To feel supported these first weeks of school you need the time and necessary information to get your assigned classroom ready for the year. You have only started a school year once in the last 13 years, and that was a half day teaching position in a combined Montessori preschool and kindergarten room. In the past, you have started 12 high school classrooms, but this job of staring the school year as a substitute teacher in an elementary building is a challenge. This fall you will likely need support in understanding all of the school behavior expectations, but it has already been helpful to spend time reading through the school and student handbooks.

You live at nearly 10 miles from the school where you will be subbing, so the busy main street is your only complaint about the school where you have accepted this assignment. For that reason you will likely be arriving early to avoid the traffic that I drove in for the 13 years your girls attended this same elementary building.

You have not subbed at this particular school a lot in the last few years, but when you have been there you feel like you have been able to contribute to some really good writing lessons in Montessori fourth and fifth grade classrooms.

You sub in Montessori classrooms preschool through eighth grade, high school English classes, and the Young Adult Program. And you spend your days in a variety of educational settings: private schools, public schools and charter schools. Your professional goal this year is to continue to improve your classroom management techniques depending on the skills that are needed in these various environments.

Today’s Charter School Offerings Continue to Expand in Many Parts of the Country

The fact of the matter is everyone is an expert on education. And we might not all have had a chance to attend the highest rated charter schools in the nation, we have all spend our fair share of our time in a classroom. For this reason, there are many times when parents want to replicate the experience that they have had in the past. On contrast, of course, there are also parents who want to make sure that their children have a totally different kind of educational experience. From various kinds of school programs that feature STEM subjects or foreign language immersion in some of the top private or charter schools to the magnet buildings that are in some public school districts, parents often have many choices when it comes time to select a school

Whether you are considering alternative high school options for your son or daughter who has not succeeded in a traditional school setting, or you are looking for a Montessori classroom for a youngest child, it is important you visit enough that you are allowed to understand how a classroom function. As your child’s first educational instructor, you may have some of your own ideas about how you want their formal educational experience to look. Consider some of these facts and figures about the many ways that schools and their quests are scrutinized by parents across the country:

• 90% of the U.S. population aged 25 and older had a high school diploma as of 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
• although percentages vary from one state to another, 82.3% of Florida students graduated high school during the 2016 to 2017 school year.
• A high school dropout will earn $200,000 less than a high school graduate over his or her lifetime, according to DoSomething.org.
• In a trend that continues to grab the attention of many law makers and parents, the percentage of all public school students who attended public charter schools increased from 1% to 6% between the years 2000 and 2015.
• The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics reports that 3 million students were enrolled in charter schools during the 2015 to 2016 school year. This is a number that is an increase from approximately 1.8 million students five years earlier.

It may be close to winter break, but you can be certain that there are already teachers planning what their professional goals are for the first semester in the year 2020.