Found Teacher Diary

Dear Diary,

Today started off as all others do, and everything this morning played out the same. My 5:45 am alarm was on time as usual, and in a matter of 20 minutes I was out of bed brushing my teeth after the 8 hours of sleep that never seem long enough. The quick shower and morning coffee following this did its usual job in fully waking me and giving me that necessary energy to step out of the apartment. We know how much I’ve been struggling with my motivation recently, but today was the day everything was leading up too. In all honesty, I expected it to feel different. I expected to feel angry, or at least irritated, but none of those feelings ever came, and that was the weird thing. As I waited for the bus I missed by mere seconds, all I could feel was a wave of depression. After taking my seat on the following bus, I opened my computer and finalized my lessons from the previous night, eating up the little bit of personal time I could have had as always.

From an outside perspective, I suppose everything would have seemed normal, almost fine. But the feeling of knowing that things that you have no control over and are quite literally impossible for you to change can have such impactful outcomes was unbelievably tough to swallow today. None of it is my fault, and no matter how hard I try, I couldn’t change the outcome; not with the new rules the Toronova District School Board put into effect today. How they could ever believe this was a good idea is beyond me. I am sure (or at least I want to believe) that their intentions are to make school better for students, but surely there was a better way. I understand that motivation for students in the gifted stream (the stream for students with intellectual modifications) has been lacking for the past few years. But enacting a rule that only allows for teachers who are intellectually modified to teach said classes, and then following this with another rule that essentially leaves no room for a non-genetically modified teacher from ever getting a shot at the position of any department head was incredibly unexpected.

Right away, the school's atmosphere felt off. Feelings were high and even behind their smiles and nods, I could tell that the other “normal” teachers were feeling just the way I was. Even after just one day, I can already tell that these new changes are not healthy. I will admit that teaching a class of gifted students was very hard and tiresome. It's difficult to teach and manage a class that all instinctively believe you are less intelligent than them. And to their credit, keeping up with the demands of these students became increasingly hard as the grades went up. At the end of the day, that's what I decided I wanted to teach, and I accepted it as I really needed the bonus pay that comes with teaching these classes. Living in Toronova isn’t cheap after all, and rent is only continuing to go up.

I will admit that after the first day, there is something tranquil about teaching students just like myself; I almost felt at home. This feeling was short lived, however, when I realized I may have to pick up another job now. To make things worse, I was expecting to move up this year. I have quite a number of years of experience now, and it would normally be around this time that teachers begin looking into positions at the head of a department. I was expecting to, at the very least, be in contention for the head of the Biology department at the end of this school year, but of course, that is simply no longer possible. It hurts, it really does, especially preparing and getting excited about this new step in my journey, only to have the rug pulled beneath me.

It is only the first day and I am already thinking so pessimistically. It's hard to believe things can get better when the future only looks dark. Forced to be at a level you want to move beyond simply because you are different and that there is no chance for you to move on because of that is anything but motivating. All I am thinking about is how my motivation is going to plumate; how could I possibly keep my drive up? In trying to motivate my students, my employers are demotivating me. As hard as I and many other teachers try, this is surely to leak into our current classrooms at one point or another. And then what? We are back where we started. The only potential for moving forward now even though I had never wanted to is to look at administrative positions. But by the time I feel comfortable for that position, who knows if I will even be eligible for it anymore.

One of the hardest parts is that I am expected to act as things are perfectly okay and normal. Just like any other day, I must give the same amount of effort as always. I must prepare and work just as much. Like always I must come home and prepare the next day's lessons outside of paid hours. I must sacrifice my time with my family. I must deal with the same unbearable parents. I must do so much, and now for so much less. Don’t get me wrong, I love my students, and at my core I love to teach, but it's hard for it to feel worth it sometimes. But hey, as others tell me, at least I get summers off. Of course that's only when I’m not doing prep during that too, but they don’t realize that part.