No Time to Quit

The weekend was great; I loved seeing my coworkers from UO. It was completely worth the 3 hour drive to San Antonio. They were just about finished with the day when I showed up and our decorator took us to a fabulous dinner. It was so nice to be around people I know and care for, and who know me as someone confident, capable, and sometimes even happy. Not that no one in TFA has seen me as such. But they haven't seen me succeed yet either. I had short but good talks with everyone and then headed back to Houston on Sunday morning to resume my tortured teacher life.

I was in the best mood when I first got back. I'd been listening to some music, got to touch base with some people. I was ready to rock. And then I remembered how much I hate lesson planning. It's not even that big of a deal. I just needed to find some paragraphs for my kids to analyze in today's lesson. TFA doesn't even care if there's any continuity in my lessons. It doesn't even matter if they read narratives, or paragraphs that I write myself. But I just get so stuck. I just feel brain-dead and overwhelmed all of a sudden. And then I just felt so down, missing everyone, missing my old life, though I'm trying not to romanticize my life because I know that I was unhappy in a lot of ways.

Today in class was terrible. I don't think Mighty has been worse. Ever. Ever. She was apparently okay in her A Block class and even asked her A Block teacher (whom she seems to like) to come observe my class. I don't know if that's why she was acting up or if it's because I gave every kid a note from me thanking them for their hard work and commenting on their essay. I feel like maybe she decided to take the mindset of "oh, so you think I can behave cause I was participating on Friday? Well that's not really me. I'm bad. Watch this."

PLUS I was observed more than ever today. At one point, the other teacher, my advisor, and my school director were all observing me. But that was after I'd already threatened Mighty that if she didn't stop interrupting me, talking out, putting her feet on the desk in front of her, and doing anything she could do to be disrespectful, that she had to go to the back of the room. She didn't move. Then I threatened that she had to come to the hall to talk to me. She didn't move. Then I threatened that I'd send her to the office. She didn't move or seem to care. So then I had to follow through on that and ask the other teacher, because there was no other teachers in the hall, to go get a faculty member to walk Mighty to the office. Instead the faculty member just gave her a stern talk in the hall and sent her back in. So when my school director commented to my advisor that she didn't see me issuing any consequences, that's because I'd already run through them all. What am I supposed to do?

Plus, that's just distracting me from teaching the rest of the class. I have to keep them busy doing something while I'm trying to deal with Mighty because whenever I start talking to the rest of the class, she's being totally inappropriate. And then I was just totally flustered and already didn't feel great about my lesson plan and then was behind on the timing and upset. At one point, Mighty asked if I'm gonna be there in the fall, to which I say no, and she said "ahh, that's too bad I won't have you," so I said "thanks, Mighty" and tried to move on, at which point I think she said something along the lines of "so I can f--- with you, bitch."

I wasn't even upset. I wasn't even mad. I just felt powerless and depressed. I felt like giving up. I looked at the clock: it was 10:10am. I told myself you only have to do this for 45 more minutes. At this point, I don't even care if they learn anything. You just have to not fall apart. If I leave now, it means she wins. If I walk out now, this would be the worst, worst time to do it. This is absolutely the worst time to quit. And even though everything inside of me says to leave, don't. Not sure why I didn't. But I didn't. I struggled through the rest of my lesson. I didn't even have enough time for the ending. Oh well. I totally felt like I botched part of it. Oh well. I made it through. My faculty advisor came to observe the end of my class and she claims it was fine and by then Mighty was actually working in her group, but I'm still not sure why.

And what really pisses me off is that I went to observe my same kids (they travel together all day) in their D Block, last period, class because that teacher, the only guy they have, says Mighty isn't that bad for him. She is so much worse to her C Block teacher apparently. And told her A Block teacher on Friday that one thing she likes about herself is her attitude and that she can f--- with people's heads, especially teachers. And I keep seeing in my kids' journals that my class is boring. HIS class was boring. Seriously boring. I have no idea why they like his class. Maybe he was just having an off day. Or maybe it made him nervous that I was observing.

So that's my day. Another amazing, wonderful teaching day. Now I'm going to re-evaluate what I'm doing in the class, again. Figure out how to do another overhaul of behavior, again. How exhausting. I need another little redeeming moment. Or a hundred of them.