What now?
I've begin to start thinking about and planning what I'm going to do next year. I'm pretty sure I'm not returning to my school. Even though things are better, I just can't see myself expending the energy I do now to try and get through to these students while still dealing with a mostly incompetent administration and successfully keeping myself sane. Much like last year, I've been prone to fits of depression lately, and I'm starting to realize that it's just the natural stress of the job. Even though I have much fewer discipline problems, my classroom management is still far from flawless. Kids still skip school a lot. Kids are still failing a lot. Parents are still upset with me because their students aren't doing work and I don't have the time/energy to inform every single one of them. And perhaps most importantly, I'm tired of trying to teach Literature to a group of students that abhor reading. I can have fun activities to supplement the reading, and I can give examples and background information about the reading that relates to their life, and I can show movies and relevant clips that connect the literature to modern day society, but there's still going to be a minimum level of simple reading in my classes, and that's the part where I can't do anything with them. I'm tired of waking kids up or watching them stare into space as we read through a short excerpt (yes, sometimes I can't even get them to read 2 paragraphs silently on their own). They're not disruptive or disrespectful; they just don't (or probably in some cases can't) read. And this part kills me. It's the part that I think is ultimately going to drive me out of the classroom. I worry about that small portion of the day where I'm not successful. Worry about it to the point where I can't get other things done. I love the kids for the most part. And I want to have interaction with them. But I think my happiness would be preserved if I could interact with them in a role where I'm not directly responsible for their learning (like an administrator, counselor, mentor, etc.). I used to think that if I went to a different school, I'd be much happier. But lately I've been wondering if I just hate having a job that I can't leave at work. This job infiltrates every aspect of my life, and I'm growing weary of that.