New Teacher Diaries
Keeping my head above the water
May 24, 2007 12:44 PM
From the moment I settled in for my eight-minute subway ride to school this morning until I plopped down for my eight-minute subway ride home, I was consumed with a certain feeling ... dread, disgust, disappointment … I couldn’t really pinpoint it. Do I dislike the neighborhood I teach in? Am I frustrated with administration? Are my kindergarten students sending me over the edge? Is it a first-year teaching thing? Am I opposed to working?
Graduate school at Columbia sounds tempting. Beautiful campus, kind professors, no naughty children ...
OK, OK, I am terrible for giving up already. Attempting to put this year into perspective, I have been thinking back to my freshman year of college. First year living on my own, meeting strange individuals with peculiar habits, making independent choices ... no lie, after the first week I wanted to call it quits. I felt out of place, quite lost and was struggling under the unfamiliar pressures of difficult classes. That being said, by second semester I had found my niche. Five years down the line, I was sad to move along. Shouldn’t teaching follow the same pattern?
I figured my first year of teaching would suck. Struggling to teach small beings who are constantly testing my limits, attempting to cooperate with parents who believe their 5-year-old angel would never fight without being provoked (surely not!), and giving up a great deal of dignity as I put on a quite a show to capture the attention of my children (a little song and dance always clears the air of chit-chat). Clearly I was not wrong; teaching is tough. But come now, I thought I would be getting good at teaching and that by May, by MAY for crying out loud, I would have my class running smoothly and under control. Evidently this is not the case.
So what now? Will next year be better? Am I willing to take that risk? Should I open a bakery instead? Hibernate?
No matter my level of exasperation, no matter how much I’d like to close my eyes and wish my students away, my students will still be there when I open my eyes and I had better have a plan — a good plan — to get through each day without losing my mind. I will keep thinking of ways to entice my children with finger puppets who just happen to love to read and will continue to attract their attention with a store full of goodies that 5-year-olds will do anything for in order to learn how money works. I am striving to end the year in good spirits, striving to keep my head above the water.
No-sleep-till-Brooklyn is a pseudonym for a first-year kindergarten teacher. A version of this post first appeared on the UFT blog, edwize.org, where “New teacher Diaries” is a regular feature.
