Two unrelated rambles 1-30-05

[kilroy]

I have enough money, or I will come the 15th of February.

A teacher resigned without notice at Parkland, and I was apparently top of the list of replacements in his timeslot. So now I'm teaching another class: college paper writing, basically. It's something that I have an adequate fundamental knowledge of; and now that I'm done with the initial panic period, I think it'll be a lot of fun.

Additionally, I'm going to be teaching English vocabulary and reading skills to a very small class (2 at last count) of foreign students. I'm still mildly panicked about this one, but I think it'll wear off as I get a better bank of things I can do in class.

All told, this means something like a $750 a month pay raise through May. I'll be in the black again, and I'll probably have enough to start building my savings and finally get some health insurance. Yay!



I just saw The Emperor's Club, and it made me depressed. Part of it is simple timing; I will soon have to go to bed before the first day of classes under my new schedule, and the pressure is pretty high right now. I watched the movie because I'm mostly ready, but that doesn't stop someone as anxiety-prone as me from worrying.

But still. It's a teacher movie. This should have reaffirmed my desire to do what I'm doing, lifted me up and exonerated my chosen profession. Except that it didn't. I don't know if I'm making a difference in anyone's lives at the moment; I don't know if I ever really will, and that's one of the big reasons I wanted to be a teacher in the first place. The kinds of things I'm teaching are... well, not life-altering. And the way that I teach them, while a good time, hardly molds any of my students' characters. They leave me pretty much the same way they come in. A little more knowledge in the arsenal, but no different really for it.

And I tell myself that I have made a difference in students' lives: all I need to do is look back at Rachel to confirm that. And I tell myself that the skills that I teach are subtle ones that will apply to other things that may change lives. And I try to ignore the fact that teaching is so much like a job and so little like an avocation.

I need to remember this when I am well-- so that when I have the energy to pour into teaching, I'll use it to make every class as important as I can.