#2 Reason for Leaving: the sloths of high school

 7 December 2021

I don't care. 

I don't care.    

    I don't care i don't care idon'tcareidon'tcareidon'tcare

they don't care so why should i care?

    I used to care soo much I felt like I made them care, they were caught in my tractor beam of passion

        Now I'm being slowly sucked into their lazy, apathetic indifference.

         I remember people saying that Jim and Pamela Morrison sucked one another down, spiraling downward  in their own drug induced cycle. It's like that. Without the drugs. Or the sex. Or Val Kilmer. Or love.

    Just the sucking down part. 

I used to love my content, I had such passion.

        I used to love coming to school to teach. I would get up at 5 am so I could work out, walk the dog and make coffee before I headed out, and I'd still arrive an hour early to warm up my room, make copies, just be in the space, ready to welcome my kids.

       I get up now with just enough time to feed the animals and start coffee. Most days I forget to bring it with me. I don't bring lunch, either, because I'm not hungry during the day. I don't really eat dinner, either. 

                    I hate the kids. 

How can they drag their feet and not care about getting to class on time? How do they have jobs? Do they have jobs? Will they ever have a job? It's like watching herds of sloths moving across the freeway, teachers are stopped along the edges waiting for the kids to move faster, move faster, stop talking you're clogging up traffic, get to class.

                They Don't Care. Their indifference makes me angry. 

                So I hate them.

            I know I am no longer engaging, and I don't care.

            I used to be engaging. Students did not stop attending my classes because I was not engaging. I stopped being engaging when they stopped attending my classes. Those who do act out act  up after Covid it's an uphill battle against behaviors with no hope or support or belief that they will recover from the trauma. Now I feel like a prison guard, my only job is to keep them in the room. 

    The impressive pile of discarded and frequently used acronyms clogging up my evaluations gives me anxiety twice a year, when I have to dig them up and write more useless words to prove that I am teaching, I do teach, I teach: here are some acronyms, a graph, unit planner, lesson plans and hours of my time to create these documents that I only look at when I'm evaluated an my evaluator only looks at when I'm evaluated but hours of my time, hours of my time and years of my life have been spent defending and proving that I Am Relevant.

    Clearly I am not.

    So I don't care. 

    I don't care, I don't care....I Do Not Care.

            lALALALALALAlalallaalallalalaaaaaa

            No Care I

                Nope nope no cares.

                Including me. If a bullet strikes me in a school shooting, it will not be because I was defending a student. It will be because I didn't care enough to move quickly, out of range. 

    Like a sloth.

            Like the sloths that shuffle through the halls.