Samskara II

School starts on Monday. I didn't make any super-tight friends in my 9 months at the high school, but there have been a couple of good people who texted me, checking to see how I'm doing as I head into my 16th year of middle school. One promised she was moving to Florida at the end of this academic year, so I could have her position when she vacates.

In response, I sent her this meme:

You could not pay me enough money to move to Florida. I mean it. If someone offered me six figures and the chance to teach at an inner-city school, I still wouldn't do it.

So, here I sit, ready to start teaching 7th and 8th grade in the Midwest again. At least the other teachers seem nice. I take back everything I said about the department head's beard; he is a lovely human being. As is usual with me, everyone I immediately dislike, I end up adoring, and everyone I have an instant affinity for, I end up loathing. It really doesn't do a lot toward encouraging me to trust my instincts.

Anyway, the department head shared a bunch of his classes with me, so I can pick and choose what I want when teaching 8th grade. The 7th grade teacher was super stand-offish, which I found odd, until it came out that she'd written my cell phone # down wrong and been texting some random stranger all summer (to no reply).

I thought maybe once it got to the point of school starting, I would settle in and acquiesce to the fact that I'm back in middle school, but that is so far not the case. I'm supposed to start teaching 7th grade (with one section of 8th) in less than 48 hours and I'm still in shock. How long does this state last? I'm getting real worried. It's been 7 months. I can't walk in on the first day and just sit there while 140 students stare at me.

Everyone at the middle school knows that my job got RIF'd (Reduction in Force) and that's how I ended up there. I've tried to be really positive and upbeat, even talking about how much I'm looking forward to only having 2 preps and room to breathe.

Only... I had this realization that maybe what I'm so terrified about isn't that I'll never be recalled to the high school. I realized that, when offered the opportunity to return, I might not take it.

Let's be honest. Last year was a dumpster fire. My nerves were constantly raw.

There was one senior who stood up in the middle of class and went off on me: "I don't know who you think you are, but maybe you oughtta go on back to the middle school where you belong. This kind of shitty teaching might have worked there, but it certainly doesn't work here. This is high school, and if you want us to respect you and take you seriously, maybe you should spend some time learning how to actually do your job."

Those words cut me deep. And it didn't help that I could see the judgment on other teachers' faces when I told them, in tears. They looked like, "Oh. So you are terrible at building relationships with kids? Fantastic."

At that point, I had been regularly putting in 10-12 hour days, showing up at school before the entire administrative team. I didn't think it was possible for me to work any harder than I had been.

Another senior lost his shit when I asked him to put his phone away (I eventually passed him by 1%, allowing him to resubmit until he could turn in something that wasn't plagiarized or half-finished). He called me a crazy-ass bitch in front of the whole class.

Another senior plagiarized everything he turned in all semester and convinced his parents I was targeting him -- even though they'd started out by admitting other teachers had accused him of the same thing.

None of them got any consequences to speak of.

Last year broke me.

I could look at the cases individually -- the first boy had just been accused of raping another student and everyone was talking about him. He was primed to blow, and I was available.

The second boy was entitled and unhinged and even his principal referred to him as an asshole.

The third boy had many previous teacher complaints.

But that's the only year I got. That's the only thing I have to go by. And for me, last year completely blew. Why would I go back to that?

It's been tough admitting that maybe I spent a decade and a half working toward a high school position, only to give it up at the end because it sucked so bad. But I can't do another year like that.

Maybe I really am just a middle school teacher. Maybe I always was. I know where I stand with middle schoolers: nowhere. It changes every day, along with their hormones.

I hate that I'm looking forward to 13-year-olds trying something with me and me leveling them with a single eyebrow, but that's the truth of it.

Maybe it's not so bad to just teach The Outsiders, tell kids to stop farting in class, and call it a day. I don't know.

In the Vedic texts, there's this word called samskara. A samskara is like an impression that grows through repetition. My samskara is all things middle school. It's my default mode at this point. It's been worn into me so deeply that it requires a lot of work, but not necessarily a lot of effort.

I hate that I'm even thinking of just giving up and being a middle school teacher, particularly since I still haven't wrapped my head around the fact that I am one again. But there it is.

By my calculations, I've taken over 500 yoga classes and completed 200 hours of training. Therefore, I've completed about 700 hours of yoga, 100 hours of meditation, and 200 hours of therapy in the last few years. That's 1,000 hours of wellness, apart from all the psychology books and journaling. That 1,000 hours is its own samskara. It's a groove in my mind that says: as much as possible, so far as it depends on you, be present in this moment. You can't foresee the rest, and even if you could, you're not magical. Just breathe in and out here. Now.