Radio silence

I haven't posted for a week, but there's a good reason.

I did what is, arguably, the dumbest thing a person can do, especially right now and especially in New York.

I quit my job.

I know, I know. All that stuff I said a few weeks ago, about how a rough beginning to a job does not mean you'll be unsuccessful, about how teachers build up a constantly-evolving skill set and so on and so forth. Clearly, it was kind of a lie.

I knew it would be a big change, moving from a suburban school to an urban one, and I knew that I would need to expect differences. I just wasn't prepared for how much. See, I'm a politeness kind of girl. Yes ma'am, no ma'am, please, thank you, all that. My students don't have that same background as I do. They're punch your face in, I'm not doing this shit kinds of girls. And that, at a very superficial level, is hard for me.

More profoundly, though, is another issue, one that I think isn't uncommon with teachers. I take it very, very personally. There's no better moment than when a kid struggles with a problem, really engages with it, and works and works and works until she finally gets it. That moment of triumph is what I'm there for. However, if you're going to take credit (in some small way) for a kid's successes, you also have to be there for the failures. You have to be right there alongside the kids who don't give a damn exactly as much as you're alongside the kids who want nothing more than to succeed. That's the difficulty of teaching, and it's a difficulty I didn't encounter much at my last school, where the assumption that everyone would graduate and go to college was not a difficult one to make.

Here, though, it's hard. The kids arrive at school with much more difficulty in their homelives than I can begin to address. It's a struggle to get to school each day, and while that means that, ideally, their classroom should be their oasis, it's hard to make that happen. Because, really, if you grow up in an environment in which punching someone else is an acceptable response to frustration, how do you know to leave that at the door when you get to school? And even if you do know, what incentive do you have to act on that knowledge? My students struggle with this, and with the need to balance going to school with taking care of siblings, cousins, parents.

I'm not Sidney Poitier. I'm not Michelle Pfeiffer. I'm not a savior. I'm just a science teacher (and, technically, only that for another two weeks). This is more than I can handle.

I've been meeting with my administration and with other teachers, trying to find a way to make changes in my classroom that really work for my students and for me, but things have just fallen flat. And it was time to get out. My staying wasn't good for my own sanity, nor was it helping my students -- my teaching and their learning just weren't jibing, and it was time to admit it and move along.

So what's next? I have no idea. I'm looking for work (not necessarily in teaching, though that may be nice). Any ideas?

And on your end, if you're a NY certified science teacher? Let me know. I think I've heard rumors of a job opening.