Whilst avoiding work at my summer job today, I managed to come across this amazing blog that I have neglected for over a year. To be honest, I completely forgot it existed. I've got to say that after reading over all of the posts from last winter, it was like watching a human being falling apart. I know I tried to keep everything censored and all so as not to lose what was truly the worst job in the world, but I feel so much better about my life just having realized yet again how much it sucked last year.
In case anyone is actually reading this or was wondering what happened to me that I stopped writing - here's a quick overview. February and March dragged on and continued to be some of the most depressing months of my life. Every day at my inner city teaching job, I felt my creative energy further and further drained out of me in some attempt to please a bunch of people I had absolutely no shred of respect for regarding how they ran a school. Everything I had ever learned or cared about was thrown away in attempts to track my every move and fit a structure that treated students like color by number pawns rather than individuals with innovative minds. It's a wonder I didn't denounce teaching altogether.
Somewhere around April, I realized that I was ruining one of what surely will go down as one of the best experiences of my life by not truly learning from my students all that I could be. Screw the myopic administration and their definition of a school that treated one book that some guy who taught in the inner city for two years wrote as a bible. I decided to start teaching my way and realized again why I wanted to teach in the inner city in the first place. I wanted to reach students who didn't have a lot of people trying to reach them. I embraced the fact that my coworkers were the most unbelievably dedicated, talented and passionate people I had ever met and I lamented the way they were all treated by our heinous excuse for a principal. I pushed my students creatively and bs'd my lesson plans regarding how it fit into the respective structures and common core standards that were so callously written to be tested on a bubble exam which leaves no room for true vision or thought.
On the same day that I was voted Teacher of the Year by the entire student body of my school (as a first year teacher mind you), I was told that I "did not seem to share the vision of the school" enough to be recontracted for the following year. By this time, I had already been interviewing at other schools everywhere and had started to feel that if I had to spend one more year in that hell hole, I'd probably die anyway. Was I terrified of how I was going to manage my mortgage payment? Absolutely. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I gained a wealth of experience, learned what I am capable of accomplishing as well as withstanding, and will never take a decent job for granted ever again knowing what it is like to wake up feeling like I wanted to vomit every day just for having to go to work.
Enter Disneyland. That's what my current coteacher calls the school where I work now. I went back to my roots, accepting a maternity leave position at a large suburban school near where my parents live. I am treated with respect, I love my students, I learn so much from my coworkers and my boss knows how be encouraging while still maintaining a strict sense of professionalism. While I still do not have a full time job, I will be there throughout the entire next semester and maybe one day, the school will hire an English teacher, and maybe one day... that teacher will be me. In any case, I am making pretty much the same amount of money in addition to working as an administrative assistant for an IT outsourcing firm.
The best part of both of my jobs is that while they are challenging and require me to be on top of my game creatively and cooperatively, I go home with the mental energy that was drained from my life last year. My hair grew back (I had lost almost half of it due to stress), I no longer have a tick in my eye, and I no longer spend my entire extra curricular life drinking or watching mindless television.
Some time last summer, I read through all of my college papers and felt a sense of yearning for the academic I once had been. This, combined with an excessive appreciation for Eminem's Recovery album, caused a renaissance in my creativity. I started writing again - songs, my novel... started a new novel as well, articles, whatever. I started singing more. This carried throughout the year. I got a piano off Craigslist for Christmas and taught myself how to sing and play at the same time. I now post videos to YouTube.
I won a $500 karaoke contest last week. I'm trying to eat healthy, but am not replacing the batteries in my scale. I love my family and friends who stuck with me when I was undoubtedly a wretched person to be around. It is now my goal to finish one of the novels, write a few full songs, and just never let go of all of my positive inner energy. I can't believe I let a stupid job get so in the way of who I am as a person. Maybe this blog will have a different flair to it now.
This is a link to my youtube account, one example of the ways I've expanded personally in the last year
YouTube Account of my Cover Songs .
