My body in a word: blah.

I'm pretty miserable right now, so this isn't going to be an uplifting post.... A few things give me joy:
-my loving husband who's been so compassionate and helpful with chores
-my sister-in-law is going to find out the sex of her baby this week
-my friend Betsy's baby girl is getting cuter and cuter with each picture I see
-yesterday's 87 degree day
-my growing seedlings
-this school year almost over
-the country music playing in the background

Last Monday, my two goofy students (Ann and Annie) asked me if I was pregnant and once the initial speechlessness of shock passed, I learned they meant nothing by the size of my tummy. Rather, they blamed my face. Once again, I had to shake off the self-consciousness they brought me and search for their true meaning. Deliberately remembering they were silly teenagers, I pressed them for what in the heck they meant. Oooooohhhhhhh!! A glow? I thought it was necessary to inform them of the First Trimester Symptoms which do not involve glow. (I may not be correct on this point, but I don't care. I had a point to get across to these two handfuls.) Secondly, I pointed out my tan, my makeup, my general happiness thanks to spring... all valid reasons for looking good.

That night, my fever of 100.5 explained the supposed glow.

The rest of the week, I was up and down with energy and fatigue and a sore throat and a pesky dry cough. Finally, I saw the doctor on Friday morning who confirmed that I had strep throat and should not go back to teaching until Monday. It was stressful having to come up with substitution plans, but everything worked out and I had myself a long weekend of rest. I consumed way too much hot tea, but I couldn't help it. Plus, I had lost my voice late Thursday night, only to find it again Sunday night. The meds must have kicked in because I felt better except for the voicelessness. Matt had a lot of fun carrying on conversations for the both of us using his "Rebekah voice". Scary thing is, he had my part all right!!

I went back to school yesterday with a froggy voice, but by the end of the day I was miserable, and still am today. I didn't think I could get worse while on antibiotics, but what do I know? It feels like my strep throat is turning into a bad cold, and that all my symptoms are back. Even this morning (Tuesday), I had a slight temperature (99.11), but I pushed through. The nurses at school told me that they've had a record amount of sick kids come through their doors. Last week, they averaged 79 kids per day! Student population is only 550! Craziness. I'm just thankful Matt is showing zero symptoms even though is class got cancelled today due to sickness.

I'm never sick, so I have a low tolerance for these symptoms. Yuck.

What's worse is my mental/emotional health. I'm just not in a job that I enjoy and it's getting me down recently. There's going to be so much change next year with the AP exam changing, so I really can't reuse what I have from this year. I need to be changing textbooks and vocab lists and activities and goals. It's just too much. I feel so much pressure to bring kids to such a high level (an impossible level, really), and I don't know how. Because that AP exam exists, I have to teach different content, and in different ways, and I'm telling you, I'm so tired. It is so difficult to get students to do what you want them to. How do you make someone fluent in 230 minutes a week? If you saw that test, you'd see that that was the goal. I'm out of ideas to get them to talk. I don't know how to teach them how to write, or to organize their thoughts in an argumentative paper. How do I grow their listening comprehension? All of that, in my opinion, is what immersion is for. Everything is trial and error, and depending on the day and the teenagers' moods, they will perform when they want to. What tires me out the most is that I'm doing all of this brainstorming alone. That's right. There's very little collaboration and help from colleagues, even though you'd expect it. Nope, teaching is a very solitary activity and it's very discouraging. I've requested on many occasions that we have a department meeting (or a set time) purely on sharing ideas, but with teachers as busy as they are here, it's like asking the impossible. Everybody teaches at different times and everyone has coaching or community life responsibilities that take up all afternoon. Sigh.

Don't get me wrong. I am very thankful to God for this teaching job. I remember clearly last spring how excited and proud I was, but once I'm in it, I don't enjoy it and I often feel discouraged. My students' proficiency is partly due to their own effort, but it's also a reflection of my ability and it's very difficult being evaluated every day of your job. I do not have the motivation for my job. Just today, there was a department meeting and we were talking about other courses to create and offer that students can take besides (or after) the AP course. In my head, I think: "Are you kidding me? Just come up with a brand new course description? Where would I start? What would I teach? When am I going to do this?" And since I'm only upper level teacher, everything depends and rests on my shoulders, like I'm supposed to come up with the brilliant and exciting new learning opportunity. There are people who would LOVE this project and the openness of the task, but that's not me. I have a hard enough time coming up with ideas when I have something to work from and a specific goal ahead of me. I don't want to be responsible for the success of a brand new course that's supposed to be a step higher and more exciting than what the students have already completed. No thank you.

I was dreaming of a better-fit-for-me job description on my drive home today. Something that used my high energy, my love of tackling straightforward tasks, my people skills, and my organizational skills. Even though I got home at 3:30pm today, I was thinking I wouldn't mind being at a job for two hours longer if it meant that not all of the pressure for success would be on my shoulders and creative thinking. Or that my job would stay at my job. Or that a task can be completed just one way and be declared "good enough," rather than look at a task and think it was "okay" but could have been "great" if I had done X, Y, or Z. It's a discouraging place to be mentally, and I'm ready to move to happier grounds.