It feels good to write again. I really wish I had more time to, but my schedule really doesn't allow it. And I'm not saying that my schedule doesn't allow it as someone who can sit around and play video games while not "making time" to write. I actually just don't have enough time to write. Ever. The only reason this is even getting done now is because I'd rather do this than go home and deal with my roommate's cat, who seems to think that everything but the scratching post I bought her is actually that scratching post. So here I am.
People who know me know that I (used to) really like working out. I think it's a great way to relieve stress and promotes a ton of self-confidence. In college, I used to work out 4-6 days a week. Now, I am lucky if I get 2 days in, and it's usually the weekends.
The schedule that I am running on right now asks for a minimum of eleven hour days, with thirteen hour days hardly an abnormality. There are many days when I come in an hour before the sun comes up, and leave much after it has gone down. Since coming back in January, my average weekly hours hover around 60. That wouldn't be so bad (well, it might) if I were getting compensated for those hours in overtime or even some sort of baseline salary. However, here I type, working on $0 income this year. I know that a Master's Degree is getting paid for, but I'm not anywhere close to reaping those rewards yet. It's been a bit overwhelming at times.
So, here is what I learned: teaching is hard. I think I've said this before. Actually, I know I have. Sorry for being repetitive. But, it needs to be said. What makes teaching unique is that it isn't hard in the way that you have to adjust to it and then it gets a little easier. If that is the case, I definitely am not anywhere close to reaching it. Teaching is hard in its daily tasks -- creating lessons, calling parents, creating homework, and then all the other things that a job asks you to do. I never imagined teaching would be this demanding. After hearing that my program was experiencing a fair number of dropouts halfway through the first year, one of my co-workers said to me, "Teaching is not a profession for the weak." You really have to be committed to this thing if it's going to work for you. Really, really committed.
I think that these pressures really took their toll on me in the first half of the year, as evidenced by my less-than-cheery end of the year post back in December. Since then, however, things have changed a bit. Admittedly, I hope that things couldn't get too much worse than they were, but still, improvement is improvement. Following the same format of my venting post, here's an update on things that I have been doing in the past month and a half or so.
School
Here's the thing about working in education: nothing is ever going to be perfect. Here's the thing about working in urban education: it is rare that things are ever going to be going well. It's understandable why working in urban education has such a huge burnout rate, with long hours, lower salaries and so on. Now that I have come to grips with that, I am better able to do my job.
When I wrote last, I wasn't happy that I wasn't being given any real responsibility at the school. That has changed massively. I now work by myself with a small group of children, all of whom were failing. I've been having a lot of success with them, as many of them ended up pulling up their grades in the course by the end of the quarter. Behavior is a completely different issue -- many of them think that they don't need the class and would rather be taking history -- but that issue will remain a separate issue because this is a post about positivity. Hooray, passing grades!
I have also been asked to substitute teach on a couple occasions when teachers have been sick, which is a bigger deal than you might think. Again, this means I am in a classroom completely by myself. Also, the classes that I was asked to sub for are some of the poorest scoring (behaviorally and sometimes academically) in the school. So, substitute teaching was ridiculously hard, especially because I didn't know any of them by name. Still, I was asked to do it, which is a big confidence boost for me about what my superiors think I am capable of handling at this point.
DC/Social
I am going to merge these two together since they really are dependent on each other. I realized that a lot of the reasons I initially didn't like DC at first is because of the social life I carried here. It wasn't like Ohio State, where I had a plethora of people that I could turn to when I just wanted to get a little stupid and kick back after a tough day/week/whatever. While DC has not magically transformed into Columbus and probably never will, from a social standpoint, I have begun to appreciate little things about DC more.
While I maintain that DC is overrated as a major city, the fact of the matter is that it is still a major city. That means that there are people in it. This cannot be overstated. I know so many people that work in some city I've never heard of, where (it can be assumed) there are not a large amount of people around to partake in fun stuff with. While there is a ton of room for activities in these areas, there are not any people to share these activities with, which kind of defeats the purpose entirely.
I've done a much better job of getting involved out here. I joined a couple social sports leagues, flag football (big shout out to the Fire Breathing Rubber Duckies) and basketball (more subdued shout out to Free Agent Team A) and have met a lot of really awesome people through these. They've been a blast and I can't recommend social sports leagues enough to people who feel like they don't know enough people in a new city. I also went to sports bars for the teams who hold my sports allegiances, including the Browns and OSU, and had a great time with that as well. While going to a bar completely by myself was admittedly a bit awkward at first and a new experience, I am very happy that I did it and will definitely continue it once football is back in the fall.
An interesting trend I've noticed since stepping out of my comfort zone and going "out there" socially is that I have a lot less animosity towards DC ever since then. What I've realized is that it's not really at all about the city that you're in, so long as the people that you're in it with are people you enjoy being around. No matter where I've been in my life, as long as I'm surrounded by good company I can't complain. So, although these leagues are a bit pricy and I always spend too much money going to the Browns Backers Bar (insert Cleveland drinking joke here), I have every intention of continuing these trends going forward.
Last Words
Wait, that's it?
Who knows, maybe I will look back on my first semester of teaching and realize that it was my version of a quarter-life crisis. My hope now is that it's in the rear view mirror, gone forever in the smoke of bad vibes.
Teaching still is and will remain to be incredibly, incredibly difficult. What will make it enjoyable, though, is how I handle myself when I'm not teaching. This holds true for everything in life, not just teaching. When you're in a bad mental place going into work, you're more likely to stay in that bad place, and it's just a spiral of negativity. What I need to do from here is find a time that is just for me, and guard that time. It is arguably just as important as anything I do in class.
In order for me to give the children I teach the best version of myself as a teacher, I need to give that best version to myself in the form of a positive mental state. Or something like that. I'm not sure. Either way, while things out here are still not ideal, they are getting better. At the end of the day, positive momentum is all you can really ask for.
BD
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