Running on Empty
I started teaching in 1973. I was a permanent substitute teacher in a 6th grade class in the Three Village School district. The five months I taught there allowed me to see what it was like working with kids and grade-level teachers in a natural school setting.
I did okay there. I learned a lot about my capabilities as a teacher and colleague. I was idealistic and had lofty goals.
The following year, I was offered two jobs. One to continue as a full-time teacher in Three Village in their open wing or as a full-time Middle School sixth-grade teacher in the newly merged school district of Shoreham-Wading River. I chose the latter and taught there for 33 years.
Each year I taught, I always learned new things. My first two years were in a different building from the rest of the Middle School since the High School had yet to be completed, and they needed room for 9th and 10th graders until it was completed.
Back then, we had fewer mandates than today. The sixth grade spent lots of time meeting to develop our curriculum, as most of the NY State Curriculum was only recommended.
My second class in SWR was great. It had a few problems, but on the whole, I had a good year.
Then came our move to the Middle School…my tenure year. Things took a turn in the wrong direction for me. I had several disagreements with my 6th-grade colleagues and ended up choosing to break away and do math only with my class and not collaboratively with the other seven sixth-grade teachers. In hindsight, that was a mistake. It added a lot more planning for me to do by myself. I still worked with the other teachers in other areas.
I also had a different social studies program. I was working on my Master’s in Elementary Education Curriculum. I developed a social studies curriculum that dealt with American history using the theme of the History of Communication as my final project. Again, more work for me to do on my own.
Then there was my class make-up. As good as my class was the year before, this class had a lot of issues. There were a lot of power and control issues throughout the year. There were different learning styles and levels, different emotional needs to be met, and different cliques within the class that kept working against things I tried to do. One group I nicknamed “The Grand Alliance”. There was actual fighting, name-calling, and refusal from some to do work.
I remember one point in December while the class was off to specials; I went into the 6th-grade classroom next to mine in tears and said to my colleague, “I can’t do this anymore.”
That night, I wrote in my journal, “I’ve semi-decided that teaching will not be my lifelong profession. It can be too frustrating and not as rewarding as one could wish.”
I was running on empty.
Luckily, the year improved by the end, though not by much. I learned more about their positive feelings about me on the last day of school than I had all year. Interestingly, I’m Facebook friends with almost half of the students from that class.
I would have done much better if I had had this class later in my teaching career. Experience is a good teacher. And as I said, I did teach for another 30 years after that, and I still teach when possible.
I’m glad I stuck it out.
