Those who can’t do, teach.
I’ve recently decided to resign from teaching high school English.
And if only it were all as simple as that sentence makes it seem!
Let’s unpack…
First, it wasn’t entirely my decision. When you’re living with a progressive disease, it’s always there to influence your life. Very little is done because you choose to do it; your disease has already decided for you that you can’t do it. Or at least you can’t do it how you want to.
A therapist once told me to think of Ataxia like a separate being – people aren’t frustrated with me, they’re mad at my disease; my husband has to do a lot more in this marriage because of Ataxia, not because of needy wife; it’s ok for Ataxia to depend on other people, that doesn’t mean I’m a burden.
But now that that little SCA creature has started drowning out my own thoughts, I need to put it back in its place.
Then there’s the “recently” part.
To be honest, I thought last year was going to be my final one. And then I decided to teach half of this year. And then that turned into a full year…
I can’t say I’d teach forever if I could; unfortunately, I’m encountering fewer and fewer teachers who will say that. It’s a challenging job that requires insurmountable work with uncomparable compensation.
But it is rewarding.
It’s tough to complain about staying late to grade 50 essays because you spent prep time writing a Letter of Recommendation when that student gets accepted into their dream college.
So, resigning has been an internal battle I’ve struggled with longer than I care to admit.
When I have my students “unpack” a text, we analyze it word-by-word to uncover that glorious deeper message. There’s a lot of thought that goes into an author’s diction.
Which brings us to “resign.”
I highly doubt people realize I use that word specifically.
My kids all say I’m “retiring,” which isn’t exactly wrong, but it makes me sound like I’ve taught for 40 years instead of my solid eight, accomplishing that goal we’re all literally working toward.
“Quitting” really has the opposite connotation, like I’m stopping in the middle of something without seeing it all the way through. Which I guess isn’t entirely wrong either.
But, falling back on that awful way we were somehow all taught to start an essay, Webster’s Dictionary defines “resigning” as “to give up deliberately” or “to accept something as inevitable” and those are both true. And it’s reinforcing that no longer teaching was my call. Sort of. So there.
When adults introduce themselves, they instinctively throw in their job title. Being a high school English teacher was literally part of my identity.
I’m not exaggerating when I say I was meant to have the job I did – I have a Master’s degree in Literacy and three different NYS teaching certification titles; my classes had a 98% pass rate and 60% mastery rate on the state exam; I advised the student newspaper and yearbook; I coached a county-winning varsity cheerleading team.
But when you can’t walk around the room to monitor students because your walker won’t fit between rows, and you can’t write homework assignments on the board because your fine motor skills are shot, and you can’t give any lecture lessons because your throat closes when you talk, and then you get home too exhausted to even think about cooking or cleaning…
I’m not as good as I once was (and I was pretty damn good). I can teach – my coworkers and principal do absolutely everything they can to help make sure of that – but not how I want to. And as a teacher, my skills directly impact 100 kids a year.
So, I’ve recently decided to resign from teaching. And I’m inviting you to join me on this next chapter of my life, whatever that may bring.