STICKING IT OUT


Just when I felt like I was at my wit's end, a sign of hope crossed my path nudging me to push forward. By now it is no secret that there is a lot to be desired in the role of a teacher in today’s society. I have mentioned in several posts how displeased I am with the policies, expectations, unrealistic demands, and challenging student behavior. It is a lot to deal with and has proven to even be anxiety inducing. I have, on numerous occasions, seriously entertained the idea of leaving the profession, but the fear of not finding the best footing in a different field has made me a bit apprehensive.  I know education. I know how to teach. I am a teacher. I have been for over ten years. Even though I have been feeling stuck lately, this is what I know and I’m pretty good at it.

 So what caused this change in attitude toward switching careers? A perusal of the contract book. While checking on a totally different topic, I took a look at the salary guide and realized that I am a lot closer to the top step than I realized. I pondered whether money was enough to keep me in the classroom and decided that it is. The numbers were impressive enough for me to overlook the trials of my work life. I also considered that if I were to enter a new field, I would most likely earn an entry level salary. Sticking it out was looking much more appealing. I began to imagine the trips I could take during the summer, the massages that I could afford so that I could decompress on the weekends, the little luxuries that make me happy. I tried to convince myself that these things were enough to make me stick it out. However, I did think about the job’s impact on my mental health. How would I address that? Things aren’t always as effective when it comes to the mind. Is my mental health worth the acquisition of financial security? This is what I’m left to think about. For now, or until the next incident arises, it is.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HERE WE GO AGAIN

Image
It seems that every year there are changes in pedagogy. However, in my opinion, these new concepts are really old ones that are just repackaged and given fancy new names. With the constant influx of theories and research that dictate how we are to teach comes the teacher training workshops usually run by well-paid consultants who have rehearsed their presentation dozens of times to schools across the country, but never actually implementing them and of course not with the at-risk students that I teach. And let’s say that they have worked with students in a school district similar to mine. They most likely worked with a group of hand selected students or at a charter school. Needless to say, this is the case for me yet again this summer. My Title 1 school was awarded a grant to make improvements and one of those improvements is working with a program to improve overall academic performance and to give all  students the option to attend college. That’s perfectly fine with me, but
Read more

WHY I DON’T FEEL LIKE TEACHING TODAY

Image
Early in my teaching career, I worked at a high school that made people gasp when I told them that I worked there. It was no big deal to me. I did not encounter many disciplinary issues at all. However, the majority of the students that I taught were not motivated to learn. Each one had their own story and I understood, but on this one occasion I was a bit fed up. I had been teaching them the structure of a persuasive essay for a few days and wanted them to write with a bit more command. I was teaching the counterargument. What I thought would be one lesson took several. With that said, on one particular night I was confused and frustrated about why my students were struggling so much to address the counterargument in their essay. At that point a light bulb went off. I decided to write a model for them to analyze (I found that the exemplars that I wrote for them helped a bit more than the exemplars found on the web because I wrote about topics that they could relate to, so that'
Read more

YES, I'M JUDGING

Image
Here I go again sharing my two cents on something that came across my feed on Facebook. The title of the post “My Title 1 Kids Have $300 Shoes. And It’s Nobody Else’s Business” immediately caught my attention, because 1) I teach at a Title 1 high school and 2) I do judge the students and their parents when I see them with expensive products. The author of this article wrote with a strong tone of sympathy and compassion for her, presumably, immigrant student and his choice to purchase a pair of $300 soccer cleats. She doted on the fact that his family struggled financially and that he actually paid for the shoes himself by working with his father doing landscaping. She complimented the student’s motivation to work hard to get what he wanted and warned teachers against making assumptions and judgements about what our students and their families chose to purchase with their money. Now this is all fine and good, but it is not the narrative for most of the students that I t
Read more