I’ve got a lot on my mind and only 14 minutes to get through this with the VPN. Let’s go!

Today gave me much to think about. The new teacher who is replacing me is at the school now and watched my two classes today. The Chinese manager of our school watched me teach the first class which was really weird. At first I was very upset about it because the only thing I could figure was that he wanted to make sure that I was teaching alright and was there to check on me. That pissed me off. I’ve done a crappy job of teaching these last couple weeks – I’ve actually done the best job I could under the circumstances, but my attitude wasn’t in a very good place so the teaching was pretty poor. What pisses me off about it, though, is that the school didn’t care enough to help me become a better teacher to have me regularly watch more senior teacher’s classes or to have my own classes observed. It’s frustrating that now, the week I’m leaving, they would take interest.

So while I’m teaching this class, which I wasn’t excited about to begin with, I find myself getting more and more upset and thinking maybe I’ll just quit on the spot. Like call him out on it and just be done with the school early. I applied today’s lesson from the course and it seemed to help. I also realized that there could be other reasons he was watching my class. It’s a weak class and the TA wants to not bump them up to the next level when this one is done and do a few months of review classes to get them ready for the next level. I realized maybe that was why he was in the class watching it. I don’t really think that’s why. In reality, I think he was there to make sure I was going to teach class up to at least some kind of standard. I’m going to ask him tomorrow why he came to watch my class. I didn’t appreciate him just showing up and not giving me any forewarning.

It’s not easy to admit that you’re not good at something and that you’ve failed. I feel like I have failed at this teaching because I don’t like it and it’s not something I could continue doing. I also don’t feel like the school gave me nearly as much support as they could have so I was bound to fail in a way. I mean really, I could have taken it upon myself to work harder and learn more. There are resources and other teachers I could approach about helping me to become a better teacher and I didn’t do that. But, that’s also not something I would do. I need more formal, scheduled things and accountability in order for that kind of growth to occur. It’s one of the things I didn’t find at this school.

The other thing I realized is that I have hated this job for quite a while. And how did I get to the point where I hate this job so much? These past few months have basically been hell. I’ve not been happy teaching or in class and in reality the students are actually pretty nice and they just want to have fun. I don’t understand how I let my attitude get away from me so much. Working for this school wouldn’t be nearly as bad if I hadn’t made it out to be so bad.

That said, I have no intentions of getting another teaching job. Working for a language school under these circumstances is not for me.

The other thing that’s been rattling around inside my head is that there is still a part of me, deep down, locked away somewhere inside that doesn’t want to be happy. That doesn’t feel I deserve to be happy or that I ever will be. I want to fight that and evict from my mind. I do want to be happy and I do deserve to be happy. I just spent so long feeling otherwise I’m now stuck in this space where I’m trying hard as hell to be happy and to find that, but there’s a lag for some reason. I need to examine this more and pray for some help.

Ok, times up. Frantic and not very cohesive, but I got it all out.