After a week of such measureable success, this previous week has proved to be my most challenging yet. When I originally took this job, I was impressed by the professionalism and commitment that the teachers and administrators of the school seemed to have for the cause for which they were fighting. The most important element of our school is not only to give kids a solid education, but to build an efficient model for future ventures of a similar nature. I find myself emulating this mentality, and I rarely perform any action that I feel would be detrimental to the students we serve, or to the school. This spans from performing menial, simple jobs such as filing to refraining for stealing pens. So it shocks me when I encounter employees of the school that don’t share my mentality. I’m sure this comes with years of deflated ego and intensified need for return. Some people that work for the school don’t keep a big-picture mentality, and therefore often cause inner-staff issues that skyrocket out of control into a personal realm. This is what happened to me this week. I’d rather not get into details.
In addition to a strange employee meltdown of which I was unfortunately in the middle, I’ve begun to be pushed backwards by one of my students, who is resisting my teaching to an incredibly self-destructive degree. It’s gotten to the point where no word I say is worth listening to, and no ally can tell the student otherwise.
The third and final blow to my professional life this week came when one of my most promising and encouraging students deciding to transfer out, convinced that a larger school will serve the needs that she requires – that is, more lax attendance policies. What is so disheartening about it is not her departure – I’ve quickly learned to stop letting those get to me – but her utter disinterest in maintaining the bond she had to our school.
So with those three discouraging events weighing me down, I went to northern New Jersey this weekend, where my sister lives, for a family gathering. My mother and sister have both had significant experience as teachers, which includes experience as inner-city teachers, so my cries of frustration and anger were not falling on deaf ears. In fact, no scenario that I desperately described was unbelievable or unusual to them. They had encountered them all, from ornery and unprofessional co-workers to power-stuggles with students, to those that just seemed to fall through the cracks, no matter how hard you tried to patch all those cracks up.
So as hard as it may seem to deal with all of the utter crap it seems like I deal with every day, it’s good to know that none of them are new to anyone but me and the other new teachers that work with me.
