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2004-04-13 - 7:51 p.m. I went out to dinner with two of my friends, S & J, for a belated birthday thang. J is a NYC teacher and former fellow who is currently teaching an inclusion class in the Bronx. In straight speech, she is teaching a second grade class comprised of 6 special education kids and 22 general education kids. Her advice to me was, �Don�t do it�just don�t. Trust me you won�t survive.� Doh! Talking about taking the wind out of my sails. Then she apologized for being so harsh and said, �Okay, to look at this in a more positive light. If you can just treat it like a job and not take is personally, then I would say do it, but go for District 75 because at least you are getting the truly disabled kids and not just the bad-asses that they don�t know what else to do with. Plus, you might not end up in as bad a ghetto.� Hmmm�I was sort of leaning toward D75 since I read on the website that most of the fellows reported being extremely happy with their placement. But then� I talked to M, a future fellow who is currently volunteering as a special ed teaching assistant for a high school class and a 3rd grade class, both in Brooklyn. He raved about how much he loved special ed, waxing poet on how much satisfaction he was receiving from teaching a 19 year old to add 2 + 2, and a third grader that no matter how much she tested him that he wasn�t going to desert her like her parents did. He strongly urged AGAINST District 75 saying that I�d be taking on a position that was a cross between nursemaid and warden to the �shitters and spitters� and kids with the severest of disabilities. Dang! Then he urged me to get out of my job as quickly as possible and start volunteering at a school so that I can get some experience in and more importantly (hopefully) make a connection that could lead to a placement in Brooklyn at a school that knows and likes me rather than in the south Bronx where I�d be losing two hours a day just commuting back and forth. I tried to tell him that I didn�t want to screw over my boss who�s been so good to me but he was really fired up about how I couldn�t sit back and wait for a placement from the fellowship � or suffer the consequences: a slum, the shittiest school and a long commute. Double Dang! So today I talked to my boss. She already knew that I applied so it didn�t come as a shock. She was really nice about it all and said she thought that volunteering would be a good idea since it would give me a better idea if I really wanted to do it at all. Then she asked me why I wanted to teach. I told her how I�ve been struggling to find more personal meaning in my life and my work. �But why teaching?� she asked again, �Is it teaching that you want to do or is it simply that this opportunity has come up?� She suggested that I might want to consider nursing school instead. When I said that I hadn�t really thought about it much because I didn�t really want to work with sickness and death. She said that there was a lot more fields open to nurses than just that. She suggested nursing therapist or occupational therapist as possibilities. The money would be better and the opportunity to work in a hands on field with people would still be there. She was concerned that after the two years of teaching that I would find that there was little room for improvement, not much increase in salary, and a high level of stress and frustration. Double Doh Double Dang Doh! Now I�m all freaked out� I am going to try and volunteer at a couple of schools and see if that helps straighten things out for me a little. AND A PERSONAL PLEA! If you are in, or have any connection to the public school system in Brooklyn and can give me an intro, a reference, a name, or anything else that could help me get a placement in Brooklyn I will be most eternally grateful for any assistance!!!!! � 
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