Literary Pixie

Just finished reading Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way we Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown at the bar at Tabula Rasa and now understand why I started crying before work, and decided to take a mental health day this morning.

And why I burnt out at my first high school, taking a 3 month mental health break, before getting a new position at a different high school and am currently in the process of burning out again, trying to come up with escape plans and promising myself if I work one more year, I can take a break.

Except this morning, the voice saying, ‘just one more year, things are improving’ turned into ‘fuck this, get me the fuck out of here, I don’t want to do this’.

What was the trigger?

Well I was journaling for ten minutes as I do every day, and I started to write about some dating challenges I’m having, then I started to write about some roommate challenges I’m having, and then I realized I really need to start thinking about work.

I typed, “Oh, I found out I’m officially going to be teaching four curriculums next year. 9th, 12th, APLit and now they’ve added museum studies,” and then I burst into tears. I started crying all over the place at the Coffee Bean I go to every morning.

Immediately, I started writing these long, vulnerable messages straight into the faculty group chat, “Good morning, with two teachers leaving and the magnet coordinator position opening up, as well as with me and the other ELA teacher starting in January, would it be possible to do some team-building?”. Then I was gripped by panic, what will they say?

I can’t sit in another meeting completely disengaged and feeling powerless and angry and taken advantage of. The experience teaching at this school has been terrible. The gossiping of students about teachers, about other students, the bullying both students on students and students on teachers – the students changed their Instagram messages to “I hate Mx. Teacher” because she refused to take them to the zoo for a field trip because they were being disrespectful, and then a student had their parents put in a formal complaint and she was yelled at by admin.

When I shared this with the current coordinator, she said, “students don’t have to like you.” So the students are allowed to bully and harass teachers – and can even have their parents report us, and we get yelled at because “kids will be kids”.

And now they want me to teach four preps, an impossible amount of work to do at a quality level unless I work outside of my paid hours and at detrimental costs to my personal life, which I have been doing for the last four years with no end in sight.

They told me it would get easier. That after four or five years, you’re over the hump, and I’d be able to do normal hours.

Except they keep changing the game on me. Teaching is like a game of chess where I am a pawn with policies designed to never let teachers win the game.

I paid the price for the last three years because I believed that it would get better, that teaching would eventually become sustainable. I had hope. But August of this year, I had run out of hope.

My family and I were sitting at Le Figaro Bistro having dinner, and I said “Things are not going to get better this year. It’s been three years, and now they’ve changed my co-teacher and given me a whole new grade level and curriculum to prepare. I can’t do it. It’s not going to get better. I told them it’s not realistic, and they told me it is and that this will be my line unless I leave. I told them in April I couldn’t do this. And they gave it to me anyway, and now it’s August and school starts on Monday, and I can’t do this.” I began to cry in the restaurant.

My parents felt deeply uncomfortable. “You can do it,” trying to encourage me. “It’s your mindset.”

My Dad began quoting Ted Lazzo and said, “You just have to believe.”

By October, I would be calling in sick every day, and by November I would have a letter from my doctor saying I couldn’t go back to work for 6 weeks.

Reading Daring Greatly, I learned that mindset is only one of three parts of the recipe required for hope. Quoting C.R. Snyder’s research on hope, Brene states that “hope is really a thought process” with three parts (Pg.239).

Part 1 is having the ability to set realistic goals. Part 2 is being able to figure out how to achieve those goals, including the ability to stay flexible and develop alternative routes. And Part 3 is believing in oneself.

After three years of trying to achieve the same two goals

ONE: to prepare my all three of my curriculum materials one week in advance so that I can collaborate with my co-teachers to help them do their job

TWO: prepare quality teaching curriculum that teaches students the value and joy of reading, writing, and discussing

I had realized that the workload and the resources they were giving me made it unrealistic for me to be able to achieve the goals. It was not my mindset. It was not my time or effort or personality. It was the workload.

To top it off, while failing to achieve these two goals – my co-teachers had started to complain to the administrators about me not being able to achieve these two goals. I was going to be reevaluated for an additional year because of the complaints.

Now I was going into my fourth year trying to achieve these goals, and I had no hope.

These three years of failure, of complaints, of betrayal, of never enough were so excruciatingly painful for me. I felt such deep and immense shame.

I kept trying to explain.

“Well, I may look young but I am actually career-changing from marketing and I was only in a classroom for four weeks during my pre-requisites when everything shut down for COVID. I did my credential 100% online and didn’t enter a classroom until I was the teacher. I spent the entire credential program sitting in my bedroom in pajamas on Zoom with black screens.

Then, I taught summer school at CHAMPS teaching one class a day, and that was great. The students and I published an anthology of their short stories on Amazon and did a launch party at a local bookstore!

Now I’m trying to teach ELD 1 and 2 in a mixed double block (aka the only teacher supporting all of the international newcomers) and ELA 9 honors and ELA 12 honors with a co-teacher, four different curriculums, and it’s too much.”

“That’s a normal workload for a new teacher, and a teaching credential doesn’t really prepare you anyway.” my administrator told me. “Maybe you’re just not cut out to be a teacher,” while popping an Advil, drinking diet coke and getting a hernia.

I held my tears in and cried in my car in the parking lot.

Then I listened to myself and to my family and friends, and I believed that I could be a great teacher, I just needed a supportive environment and the person whose job it was to support me was choosing to shame me instead.

I decided to keep fighting and putting in the hours – completing a Masters in Secondary English Language Arts Education with straight As, passing my California Teacher Exams and my induction, and clearing my credential.

And now it was year 4, and I was having constant headaches, and this horrible anxiety that wouldn’t go away. My nervous system had become completely dysregulated. And, I couldn’t stop crying.

Every time I thought about work, I would just start crying uncontrollably and would have to stop working.

This morning, processing that I would have four preps again, I became triggered and began crying uncontrollably.

Four curriculums. That was the trigger.

Now, I know what you’re saying. Why can’t you just do the four preps, and not put in those extra hours? It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Ugh. If it was that easy.

Growing up in the American school system, I learned that I needed to be the perfect student and get straight A’s or else I would be a failure!

Parents and even the other students reinforce this mindset, making fun of kids who didn’t get straight A’s or choosing friends based on who could help you in class.

I learned I was able to avoid that shame by being quiet, nice, and getting straight As. I could be identified as a good friend. I was able to be loved, to have friends because I was the perfect student.

Being back in the classroom, that same pressure is there. And when I am not perfect, the kids complain. They question me, they shame me, they use the tools they have to get what they want, which is what I wanted too- straight As.

When I am not perfect, the kids complain to the other teachers, and the teachers stay in their classrooms and rarely talk to me. The administrator then tells me what all the kids and parents and teachers have been saying about me, and that maybe I’m not cut out to be a teacher.

I have nightmares of me screaming, “I can’t learn like this!”

I wanted to become a teacher because I wanted to prevent kids from having to unlearn what I learned in school – to understand that straight A’s guarantee nothing, and that in order to learn you have to fail, you have to listen to feedback, you have to have a team that supports you, that invests in you, that nurtures you. You can’t do it alone.

You can gain knowledge alone, but you can’t learn alone. Learning requires action, and action requires society. Learning requires practice, and practice requires making mistakes until you’ve developed the skill, and even then, there is always room for growth.

The first time you do something, you can’t get an A – or that means you aren’t learning.

From years in the school system, I had internalized that message. That I had to be perfect on my first attempt, or I wasn’t smart, and that the shame created by this failure was what motivated me to be better.

I thought my perfectionism was a good thing, but as Brown says:

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is a defensive move. It’s the belief that if we do things perfectly and look perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgement, and shame…

Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval…

Healthy striving is self-focused: How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused: What will they think? Perfectionism is a hustle.

My whole teaching career had and has become about what my colleagues thought of me, what my students thought of me, and what my administrators thought of me – but it’s also designed that way.

You are only a good teacher if your students and administrators and colleagues think you’re good. If you think you’re good, but all the other stakeholders are complaining – you’re delusional.

And yet, you can’t control what these people think about you, you can only control yourself.

And when first do something, when you’re learning – you’re not going to be good.

Also your goals are diametrically opposed to each other.

• The students want to get straight A’s so they can go to college and make their parents proud.
• The parents what their kids to get straight A’s so they can brag that their kids are smart and that they are good parents.
• Your administrators want the students and parents to be happy so that they don’t have to get yelled at over the phone or sit in on parent-teacher conferences. So that their enrollment numbers are high and the superintendent of the district says they are a good school.
• Co-teachers want their students to learn, as well as to finish their individualized education plans (IEP) for the students they case manager and make sure that the teacher they are working with is following the IEP so they don’t get sued.
• And you as the teacher – want to do your job, which is to get students to learn the curriculum and become good people.

The only person with control of the curriculum and grading is the teacher, and thus, the dynamic is teacher vs all other stakeholders.

Thankfully, because of our union – they can’t fire us for these kinds of complaints, but they sure can shame.

That is their tool. They use shame to control us. And it works. It burns us out. It makes us quit or resign on our own. Drop out. Disengage.

Brene defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging” (69).

Brene defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging” (69).

This is what my administrators are communicating every time I ask for support, they shame me. You don’t belong here. You’re not one of us. You’re not cut out to be a teacher. But really, they don’t have the resources to support me.

I know that I have things to learn, that I am making mistakes, that I am not a perfect teacher or even a good teacher. I am just trying to be good enough. I want to learn, I want my students to learn how to be amazing readers and writers and people, I want to learn how to teach them that.

However, when I make mistakes instead of being listened to and provided the resources or support needed (aka changing from teaching four curriculums to one curriculum, or from teaching five classes to two or three, and then co-teaching with another teacher to get mentoring), I am told that I don’t belong here.

After three years of asking for help trying to achieve those two goals, I was defeated. Broken. I cared so much about those kids and learning to teach them the literacy skills they need to thrive in the 21st century, and yet, I did not have the support I needed to become a good teacher, or even good enough.

The experience trying to get help at that school was dehumanizing, and for my own health, I needed to disengage. Brene says, people “disengage to protect ourselves from vulnerability, shame, and feeling lost and without purpose” as well as when the people who we are working with and who are meant to be on our team aren’t actually helping us, but becoming the enemy (176).

So I changed schools. But now I am back in the same situation where I feel I need to disengage in order to protect myself. What do I do?

The policy is that after changing schools, you can’t change again for 3 years. I’m trapped. It’s either resign or roll over.

Or I could fight?