Sink or swim.

I feel like I'm sinking fast. (It took ALL I had to not break down and cry in front of my class today. In fact, I cried at lunch, during the class specials, and after school, but not when the class was there.) It's only 6 weeks in, and I feel ready to quit. I'm feeling like this whole elementary education career choice was a bad idea, inspired by ignorance.

However, there is hope: I talked with both my mentor teacher person and the superintendant for over an hour tonight in my classroom. Seems some changes will be made (soon, hopefully!) to help out. One of these changes will be moving 2 or 3 of my worst kids elsewhere. This may or may not happen, and I can't say I don't feel a certain degree of guilt, but it would help immensely.

I asked several people what would happen if I quit before my contract is up. One said simply, "Don't do it; they'll make it miserable for you." Another: "Oh, honey, you need to get out NOW if this isn't for you. No sense in making yourself suffer so much." The superindenant tried to be comforting, saying I was the "creme de la creme" of his pool of applicants this past spring. Ego boosts aside, he said it would be difficult to get out of a contract, but that he wouldn't give me too much of a hassle. It seems the district could hire a replacement at midterm (December/January), when students graduate from other programs. We'll see.

I honestly don't know if I'll make it at this point. It's not even the district; it's the educational system in general. It's the paperwork, the phone calls, the constant planning, teaching from state standards, preparing for high-stakes testing, dealing with daily classroom drama, little "extras" (recess duty, after- and before-school meetings), etc. I just don't know if this is for me. The other new teachers said they want to leave the district at the end of the year, but not one of them is questioning the field itself. Just me. I'm the one who can't hack it. And despite the words of encouragement (of which there are surprisingly many), I don't know if I want to hack it. Sure, I want to change the world for the better, but maybe this isn't how I'm supposed to.

I've been feeling this way for weeks now (in case you haven't noticed), so I'll get off it. In the meantime, we have our first field trips coming up in 2 weeks. Those should hopefully be fun.

Finally, for your reading pleasure, I have found an article that perfectly defines what I've found in teaching so far. I'm somewhere between the "survival" and "disillusionment" phases; we'll see if I get any farther. It'd be nice to see this day's blog months down the road and laugh at what a doof I was. All I can say right now is: vamos a ver (we'll see).