Enough

I am gonna be pretty honest for a second. Yesterday I legitimately thought about quitting my job.

I thought about walking out and curling under my bed and crying for 3 days straight.

It all started when I read an email saying I was receiving a new student on Monday to be in 5 of my classes. They told me he was ADHD and extreme behavior. Lots of issues at home and very low academically. (That basically describes all my students). I stared at my computer screen and my eyes welled up with tears. That would be my 10th new student since January. My classes are well over the legal resource limit. I don't have the time to give them all the extra instruction that they need especially because over half of them are HUGE behavior problems. I realized I was burnt out. Just like everyone told me I would be.

Call it blind-first-year-teacher hope, but when I entered this field and was told that I would be dead by summer, I laughed. I thought I could be patient. I thought I could do it all. I thought I could change the world. I am slowly learning that I cannot.

And that's not a bad thing. I don't mean that I am not making a difference, just that I can't save every child in every way. Last night as I sat and cried to Nathan he told me he admired how much I loved my students, but that maybe I loved them too much. That might sound bad, but I knew what he meant. He meant I can't put the burden of their entire future on my shoulders. He meant that I can't lie awake at night wondering if I am doing enough. I can't be their teacher and their mom and their best friend and their disciplinarian and their psychologist and their protector and their everything. I am only one person and I can only do so much. I think that has been the hardest lesson to learn.

My job is demanding. Demanding in time, energy, planning, and patience. There is very little reward back. The kids think I am always nagging them, I make less than most people without college degrees, parents don't return my calls and constantly berate my efforts, I am expected to know the ins and outs of every special ed law that was ever passed in the past 200 years, and some teachers think what we are doing in resource is a joke. I spend hours a week planning lessons, scheduling and attending meetings, filling out endless paperwork, and that is all unpaid, after-work hours. It does not even include the exhausting 8 hours a day I spend teaching. This job is the hardest think I have ever had to do. Harder than the years I spent in school trying to get to this point.

I love my job, I really do. I am doing what I have dreamed of since I was little. My students make me laugh and I have an amazing team of fellow educators. I guess I just wish I could do more. I wish I capable of sending each child off with the self-confidence they need to succeed in the world. I wish I could teach each one of them to read on grade level. Heck, I wish I could teach them to read on anything higher than a 3rd grade level. I wish I could teach them to write a paragraph. I wish I could get them to remember to turn their work in on time. I wish I could help them believe in themselves. I wish I could help some of them make friends. I wish I could shake sense into them. I wish I could make the girls feel pretty. I wish I could help the boys see how important school is. I wish I could help them all pass their math test today. But I can't do it all.

I can love them. I can teach them. I can pray for them. And that's enough.
I need to remember I am not a failure, it's enough.