teacher

elementary school teacher

english teacher

special education teacher

educator

ALDINE INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT

First of all, the students are amazing! 
Personally, the district has been good to me and I appreciate the opportunity to work for them. 
With that said, it is my duty to be honest and share some things I have observed over the years. Administration (principals, etc.) lacks the ability to trust and empower their employees. Aldine ISD employees are treated like small children as opposed to working adults with a wealth of knowledge, credentials, experience, and input. Input is not valued from teachers even though teachers have first hand knowledge of what the students in the district need. Because of intimidation and manipulation tactics implemented by principles within the schools,teachers are afraid to speak up for themselves, for their students, and for their co-workers due to fear of retaliation. I do not agree with this style of leadership. In order to produce strong, creative, hardworking individuals, their employer must empower them to be leaders. Encourage them to express their opinion, and VALUE their input. I believe if an employee is encouraged to be strong, stand up for themselves, and communicate their rights; they will one day be able to stand up for others. Unfortunately, the leaders of Aldine Independent School District are not yet comfortable with this style of leadership.
I believe that everything trickles down from the top. If leadership is constantly focusing on improving themselves, the benefits will affect the students in a positive way. Aldine ISD is blessed to have some of the hardest working and talented students. If Aldine decides to step outside of the box, embrace creativity, and make adjustments within their leadership style, they will help those students fly higher than they could ever imagine. 

Aldine hired a new superintendent this past year. Unfortunately, she has not had enough time to change the leadership culture within the district. She is a wonderful woman and I am confident that with more time, she will help move Aldine leadership in the right direction.

The experience may vary depending on grade level, I was High School. It is a rough place to work as a first year teacher, you are basically on your own. Planning on the district level for basic things like technology distribution and management is not existent. Administration tends to be personally biased and not very engaging on teacher support needs such as student discipline. Counselors are either overwhelmed with the workload or not very intentional with how they place students. Truancy is a huge issue which is apparently addressed in court but doesn’t count against credit. Aldine fights change like a bear and my school historically has had a huge teacher turnover every year. Very inconsistent on employee expectations depending on who you are. Leadership tends to take the egocentric way of thinking and blames the teachers for leaving (old school). It is trying to change with new central office administrators but there needs to be some new fresh administrators that haven’t been set in there ways for the last 25-35 years. Violence and theft has victimized employees. 

It’s a place you can get employment at if you are struggling to get one in another district. They can’t be too selective like most inner urban school districts. 

Pay seems to be competitive to attract and now some retention bonuses but that’s not all apparently. They are trying to come up with new attractive schedules like fall break. If you are fortunate to get the right position under the right leadership it may work out for you. 

My life has been spent here in Aldine. I worked with Kinder and First grade students most of my time in this district. I learned that hard work pays off. I appreciated the Administration Staff especially those that believed in me. I will never forget having the highest compliment of a Principal placing their student in my classroom in mid year. I was a three time recipient of the Going the Extra Mile Award.

Both of my classes were self contained rooms which meant I had to teach all subjects. The hardest part was always trying to find enough Spanish materials to enhance the lesson. This would put my translating a lot of materials and made for many late nights. It was difficult as I was raising three grand daughters during these years. I enjoyed teaching Kinder and First Graders. They seem to give so much love easily without expecting anything in return. The joy of teaching also included a lot administrative upkeep. I worked on Microsoft programs constantly, whether it was Excel to do reports or Power Point to do programs for my students. The fact is that both Teacher and Student learned daily many qualities of becoming a productive citizen and purposeful leader of tomorrow.

7:45      The first bell rings and students may enter the classroom.  During this time children put away their belongings and get settled into class for the day.  Teachers have various tasks assigned to get children settled and ready for the day.
     Class officially begins for the day.  Students who arrive after the second bell are marked tardy.  Teachers take attendance, announcements are shared and children are invited to participate in the pledge of allegiance.

During the course of the day children will participate in all of the academic subjects: reading, writing, math, science and social studies.  Most days children have a special subject class such as: music, physical education, art, chorus, recorder, band or strings.

  All lunches are followed by an outdoor recess period. Children will go outside for recess unless there is extreme weather.

Language Arts blocks are ninety minutes and generally encompass activities such as: focused mini lessons, small group guided reading instruction, individual conferences about reading and/or writing, writer’s workshop, independent practice in spelling, handwriting or vocabulary.

Dismissal at 3;30

Overall
My experience working at ALDINE INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT was not the most pleasant. I was excited to start my journey as a first year teacher. Within a month I was stressed, felt unsupported, unappreciated, and unproductive. The campus I was assigned to was ran VERY poorly, which probably made my experience worst. The district and campuses have very high and unrealistic expectations. Everything is about the “student” and never about the teacher. You need us to guide and mold them! You’d think they’d pour into their teachers but they don’t. From the campus to district level they’re unorganized and inefficient. There are no proven leaders in any level of their hierarchy. The only good thing about working for Aldine was meeting certain teachers and students and forming a bond with them. Furthermore, even the parents were a headache on top of the madness and PLEASE don’t expect support from your administrators in these situations. It will always be about what you’re doing wrong and what you’re not doing. Please, there are better districts out there. Use your time, passion, and skills somewhere else where you’ll be appreciated and actually leave work feeling productive!

One major pro is Aldine is a large district. I’m sure a teacher can find a school that compliments their teaching style and values. There’s  also plenty of room for growth. I personally watched many teachers career blossom. My main issue is the real disconnect between administration and teachers. Bottom line, I had no complaints for majority of my time at Aldine. My problems truly began  after starting my family and having to deal with people far removed from the classroom. In the media teachers are often praised for working extremely hard and making sacrifices for students. In reality, most of the hard work and sacrifices a teacher makes  will  go unnoticed by admin, parents, and even the students. These people cannot see the money spent on subscription, supplies, and rewards. They have no clue how long it take to build a course from scratch online. To be a truly effective teacher is no joke! It’s a craft that take years to develop, but I digress. My point is it will not advance or save a teacher career to overextend themselves. The only way around this could be to tweet every good deed😉.....

 A teacher starts her day at 7:15 in the morning ready to greet students into the room by 7:45am. She is on her feet and on stage so to speak, teaching and facilitating the learning process of students as well as managing behavior problems of many types through out the day. I learned that you need to stay  positive and flexible and continue to remind yourself of your long term goals rather than letting yourself worry about the constant interruptions that weren't part of your lesson plan that day. The co-workers understand and are generally empathetic to each other because they have been in similar circumstances. The most enjoyable part of the job is when you see the seemingly miraculous progress your students are making in their acedemics. You see the fruits of your labors and realize they were learning after all. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
Worst place to work , people it’s not the problem   , is the new system that they have for everything, even the way they pay it’s horrible. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Pay program they have , and people who work in the upper management don’t know how to get organized. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Work environment with coworkers ( bus drivers ) excellent, culture at the upper office horrible . 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Begins at 4:45 am ,make sure everything in and out of the bus is working in excellent condition, get ready to pick up children’s and dropping off at the school . We have to deal with traffic, late parents with their kids, make sure everyone is safe . Out of the bus parking lot at 8:45 or 9:00 am , return to bus parking lot at 12:15 pm to do the same routes , ( in between we have to have paper work ready and make sure we have all kids and parents information right, if we need it in case of an emergency. )

My first Texas teaching opportunity has been a very rewarding experience.  At Escamilla Intermediate in Aldine ISD, our special at-risk LEP 6th grade students were in need of a great deal of encouragement and motivation.  Lessons needed to be very engaging, and I often used scaffolding to support comprehension of grade-level concepts presented.  I consistently challenged them to make inferences, draw conclusions and provide evidence to support their understanding.  I also regularly employed question stems designed to promote critical thinking and encourage them to make connections to reading passages, in both the Reading class and the Social Studies class.

This year, my well-integrated and dedicated team managed to nearly quadruple student achievement levels from the Practice STAAR to the actual STAAR, and some students even received commended/advanced scores.

The administrative teams that I worked with in both schools were not good but for different reasons.  One school, Carver High School, had the worse administrative team of all.  The principal had extremely poor communication skills and lacked knowledge of assessments or assessment data.  He had no idea of how to manage his staff -- only how to threaten the staff.  The second school, Eisenhower 9th grade campus was run like a military camp.  The principal was a bully and felt that she could bully because most of the people she hired were either straight out of college OR could not manage to pass the TeXes exams in their content area.  The teachers were not knowledgeable of formative assessments, did not know how to use data, but they did understand the importance of sucking up to the principal.  She is a straight up bully.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Teacher 6 salaries reported	$68,167 per year
Elementary school teacher 65 salaries reported	$48,892 per year
English teacher 3 salaries reported	$63,667 per year
Special education teacher 5 salaries reported	$65,000 per year
Educator 4 salaries reported	$66,550 per year

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