i left my job.
i left my job a few days ago. wasnt that big of a deal, at least that is what i thought.
for context, i teach. i teach english to elementary kids. i like my job, and i thought i would be good at it, at least the english part. i mean, i can speak the language and read the language fairly well, how hard can it be? turns out you'd have to break it down so that a third grader can understand what you are saying. they can't even spell their names correctly. how are they supposed to understand if i speak at a normal speed?
anyways, the first lesson was a disaster. one student was sitting at the back of the class, just asleep. he did not care. about me, about the lesson. about anything really. i could tell that he was tired. poor kid. so i slowly walked up to him, and i gently asked him to stand up for a bit, and told him that he could sit down if he no longer felt sleepy anymore. the kids all looked back at him. he got embarrassed, and i felt bad. he sat down after a while, falling asleep again. 30 minutes later, i noticed it was just impossible to wake him up.
parents were allowed to listen to the lesson at the back of the classroom. so this kid's mom woke him up, took him to the restroom, and never came back for my lesson. the kid that was sitting next to him got so bored out of his mind. his mom took him out of the classroom too (she told me that her son was not feeling great in class at the time. it was either that or my lessons were so bad that she could not stand it anymore.)
another kid's mom told me during the break that the lesson content was too easy for her kid, so she decided to take him home too.
10 kids remaining out of 13. later that night, i received a message from the school telling me about the parent's complaints on how inexperienced i was.
it's a cram school. kids go there not because they want to learn, but because they have to. they have to come to my class because their parents signed them up for it. could i have made the lesson a bit more interesting and a bit more engaging? absolutely. now that i look at my lesson plans, they suck. i reflect back on my speech, it was monotone and not energetic at all. did i try at all? i would say yes, just not hard enough.
the second day, the principal told me to not stress out too much about it. someone else would be taking my place, and i could rest for the month and observe lessons for now.
i woke up the third day morning, still feeling frustrated. so, i flipped a coin. heads would be that i stay and tails would be that i leave. it was heads. but i noticed something: i wanted to flip the coin once more. so i did. it was tails.
i wrote up a resignation notice on the work messaging app. turns out that the principal did not even see it until i had to bring it up to her face-to-face. things were getting quite overwhelming, not just for me. it's okay, i understand.
i was observing her lessons and before she left the classroom, i told her about my reasons. she was being quite understanding. she said she got busy with her own lessons because it was the summer vacation period after all, and had not seen the notice until just now.
i thought i would feel relief. but no. i was just a bit sad. i had prepared one month for these lessons, but they were still not up to standard. i have to admit, teaching kids did not come natural to me. i had the feeling that these kids were seeing right through me that i was putting up an act to be the energetic and active person that i am not. they can be pretty quickly intuitive when it comes to detecting one's inauthenticity.
i know that is not my fault, and maybe i could be a bit more strategic in my lesson preparations but if i am being completly honest, i don't think i enjoyed my time around kids in the first place. don't get me wrong, they were amazing kids. and i think they each are adorable in their own way. but i just can't really force myself to like them. i have forgotten about the inner child that i was, and i have not yet found a remedy for that. even now, i am having a hard time imagining myself sitting next to 10-year-old me and patting myself on the back.
then there is the shame coming along with becoming unemployed. and the fear of going back to the workplace, signing the rest of the resignation documents. i have only worked in this teaching job for 2 months, and i already care so much about what my ex-colleagues will be thinking of me.
i don't think i am not ready for a job, yet. that is a-okay. i guess.