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In which I use my lunch break to whine.

You know, I never really believed that teacher burnout was a thing that would happen to me.

I would read all these articles about new teachers leaving the profession in droves, exhausted by how much they had to do and I would smugly think, "Well, yeah, but that's never going to happen to me because I love teaching and I love music and I love kids, so I'll just always want to do this."

Oh, my friends, my friends. I spoke too soon.

I have been a real, actual teacher for just over two months now.

And today, I hate it.

Today, I want to quit.

Today, I want to go find some job where I don't have to interact with children and I can just have scintillating conversations with adults and like...do data entry or something easy. And I'm sure a cushy job like that doesn't actually exist, everything has a stressful, hard side, but I just want something that is not this.

I'm sick of being sassed and talked back to. I'm sick of seeing kids zoning out while I teach and knowing it's because my lesson isn't as engaging as I thought it was. I hate that my students either don't take me seriously or hate my class because I'm "mean". I swear I learned all of these foolproof tricks to keep these things from happening back in my college theory classes, but I can't remember most of them, and I think I must be doing the rest of them wrong.

I guess I just have spent the last 6 years thinking this was something I would love and be really good at, and I feel like I'm not good at it and I don't love it and I just want to go home but I have like three more hours before that can happen.

And maybe it's because I'm getting over an awful cold (but I'm still not sick enough to make writing a sub plan worth it). And maybe it's because I'm new at this, and as I get better at teaching, it will become more enjoyable. And maybe I'm just having an off week.

But today, I just kind of want to throw in the towel on this whole teaching thing. Is there anything else I'm qualified for?


Comments

  1. aw, poor Riss. I'm sorry. But we can have scintillating conversations this weekend! (I'm not sure I can provide scintillating conversation, but I'll sure try)

    ReplyDelete

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