When I was a little boy growing up in a rural community outside of Riverside, CA, about sixty miles east of Los Angeles, among the things I did to pass the time was to play school in my bedroom.
With Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts gang as my students (I was an absolute Peanuts freak), I would pretend to be a teacher; calling roll, giving lessons, the works.
Fast forward a few years As I got older and saw my mother and many of my relatives enter the field of education and the teaching profession, and be successful at it, the combination of that and the fact that I've always been attracted to the school atmosphere made education and a career influencing young minds appeal to me that much more. I found myself planning to join the family business.
There were other reasons why I wanted to work in schools
- Teaching, being with, and being a leader of kids sounded like a fun way to make money.
- The school schedule - working weekdays, with weekends off. I always liked that kind of schedule as a kid, and I saw no reason to change that as a working adult.
- Having two and a half months off in the summer. Again, I loved having that time off as a youngster, and saw no reason why it could not continue.
After over fifteen years working as a tutor, a noon playground aide, a coach, and a physical education teacher, and after having quite a few bad experiences and episodes with different kids, parents, supervisors, and principals, never lasting more than three years at any one school, I ultimately realized that I was not meant to work with children in education.
After years in the field, working as hard as I could, even entering a program to get my master's degree in education and a teaching credential ( and doing very well in the classes), I found myself disillusioned with the whole thing. That's the best word to describe it.
Several factors contributed to my feeling this way in this profession, and eventually giving it up...
First, the students I worked with that had bad behavior and attitude problems and a lack of respect wore me down and burned me out, to the point where I simply could not deal with it - and them - anymore.
Over the years while working at different schools, I have been viciously cursed at, called bad names, and nastily talked back to on many occasions. I even had money stolen from me, and it wasn't even my money!
It was at a school in Los Angeles where I worked as a cafeteria clerk in the mid 1990's. I sorted out applications for free and reduced meals, worked the cash register at lunch, and distributed lunch tickets.
One day after lunch I went back to my little office to count up the day's free lunch tickets and money, when I found that the cash from that morning's reduced and full-price meal ticket sales were missing. Although it was partially my fault, since I did not lock my office door prior to lunch, it alarmed and angered me to no end.
Later that afternoon another kid came up to me and told me that a girl had snuck into my office and took the money out of my desk. I told the assistant principal, who suspended the thief and got my money back. It had ended well, but this particular incident contributed to my eventually getting fed up with that particular school.
Along with the behavior problems, I found that I did not have enough patience to be effective with certain sections of the student population. I found myself teaching and working with kids that I did not want to teach or work with, and wishing that I could pick and choose the children with whom I did want to interact.
Certainly those students with behavior problems and bad attitudes, who mouthed off, cursed, and showed no respect or consideration led me to the point where I dreaded even seeing them, let alone working with them. But I also dreaded those spoiled kids who whined, complained, and bitched whenever they did not get their way. I got fed up with them, too.
These wayward children at some of the schools I worked would have been more bearable for me to deal with if it were not for the fact that there were at least three schools I was at where I felt the principal didn't give enough support when it came to dealing with certain situations the way I felt they needed to be dealt with. These were people who, because they wanted to be "sensitive to the kids' needs", and "these are just kids" (I've always ABSOLUTELY HATED that phrase), would let the problem youngsters get away with almost murder.
