Education is important, right? It’s important to do the early stages of it well, not just the last stages, right?
Teaching is hard work. Teaching in a middle school is crazy hard work. A Facebook friend who just started teaching in a middle school posted an account of his third day, and gave me permission to quote it. It is, frankly, horrifying.
Oh oh. Day3 was worse than Day1. My 3-day experience of teaching has been pretty horrific overall. I estimate my half-life as a teacher, before I have to bail to live, is just a few more days. Jail would be better. (I could read and sleep more.) The amount of work involved is insane – and I’ll have an additional class from next week (and won’t get out of school tomorrow till 9pm, to sleep at 10 to get up at 3). There’s essentially no lesson prep time at all – except the weekend. I have huge admiration for my fellow teachers and care about almost all the students I’ve had, but those important positives are vastly outweighed by the negatives. In spite of all that, I was doing my very best in my second class this morning when I was ‘observed’ by the principal of my school (a man who has yet to respond to any of my first-week greetings when I cross his path). I was pleased that he was seeing one of my better newbie lessons. Soon thereafter I was summoned to his office, told my lesson didn’t conform to the ruling US ed. ‘group activities’ fashion and told that all my lessons must be documented at length (this week presumably during my regular five hours of troubled sleep). Why should I endure all that when I could be comfortable in England growing old with my family?
It’s as if the goal were to drive all teachers out of teaching.