Post: just need to get my thoughts on paper...

Posted by Incognito on 10/19/09

In 2007 I received a B.A. in elementary education from a
university in Colorado. I immediately began looking for
teaching jobs, both in-state and out-of-state, and landed
one at a school district in Arizona. To make a long story
short, I did not even last until Christmas. I was placed
in a 6th grade classroom with 35 students that even the
most experienced teacher would have some trouble with. I
made a lot of mistakes and came across as "playing
favorites" which got me in serious hot water with many of
the parents (one who even called me every name in the book
that she could think of during a conference) The stress
literally almost killed me. I was having suicidal thoughts
and almost developed a drinking problem. My marriage
suffered badly, and the people renting my house back home
almost wrecked it because they were remodeling it without
my permission. Well, to make a long story short, they
asked me to resign by Christmas and I did. I didn't give
up (yet) and began looking again, finding a job two weeks
later at a private school in a large city in the colder
eastern U.S. I thought things would go better in this
situation, but they did not. I only had 13 students but
the class was FULL of BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS and I only made it
a month there. When I got there, I was all gung-ho and was
getting ready to go the local grocery store to buy some
school supplies and promptly got into an accident that
disabled my car...so here I am, a thousand miles away from
home, no car, no wife or family, and a class full of
behavior problems. I was out of teaching again that year
by February. I STILL did not give up. I waited until March
and began applying to different districts in my home state
of Colorado once more. I landed a job in as an ESL teacher
in a district in a mountainous part of Colorado. I THOUGHT
that finally, I had found a job where I would be suitable
for, and it kind of was. There were some positives to this
experience, no question. One particular girl said her
FIRST WORDS of english to me and I still, to this day, get
a kick out of that. However, I was an outsider in this
community and was continually (for the first time in my
life) harrassed by law enforcement. Every thing that could
have went wrong, went wrong. Last November things came to
a head when I was arrested for domestic violence. My wife
and I were living in a little holiday rambler trailer and
I hit a little plywood table in frustration and it fell
off its hinges and collapsed. I have LEANED on that table
and have broke it. I was labeled a batterer and ALMOST
lost my teaching job once again. I made the mistake of
telling the police man that I was going to kill myself and
was prompting placed in a suicide smock and kept to myself
at the jail. However, a funny thing happened when I was in
that jail cell. I realized that teaching was probably not
for me. I've always been a spiritual person, so the first
time in quite a while I started praying. I remembered how
when I was sixteen I felt "called" to become a Christian
minister, and so I basically bargained with God. I told
God in my prayer: "All right God, if you get me out of
this and get me my job back I promise you I will take
steps to become a pastor. Just get my job back. And Lord,
if you want me to be a pastor, you've got to work on me, I
have a lot of baggage and I'm no where near ready." (I was
drunk when I prayed this, btw) To make a long story short,
I did eventually get a deferred judgment and was able to
continue at my job. I did not finish the year; I only made
it to March. However, the more I studied becoming a
pastor, the less interested I was in being a teacher and
by March I had already decided that I would not look for
another teaching job at the end of the year. I was
accepted into a nationally-recognized online bible college
and seminary in May and let me tell you, I have enjoyed my
classes ten times as much as I did my education classes! I
guess the moral to my story is that having everything
possible go wrong with me in education these past three
years that maybe, possibly it wasn't meant for me to be a
teacher, at least at the elementary or secondary level.
Examine your motives and whether you are really meant to
be a teacher. If you are and "you know that you know" then
be patient, you will find something. Otherwise, it would
be just like me attempting to fit a square board into a
round peg. As for me, I am going to continue being a
prayer warrior, serve others, and studying my Bible to be
the best pastor possible in the future! Thanks for letting
me get this off my chest.

Posts on this thread, including this one

just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/19/09, by Incognito.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/20/09, by So let's see.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/20/09, by Incognito.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/20/09, by anon.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/20/09, by anon.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/21/09, by Incognito.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/21/09, by ElemESOL.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/22/09, by joe.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/22/09, by OP.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/22/09, by CRAP.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/22/09, by ElemESOL.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/22/09, by anon.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/22/09, by Confused.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/23/09, by Elena.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/23/09, by OP.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/23/09, by sped.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/24/09, by OP.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/24/09, by anon.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/28/09, by Confused.

Re: if you leave of your own volition it would look better down , 10/28/09, by the road NFM .

Re: if you leave of your own volition it would look better d, 10/28/09, by Confused.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 10/29/09, by What?.

Re: just need to get my thoughts on paper..., 11/01/09, by OP.