Count me out

This is the part where I make myself sound like a really big jerk. It's the part where you will find out that I am a mean, terrible person. It's the part where I complain and whine and am full of anger and despair. In short, it's the part where I lose it.

On Tuesday, September 7th I almost posted this entry where I was going to be all inspirational about my incoming class. It's a good thing I didn't, because I guess I don't mean any of it. I was going say "I will meet 28 new faces, and I will be given 175 days with them to influence, change, and transform their lives. One-hundred-seventy-five days to do God's work. Because this is more than a job. If I were looking for a way to make money, I would have picked something else. This is different. I do this job because I have to. Because if not me, then who? If not now, then when?"  But then you know, 28 faces turned to 30. 175 days was more like 182. And transforming their lives turned into me sitting at my desk while they were in PE, wanting to cry. Most significantly, if not me then you. And if not now, then later. Or never.

It's not like I hate my kids. I like them all as individuals. But trying to teach 30 kids who will never shut up is basically impossible. They make me be mean to them. I don't like who I become when I am standing in front of them. 

Time makes this task feel impossible. I have to plan for modeled reading lessons, guided reading lessons, science, math, interventions, and writing in about a 45 minute slot. Plus you know, analyze student work. I get to work early, stay late, then work at home. All I want to do is sleep and dream, because when I am doing that I can attempt an escape from this overwhelming pressure. Unless my kids haunt my dreams, which they often do. This is time in my life that I will never get back, sanity that could be forever lost, and I have to ask myself is it really worth it?

I want to be terribly selfish right now. Find a job where I am respected, a job where I don't have to play mom to 30 poorly behaved children. A job where I leave on time. Something that doesn't make me want to cry. It's not just the degree of rottenness in the kids, either. It's less of that and more of other things. It's the span of the skills that I feel I can never teach. I have students who are more than two years behind grade level. How will I ever get them to achieve? I know it's possible, I know people can do it and have done it...I just don't know that I am one of those people.

It's all too much.

I want to change lives, I want to love kids, I want to help them succeed. But when the only life I am changing is mine, and it is for the worse, I think this game needs to end. I think that this may be the last.