Last night before I went to bed I found myself in a very sort of strange place. I laid there, at 2:00 in the morning, my stomach in knots and my head filled with the whispers of insecurity that I’d become accustomed to over the course of two years as a professional educator. All teachers experience the first-day jitters. It’s kind of our way of self-checking whether or not we’re ready for the rigors of the year ahead.
The past two years I had said jitters. I wondered if I had made enough copies of the syllabus, whether is adequately rehearsed my first-day lectures well enough to the point that the students would understand and, perhaps most importantly, whether I’d set the tone for the maximum amount of learning to take place.
As I laid awake in my bed last night, I had to add a sort of new response to these jitters for one important reason:
I didn’t have a class to teach anymore.
It was a sudden, harsh reality that kind of bum-rushed me and overwhelmed me. There would be no tense moment waiting for the starting bell to ring, no lecture to review, and no horde of new children whose faces and names I could learn and get to know.
In that moment, the jitters went away and were replaced by genuine sadness. An empty, gaping hole in my heart that I wasn’t aware of until that moment. My last teaching gig was miserable at times, yes. I was angry a lot and hated more than a few of the people I worked with, but it was never about the people I was working with. It was always about the work itself.
I recently moved into a new apartment. In moving, you’re sort of forced to sort through and pack up all aspects of your life into boxes. In that sorting, I found all the little tokens given to me by my students during my last days: the custom shirt from the class of 2013 who all signed it, the caricatures of me doing everything from teaching to landing a TARDIS on the head of Rebecca Black, and the letters written from the heart by students who at one time I’m sure cursed the day I was born. In a blog titled “Your Kids are Assholes,” it’s hard to express what I really feel.
Sadness. A vast and infinite sadness. It’s not that I’m not working at something I love…
It’s the thought that I’m not making a difference.
I feel bereft of purpose. I feel like another blip in the stats for what folks.are calling “The Lost Generation.” However…being who I am…and what I believe, I am going to continue fighting. I will teach again.
In the meantime…there’s always subbing. That should generate some fun, eh?
Cheers…
Your Kids are Assholes 