The best way out is always through

With the rise of perfect teacher instagrams, it’s very easy to feel like your classroom looks a state or you’re not organized enough or your resources aren’t up to scratch in comparison to everyone else’s. I took some time yesterday to go and speak to some of the other teacher’s after school, one-to-one and see if they were really ok behind their pinterest perfect classrooms. It’s very easy to think you are the only one having a tough year or a tough day and I found that three of the four teachers I spoke to had quite a tough day between challenging parents and tough students. I told each of them this story and now I will share it with all of you, the first time I told it was to a guy I taught with four years ago who failed his Dip and just felt like the worst teacher in the world. Needless to say he took my story with a pinch of salt and now four years later, he’s taught in America and Australia and he’s having the time of his life. Tough times don’t last forever, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Six years ago I got a temporary job with a fourth class, I was delighted as jobs were hard to secure at that time and anything at all was something to celebrate and I had just passed my Dip the previous year. Come September, I knew after my second day that this class was going to be tough, the kids didn’t get on with each other, constant yard problems, no discipline procedures in the school and they’d been like this since junior infants. I felt like I was losing my mind, my parents were so worried about me he wanted me to leave the school. I considered leaving teaching, thinking I just had an easy class in my first year and this was an insight into the real world of teaching. I felt I was the worst teacher in the world, embarrassed of what the other teachers thought and began looking at other ways I could use my degree besides teaching. Some days it was so bad I’d burst into tears as soon as I got into my car and twice I had to pull in because I couldn’t see whilst driving through tears. I tried everything with that class but nothing worked and up until the last day of the school year there were problems.

Needless to say I had too many bad memories to return to that school but kept in contact with the teachers. The class were given to a guy who had been in the school for many years, he was one of these teachers who the kids would call ‘the cross teacher’. Whilst meeting up with the staff Christmas of the following year he confided in me that if he were to get the class for a second year running he would leave. Turns out he was given that class for a second year as the principal felt he was the only one who could control them, and he left.

Meanwhile, I’d gotten a permanent job in another school and realized that the fault didn’t lie in the kids or in me, it lay with many problems in the school. No discipline code, lack of procedures and lack of support were to blame in allowing the problems within the class to continue each year without resolution. I haven’t felt like that since that year and I hope I never will, that’s not to say I’ve had easy classes since but I’m stronger now as a person and I’m confident in my capabilities as a teacher and I know as should you that I am a good teacher.