Lately a parade of inspirational posts about teaching have been popping up in my Facebook feed. Each one talks about how in spite of everything teachers have to deal with, it's all worth it. I know that feeling. It's the end of the school year, and on that last day of school, in the anticipatory glow of ten weeks of relative freedom, we can forget all the garbage of the past ten months for just a moment and remember how much we actually accomplished. Well, for the first time since I was a child, there's no last day of school for me. After 16 years, I've left teaching. I never thought that would happen, but here I am.
So, was teaching worth it? Not always. For me, it was for the most part. I taught in the same school for 15 of my 16 years, and most of those years were fantastic. Not perfect. There were days and even weeks that were downright miserable. But as a whole, I loved what I did, and it was absolutely worth it. Worth the hours longer than all reason. Worth coming in to teach while sick because no substitute could do the things I did. Worth spending every weekend grading 180 of the same assignment. Worth the sleepless nights sewing costumes and building scenery for the school play. It was worth it. It really was.
Until it wasn't. My final years of teaching were not worth it. I wasn't treated well. Some of my students weren't treated well. Despite my best attempts, things were unfair, and unjust, and I couldn't fix them. More often than not I was angry. I'm not an angry person. But I became really, really angry. So much so that I spent nights lying awake with my blood boiling because the injustice I saw day after day made it impossible to sleep. Changing schools didn't help because my new school had bigger problems than the one I'd left. I'm not being very specific here, and that's intentional because the important thing is this: Things had changed, and teaching was no longer worth it.
So all of a sudden, I'm not a teacher anymore. I always thought I would be a teacher until I literally dropped dead. Now that's gone, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. What do you do when you lose your calling? I'm working in a public library now and adding another master's degree to my collection. I'll be qualified to be a school librarian in a year or so. It's something I think I could really thrive at, but honestly, I'm not sure I have the courage to walk back into a school again, knowing how badly you can get burned there.
Maybe what they say is true that those who burn bright also burn fast. Maybe for someone who threw herself head first into teaching the way I did, fifteen or sixteen years is all you can sustain. I don't know if I buy that, though. Because every time I step into a school, I get both energized and homesick. I can't help it. School is my home. It's the place I was born for. I hope someday soon I can find my way to that kind of home once again.
Until then, I'll take advantage of the new and strange freedom I'm experiencing. I can go to the bathroom when I want to. I can make a dentist's appointment on a weekday. I can take a vacation in the middle of February. But when I'm ready, and I find the right situation, and some lucky school is looking for just the right kind of librarian, then I'll know it's time to go back. And I'm sure then, it will be worth it.
