Teach for Hysteria: Renewal of Vows

I have been in a wretched mood this year. My tumultuous love life over the past year, coming back from the summer with most of my wonderful friends transferred to other schools, put on a team in a wing where I was the only person who had taught for more than one year, in the wildest mini school in the building, my mother dying, my lover on the other side of the earth -- I went on strike.

I didn't realize that was what I doing. I called it "getting sleep not being such a goddamn workaholic taking care of my family fucking a lot and having a social life and spending my money on me instead of on my classroom." Then I read an article (I'll link it later) about teachers in Berkeley who, to protest two years of working without a contract and city demands that they work longer hours, stopped working non-contract hours just to show that they already worked longer hours. What happened? Tests and papers not graded, extra help and extracurriculars not happening, rooms not kept up, shit just disorganized. Parents are complaining. Hopefully someone, somewhere, will get the message.

I don't know how it started with me. Maybe I had a dream. More likely I had a revelation. I have been a real bitch lately. No patience. No compassion. Okay -- I exaggerate. Maybe I am nice sometimes. But mostly I am find myself incredibly irritated. One of my class actually feels that I hate them. I am sure, with their antics, most of the time I look really unhappy and pissed. Usually I am just really zen and unflappable. Not this year. Yes, I know, my mom died. And I am stressed out. And I cannot even look at my bosses. I HATE them. (More on that growing rage later). But today I decided that I would work really hard not to let anything that is going on with me hurt the kids. It is not their fault.

It is not their fault that my bosses are assholes who criticized me for taking time to stay with my dying mother in the hospital.
It is not their fault that this school is so fucking underfunded I have to buy every single supply I need out of my straining budget.
It is not their fault that they get barely any exercise because they have gym once a week during which they sit for an hour on the floor in the name of discipline and when they get home their parents are too afraid to let them out of the house.
It is not their fault that no one ever taught them that that stick with a dot is an exclamation point.
It is not their fault that they have been in foster care, adopted out, beaten up, and witness to drug addiction and murder.
It is not their fault that my mom died and now I am sad.
It is not their fault.

So today, I decided that I would rededicate myself to being the best teacher I could be. And to practice loving compassion with my students and breathe out my incredible anger at my bosses and the grief I carry around daily. And try, in the words of my girl, to not just work harder, but work smarter.

S'acabo la huelga.