I Love Being a Teacher, But I am Also Mentally and Physically Wrecked from It

When I was a little girl, I’d set my stuffed animals in a row across the playroom floor. Each of my “students” would complete their test after a curated lesson taught by yours truly. My childhood playroom was my first classroom, and this was where I began dreaming of one day being a teacher. Fast forward a few years, and college only further drove home my passion for becoming an English teacher.

I just KNEW I was right where I was supposed to be.

The first year of teaching

My first year as a teacher came as a shock to my system. It didn’t take long to go from feeling overly prepared to completely overwhelmed. I could have never anticipated the amount of discipline problems I would encounter as a first-year teacher. “The students will try you daily, especially since you’re new and young,” my coworkers would say. But before this, nobody warned me. In fact, discipline was an issue that my college studies rather *skimmed over*.

In that same theme, there were other seemingly important aspects of teaching I wasn’t warned about. My classroom is full of technology I’m unfamiliar with, though the single workshop I took on technology in August was supposed to be sufficient. I desperately need a lesson on navigating teacher-parent relationships; I underestimated the amount of conflict resolution I’d be partaking in, not to mention the calls home that I was actively dreading.

Long story short, I love being a teacher. However, I don’t love being a disciplinarian, counselor, and referee — to name a few things.

I love the kids and my subject. I don’t love the constant documenting, scolding, repeating, and doubting.

And for my personal life —I don’t love the amount of complaining that I have unfortunately found myself doing.

Welcome to teaching! Here is a pile of extra, unrelated, unpaid work!

I love being a teacher, but I am also mentally and physically wrecked from being a teacher.

Optimistically, I thought that with my schedule I’d still have the time and desire to have a social life.

I was so wrong.

The candle is burning out at both ends by 3 p.m., and then I also have a hand in sports and extracurriculars that I never volunteered to do. By the time my work day is done, I am so depleted that I can’t even fathom cooking dinner, let alone going out and doing anything in the evening. My early alarm clock and another exhausting day await me, and they loom over my head like a heavy weight, reminding me that I’d better turn in early — every day.

Besides, I’m probably working the gate at a middle school basketball game that night anyways.

The sad part is, I know in my heart that I am a good teacher. The teaching part comes as naturally to me as breathing. I genuinely care for my students and their well-being. I want to see them succeed, and I know how to help them become better readers and writers and communicators. With every lightbulb that goes off during a lesson, and I know I gave them what it took to get there.

Unfortunately, all of the other things I’m asked to do have begun to greatly overshadow my love for teaching. Not only has my actual *teaching time* been cut in half, but it’s also taken my passion and joy. I can’t teach without the invisible pressure to hurry up and finish, so I can move on to the next item on my to-do list. I feel a gravitational pull toward my laptop on my desk, which houses the lesson plans and grading and reports I have yet to finish.