Wednesday May 9, 9:17 p.m.
Feeling like a knotty pretzel right now. Finished nearly 3 whole days of meatball teaching (kinda taking a stripe out of MASH)...namely, I went in as a sub teacher. 3 different teachers decided to take Monday, Tuesday and today off. I think I'm starting to develop a reputation at the school...I've made a few allies amongst students, but I've also developed a number of detractors. Plus, had another crash n' burn of a class this afternoon....just nothing went right, including finding myself a copy short of a frankly useless handout. I was lucky, though, that my final lesson went well and even earned me a couple of compliments from students.
Being a substitute teacher is quite a different experience from being the teacher I was back in Japan. I'm the invader going into the dynamic between the established instructor and the students. I'm just in for that one hour or so and then I'm out, with the only sign that I had been there being in the form of a report to the regular teacher. It's not easy and I'm dealing with students from different countries.
I had to go in early every morning....which I don't complain about. But heading home, I just feel completely exhausted...not the happy fatigue of having done a good job but the tiredness of going through an ultimately unhappy wringer. Even with the few smiles that I've gotten, it's been outweighed by a sense that I really gotta find something different. But I signed up to help them out and supposedly we're going into a busy season of regular teachers heading off for vacation. I certainly don't like to leave people out in a lurch but frankly I'm not sure if I'm heading into burnout mode. It simply hasn't been fun although my parents are happy that I'm not lazing around the apartment.
I've got nothing tomorrow so I can get some errands done and maybe decompress a bit. My problem is that I've always felt that I'm only as good as the worst lesson that I've taught during the day. So, I'm basically feeling like the worst teacher right now. Just gotta gut myself through it.
