Some will tell you that teaching gets easier with each additional year of experience.
I would say that perhaps on the contrary, my job feels as if it has become more and more difficult each year. Perhaps it is because with each passing year, I become increasingly aware of the intricacies of our professional. Perhaps it is because with each year I become more acutely aware of my imperfections1 and shortcomings as a professional. And perhaps part of it is that the expectations I place upon myself as a teacher become weightier and weightier with each passing season.
Its like they say:
The more you know… the more you realize you don’t know.
Each and every one of the past seven years has carried its own unique, special kind of magic that I can’t even begin to describe in words. But oftentimes at this point in the year — depending on the minute of the day — I am either optimistically excited about the upcoming year, or scared to a cold sweat that this might be the one where the magic runs dry and I just totally suck at my job.2
Or worse: This might be the year where kids stop laughing at my jokes. 3
I look around at some of my co-workers who have taught for 20… or 30-plus years… and I am in absolute marvel of them. Knowing how hard I have pushed myself these past six, making it to double-digits seems almost unimaginable to me. 4
I’m not really sure WHY I held onto this, but it fell out of my wallet a couple of days ago.
Worth a chuckle, and something I’m just gonna hold on to.
- being a perfectionist doesn’t help [↩]
- the latter is probably irrational… but fear and anxiety usually are [↩]
- this one is not at all irrational as my jokes aren’t even that funny [↩]
- this is why I forced myself to take this entire summer off, because I knew I would probably otherwise run myself into the ground at some point [↩]