This was not my best year teaching. My heart was not in the job a lot of the year. I was present and accounted for and did all the things I am supposed to do all while not enjoying much of it. When I admitted and apologized to most of my classes towards the end of the year that I wasn't at my best, I was surprised that they didn't readily agree with me. I said I was a B, B- teacher at best and one Senior responded that he would hate to see me on my A game.
In January, I actually applied for another job outside of education because I felt like I just couldn't do this anymore. Coaching plus teaching is exhausting and I constantly felt as though I was running in butter and getting nowhere. And the hours! Soccer games mean the day starts at 8:30am and ends somewhere about 10pm. Y'all. I am old and this is hard on the body. I also spent much of September to January in this weird malaise where I just didn't feel like me. Symptom of COVID or menopause or this career or all of these things? Add to it both kids living away from home for the first time and moving. It was a lot and it showed up where I work because I am human.
This meant that I really phoned in some lessons. It meant that I couldn't keep my disdain for Steinbeck from leaking through as we read Steinbeck and made me avow to never read Steinbeck as a class again. I didn't write comments on a lot of work that was turned in. Just checked and graded and entered and compiled. I didn't always reach out to the kids I could see who were hurting because I had no emotional bandwidth to give them. (I am not sure if I am allowed to admit this?). It meant that my coaching was sloppy. It meant that I was half-heartedly going through all the motions and thinking it would be better and I would be better somewhere else. And the pay would certainly be better.
I am not sure if it happened all at once like the Grinch and his growing heart or was more like a slow thaw, but somewhere in late February, I started to no longer hate my job. I was still tired and annoyed with many things, but I didn't hate being here. Even for ten hours a day. There was joy and I was seeing it. It was winning a hard soccer game and doing a stupid TikTok dance because I promised I would if we won. It was watching the quiet kid laugh at something I said and then write with all of his heart. It was listening to two baseball boys call each other terrible things while arguing over how to analyze poetry. (This actually might be one of my favorite teaching moments ever.) It was writing all of my seniors a note on their last day and watching them become quiet and thoughtful as they read them. There is happiness most days and I was finally seeing it. And even better, I could feel it.
I think teaching is a career where I will periodically wonder if I should teach or not teach. If I am doing the right thing for me, for my future, or hahahaha, retirement. There are a few things I know for sure though: anything with an acronym will serve to make my life a mess for one year and then be replaced with another acronym, I will always be exhausted, I could get a 20% pay raise and still be underpaid, and that I am total sucker for nice words written on the back of an exam or assignment. And maybe I am a total sucker in general for not jumping out of education and into something more lucrative or less taxing on the soul. But then I would miss that quiet kid in the corner, or the way that the air is electric in a huddle before a game, or the next section of Women, Words, and Wisdom, and well, I am just not ready to give that up.
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| And, I do get to see some amazing sunsets. |
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