So, I switched over to a new site that I’m trying to set up, but it’s somewhat frustrating, because I’m so stubborn, and won’t watch tutorials and such!
Anyway, it’s at this site: http://magicsurrealist2013.me (I also call myself StrangeLander2015).
I haven’t written anything much recently, because this year, I was mentally focused on the process of extricating myself from seventeen years of being a school-teacher.
School ended in late June — and I was fêted very nicely by my immediate co-workers (the other teachers on my Team), the Guidance Counselors, my English Dept., the school-system, the Union, etc. Plenty of nice words, gifts and cards to prove I existed there for all this time. In return, I placed “thank-you” cards in the mail-boxes of most of my colleagues (missed a few, have to remedy that), and generally did all that I was supposed to do.
I was surprised, grateful, pleased and moved by what people said, even those who had not been nice to me in the past.
After getting rid of most of my papers, and still managing to bring home boxes and boxes of my stuff in early July, I cleaned up my classroom, stripped the walls of any residual tape and gunk, wiped windows, my desk, all the book-shelves and cupboards, and generally made the class quite pristine for the incoming teacher, who is very grateful, and whom I really like. I’ve also left her supplies and books, and lots of useful copies of poems, lessons and grammar sheets in files in the file cabinets. I returned the (wiped-down of files) school computer, my keys, ID card and grade-book.
I believe I am TRULY done.
The last few years had exhausted and diminished my reserves my strength. I wanted to write, to help others, to be with my family, to be free of the toxicity of school. Yes, I was still enthusiastic when I taught, yes, I was still creative with my students, but I had nothing left in reserve. I needed to recharge. A few unpleasant things happened to me at school in the past couple of years which reinforced this feeling.
I needed to leave.
My husband and daughter supported my need to leave, and because of that, I knew I could. And now that I have left, I am truly free.
It’s so liberating!
But now, what shall I do?
I’ve begun tutoring, and I love that, because I love teaching. I’ll keep doing that. However, what I really want to do is write. I keep wanting to write, but feel stuck. Perhaps, I need more time to lick my wounds. School, great though teaching was, and nicely though my administration had treated me, had wounded me. Over the years, I put up with barely concealed ethnocentrism on the part of certain people, pointed barbs by others, outright hostility from a very few. I dealt with bullies (certain colleagues), patronizing (certain parents), hypocritical and occasionally alarming behavior (certain students). I am known as a very good, even great, teacher by many of my students and parents, but school is not a place to stand out, whether you are a student OR a teacher.
I also want to serve. It’s part of what I am. I want to do more for those who really need education — the poor, the abandoned. I have no experience in this area. I intend to find out after I recover from school.
I am a free thinker. I am not a follower. I despise edubabble, and the random, prating nonsense in the name of education. I refuse to administer standardized tests. What I want is this: I want to be free. I’d like to serve. I’d like to write. I want be a great writer and satisfy me. I know I’m a good one. I have to have time to hone my skills in this area, to know whether I’m any good.
Right now, I feel somewhat dispirited, but I know this will pass when I write something I like.
Meanwhile, I’m re-charging myself right now — sleeping, walking, taking my child to her summer Circus Camp, playing with child and dog, getting back into West African drumming, singing madrigals at night with husband and daughter, and meditating (I cannot believe I’m actually doing that last bit — no, I am not part of some cult, just teaching myself to focus breathing and energy, and it’s nice!).
Wherever I go, I’m around people who seem happy to see me, don’t shield their eyes mentally, don’t narrow their eyes at me, seek me out when I go places, and want to talk to me.
This surprises me, because I felt (despite all the good words of colleagues and so on) lonely and misunderstood at school. This is not to say that it was always so — I have formed some very close friendships over the years and my friends are the ones who helped me survive. Also, my students were fine — I always got along famously with most of them. While I worked at the school, I knew what I was: an improbability, a Hindu with a dot, an accent that people misidentified as British (or so some told me), and an obviously literate and well-spoken person with a history and a culture from a poor, but ancient country in a very self-referential, very self-satisfied, wealthy, mostly white school district in this country.
I hope what I underwent there all these years will give me the gift of stories, at least, so it will not all have been a waste of some of that angst that I experienced.
Meanwhile, I cannot believe my luck. I escaped the net. I survived. I still have another life stretching out in front of me. I intend to use it well.
And I’m here.
Thanks for reading this rambling piece — I’ve not organized my thoughts here, but I wanted to say something about why I’ve been absent.
~Dreamer of Dreams