Wow, what a dream! We don't have subs in my school. Grade level teachers split the coverage load

100% agreed. I feel like there's a switch that turns on that makes people forget their teacher experiences once they become leaders.

Respect is definitely earned!

A lot of new ideas (which is great!), but also wanting to reinvent the wheel when systems already work. Another pain point is lack of transparency especially for veteran teachers (4+ years) as to why certain initiatives are being pushed.

Also new to leading a whole staff, growing pains there

I taught for 9 years before taking a 2 year break from teaching to do an office job. I chose to come back this year to my old school, and while staff morale is low (new leadership team), it's the kids that keep me going.

All that to say, I'm really enjoying my break and I'm glad that you are too!

Agreed! Lowering the bar for students is an injustice. Students can achieve any goal with the proper supports, and high expectations sets them up to succeed exponentially!

I've done multisensory phonemic exercises to build automaticity when it comes to decoding tricky words (not as quick, but the it's been paying off)

For math story problem, breaking it up into sentences and visualizing what's happening has been okay, but our gaps have mostly been in decoding

I teach SpEd but are around a lot of 3rd and 4th graders. There's no intrinsic motivation to do well in school and show resilience with new content. If they don't understand it the first time, they don't bother trying. It's so sad to see because they have so much potential!!

I taught both 6-8 history/social studies and 3rd grade. I think I enjoy 3rd the most because they're almost middle schoolers but not quite, and they're so excited to learn new content and just be in school in general!