Someone else talking about "feelings" . Thank goodness !!!!
The following excerpt is from a fellow staff member ( hope they never find this blog) talking about stopping to teach at the school where I work.
".I have watched for the last 12 years as one legislative mandate after another has washed over the landscape of secondary public education. Each of those mandates has made charter schools a little more like the traditional public schools we were created as an alternative to.".............
......."In any case, the net result of it all is that my fire for continuing to do this has dwindled. A paycheck is nice but does nothing to replace the glow of a healthy fire. For me, there is no passion without that fire. I am willing to forgo a lot of things, but passion is not one of those things. Consequently, I have chosen to take my energies and invest them elsewhere at the end of this school year."
Another hmmm moment. Do you love what you do for a job/career? How long do you see yourself doing it? What are your other options should you decide to stop?
I think about this every now and again. American public education is a battlefield at best with many competing interests, first and foremost it would seem is money. Next is to replace home parenting. Somewhere close to the bottom is creating educated, thoughtful, upstanding, self sustaining citizens. Ok, so for a teacher on a global scale, that's a bit of a downer.
But there are perks too. Teaching somebody something is a great joy and a non purchasable, irreplaceable gift. But, there's always the yin and yang isn't there. How long to you try to give 110% knowing you may get a 50% return rate or can you live with yourself if you only give 70% to maintain status quo and state of mental and/or physical health?
Anyway, as I thought about this, I was also thinking how much a career and the choices you make within that realm can resemble relationships and the choices you make in them too.
Options;
Stick to what you know, accept it, work at it and yourself to keep it from getting old or "boring", or settle for it and maybe hope that it gets better.
Leave and go and explore the unknown and see what happens and where other interests lie.
Have some job hunter seek you and change alliances.
And, it seems you should be passionate about what you do and what your role is, most of the time, to have intrinsic reward.
Do you see the corollary??? A little creepy actually, but true, don't you think.
So which do you focus on first? Career contentment and then personal relationship contentment/fulfillment or vice versa or do you work equally hard at both simultaneously? Or.... do you only work so that you can play and have or look for "relationships" so that you can play too?? Ew, that notion seems disgustingly selfish to me, yet profoundly simple. I guess that's why it doesn't work for me. I seem to be attracted to the complex, as much as it vexes me at times. Simple is boring...... sometimes.
Or, do you just do what's true to and for you and say screw everything else.
Hmmm. I tell you, after reading that " Eat, Pray, Love" book, Bali or even India sounds better each and every day.
I think when you're caught in a rat race, of any genus, sometimes you forget where your going, sometimes forget where you have been, and then the horrible realization comes that..... eventually the rat dies even though the race continues. Where's the story of the rat stopping just to rest and eat it's cheese? Or is that the rat in the trap?
Ben Johnson, a former student summed it up the best. "What are you doing??" and the follow up question. "WHY are you doing it?"
Not depressed I swear to you. Just...... thinking.
I have to say this though,as a tangent, I'm not the biggest fan of the thirty's decade thus far. I guess I should try to learn to be. I won't be here (in my 30's that is) all that much longer and last decade flew by before I realized it. How did that happen???
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