Burned Out Teacher

It’s all over. Normally, there is a big sigh of relief at the end of the year. I felt it as a student. As a teacher, I sometimes felt it even more. This year, I didn’t feel it. Maybe it’s because I’ve decided not to come back next year.
I sat at our last faculty meeting and looked around the room. I realized suddenly, that I knew less than half the people in the room. They were giving out awards to people who had been working for twenty, fifteen, ten, or five years. Can you imagine doing this for twenty years? Then I realized that very few of them were in the classroom. That’s how you survive long-term. You get away from working with the kids.
The head counselor is retiring. She was awful. She won’t be missed. Our seventh grade counselor is taking her place. It’s a poor choice. She’s awful, too. She doesn’t do any work and she doesn’t care about the kids. Oh well, it’s not my fight anymore. I’m tired of fighting every day. I’m tired of fighting for things that should be taken for granted. I’m a lover, not a fighter.
Ultimately, I don’t like the person that I am becoming from working at this school. I don’t like to be angry, suspicious, paranoid, and untrusting. Our time-out room monitor told me that I wasn’t really cut out for teaching because the students got on my nerves. How can you care about the students and not be angry? What right does she—a teacher who was forced out of the classroom because she was ineffective—a teacher who draws full salary but does almost nothing to help—what right does she have to tell me I’m not a teacher? She doesn’t have any idea what goes on in my classroom. She doesn’t have any idea what my students are learning. No one does. We’re all too concerned with discipline and behavior to think about teaching and learning.
It’s over. I know that I should feel something but I don’t. I’m burned out. I gave it the best that I could for three years. I just can’t give any more.