Labor Day Laboring

Courtesy of Jenn:

Growth means change and
change involves risk, stepping
from the known to the unknown.
- Author Unknown

While the rest of the country may have had Labor Day off, apparently Texas schools go to work. Ugh. Would've been nice to have that extra day considering that I spent all weekend working on a week-long plan but am still spending evenings lesson planning. When will I be able to get ahead of things? How do I even have time for things like entering grades? Figuring out when to offer time for students to come make up work? I'm exhausted by lunch and just want that 45 mins to myself to just peace out, or run the numerous errands I have to run like making various photocopies. Anytime I go to the main office, there is more paperwork for me to do. Anything from pulling together an entire week-worth of assignments & readings for a student who's just been sent to in-school suspension, to doing a count of all the various technologies or desks or equipment in my room. And everything is ASAP.

I'm so tired. I can't even imagine making it to Christmas at this point. I'm just shooting for surviving through an entire day, maybe a week, just til Friday. There's so much to remember. At least I'm getting better with their names. That helps a little. I have around 120 students between 6 classes, I think. My 7th period is the hardest still. I can barely get through a lesson. It's the most frustrating thing I've ever done probably. I now have TWO dedicated resource teachers who are going to come help me. It makes me feel like I'm a bad teacher for not being able to control my classroom but 1) it's only week two, 2) this is the first time they've kept the repeat freshmen on our campus instead of sending them to the regular high school, 3) I have all the toughest kids who are already feeling like failures and already un-invested and it would be rough for a veteran teacher. I just don't know what to do. I'm not a good enough teacher yet to make my lessons interesting. I just don't feel creative at all. I am struggling just to come up with ideas for a lecture-style class, to find readings to go with the objective I'm trying to accomplish. I need to just rely more heavily on our planned curriculum, which no one follows, but it suggests doing ridiculous activities like having boxes that are wrapped and filled with various items and have kids reach into the hole in the box and feel the objects and guess what they are as a segway to talking about risk-taking and identity. What? I don't even understand the connection. It just sounds like a waste of time.

How do I get control of my classroom? How do I teach students not to interrupt me mid-sentence to ask me off-topic questions like if they can just hand me their reading journal right then? How do I weight my grades? What kind of homework do I assign? How much? How do I challenge them, while giving them homework that my lesson has prepared them to do, without creating too much work for me to later grade it? How do I incorporate it the next day and reinforce it? What will my consequences be for not doing homework? When should I offer out-of-class tutorial? Before school (but I'm currently commuting 45 mins & I'm never ahead of stuff to not be needing the morning to make copies, etc)? After school (but then I'm exhausted and have trouble enough staying awake for my commute home)? During lunch? How do I make contact with parents? What exactly do I say? How do I make my lessons more interesting, more engaging, use more student-centered learning, while also keeping order? How do I invest my students who are so resistive?

In home life, my flatmate is moving out this weekend. We gave our 60-days notice and I'm moving out next weekend to Harlingen to our sister complex. The good news was that I actually stood up for what I wanted: my roommate to pay the transfer fee in full ($300 instead of $1700 to break the lease if I moved to a different complex not owned by this company). She's the one who wants out and wants to break the lease, she's the one who can pay for it, especially since I'm saving her $500 just by moving there, which will be expensive for me in rent. She was pretty upset about it and we had a really uncomfortable conversation. But I held my ground with my reasoning and didn't cave like I may have been inclined to do in the past under similarly uncomfortable situations. Eventually she agreed. Then eventually we both apologized for the tone the conversation took. And now we're back to neutral. My new coworkers have already offered to help me move in. I offered to make dinner & drinks afterward. Good news about the place, in addition to having a pool and workout room just like this complex: I'll only be 2 miles from my school, which will be amazing for my commute but may also mean that I run into my students while buying tampax and beer. Well, I am human too, right? I'm looking forward to having my own place actually, to finally setting up some kind of home for myself. I know that I'll get lonely. But I'm already lonely. Even living with someone. I just need to find my support systems. I need to find help.

Last week, on Friday, I did get some help from the veteran teachers. The resource teachers took me to talk to the reading teacher who had most of my repeaters last year, who told me 1) that these were tough kids individually, and together a disaster, and 2) it was cruel to put them together, and with a new teacher. But what can you do but try to teach them? Anyhow, they decided a prayer was in order and took me to my room and said a prayer for me. Then proceeded to reorganize my classroom setup: turn desks with backs to the door, put down the blinds on the window, papered up the window next to the door so students can't see into the hallway. I can't tell yet if it's working. But I felt good about seeking out the help I could.

I won't lie, I think about quitting everyday. I feel pretty miserable here. I'm homesick. I'm lonely. I'm very hard on myself and have these visions of myself as this fabulous teacher which I just can't be at this point, for whatever reason, I'm told that's to be expected. So far I do not like teaching. It's stressful. I feel a bit nauseous when I think about teaching tomorrow. I'm not really sure what I'm doing in class. I worry that it will be boring and then the energy in the room is really negative and it's hard to get through. By the 5th of 6 times that I have to give the lesson, I'm hating it and just wishing I could be somewhere else. Is what I'm teaching them valuable? I think it is. I think they need to know what "theme" in literature is. But I also don't think I taught them the skills for it, just the definitions. How do I teach the skills? I know that my students are learning something from me, everyday. They are. But it doesn't make it any feel better. And I'm so far not enjoying teaching at all. It will help to move closer, both in that I'll have less of a commute but also in that I'll feel more integrated in my community, more invested. Part of the problem is that I am not invested as I should be, or could be, or would like to be. I don't have hope. I don't have faith. I don't believe or see that it will get better. Logically I know it will. It has to. And people who have taught before tell me it's true. But I don't have the faith and hope that I need to have to make this feel more possible and feel less awful. These are moments when I wish I was more spiritual and could put my trust somewhere. But I feel so jagged, after all that's happened this year. It's hard to trust. It's risky and it's scary and there's no guarantee.

My intention here is not to be a downer. But I'm also not into sugar-coating my experience. If I can't be honest and raw about my feelings, what's the point? Because maybe someone will be able to relate. Maybe someone has felt similar. And that's the power of writing after all, to connect us, to help us communicate our experience to others.

My friend Katie gave me a picture that says Peace, Love, Joy. It's hanging across from my bed so that I can see it every morning and night. I promise to try to cultivate these more in my life. Starting at this moment. And making my week goal to reach Friday pm feeling that there is more peace, love, and joy in my life than there are at this very moment. Thank you for your contribution; I can feel your love and support from here. I just wish you could be around to come get a beer with me on Friday to celebrate my week survival. Cause, man, teaching really makes you want a drink.