Brain Dump State of Constant Revision Pt. 2

A time of change is upon me and I’m not sure where to go from here. I may talk as if I have everything together but, in essence, this chapter of my life is simply a continuation from another chapter, one in which I admit that my life, as many other people’s life, is in a state of constant revision. What I mean by that is that truly at the end of the day we have no idea where we are going or where we are coming from.

I find that this state can be both freeing and yet it can also feel like you are free falling without a net. I feel like I have no net. I am for all intense and purposes unemployed at the moment. My "current" district has no claim to me, and in truth neither does my next place of employment. I was verifying my employment information with my car loan company today and was shocked to hear myself say, as if an apparition of myself watching from above, say no I am not longer employed through my school district. It was shocking, and liberating. It makes me feel free to say all of the things that I have gone without saying all of these years because I was afraid of retribution. I can talk now openly about the problems that occur in here in my school distrcit and about how frustrating that is for a teacher who is idealistic like I was. I heard a new teacher say to me the other day, after her first year of teaching “listen to how jaded I am”. And in truth, I was jaded too. And how can we not be. We show up out of college ready with all the knowledge a university can teach us and what little we know from student teaching and we attempt to apply this all to a real world scenario. Its kind of like being a gladiator. If you come out on top you are a hero among many, you are revered amongst the peers you have, whom are slaves to the same enemy that you are a slave to. If you fail however, then the lions truly have eaten you up alive and left your carcass to be eaten away by the hot sun. I remember my first year being this way. Half of us survived, half of us left. My classroom in particular was a perfect peek into this formation; myself on one end of the port hole, and another teacher on the other.

She fled. I stayed and fought the lions. I am so glad that she did leave too, because that gave room for one of my most revered colleagues and someone whom I am considering a better and better friend. And now, I have to start all over. New friends. New colleagues. A completely new and not nonexistent political structure. It all sounds in a word exhausting. So much so that I have in the last four days taken three naps and loved every moment of them. One of the benefits of not having a child of my own and being on summer vacation is that I am truly off the hook and I can allow my body to do whatever it wants to do.

Tomorrow it will have to drag its lazy self to the gym because it has been far too long since I have gone, but even that being said I have enjoyed some true time off to really wrap my head around the sorrow that I feel for no longer being in a system with these find young educators, for losing the students whom although I have compared to lions starved for meat I adore, and for an administration who although I have not always agreed with at least I knew where I stood with each and every one of them. These are the things that I will miss. This is why I feel that this new chapter in my life is simply a continuation of my life being in constant revision and this is why I am scared and excited ll at the same time.