Well it is 11.08 on Sunday night and because I don’t have the internet at my new place ( I don’t even have a home phone actually!) I am blogging into a word document and will post this blog at school on Tuesday. I am sitting here tonight thinking about the possibility of starting a blog about my life outside school and I have realised that my life outside of school is inextricably linked with my life inside school and the issues and problems that I talk about in this blog are generally common to both anyway. So I guess that this blog with now attempt to bridge the gap between both. You will now get the whole me, and not just the “trying to be academic” me!
One thing that has been playing on my mind recently is the issue of insecurity. I guess that ending a 7 1/2 year relationship has brought the issue of insecurity to the fore in my life at the moment. I have always been a confident person. I have always had a healthy ego (that I don’t think gets away from me too often!) and I guess that I have always felt secure in myself. Now, although nothing about me has changed but my personal status, I am feeling a little insecure. I am questioning myself a little more than usual. I am more conscious of the way that I act and the things that I do and who I am friends with because I am a little more worried about what people think about me. It is funny in a way, because being single for the first time in my adult life has made me worry about what people think about me and it is making me a little paranoid.
Strange huh? I am worried about my friends getting sick of me now that I spend more time with them. In my rational mind I know that they would just tell me if they were sick of me and that they wouldn’t invite me over if they didn’t want to see me, but in my paranoid mind, I feel like I am becoming a burden. I have taken to avoiding my best friend at school because he is male and I am worried about what people might think about the amount of time we spend together. When really this is the time in my life when I need more support than ever before, I am concerned about what people think, and so I am worried about spending too much time with any one person. It is a strange and new phenomenon for me, dealing with my own little insecurities and I find myself psychoanalysing myself! But it also makes me think about the universal issues with insecurity at work.
At our school at the moment are 3 first year teachers who are dealing with the sort of professional insecurities that I dealt with last year, and that every teacher deals with all the time. Teaching is a notoriously lonely profession. No matter what is said or done outside of the classroom, when the door of that classroom shuts, it is you and your class and often you feel as though the things that you are experiencing are only happening to you. You can feel as though you are out on the edge of a cliff that no one has ever stood on before and that there is no where to turn for advice on whether or not the cliff is too high to jump off, or if there is water below to break your fall.
Exams have caused a stir amongst the first years this last week, as they have been dealing with marking exams for the first time, and cross-marking with other teachers, and finding out that their students have done better or worse than they expected. And I guess in a lot of ways I am in the same situation with my Year 12 Sacs. I have to cross mark with another teacher, I felt that my students didn’t do as well on this sac as I would have liked and I find myself questioning myself and my methods.
Perfectionism seems to be a quality found in a lot of teachers, none more so than myself, and I am also speaking for a couple of the first year teachers as well. Perfectionism has both an upside and a downside. The upside is that as perfectionists we are constantly striving to do better and to be better at our jobs and to do the best for our students, and we are never happy to rest on our laurels. However the downside to this is that you find yourself questioning yourself constantly and thinking over what you have done and said and what you could have done differently. I find myself constantly questioning myself and whether or not I am good enough to be teaching year 12s. Sometimes I feel like a fraud- like I am playing the part of a teacher and that pretty soon someone who is actually qualified for the job will come and relieve me.
Teaching is a profession that can play on your insecurities. There is no other career where you are scrutinised every day by over 100 different people, each of whom spend at least 45 minutes noting your every move, listening to every word, noticing that you dried your hair with a hair-dryer and not a straightener, or that you are wearing the same pants for the second time in the week, or that you have worn the same top two Tuesdays in a row. How does one survive such insecurity and personal uncertainty? You tell me.
3 comments:
How do you survive such insecurity? By talking to me and letting me expand your head a little of course!! Remember Darce, 40% of teachers don't even make it this far. Acknowledge your acheivements and then reassure yourself that you can deal with any current or future challenges - I know you'll be great! You will always have people around you that care about you and will stroke your ego when you need it. They will also tell you if you are being annoying so until they do, trust them enough to know that you are not.
Welcome Back Darce! And what a great re-emergence into the blogging world. This is very profound stuff you have written. I also feel at times that I wish I had a personal blog and don't want to mesh the two together too much, but I can deal with the personal stuff pretty well. It's the school stuff I need to get out and off my mind. I hope things brighten up for you!
I've never believed in personal - professional distinctions either - they mostly seem like weak attempts to segment off portions of lives that are just not open to segmentation. I mean this doesn't stop one from trying, but sooner or later one comes to realise that it's all the same thing in the end. And that is what makes teaching, learning, writing, friendship, love, sadness and everything else we do so worthwhile and boring all the same time.
Yeah, that's what I think.
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