I'll make up for it tomorrow.
My soul is low today. I think it's a combination of being weirdly tired, being heinously behind already/again, not feeling I'm fulfilling my complete responsibility to my students and this effing neverending job, that our department meeting today basically ended on the note that we have too many failing students and we need to revamp our curriculum again (we do this every year), the fact that one of my students is seeking help and emancipation but her situation probably isn't dire enough for the state to consider it...maybe not until her gangbanger family kills her or something, and the fact that another of my students (an aforementioned cutter) is having more self-inflicted violence and substance abuse issues (she came to school loaded once last week and also today).
I've spent the evening having a meltdown.
How are we supposed to handle this job again? I can't fucking do this. It is not in my power to give these kids the kind of help they really need.
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6 comments:
:( I wish I knew what to say!
Sending prayers your way (for you and your students)!
No you don't have the power to give these kids the kind of help that they need but what you do give? That has huge impacts, even when you never see it - even when they don't know for years and years.
Honestly and truly - teachers and other adults who cared about me impacted my life and still do.
My youngest kids have a 14 year old brother and I stand helplessly by watching him self destruct and the system that is supposed to take care of him screw him over and screw him up and I keep clinging to the idea that maybe somehow just showing we are there and that we care is going to help him someday.
I hear you.
I wish I could fix it, all I can say is that you care really does make a difference.
I know it because I was one of those students, maybe flying more under the radar, but I was one of those students.
audrey mango - thank you. i'll take your prayers, in abundance if you have them to spare.
gawdess - thank you. just...thank you. you rule. i'll respond in more detail later, maybe tomorrow when i feel stronger (i hope). i think both my soul and body are fighting off things today.
I agree completely with Gawdess. I can say without exaggeration that I would not be alive today if it weren't for my gifted teacher in elementary school. And each year in high school, I had one teacher who was the one and only stable, caring adult in my life. It made a huge, huge difference for me, even when there was little or nothing tangible that they could do to help, even when they were largely unaware of the scope of the problems I faced. Students may not know it in the moment, but they know, and it matters.
I know that feeling ....
jo(e) - i know you do. no one can be a decent teacher and not have experienced this. and i know you're a great teacher. thanks for the collegial support.
scriv and gawdess - thank you again for your words and reassurances. i know these things intellectually -- i do -- and i know that teaching is like sowing seeds or like casting bread on the water or like a time bomb or whatever -- the results usually only show up later, if at all. i'm usually ok with that part.
but there are some days (or weeks) when it all feels so ineffectual and for naught. it sucks to freak out when a particular student is absent because you really don't know what that absence might signify. and it sucks to know that this fucked up system of ours does more disservice to students than it does service...at least in the cases i've witnessed or been involved in. i know the system helps some; but it should be helping more, and it shouldn't be making anyone's lives worse. it sucks to feel like you have to advise a student to just suck it up and stick it out for two more years till they're 18, because you fear that getting a social worker involved might make things even worse than they already are.
but my kids do know that i care about them. they don't know that i pray for them. they do know that i listen. my cutter/inebriate said yesterday, "i'm sorry for involving you in my stuff." i said, "no. don't apologize for that." i asked her, "isn't that part of the deal? isn't that part of the teacher/student deal?" i told her she was apologizing for absolutely the wrong thing. she said, "yeah, i know."
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