Somedays I wonder if I am cut out for this?

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Teaching that is. I’m a good teacher…scratch that I’m a bad ass teacher! My students love me, parents love me and my admin loves me. I constantly have to remind myself of these facts as I deal with the day to day chaos of being a high school teacher.

Today was exceptionally crappy, I was exceptionally crappy. Period 1 went great, period 2 ehhh not so much. I couldn’t meet my team to plan because for the first time all school year I procrastinated and didn’t write my lesson. Shoot I didn’t even really look at the lesson until the night before. What makes this worse is that this is a lesson I am getting evaluated on…tomorrow! Also 2 other teachers were waiting on it which is pretty crappy for them. I finally looked at the lesson idea and got “teachers-block!” (similar to writers block). I could not figure out how this particular topic was supposed to wrap up our current topic and introduce next week. I went to tell the other teachers that I was struggling and needed some ideas and both of these ladies (who are old enough to be my mom!) scolded me instead of helped me. I felt defeated and with only 7 minutes left in my plan I accomplished nothing and had 3 full hours of teaching ahead until my next plan hours.

Periods 3 & 4 went great, and for the most part period 5 went well. The only issue was with a boy in my class who was having prank week with a girl in the other Biology class. He told me the other girl killed his corn plant and I said “that’s not nice!” Well about 2 minutes later we had to walk through that classroom the other girl was in to get to our corn plants and as we were taking our plants back to the classroom, the girl told me you can’t talk about students like that! I said yes I can, that was not nice! Well I find out a few minutes later that one of her friends who is in my class and partners with my prank boy told her friend I said “bitches.” Now obviously I did not and I was very upset and told tattle tale girl she better tell her friend the right story, and she did, but it just made me wonder, am I cut out for this job?

Both of my colleagues who were waiting on my lesson heard the stuff go down and I just felt like it made me look bad on top of already being late getting my lesson out…even though I did nothing wrong. So frustrating!!!!

Period 6 & 7 are my plans and I worked furiously to get the lesson done, but grades were due today so when the bell rang for me to teach 8th hour I clearly knew I would be staying after to not only finish my lesson but put my grades in.

8th hour my kids were completely disrespectful and not listening so instead I taught in a whisper and out of 34 students only about 11 listened…defeated! So I handed out the assignment and only helped those kids who were listening. I know I could have easily got that classroom under control, I just was not feeling like I was worth a crap as a teacher at that moment and couldn’t muster the drive. Eventually all the students were on task and kids who could not balance equations were rocking the heck out of it, but for those 10 minutes where only 11 were respectful enough to listen I felt pretty terrible as a teacher.

So I spent 2 hours after school finishing that lesson and grading like crazy and thinking. Thinking that I am such a crappy teacher, that today showed me that I am not cut out for this and beating myself up. Is this fact? Probably not. I hear more positives than I do negatives but I do know that I need to figure something out. Maybe I am to laid back this semester…it’s not like I have been dealing with anything tragic or anything! I just haven’t been myself since the baby died and maybe that’s why I am beating myself up. Ugh! Who knows, but I could use some encouragement.

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