I have had a tough few weeks, and I decided trying to put my thoughts into words might help figure things out (you have a blog for that, right?!).
I feel like I'm a really hard place at my current job. The school I'm at has the potential to be hugely transformative and in theory is my ideal work place. I'm surround by smart, caring, concerned, and committed educators in an urban school that is beating the odds. We're helping support kids so they can all go to college. Teachers are pushed to what at times feels like beyond their capacities. The principal pushes and pushes and pushes. His ambition is huge and the school is his everything. He founded it and he has watched it grow - he wants it to provide the nation with a national model of how school can be done in the inner city to make real change for families and break cycles of poverty.
Sounds pretty great typing all of that out. We are a place that is always a work in progress, always changing, always building, always asking more from teachers and from students. ...Here's where I get selfish a little. Me. I. and so on. Sometimes I just don't want to be working in a school where I never feel accomplished. I never truly feel successful, necessary, adequate, or satisfied in any real way with the work that I do. I constantly feel overworked and underappreciated. I'm never really certain or convinced that our "work in progress" is ever going to be the place we strive to be. Nothing we do seems permanent, thorough, well-structured, or organized. It feels like a big experiment, and I feel like I'm at a stand still. I have a standing meeting on Fridays with my principal to go over my lesson plans and talk about observations which he does in my room (which don't happen as often as he shoots for - I get it, principals are busy). I got "Needs Improvement" on my last two formal evaluations and he has promised to re-do one of them, but has already pushed the date back 3 weeks. I am being singled out and focused on and I am not confident that it is for a good reason.
Teaching is really hard. I've been doing it for 7 years and I'm not really great at it yet. Sometimes I wonder if I taught at a different sort of school - one with better structure, or one in the suburubs... would I thrive? Would I feel more successful? Would I be able to build a body of evidence to make me feel confident about the career I chose years ago? Would I feel less important not being in the grand experiment that is my school? Lately I am uncertain if that decision will be mine at all. I have negative feelings a lot - what if I get let go? What if I have bed evaluations and can't get references from administration. I came to my school wanting to be one of the best teachers there, but I generally feel wildly mediocre.
I think about people in other careers that don't care at all about their jobs. People who don't bring home hours of work every night, or have to feel guilty for enjoying a few hours on a week day. I can understand why so many people leave this profession. I'm certainly not at that point, but it is something I give thought to. I just want to feel like my life's work is valuable and valued. I want to come home and feel like I accomplished things and helped kids get ahead in life. I don't want to feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders and that I don't live a high quality life.
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