My new coworker has a year of Korean teaching experience already under his belt. In an odd "The world is smaller than you think it is" twist, it turns out that when I had to look for work a few months ago when my last school decided to stop paying taxes, I actually got in touch with him when he was working at his last job. He was pulling double shifts and needed a new teacher to work at his school so that he could resume a normal schedule. We had only talked on the phone, and I didn’t take the job, but as he described the details over dinner last week, I recognized the situation immediately. We could have been coworkers before, and now we work together. How odd.
He’s still a nice, kind, child loving teacher. When students arrive, he goes out and greets them. He finds his favorite students and plays with them. He tosses students in the air and gives them hugs.
I remember that time, back when I couldn’t understand a word my students were saying. Back when I tried to compensate for my lack of understanding with friendliness and fun that didn’t fit with my role as teacher. A few years ago, I used to be "that guy". The "fun" teacher, but not anymore.
I had a spectacularly bad day at work. The "lucky there were no scissors present" sort of day that comes with large classrooms full of sarcastic, rude students. Not fun. I’ve got the largest classes I’ve ever taught, and they are growing dramatically. I’ve added new students in every class in the past week. There are now enough students in class that it’s getting nearly impossible for one on one interaction. Their behavior isn’t good enough to allow for group work or greater freedom for my students. Worst of all, their testing, results, and general ability hasn’t shown significant improvement on most tests. The bad students continue to fail, and the good continue to pull their weight.
I was furious today. Every single student that misbehaved thought that this was the time to test me in any petty manner they could. If it wasn’t for my experience teaching and knowing where my limit was, I probably was dangerously close to doing something rash. It’s not good for me to return home worried and stressed from work. If I can’t put my day behind me, it builds like steam until I need to vent. With so few social and pragmatic ways to let go of my stress, each day this week had been progressively worse.
Strangely, when I was less antagonistic and less of a teacher, I was much more stressed out day to day. It’s rare that I let things on the job bother me, but something got under my skin today and I’m still bothered by it.
