Over the hump

The first week of teaching damn near killed me. I was working more than 12 hour days and falling flat on my face. There's nothing much harder than putting your heart into something and trying to go out of your comfort zone and make your lesson different and interesting and engaging only to have it get derailed entirely. It's a pretty bitter moment when you realize that no matter how many hours you put into something and no matter how hard you work, you are going to fail. Then again, it might be more accurate to describe that sentiment as bittersweet. Sure, it sucks to know that there's not much you can do to make things go well. I mean, all throughout college, classes were hard, but if I put in the hours, I could do well. I was willing to put in the time and I subsequently did well in my classes. It's a tough proposition to go changing the rules. In college there's always someone in any class who's going to be on top and do well. The trick is just to be that person. Work harder than the next guy and you're set. Now the rules are all different. Even someone phoning it in will outshine you in a second if they've been doing it a while. In fact, you're pretty guaranteed to do poorly no matter what. It takes some of the fight out of the whole thing.

But there's where things have their bright side as well. I was working myself to death with very little results. Since I knew I wasn't going to get the results, I stopped working myself to death. Turns out the quality of each lesson did not change drastically. And if you mess up, oh well. You were going to do that anyway. Who cares if it was something preventable? Something unpreventable would have come up instead. On Friday, I accidentally turned off my alarm instead of pressing snooze. Woops! So I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants that day, but it turned out fine. 6th period was incredibly chatty and didn't work in the classtime provided. 4th period did some of the most godawful presentations I have ever seen. 1st through 3rd periods were probably bored out of their minds. Whatever. They'll live. And hey, half of algebra 1 and algebra readiness fail anyway. Not the greatest of attitudes perhaps, but it takes the pressure off of me somewhat. I mean, seriously, what was I thinking? I was going to be the one to turn them all around? In my first year? Not too likely. I'll do what I can with whom I can. But for that large subsection of the class that isn't focusing, it's nothing new. I have some plans to get them on task for next week, but it's not that big of a deal whatever the case is. I'm trying. If I don't get rehired, oh well. I mean, I do get paid a lot less than a teacher who's been around a while. That's got to mean something. They found me in the bargain bin- they can't expect me to be in pristine condition. And sure I'd like to be rehired, but if I'm not I feel pretty confident that I could find a lower stress, higher paying job elsewhere in a year. Or even lower paying. Whatever. *shrug*

I feel a lot more prepared to handle what I've got right now, but I also know that in a week's time, I should have much smaller class sizes as well, and that should help a lot. Part of me is actually a little worried about it. I have a few students that it's going to break my heart if they get transferred out. There's this one in my algebra 1. She's a total punk and she never works and she talks a lot, but I just can't dislike her. Seriously. I don't know why, but it's like she can do no wrong. She asked for a bathroom pass and as I was writing one up, she told me she was going to go to J hall to use the bathroom (on the other side of the school - we're talking at least a 7 minute walk one way) where she was going to do her makeup. It's a 5 minute bathroom pass and she told me straight she was going to take 20 minutes. I told her I appreciated the honesty, but she really had to be back in 5. She said she wouldn't and I let he go anyway. I couldn't help it - she's hilarious. She makes me laugh a lot. It's kind of a funny change, because you would not believe the hell she gave me in that first week. Seriously I should have hated her and considered her my problem student, but I just couldn't do it. I think it has to do with the day after last Thursday (my day of hell). I moved her to the back of the room (as requested), far away from her friends. She didn't talk that much and she even yelled out answers from time to time. It was so not what I was expecting that it completely endeared her to me. I think it's also because I noticed how smart she is. She's seriously really intelligent. And I think she's really really nice under the tough exterior too. I just can't get mad at her, no matter how little work she does. But she made my day on Friday. Right now I'm super hopeful and a little nervous. She said she'd do her homework this weekend! I asked and she said she'd do it! Teeheeheehee! So if she gets transferred out of my class, I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to do whatever I can to get her back in. I probably can't do a thing, but I'm still going to try.

She's not the only student I've taken a liking too either. Sometimes, they just get me laughing and laughing. They're hilarious sometimes! We had a brief power outage one day and the whole class just spontaneously started yelling "Recession! Recession!" I was a bit peeved at the chaos, but mostly I just thought it was hilarious. It has really taken a load off of my mind, being able to chat and joke with the students. It feels a lot more free and less uptight. It makes the day more pleasant, than and not getting too upset when they don't shut up.

The only thing that's really bothering me at this point is that I can't sleep. If I'm thinking of my students, I just can't fall asleep. I just can't get to that fuzzy state right before you slip off. Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night in between sleep cycles and be unable to fall asleep again because I'll start thinking about them. I've tried watching something (lately it's been Firefly) to get my mind off of them, and then when the episode it over, I try focusing on what happened really hard to try to take my mind off of my students. Sometimes it works. Sometimes I have to watch another episode. I can't fall asleep until I'm dead tired, and even then, if something gets me moving or something reminds me of my kids, I get all woken up again. On Friday when I slept through my alarm, it wasn't really that big of a deal because I couldn't actually sleep that much longer. I woke up about an hour and a half later, just fine. Since I set the alarm too early to begin with (I wanted to have a leisurely breakfast), it wasn't a problem. The whole being tired but unable to sleep thing, however, is not so hot. I fell asleep on the couch downstairs last night. Then I went upstairs a few hours later and I was too worried that brushing my teeth would wake me up and keep me from falling back asleep, so I skipped it and woke up with a gross mouth. This insomnia is really irking me. But at least the job's not making me woefully depressed anymore.