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I’m thinking I’m needing a mental health day soon. Luckily my birthday isn’t far away and I’ll get just that.  I know for a fact that I’m not the only teacher in desperate need.  I could go on for days about the insanity that is taking place at my school but I find it mostly pointless to dwell on here because frankly I don’t have the energy to fight the system here.  No one listens to what I or any of my teacher friends recommend so I’m not trying anymore.  I’ll save my energy for developing my own educational program – which looks more and more attractive by the day.

How do I know I need a mental health day? I’m snapping at everyone which isn’t good.  Students and family alike.  I’m feeling overwhelmed by so much at work and I bottle a lot of it up because I don’t talk to anyone about it.  I don’t talk out of lack of people to talk to. Rather it’s because I think that by talking about it I’ll only get more upset about it.  Is it better to leave it at work so to say?

I feel overwhelmed because I’ve assigned some difficult assignments and frankly my students are doing very poorly on them.  Part of the problem is that I assumed they had more skills than they do.  I obviously had higher expectations of them and I let them know this week.  I returned their papers to them and gave them incompletes.  They plagiarized like it was common practice. Run-on sentences were common and so were fragments.  My AP students were writing in a conversational tone.  Most didn’t even have a thesis statement – let alone thesis paragraph.

And it’s not only happening in my AP and honors classes.  My standard and even honors debate class are disappointing me.  I had over twenty students sign up for honors debate and I can’t get them to turn in one article a week (from a periodical of their choice).  And asking them to debate…it’s painful.  Many of them do not put forth any effort.  I swear teaching seniors is pointless at my school. They are all convinced that they are finished with school already.  To hear them talk you would think I’m the only teacher at school who gives homework or requires studying.  I passed out progress reports to my standard classes.  Most were failing because they don’t turn in many assignments.  Thankfully it caught most of their attention (and their parent’s as well) and I’m starting to see missed assignments show up.  But why should I even offer this opportunity to them? I know many teachers at a lot of other school systems would never think to give students a second chance at a test or missed homework assignment.  I had a parent corner me at my door as the first bell was ringing this morning to tell me, very confrontationally, that her son wasn’t going to be doing “any of this staying after school business” because she had to work.  I looked at her and said, “well, he didn’t take advantage of his first free opportunity to do his work and learn the material in class.  Now he needs to come to tutoring which I offer ONLY after school.”

So to summarize my situation right now, I feel like the least liked teacher at school.  I’m also seeing the good in all this. Other teachers tell me it’s a good sign because it means I’m not short-changing the students – which I can understand and agree with.  And maybe I could stand to assign a little less work every now and then.  Frankly it bites me in the ass in the end because I feel lately like I’m fighting a never ending pile of papers to grade.  However, the constant barrage of phone calls, emails, and random drop-ins from parents is trying my nerves.  I feel parents should know better and they have the tools at their disposal to know how their child is doing. It shouldn’t take a single progress report in a nine weeks span to light a fire under their asses.  Ask your child what they are doing, learning, and quiz them.  And if that sounds like more than you can handle, don’t have one.

In other news, my bill with my german hospital has been paid at last! What a nightmare it has been to get this fixed.  What I have learned from this experience is the following: Don’t accept no from your primary insurance. Even if they say they won’t pay upfront, mine did in the end. I only got reimbursed for what I had to pay directly while still in Germany.  If the foreign hospital decides to send you another, larger bill later, DON”T PAY IT.  Your primary insurance will do it.  But not before you get a letter threatening you with legal action from the foreign hospital.  Tell your primary insurance about that letter and they will suddenly create a special department that will TRANSLATE your bills.  Then you’ll get paid a whole lot more than you needed, but have enough to pay the bills for now.  If you’re an honest person you will call your insurance company to tell them you were over-paid, which hurts a lot but is preferable to prison time for committing fraud (I decided).

Two other issues are on my mind lately as well.  As you can probably tell from my blog, I’ve been thinking about new ways to use my talents and have even considered starting up my own business.  There are days when I think this is a great idea and I dive ahead and then there are days when I get really afraid of what could happen if I let myself down.  I doubt myself.  Not helping this fear has been a recent discovery I made online about a chance to have all of my student loans forgiven if I teach public school for ten years.  : (  I’ve already taught for 4.  You see where I’m going with this?  If I quit teaching now, I’ll have to pay back my loans on my own which will take me approximately 30 years.  I know staying in a job only for the money is a terrible thing but so is being homeless.

Also, if I teach in a title I school for five consecutive years I can get $5k forgiven too.  I’ve already put in 4 here. If  I leave this school then I run the risk of not teaching at a title I school somewhere else and I miss out on the $5k.

My rational side says I should put these things aside in my mind and focus on the present. I don’t know what will happen this summer or next year.  Cross that bridge when you get there. Get through this year before you worry about the next.  And most days that side wins.  But then there are days like today….