I am fired. Washed up. A has-been. A pariah. And yet I have a quarter of the school year left to teach. My first instinct is to say fuck you and take every last one of my thirty accrued sick days. I now spend my evenings writing cover letters, scouring the internet for job postings and soul-searching with my soul-mate, instead of preparing lessons or editing drafts of persuasive essays. Why should I put in the extra effort anyway? Not like it did me any good.
I am a lame duck. Rather, a lame teacher.
But then there is the reality that I don't work for my stupid principal, I work for my students. They didn't fire me. I still have a job, and as recently as a month ago I thought I was pretty darn good at it. The more I slack off and neglect my responsibilities in the classroom, the more we will all suffer for it.
But then there is the reality that I am in a serious funk. I am bitter, cranky, sad, anxious, lost. How can I possibly be a good teacher when I feel so rotten?
I entered the field of education a decade ago because I wanted to have an impact on children's lives. I wanted to be with the same set of kids for 7 hours a day, 180 days a year and teach them how to learn, how to love themselves, and how to be kind to one another. I did not go in to education to teach kids how to take a standardized test. I didn't even go in to teaching in order to teach them how to spell and memorize their multiplication facts, though I figured I could fit that in as well. I thought teaching was the perfect profession for me because it was creative, motivational, multi-disciplinary and social. It occurs to me that the act of teaching, the profession of teaching, is not what I thought it would be. I actually do not have an interest in making students sit quietly in their desks for 6 hours a day and memorize paragraph structures to mastery. It may be that I have landed in quite the wrong field.
So the question emerges: Now what?
2 comments:
Dear Lame,
Of course you are not lame. You are trying to make a creative place for yourself in a highly regulated institution -- it is not easy.
I think:
1. You have not wasted a decade in teaching. You have learned valauble things and contributed to a whole host of young people already.
2. It may be - particularly given the current swings of the pendulum in education -- that a stressed public school is not the place for your to offer your most precious gifts. It just might not be the right fit as "standards" and "tests" and "accountability" are heard more frequently than "creativity." I don't think that systems that are based on human interactions are particularly efficient, and we're are in an era where the system is asking for efficiency.
3. I think it is possible that there is another public school out there that would offer you a larger cohort of young, spirited colleagues, more support for the students that struggle, and more acknowledgment that this is hard work. At today's Whole Team Meeting (we emphasize our team, not "staff or "faculty" so each week EVERYONE, including the people who take out the garbage, gather to talk about issues that effect us) our Secret Guerilla Choir will perform a cover of Beyonce's Single Ladies dedicated to the lost and found bin ("All the single mittens, all the single mittens....Because if you like then you shoulda put your name on it"). Why? Because it is funny. It will make people laugh and the spring is a stressful time for all of us. The choir includes 2 administrators, an admin assistant, a reading assistant, and 2 classroom teachers - a real cross section of the school. If we had you we would have better props. What I am trying to say is that the system can be inane and defeating, but there are schools that see that and are doing their best to shield classrooms from the worst and use the best to motivate all of us. Find one of those schools.
4. You are amazing.
I agree with everythink that "It's Free" said!!!!
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