Last night some of you may have noticed a short post that quickly disappeared, I had written it while I drowning my stress in Mojitos and it wasn't very quality.
Pretty much the last two days were hell for me.
A little Background:
I've been subbing for the past three years, since getting my bachelors in Elementary Ed. The district I sub for uses an online system, I log in, click "search for jobs" and any available jobs will be listed. Jobs are often listed days ahead of time for teachers who have meetings or other events they know about in advance, so I don't have to do the "wake up to a call at 5:30 in the morning asking me to sub."
My first year subbing I worked almost everyday, last year (my 2nd yr) my son was in half-day preschool so I ended up working an average of 3 days a week based on my dad's availability to help. This year my desire to teach has gone with the wind and I only sub maybe 2-3 days a week for some extra income.
With the online system I can try and pick classes that I've had before and enjoyed. But since the Christmas vacation I had not worked a single day and figured I should try and get some days in. When two days in a row popped up for the same 5th grade class I jumped on it even though I'd never subbed for them before.
Cue Wednesday morning, I'm walking down to the classroom 30 minutes before the kids arrive. On the way there I run into my friend who is also the Art teacher and she asks whose class I have. "I'm in for blah blah blah." Immediately she gets a "good luck with THAT" look on her face and says, "Lemme just give you a heads up, they're obnoxious for everyone so don't take offense to it. I dread every Tuesday morning that I have them. Mrs. XYZ doesn't even know what to do with them"
Oh yeah, it's gonna be a good two days.
Synopsis:
They were just as disrespectful as my friend said they would be. Many of them would just look at me when I asked them to stop doing something and keep doing it or talk back to me. These kids were in 5th grade and talking about watching the Jersey Shore. What parent lets there 10 year old watch the Jersey Shore??!!? I just felt very powerless to do anything, I had already taken away recess (as the teacher instructed) for some of them and they still didn't care. I guess I could have contacted the principal but I did not want to cause a commotion. The only good parts of both days was silent reading (they actually were silent for this), where I got to read my ACE manual (modeling :D).
Both days I went home with a raging headache, on Wednesday I attempted to run on the treadmill after work, I made it 2 miles. The bouncing up and down and the up tempo music (which usually gets me through my treadmill runs) only exacerbated my headache. Any kind of blogging was out of the question, I couldn't even think straight.
Last night as I was telling Matt about my day he told me to stop subbing. We have already discussed the idea that I don't want to pursue a career in teaching anymore and the past two days sealed the deal. It was never my life long dream to be a teacher, it just seemed a viable option in college when I was unsure about what I wanted to do.
We talked about sticking to my plan of concentrating on getting my certification this spring, working at the beach for the summer and finding a training job for September. This makes me extremely happy!
Helping people become active and lose weight has long been a dream of mine, ever since losing 50 lbs as a 13 year old and progressing from barely able to walk a mile to running sub 6 miles. I would LOVE to work with kids in this capacity and I think a lot of the things I learned while earning my teaching degree will benefit me as a trainer.
Sorry some of this was a bit rant-y, I needed to vent some built up stress and anxiety from the past few days.
Overall I see my recent experience as a positive thing because it helped confirm that I am doing the right thing for myself, my family and my happiness.
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