I am tired of being a teacher. I never thought I’d say it, but this year has put my love of learning and children in a direct contest with politics, gossip, meddling, and drama. Above all else, I am tired of the drama. I am a very honest person by nature–blunt is a word that people have used to describe me as of late, and I can’t argue. I don’t like secrets, faux-friendships, or being put in the middle of impossible situations. Being a teacher this year has done nothing but bring on the drama, from little things in the classroom to entire district and union issues that I want no part of, but obligation dictates otherwise. I don’t want to be obliged–I want to bow out gracefully and hand the torch to another runner.
The lack of funding in education right now has made work stressful. Hate it. I have always looked at teaching as my safe-haven of sorts. Despite how out of control other parts of my life feel, I can go into that classroom, shut the door, and teach America’s future how to read a pictograph and write a simple persuasive essay about the best holiday in the world. Maybe it’s a control issue, but I’ve always considered the classroom as a place where I’ve yet to truly fail. So many other important areas of my life are riddled with failure, I’ve always been able to pride myself on my ability to compartmentalize my life for 7 hours and just be a teacher.
This year, everytime I shut my door, someone opens it and dumps something else in my lap I don’t want. I’ve been told union secrets and vowed secrecy, asked to give my professional opinion on building cuts but to keep quiet about what I know, told stories about fellow co-workers and families in the strictest of confidences. I haven’t asked for any of this information; to the contrary, much of this has been shared with me without my consent–only after “the secret’s out” am I asked to keep mum. Co-workers have done much of the same–gossip about this one or that, rumors about cuts and who will be where, caddy stuff I hate. All of it is dragging me down.
To add insult to injury, I took on the task of taking 5 graduate courses in the course of the past year. This is a decision I will not make again, but I’m way past that. I’ve spent countless hours reading about how schools are failing, that we place too much emphasis on high-stakes testing, we are disciplining our students in a completely backward way, our writing curriculum is not up to par, I do not give enough time to my special needs students, I need to consider the needs of my impoverished students more carefully…the thoughts swirling in my head are endless. So now, I’m not only burdened with secrets I didn’t want to know in the first place, but I feel like I’m failing all the groups of students I service in most areas of the curriculum.
I haven’t even touched the needs of my students and their families. I have 5 students with special needs of one sort or another and 20 more students who vary from extremely needy to caddy to ultra-competitive. And the parents–it seems that the more students they put in my classroom, the more parents feel like they should expect of me. I have parents who’d like a daily email of how their child did that day to parents who think I’m pushing their child too hard to parents who think their child isn’t being challenged enough to parents who would like their child’s red words tested on the same day each week, “if that’s okay”…the list is far longer than this. It’s almost as if I am no longer a professional with research and years of experience to back up how my classroom operates, I’m a glorified babysitting service that will hand you a note at the end of the day letting you know when Joey ate, pooped, and passed his spelling test.
As judgmental as this statement sounds, the breakdown of the American family and our economy is what I believe has directly affected my experiences in the classroom. Parents don’t have time between working 3 jobs or running the siblings to every little skill class they can enroll their children in to read with their kids at night or study math flash cards–it’s now my job, and they want a weekly report proving that I’ve done it. They don’t have time to challenge their intelligent children or help their struggling kid with math–also my job, and have I individualized the curriculum to meet the needs of their child? Better question yet–have you individualized your family life style to accommodate YOUR child?
I have been praised by several parents who acknowledge how hard I work and I do feel that my best efforts are appreciated and in most cases, respected. I’m just fried, I know me and I know I can’t do this year over and over again the next 20 years. This post returns to where it began–I’m tired. Tired of second guessing myself, parents, co-workers, and administration. It was reported to me in high school that by the time I was 60, it was predicted that I would change professional careers 3 times. I am 32, and for the first time in my life, I believe that prediction could come true.