The Second Wall (D-Day)
The dedication of students to delay, decry, disrupt, demand, disengage, dick-around and deliberately dissemble draws on a deep deposit of determination.
My drive and desire to debate, describe, direct, dissuade, distract, differentiate and dangle inducements is definitely dangerously diminished.
Deriously.
Is that enough with the Ds?
Mos def. (Just stop.)
The Second Wall: I’ve hit it. You might be wondering what The First Wall was. That’s a fair question. I wrote about The First Wall here back in November. I was curious, so I reread it. As it turns out, these two walls are remarkably similar. But The Second Wall has an added feature: Six months’ degradation of teachers’ mental and emotional states.
We’ve become weaker.
But what happens to the students? They are energized by this. Almost organized. I am convinced that there is a direct, yet undetected, transference of energy from us to them. And it goes on like this for quite some time yet. In a month from now we’ll be dressing even worse, looking all sallow, talking to ourselves, and just trying to keep from going to graduate school again or drinking ourselves into a coma. It’s about survival in April and May. Make no mistake.
You can tell me that “We’re more than halfway through” or “Spring is right around the corner” and crap like that until I punch you in the stomach. But the bottom line is that, depending on where you are, we’ve got 3 or 4 more months of this. And it’s not going to get better until the last few weeks when nobody gives a shit and it all just falls apart. This is truly an awesome time, but still far away.
Man up. Stay loose. Don’t forget the coffee and beer.
Mr. Teachbad
Addendum: Thanks so much to everybody for the birthday wishes on facebook. I really don’t know what to say. You da best.
Was there a time when I absolutely LOVED my job? Yes. Do I still emjoy most of my kids? Yes. And that’s about 130 kids a day. Do I have some kids whose misbehaviors ruin a class day after day. Yes. Why do I feel so blue about school? I wish that I knew. Some days, I can hardly drag myself out of bed in the morning.
Mr. Teachbad-
I decided the only way to get from here to mid-June was to put in my retirement papers. Yesterday I did. Today I wore a new outfit to school (something I just almost never do) and was as happy as happy can be in a classroom these days. I can hardly believe how much healthier I feel already.
Today’s post reminded me of a pic from the Air Force Museum–a fuel drone refueling a huge unnamed plane through an umbilicus. Our energy is the little drone–their energy is the big–and getting bigger–aircraft. We call it “sucking the air out of a vacumn” where I teach. movies help a lot-the more mindless, the better. I once watched “Clueless” three times in one afternoon on a Sunday just to recharge enough to go into work on Monday.
Keep up the wonderful work. You are doing us all a wonderful favor when you post. I appreciate it more than I can tell you!
Okay Gilda, I have my retirement papers in a satchel in the backseat of my SUV. I have everything turned into TRS except for “Form #7″ (That is my official date of retirement.) and my resignation letter. I kept thinking that district would offer an incentive to announce our retirement/resignation. ( Due to the financial situation in the state, many districts are offering a huge sum of money to retire/resign, in order to avoid layoffs and the re-hiring hassle that is coming this summer, heck Dallas ISD Is offering some people $10,000. ) This all said and done, we are getting nothing in my district for leaving.
I am now needing just a little to push me over the edge…….Just a little, just a little, can you tell me a reason NOT to go ahead and turn in my papers for May???????
BTW: I hit the wall today in 6th period. I literally couldn’t get up and teach, physically I was shot to shit. I had the kids do the dreaded bookwork. I don’t know how I am going to made the next 59 schooldays.
Sean-
All I can offer you is this-life is too short at my 63 years to spend one more day doing a job I have come to loathe. I still love the part where I am actually allowed to interact with children instead of data–I don’t say teach, because too damn little of that gets done anymore. Those moments aren’t enough anymore. When I stand in the shower in the morning and can’t make myself get out to go to work, I know it is time for me to go. Forty years is enough. I have grandchildren who need to play with me, trains I have to take to places yet unseen, and a bucket list that stretches from here to there. I don’t want to stroke out in a data-mining meeting.
I’ve always been curious about why people who genuinely have loved their careers choose to retire, and have often been told “You’ll just know when it’s time to go.” I know it’s time for me to go. I hope you’ll have the same peace of mind soon.
Dear Mr. Teach Bad,
24+ years in teaching talking here and I’ve done it all: PK, self-contained fifth grade, 6-8, and 9-12. I’ve even spent five years as a principal. (I left that job because I couldn’t stand to spend another 25 years making sure the substitutes showed up and the plumbing in the bathroom worked.) Lo and behold, I found myself back in the clasroom. This time around, I pretty much love it as much as anyone can be expected to love his/her job. I mean, if I won the lottery I’d see them through the end of the year, but then I’d be gone. (Conversely, if I won the lottery in September or October or pretty much any month in the first semester they’d be on their own.)
Your blog is more than entertaining, more than funny, and more than cringe-inducing. We’ve all been there and that’s why we read. However, you either need to (a) realize you are probably a really gifted teacher; (b) leave the job for a couple of years for something less significant; or (c) do some combination of your own devising of both (a) and (b).
You are smart; that’s easy to see/read. Students need teachers like you who give a shit and are intelligent. On the other hand, the world does not need you to martyr yourself. On the third hand, you have to come to some decision that all kinds of things about teaching blow, but the job is the best you’ll ever have.
When I was your age I would have hit me. But now……I would listen.
P.S. If you can, somehow, get to teach a few classes a day of kids who are really into it and a few classes of kids who need you but are awful at it, in my experience, that’s the best combination.
P.P.S. Your best line so far has been, ” “How the fuck would I know where your practice test is or where Devonte put your notebook? Keep track of your own shit and stay awake…” That IS my afternoon.
Well if it is not the kids sucking the life and energy out of us; the state legislatures are…as the kids would put it “they are going beast mode on us.” It’s like we’re the scapegoats for every problem there is. They insist on merit pay, doing away with tenure, making us pay more for our share in retirment and health ins., increasing the retirement age, doing away with pensions and creating 4o1ks
Anyway I always said that the month of Jan, Feb, March are the HARDEST months to get through…its cold (40 degrees for highs in AL is extremely cold) we’re couped up for days on end. The kids are going stir crazy and the teachers are too. We get late Spring Breaks (April)…Thank God for Mardi Gras..(Mobile, AL)…yes we have Mardi Gras….I’m not even Catholic, but I swear I got to give something up for Lent this year to show gratitude for this two-day break I’m about to receive.
I like the part of about our clothes. Funny you say that I had a student comment to me that teachers must have a certain set of outfits that are numbered that they cycle through. He said “Mrs. Warrick that must be outfit # 14 in your wardrobe. Because all of you teachers seem to have the same outfits that you rotate on a two week basis.” And you know what’s so shitty about that: He’s freakin’ right….I know teachers who eat the same damn peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches for lunch every single damn day. Coping mechanisms I’m sure…to feel safe and in control of SOMETHING, becuase we know we have control of absolutely NOTHING when it comes to our jobs, but we are supposed to be the experts in our fields…right?
Oh and the testing, testing, testing season is upon us so Happy Testing ya’ll!!!
You’re in the dead zone. . . the cure is to use your sick time.
I spent Tuesday at a workshop and was around adults all day–and they put me in a worse mood than the teenagers do. At least with a teenager I can expect him to forget in two minutes the atrocious things he just said and did and start all over again. But adults are a damn broken record!
This is therapy–you all are my Dr. ___, and you have me on the couch.
Teaching has always been such a lonely job–you come to work, go in your room, close the door, and teach. Even if the kids change classes–the teacher doesn’t and is still alone and on his/her own. But now–whoa. Teachers feel abandoned, misled (and I mean that in any and every sense of the word), undermined, challenged, and forgotten. It is a good day when I don’t feel the weight of the world on me. How did it come to this? I often see the brighter side of things–must be a pain in the ass for my teacher colleagues. Now I am experiencing the problems with morale and motivation that my friends have felt. Been down so long, it looks like up to me,…
Amen
Now…I know that’s a song. What is it?
I’m thinking of having a competition. Who can give us the best song that we will all understand?
Here is the first entry from my main man, Mr. Bob Dylan, from a song called Not Dark Yet:
I was born here and I’ll die here
Against my will
I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still
Every nerve in my body
Is so vacant and numb
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to
Get away from
Danceband on the Titanic