I suppose that this entry should be longer and might become a full blown essay, but it seems right to put something here and now. It's over.
After two years of teaching high school, I've resigned. With the myriad conflicts that I've faced, it's a wonder that I lasted this long. It wasn't a well-thought out thing to begin with, but then very few things that I do are. It was a good idea at the time. So I started teaching in an exclusive girls' school. I thought, hey I'm done with the crazy days of my life, I'm ready to settle down and become part of a system, to try and do something important by teaching.
Well, system wasn't ready for me. And no matter how much I tried to avoid trouble and keep my head down, I was always getting into trouble. One case after another, one even leading to "anger management" sessions while the actual students who perpetrated the whole shenanigan got away with nary a slap on the wrist. Complaints about my behavior which was irreverent led to many uncomfortable meetings. I don't know; it's like those cowboy movies (and please, kung pwede lang, if I make mention of cowboy movies can we not fall into that stupid too easy trap where one mentions brokeback mountain and winks as if he were a genius for injecting some homoerotic humor that is not there) where this guy just wants to go out to a quiet town and keep his head down and do honest work and disappear. But then, some way or another, something comes to haunt him, to bring out that thing that he's been trying to keep quiet. Think of Viggo Mortensen in A History of Violence and you've got a similar idea.
I thought I could keep quiet and just do my work. But there are too many things that I could not stomach, and I just can't keep my big mouth shut. You can try to change yourself, you can try to change the system, and if both fail, well, you have to leave the system.
What kept me here last year was the way that I felt I was able to affect students, to influence them to do well using my own methods, my way of teaching. But this year, the students' reactions aren't as enthusiastic. In fact, though there are a number that have responded, I feel that I've been met more with resounding indifference. The big bosses in charge also seem to have clamped down, and I've just done too many bad things for this fiasco to go on.
The question is always, where will you go now? What do you plan to do? I don't know.
At the moment I really want to stand outside the school and scream *&%^ #*# all! It would be a moment of great catharsis. For all that I have endured, for everything that I went through while here, god i feel like I deserve to do something massive and memorable and big. But I think I'll leave with little more than a whimper, just to be gone.
Goodbye students. No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks. School's out for summer. School's out forever.
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4 comments:
Don't LEAVE. Please. You have no idea what effect you have on students like me. In my fourteen years of existence, I never looked at English the way I see it now. you brought English III to a new level and inspired me to view things in a different way.
You have been part of the system. You have been part of MY system.
"But this year, the students' reactions aren't as enthusiastic."
Loko kasi yung ibang blue eh. Daming reklamo. Hahaha! Im not referring to all ha. Im just saying... Had the blue batch accepted Sir Carl the way the Yellow did, baka mas maconvince siya magstay. We'll miss you! But we all know youre better off somewhere else where youd be more appreciated. :> You rock. :)
You know I'll be typing something cheesy, so here goes:
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence ends.” –Henry Adams
If you remember, I texted you this quote on your 2007 birthday. It just seems made for you.
Teaching was not a failed experiment. If you only know how much you've affected the Yellow batch and our way of thinking, you wouldn't say it failed.
I know you'll be spreading your signature John Keating influence wherever you choose to teach or work.
O Captain, our Captain.
wow i read this just now. i think it was a choice between giving in to something you don't approve of, or choosing to stick to your own beliefs and (though it meant resigning) making a mature decision.
go to ateneo na!
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