An off day

I was once a very idealistic teacher. When I started ten years ago, I was bursting with youthful enthusiasm and was determined to make all my students love English. I specifically wanted to teach in a senior comprehensive school. At the time, I felt I had the knowledge and the ability to “make a difference” in the children’s lives.

My teaching career has been a meandering roller coaster ride thus far. There were times when I felt that what I was realizing my dream of “making a difference”, then there were times when I felt like I was repeatedly banging my head against a huge, unyielding wall. To be absolutely honest, today I feel like I have done many hours of penance at that wall. I feel as if I’ve been biting air. I feel like I have been spinning a collection of new tops in old mud. Hmmm…I’m also running out of melodramatic figures of speech.

I know I shouldn’t be feeling like this. I feel like I am betraying ideals of the younger, more enthusiastic me. I am supposed to be older, wiser and more equipped to face the challenges of the teaching profession. I’m supposed to be enthusiastically interacting with my students, appealing to their multiple intelligences and using constructivist methods to make learning more relevant to them. I’m supposed to be doing a lot of things. However, even though I would like to think that I have grown older and maybe even wiser, I face a whole new generation of students: a generation that apparently requires a great deal more of my blood, sweat and tears.