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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. UnknownNovember 11, 2014 at 5:00 PM

    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
  2. DanielNovember 11, 2014 at 5:08 PM

    YES. Just... yes.

    ReplyDelete

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