thoughts from the troughs

It’s nearly 10pm on Friday night, and I have been staring at the screen typing and subsequently deleting a sad-sack blog post about how hard this job can be. Each time I get started, I feel the negativity starting to snowball and a little twang of guilt gnawing at me, so I stop. I’m trying this new thing where I acknowledge my feelings and let them go – it’s super hard and I hate it, but in the end, I really do feel a whole lot better. That being said, I also paid a shit-load of money setting up a G-Suite for this website by accident, so I feel like I have to write something…

So here I am, typing my third draft of the night, in better spirits than I was when I started the first two, because I’ve decided that now is as a good a time as any to create a catalogue of the things that I’m grateful for as a teacher. The good stuff doesn’t necessarily get rid of the bad, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable. And maybe this is more for me than it is for you, but that’s okay.

some things that I am grateful for

1. I have my ‘own’ classroom that I have decorated and made home – it is a comfortable place and I know my students recognise the effort I put into making it so (even though they sometimes forget to tidy up after themselves)
2. I have a Year 12 class that have come in leaps and bounds this year, and even though I am more stressed about their exams than they are, I am not worried about them: they are good people and they have the whole world ahead of them
3. I love and respect the people that I work with. I feel valued and cared for, I also feel comfortable enough to tell people when I disagree with them
4. I teach a Year 7 class who are so excited about Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde that some of them asked if they could “please take the original version home” because they already finished the abridged version we are reading together
5. I get to work in Western Sydney (a.k.a the best part of this hideous city)
6. The kids I work with are a never-ending source of hilarity – I don’t think there’s been a day yet where I haven’t come back to my staffroom without a funny story, or a hilarious quip
7. I have many mentors (both official and unofficial) who help me to improve my practice and guide me when the days are feeling a little rough
8. I leave at the end of the day feeling like I have a purpose. Even though I sometimes get to the end of a lesson feeling like I have achieved nothing, there are enough small wins scattered throughout my day that I know I’m where I need to be right now, and frankly, that’s good enough for me

Any job has its good and its bad, and I think that with teaching the stakes feel a hell of a lot higher because there’s young people involved. I’ve been noticing a lot more of the bad recently, and I’ve been letting it pull me down. This kind of thing always happens for me in the first couple of weeks of term (after spending two weeks seeing no one and then going back to speaking to 100+ people each day) and I’m sure I can’t be the only one. It’s good to know that the troughs (though they may be deep) don’t last forever.

So for me, this term is about noticing the bad and figuring it out how to turn it into something better. I’m not sure how it’s going to go, but I’m hopeful about it all.

Until next time, be good,

Ms Tracy.