Teacher guilt is like survivor guilt. At least it is for me. I am relieved every day that I'm no longer teaching in KCK (that's Kansas City, Kansas to you uninitiated), but I sure feel guilty about it. Even though I live 1200 miles away, I know there are districts around here (Newark and NYC come to mind) where I could do a similar amount of good. But I don't want to anymore.
It's not just that I want to be home with my children. It's not just that I think No Child Left Behind is making teaching hellish. It's that I don't have the emotional wherewithal to teach anymore.
I drank a lot during my last years of teaching. Not at work or anything like that, but I spent a lot of evenings in bars drinking and smoking like a chimney, using dark humor to make others laugh about my job. I think the very worst day was the day I found out that I had one student at the hospital, near death because of her sickle cell and that another student had been put in foster care because her stepfather had been molesting her (Super Guilt, I knew she seemed down but I didn't know what was wrong) and another student broke down and just sobbed in my arms about everything in her life. All three girls are okay now, as far as I know. But that's not the point, is it?
When I was pregnant with Lovebug I had a challenging student with a scary parent. The man threatened to harm me on the school answering machine, though he was nothing but polite to me in person. Actually, he was a bit too polite - he asked too many personal questions, stood too close and breathed alcoholic fumes on me way too often. I was afraid of him and I didn't get much help from the school district, the police or Child Protective Services. It was the other teachers and the custodian who made sure I was never alone with this man.
I'm a mommy now. I can't drown my sorrows in alcohol or ignore the pain eating away at me. God bless the people who can handle it. But I can't anymore. I'm sorry.
3 comments:
Hey There! I'm still suffering from KCK teaching guilt as well. I want to be in there, fighting the good fight, but I was just so beat down and exhausted all the time. I love my new job now, I work in financial aid, but I miss trying to help the students. But I guess we did more than most people right? Glad to see things seem to be going so well for you!
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As a former teacher, I really appreciated your commentary. It is an emotionally draining profession. I work as a librarian part time now and make more than I did teaching so yes there are times that I miss the kids and teaching but I am a lot more content out of the classroom.
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