In every book on Classroom Management, which is the biggest issue for every teacher, there is at least one chapter dedicated to coping skills.
Imagine taking a job that is so inherently stressful, that part of the training deals with prepping yourself mentally to endure all the crap and commotion that gets thrown at an adult dealing with thirty-plus unruly students, who are unruly for the very reason that they are being ruled by some stranger telling them things that are inherently uninteresting.
Anyway, the dichotomy of teacher-police officer that a teacher must be, two antithetical considerations from the beginning, wear and tear at a person's psych. Besides, there is something unsettling about ordering thirty people to do the same thing, produce the same results, and then to have to grade that repetition, much of it literally repetition since kids like to copy.
Then there are those students who yell a lot. They probably yell at their parents, if they even seen them or know who they are. Some kids like to curse, too. If they can find some defect in your physical frame, they will attack it with the assiduous resilience of a wolf devouring a lame lamb.
Then there are the parents, who either tell you that they are doing the best that they can because they are single parents raising four or five kids (yet without a father, or some cases, fathers.) Some of these parents are still children, having been baby mommas when they had their kids in the first place.
Of course, some parents are extremely supportive. I wish that there were more of them. But in all likelihood, such caring, daring, and diligent parents are smart enough to homeschool their kids rather than letting them walk in lock-step tyranny with their peers in public incarceration, er. . . education.
It's too bad that most teaching manuals do not school new teachers on how to handle unruly parents who threaten to sue you, the school, the district, and anyone else with money (not many at this point). I guess they assume that the "this should work
' ideal of public schools will be found somewhere, in nine or ten years when the new teacher has paid his dues in the unsafe ghetto schools and has moved on to greener pastures.
Teacher's manuals also do not prepare you for the nightmare that is public school administration, in which principals (who do not have tenure) struggle to please parents, teacher's unions, and district officials, with the certainty of failing and disappointing one or all of those constituencies. Since principals (all other attending administrators beneath them) are so busy pleasing so many competing, clashing, and contradictory interests, teachers should not be surprised if they are just as schizophrenic as they have become, if not worse. Do not be surprised if they belittle you one moment, condescend to you the next, congratulate you on a job well done the next (when they have not even observed you in action yet), then take the parents' side in a grading or behavioral dispute.
Then there are all those written and unwritten rules, like how many copies you can make – but then the extra one hundred at the expense of a colleague who has figured out your copy code at the copy machine. Or that it's OK to curse and swear, as long as a parent or an administrator does not hear you, and as long as the students like you enough not to spread nasty lies about you to the same parents and administrators.
Then there are the secretaries. Some think they are God's gift to humanity, convinced that they truly run the school. Most of them are actually one of the drugs, sorry pieces of work-force flesh beaten down for little pay, some so pushed to the limit that they take out their frustration on everyone.
I have to admit, I feel that it was my calling in part just to mess with rude, unscrupulous, and just plain Wicked-Witch of the West types. Some days I was tempted to bring a bucket of water just for fun. Other times, I just contented myself telling them off, then not following through on their requests, or holding out on signing something just to see them squirm.
And the secretaries with Bible quotes and crosses all over their desk — they could be the worst! Lots of religious fluff with a lot of gruff, and I had had enough!
No wonder teachers go crazy. No wonder the profession is in such decline. Who would work in such conditions?
Only "True Believers", or at least those who have placed their "this should work" mental tape on chronic rerun. Yes, I will smile, yes I will call the parents, yes I will write that thirteenth email to the principal telling him that I need the windows fixed in my room, yes this will all work out at some point. . .
And if repeating self-defeating mantras does not work, I can always try one of those breathing techniques offered at the end of the chapter on coping with the teaching profession in the teacher's manual I almost read in college.