The Weary Teacher

wea·ry [weeree]
adj (comparative wea·ri·er, superlative wea·ri·est)
1. tired: tired, especially in having run out of strength, patience, or endurance
2. tiring: tiring or exhausting
3. showing tiredness: showing or characterized by tiredness

Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

So, this is my first week back teaching and I am exhausted! All in all I have worked a whopping 7.5 hours this week and have another 3 whole hours tomorrow. God help me when I get back to the real world. I just haven't been in the teachin' spirit this week. It has been good to see the chillins again, but both parties' heads are just not into school.

I think that I am just really disappointed with my class 1. They have always been one of my favorite classes to teach. The kids are great and fun, but today, I just had it. Done. I could only get about 9 kids out of 60 to focus on class and willingly participate (of course it doesn't help that before my class they have gym and free time and my class is the last class of the day). Yes, only my reliable 8 boys who always want to talk were going to concentrate on class today (mostly I think they felt bad that everyone else wasn't). The rest of them, let's see...I confiscated: 4 cartoon books, 2 math notebooks, 1 guitar music book, 1 MP3 player, 7 paper airplanes, and 1 paper boat floating in the mop bucket which was in and of itself distracting about 9 people. Also, I had to relocate 5 people who were just too distracting to each other to be near, sent 2 out into the hall (only 2 - I wanted to send about 50 out there) and broke up a fight. Done. Tired. My good 8 were really concerned about class afterward and caught up with me to apologize when I briskly left at the bell.

But, it's not just that class, it's more of an overall disappointment that includes all of my classes, this class was just the straw. I know that my class is not serious, hell, my grades don't even count and I don't think that they ever see how I mark them. So, actual class performance means absolutely jack shit. The ones who never say anything and do math every class period get the same mark as the ones who participate at every opportunity. Really, there is no incentive to participate in my class.

I don't have any great delusions about being able to teach them great things about English - I know what my class is and isn't and I know what my role here is (English Cheerleader) and I accept that gladly, but when I can't even get a class to shut the hell up for 10 seconds or to at least be quiet while I am talking, well...I'm done.

I know it will get better, eventually. Just incredibly frustrated and tired. At least on the way home today I ran into little Sam and he was really happy to see me and ran off to get the rest of the posse to walk home together. They all looked at me at once and said, concerned, "Are you sad, Teacher?" I almost started to cry that they were able to look at me feigning happiness and just seemed to know what I was feeling and they cared about how I was feeling. I told them that I had a difficult day, and that some classes did not go very well, but was much happier now that I was walking home with them. They all smiled, Sam did a little dance, and my sweet little Jack spoke up and said to me, "Teacher, you make all of us feel very, very, very happy everyday we see you. Now, smile." Of course, I already was.