I used to be excited before school. I would get up and spend my mornings thinking about what to say, how to make interesting connections between authors to make the learning process more interesting.
My students were making progress. They started reading more (not always the books I wanted them to, but we were getting there), and I felt like it was my place, standing in front of 35+ students. But when I started, I was twenty-three-year-old with no life experience and genuinely ecstatic about everything (movies, local festivals, books, poetry, school plays, etc.). What I didn’t see in the beginning was that I was among the rare few who actually loved their job in the school I was teaching. Another thing I didn’t see is that my salary was under the minimum wage, and I had a lot of work, often as if I was teaching two subjects, not only one.
The reality wasn’t pretty, but I decided to neglect it, bury it deep down where I can not see it nor address it. Things were good, I thought. It will be better because I will work more. I was fooling myself, and it took too much to realize that school was not the place for me. Something serious had to happen for me to start thinking differently…
And luckily — it did.
