Disillusionment

Being a teacher is hard. As a teacher your job is to stand up in front of a room of at least 20, more often closer to 30, students and try to get them to all learn what it is you want them to learn. That in itself is impossible. Now imagine that you have to teach these students who all have problems. Some have a crappy home life, some are grieving, some are being picked on at school, some are exhausted from working all day and night to support themselves and some are simply tired of being trapped in a building where no one cares about them and who they are. It is hard enough to teach 20 or 30 teenagers anything but imagine trying to do it when they feel like they are in prison and you are their jailer. To top it all off teachers get no support. Most often schools are underfunded, and many teachers receive no help from administrators or fellow teachers because they are just as tired and frustrated by the whole situation as everyone else is. I know that being a teacher is a struggle. This chapter seems to be about how low we can fall and how sometimes even we, the teachers, break under pressure.