So…

It’s been a while since I posted anything here. A lot has happened in my life since the last time I posted. Back then, I was engaged. In the years since, my engagement ended somewhat abruptly. Oh, it’s all my fault. I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t what my fiancé needed when he got sick, and I was too stupid and stressed to be the woman he deserves. I hope that, one day, he’ll find someone worthy of him. For myself, I’ve decided to return to my fictosexuality and only fall in love with fictional characters. I will not seek to enter a relationship with a real man ever again. It seems that, somewhat tragically, I got it right the first time around when I married my ex-husband. Since there is no chance of us ever being anything other than good friends, I’m giving up on romance entirely to focus on my career and my writing.

That leads me to the next bit I have to announce. Back in 2017, under some pressure, I became a teacher. I have taught high school and elementary English and French over the past three years and I have learned a valuable lesson: I am not cut out to be a teacher. I’m too introverted, a few standard deviations too distant, and just too much of an INTJ to be a good teacher. Especially in the impoverished districts that are hiring. Therefore, I will be returning to the IT world as a web programmer. I already have a position lined up for me.

So, why am I giving up teaching? Simple. I’m no good at it. Oh, I can reach most students — that’s true. I can break down concepts and get my students to understand them. I can teach. The problem is — I can’t inspire. I can’t make connections with most of my students. Part of this is down to me being an INTJ — we don’t make connections with anyone easily. The other parts come down to me being a very different generation, class, and race than my students.

See, I graduated from high school back in 1998. Back then, students were expected to just do whatever the teacher asked. There was no arguing. There was no getting Mom and Dad to come up and defend us for being special little snowflakes. It was “do the assignment or take the zero.” If we wound up in a class we didn’t want to take or didn’t have the pre-reqs to take (as happened to me my senior year when I landed in Trigonometry after having eked out a “D” in Algebra II), we were expected to give it our best regardless. None of us thought about complaining that we didn’t understand, that we didn’t want to be there, that we were bored, that we hated the class. Our thoughts, feelings, and opinions were completely irrelevant. We were expected to do the work, to give it our all, and to go along to get along regardless of whether we wanted to be there or not. If we were ill-brought-up enough to complain, we got sent to the principal’s office and there we got set straight that what we wanted did not matter at all and that life would never conform to what we wanted or wished.

I could go on and on — and will, probably, in a different series of posts — about the problems with modern students and the current education system. However, for now, all you need to know is this: do not become a teacher. Unless you feel the same level of calling to be a teacher that some feel to become a priest, a nun, or a pastor — don’t. Why?

Well, first of all, being a teacher is a lot like being in an abusive relationship. Unless you are prepared for it and have the kind of personality that is able to withstand the abuse, it’s not worth it. You will rarely ever hear anything positive. Your academic coaches and principals will instead focus only on test scores, absences, and lack of willingness to follow arbitrary rules that you will be held to while their favorites and they themselves will be exempt from upholding. You might manage to come in every single day — even on days that you are ill — but you will be yelled at and held to account for all of the teachers who don’t come in every day. Your test scores might be in the highest percentile for the school — but you will still be shouted at as if you were in the lowest percentile. And God help you if you have troubled students. For every write-up you send to the office, not only will nothing be done, but you’ll be considered a “bad” teacher who is “unable or unwilling” to control your class.

If your students threaten you, you will be ignored when you report it. If they complain and make up a whole lot of crap about you, they’ll be believed and you will be ignored. If you start to record them, you’ll be in trouble. If you can’t keep 100% of your students 100% engaged, then the problem is with you.

You will be told to “teach to the test.” However, when you do that and your students go off to college completely unprepared for the rigors of university-level courses, you will be blamed for “teaching to the test.” Even if you record your principals demanding that you do just that (teach to the test), you will be held accountable when your students aren’t college-ready. Your principals and department heads will throw you under the bus. You will have no support, no back-up, no authority, and no respect from your students, their parents, or your administration. Instead, you will be the first to blame for any problem, for any issue with other teachers in your department, for anything that has annoyed the administration. You will work at least 30 to 50 hours overtime (unpaid!) per week. You will sacrifice time with your spouse, with your children, for your hobbies — all to try to make the administrators look better. If, through your sacrifices and efforts, the school does start to do better, you will NEVER be given credit. Instead, it will be the superintendents and principals who get the credit.

Everyone will talk about how lucky you are to have so many paid holidays — ignoring the fact that you forgo several hundred dollars per month so that your paycheck can be stretched from 10 months to 12 — and that the amount will always favor the school district and not you (after all, you might think that $48,000 would mean $4k per month but no, it will get you around $3k per month after benefits, withholding, retirement, and whatever other tricks your district comes up with). You will spend most of those holidays working — trying desperately to keep ahead of the demands. Should you be lucky enough to make it five or more years in teaching, you will find yourself forced to kowtow to the whims of an idiot who brags about not bothering to teach third-graders how to read but instead managed to get their test scores higher.

You will work, you will slave, you will sacrifice, and you will give and you will be told that all of that is not enough. You will never hear a single positive thing. You will be blamed for everything that goes wrong. You will be held accountable for all of the students who just got passed along until they got to you. You might be teaching 12th grade with students who are on a pre-K reading level and it will be YOUR FAULT that they can’t struggle through Beowulf or Macbeth. Never you mind that their previous teachers promoted them because it was easier to 60 them out than to deal with the paperwork. It’s still your fault that they got to you unable to read on grade level.

And your paycheck and benefits? Sure, if you manage to suffer through 30+ years, you’ll get a good retirement package. Unless, of course, the State needs that money to fund something else.

In short: entering into education is stupid. It’s like willingly getting into a relationship with a drunk who has a history of beating their partners. Only do it if you enjoy being a martyr. If you have an ounce of self-respect, go into something else. You’ll not only work less hours, have more time to yourself, and get paid more — you’ll add years to your life.

From one who has survived three years of absolute hell,

— G.K. Masterson