My First Job--Teaching!

I was here in May, telling you about my career switch. I decided to pursue teaching instead of medicine. I fell into what felt like the perfect job--teaching first grade at my old elementary school. I originally was aiming for high school, but none of the high schools contacted me back or had positions available. I thought about how much I would love to work with little kids for the rest of my life (in an effort to fill the void of not being able to have a baby once a year for the rest of my life and not having any right now--probably not the right reasons?) and decided to more seriously pursue teaching elementary students. Again, I fell into what felt like the perfect position. My coworkers were AMAZING--amazing, amazing, amazing. I can't speak highly enough of them. My kids were awesome, too. They were soooo cute! I loved them, and they seemed to have love me, too.(: Probably because kids are easy to impress but we'll go with I'm cool. My father said that kids are not easy to impress and that's just a knack of mine to get along so easily with kids. Maybe it is. I don't know, but I know I loved working with them. I wish school was more play learning, but it's not, which is where I think I started to not enjoy myself. Not enjoy myself? This post was starting off so positively. Why is it negative now? I resigned. That's why. Lesson plan writing was hard and time consuming and a pain in the butt. Granted, I did procrastinate a lot, but I ended up staying up past midnight most nights, and I came home crying almost every day. There were even a couple days where I cried once I got to school before students were let into the building. I was so stressed. Every time I got feedback (which was often because I had zero experience teaching), I took it so hard and so personally, beat myself up about it, and almost always cried. One good piece of advice that helped a little bit was from my father. He said that you can't take work personally--none of the feedback, nothing. But it still wasn't quite enough. Lesson plan writing was starting to come along somewhat. Then, they started adding more subjects for which to write lesson plans and how many I had to write at a time and pushing the deadlines forward, and I felt like I was drowning. I met with a mentor teacher almost every afternoon and while she did help a lot, the stress still wouldn't go away, and I had a lot of tunnel vision when it came to my work. I would focus in on one thing and overkill and get nothing else done. Then, the "best" part: Once I got better at writing lesson plans, I couldn't get the hang of effective instruction in a first grade classroom. When I was in school, the teacher did most of the talking and instructing. I noticed when I was graduating high school that something called Socratic Seminar was starting to make its way into the underclassmen classrooms. I had no idea what it was at the time besides a lot of group work and discussion, which in high school would have made me want to barf. Even in college, I think. Now, I think I'm more confident in myself to not be worried about what people will think about what I think and/or say. But there was something similar to Socratic Seminar in elementary instruction, also. It was where teachers directed classes to discuss the topic about which they were learning. I don't know if it was the control freak in me or panicking about time management and assuming first graders couldn't stick to a fast-paced schedule, but I could not let go of leading the discussions and not leaving much of a discussion available for my students. I would talk and talk and talk and talk. And I kept getting told not to do that and to let the students discuss, but something kept not clicking. I was too scared or something. So formal observations came around, and I failed mine. I expected but thought oh well and figured I'd just learn from it and move on. What I didn't know about were the remediation steps that are in place to help teachers help students. I would have been placed on an intensive assistance plan and re-observed in six weeks. If I failed the second observation, I'd be fired. Big deal, I thought. I would just get up and try again. THE CATCH: If I got fired from a teaching job in this school district, I could never teach in the district again. That was NOT what I wanted. In fact, it is my dream to teach in this school district. So I sat through the longest yet best meeting of my life with my principals--three hours. They found teachers to take my class for the afternoon, and we discussed my options and my concerns and questions. The first hour or hour and a half was a bunch of feedback and information concerning the observation and tips. The rest was talking about my options and how stressed I had been and how going back to school felt like an amazing option and the only thing stopping me from quitting that day was what my parents would say because my dad thought if I quit, then I was giving up. And I thought the same. Until I heard what happens if you get fired in this district, and he agreed. I knew my mom would have my back, but I was so worried about what my dad would think. And I miss my paycheck (even though all it was was one) and the little bit of financial freedom that was starting to come with it and my students, but I feel tons better. I will go back to school in January. I'm trying to decide between a Master's of Art in Teaching (MAT) or Bachelor's of Science in Secondary Education. I'm in contact with the dean of the college of education at my college write now, figuring that out. I was going to apply for a job at a local hospital (I am homesick of science and medicine.), but when I was on the phone with my grandma talking about how a nannying job seems like the dream (getting paid to play with kids and run errands), my mom offered for me to be her nanny and housekeeper since she and my father both work full-time and all of my siblings are in school and my stroke-ridden grandpa lives with us. So I accepted, of course, and I get to go to school and live at home cost-free and my parents will continue to provide for me financially if I keep up my end of the deal and keep our house clean and fed and take care of everyone's appointments. So that is my life update! My first job lasted less than two months, even though it was what I wanted. And I am bummed that having kids and getting married and moving in with my boyfriend (not in that order (-:) will be pushed back even further now, but I know I'll be happier and healthier this way instead of if I continued to push through with teaching first grade and possibly losing my job and having to move to teach public school or be limited to private schools here at home. Seven months ago, I thought I knew exactly what I was doing with my life. Now, not so much. I mean, kind of but also not really. I am super open to the possibility of anything changing and me not knowing what I'm doing. I know what I'm working toward now, but I do not know if this is what I'll want or be doing for the rest of my life. I also wish I could write on the side like opinion articles. Getting paid for that, too, would be nice but just to change the world with my writing is what I really want. I want to educate people and open their eyes to possibilities in the world around us.