The Mid-Year Transfer

I have been navigating the 3rd largest school district in the nation for almost 8 years now, and it is definitely not the easiest thing to do.  I started my teaching career in a large elementary school on the west side of the city.  The last year or so the commute and the politics at my school started to become more than I could handle.  I knew that I wanted to transfer schools, but it wasn't going to be easy.  I made the really tough decision to transfer schools at the end of the first semester.

While I am really excited to be starting a new position tomorrow, I am feeling really guilty about leaving my students and co-workers behind.  In order to ease some of the transition for my students and the new teacher who should be coming into my position, I have been trying to leave things in place for them.  I put together portfolios for my students with their work from math, writing and reading.  I explained the portfolios to the students and the paraprofessional so they would be able to share that information with their new teacher.

I am also not the type of person to leave someone else in a bad place, so I've put a lot of pressure on myself (as you can see from my todo list above) to leave everything pretty much done and set up for whoever comes into my position.  I even made a binder with unit guides, and all the information the new teacher will need.  I truly hope this will help make the transition for my students as easy as possible.