Busy and discouraged. I guess this is normal?!
Is this the right profession for me? Or is this the normal hard-first-year-tons-of-work deal? Conversely, am I in a situation in this school where I’m almost being exploited? It’s unintentional, I’m sure, so is it just a flaw with this particular language program? Possibly. And the teacher who has been my “mentor” has added some interesting bumps along the way. This is not one of those blogs where I complain about my superior and they find it and I get fired. It’s more of an open dialogue about what it is to be a teacher, what it is to be a good teacher, and what it’s like to really teach, in a variety of situations.
Right now I’m having a time. Some ups, some downs, and in general not enough time. It’s also about balancing having an existence outside of school, with doing enough work to do a good job and improve a lacking existing program.
One positive note- I’ve started the process for getting a new book, which will help a lot.
And the personal positive note- Christmas break is coming up, and if I didn’t have that as a hope, I would be quitting.
Back to the question- is it just a difficult first year? A difficult ifrst 5 years? Am I up for that at this point? I have to evaluate a lot of things. I guess I won’t decide anything right now, but I would like to let them know in advance if I plan on not being there next year. And if it was going to another school that I was doing- would I be able to get recommendations? I do not know. Tricky to say, since a lot of situations involving colleagues and administration have been “tricky” instead of cut and dry.
Maybe I’m not explaining myself that well- I do want to be true to the situation, and to share it clearly, so I think at this point I’m too tired (literally) and too tired (figuratively in an emotionally distorted way) to accurately paint a picture of my situation.
Two more days until Christmas break. Boy do I need it.