Oh you're kidding...

Two or three days ago I was getting dressed for school (ha ha... ), doing what i do most mornings. One of these things is checking my hair. You never know when you may have a random piece of lint from your shirt smack dab in the middle of the back of you head. So I've got my bathroom mirror and a handheld one, and I'm checking and I'm searching, turning my head from side to side... I FOUND ONE! It wasn't lint, it was like this white, thin piece of thread, probably from some non-cotton fabric... So I'm getting a little closer to the light, slowly moving my hand to the exact point, bringing my fingers to a close around the thread... I got it. I pull it off and look at my fingers. I open them to see the thread (to make sure i got it) and I don't see it. Ooh it's a tough one, it's still in my hair. So i go at it again... and it's still in there! So I go at it a third time and PULL! A strand of hair comes out, but i got the sucker. HA HA! So now I'm pulling the thread apart from the strand of hair so i can look at it a little better, but it's knotted together (ah well). But then, as I looked at the strand-thread more closely I though to myself, "W-wait... wait a minute... Oh you're kidding. This isn't a piece of thread at all, it MY HAIR!" I had found my first flippin' gray hair. And it was creepy, man. Because when people I know have found a gray hair, the whole strand is gray. Not me. I could see the change in the strand from dark brown to gray, like paint. It was truly freaky. Looking at that gray hair that morning, I thought one thing: teaching had given me my first gray hair...!

I've been having a heck of a [rough] time this year so I shouldn't have been so surprised at the gray hair. I've been trying to think about a few things but haven't really had enough time to think about them. Should I stay at my school or go somewhere else? How do I decide? If I am going to go to a new school next year, where should I go? This has been a pretty big deal for me. A part of me wants to leave, just because my experience has not been generally positive. But I can't tell if the issues I've been having is because of my students, the administration, me being in my first year, the preps I'm teaching, or the number of preps I'm teaching. No clue. I'm thinking about looking into new job positions just to see what's available. Maybe even waving a job offer from another school at my current boss in order to get [more of] what i want.
I want to stay because I don't like quitting things. I have a big problem with that. I don't like the idea of my students thinking of me as just another teacher that had come in and out or of what we've been doing this year as useless. I also don't want to set myself up for another bad year. I know I haven't liked it where I am now. If I stay at my school for a second year when I had a chance to leave and it's still horrible again and I'm miserable again, then it's my own fault and I'm the moron. But on the other hand, is it worth going through a second first year of teaching just because of my current discontent? Can I gauge for myself how much easier teaching will be for me when I've got a completed year under my belt?

Decisions decisions... any insight you have on any of these questions would be greatly appreciated.

signed,

Confundida y Casi Muerta

Reaching for "sufficient enough"

I've had a very crappy 8 weeks or so. One teacher told me, earlier in the year, that at some point you're going to hate yourself because you're not going to think you're doing a good job at all. I felt like this last semester, and understandably so, I was new to the job. But I've been teaching now for six months and I still feel that way. I've felt pretty ineffective and useless for most of the term. And what's sad is that I can see and relive positive moments that I've had in different classes this term, but they don't make me any happier or motivate me at all because they were so rare and surrounded by many more unhappy moments.

So besides sleeping and tearing up every now and then I've been thinking. Why exactly do I feel so useless? And I realized it's because I expected so much. I started out last summer making sure to have few to no expectations. Something happened along the way and I think I started expecting just about everything. I expected things to go as planned. I expected students to review the work at home. I expected to spend less time grading papers since I'd been doing it for half a year already. I expected my students to be somewhat civil in the classroom. I expected to be a better teacher than what I am now. I expected too much and didn't even know I was doing it.
In the back of my mind I keep on trying to be this sort of ideal teacher. The teacher that gets students their work in a timely manner, that does most of the things asked of her by the school administration, and that has time to help students individually, both in class and outside of class. A teacher that knows what she's doing. But sometimes I feel like I have no clue what's really going on. And I'm trying to work with this feeling of confusion and still get to this ideal teacher. I'm trying to pretend I'm not confused because I have other, slightly more immediate things to deal with. And I'm trying to walk in a straight line and maybe hold a couple things as I go. But it's not working and hasn't been. So with each step I take, to the right, then the left, then the right again, I'm still trying to walk straight and I'm still thinking of getting to the ideal teacher that's waiting for me, but I'm getting quite frustrated because I can't get my feet to do what my mind wants. And the mind.. the mind is supposed to control your body's movements. If the mind says walk straight, the body should walk straight. And if my mind says be a good teacher, then i should be a good teacher. But this is not happening. I'm still walking to the right and to the left and I'm still not where I want to be as a teacher.
Anyways. So that day that I was thinking, I also thought, "What would've happened if i came in here trying to be sufficient enough? If i had no hopes for greatness in any part of my teaching?" If I didn't have this idea of me as an "ideal teacher," it wouldn't matter that I was walking to the right and to the left. If that didn't matter, then I wouldn't be so unsatisfied and frustrated right now. My problem has been this ideal and my expectations. If i threw them all out the window, I would probably have fewer teaching nightmares, would have more time to actually eat a lunch... I could probably throw my bottles of Advil and DayQuil in the garbage...
But then i thought "Of course you can't do that. You'd be no different from too many others and that's why you're here."... yeah yeah i know. And of course, this was just one thought I had for a couple seconds a lil' while ago. I'll keep on doing what I'm supposed to as best as i can.

This is really beginning to take the life out of me. I'm just trying to find a solution, because you can't do anything with a dead teacher.