The Fourth Year Crisis

At the beginning of last year, two of my friends asked me with concern if this was my fourth year teaching.  I chuckled and reassured them that it was only my third, but curiosity forced me to ask why that was significant.

They exchanged a look.

"Everyone has a crisis during their fourth year," one said.
"That's the year you wonder if you're actually doing anything good," added the other.  "That's when you hit the wall."

I forgot about that conversation until this week, the first full week of my fourth year of teaching, because this was the week I hit that wall.

It didn't take much -- we've only been back in school for two weeks counting teacher work time, and that's just not enough time for much to go wrong.

But the start of this year has been rough.  I spent 10 days out of the country this summer, which ate up a lot of my time.  My grandmother passed away and we traveled to her memorial.  And of course about a million things in my house broke or went wrong, which required time and energy to fix.
Most summers, by about halfway through July, I'm getting bored with being off and I'm ready to go back.

That never happened this summer; I never recuperated from last year sufficiently to get sick of time off.
Then, starting on the very first day, the politics started right back up.
We didn't even get a break; one of my friends got thrown into some ridiculous meeting with her department on the afternoon of our first day (following a 3 hour meeting in the morning).  Two weeks later, I'm still hearing about it.
The politics in my department started off with a bang too, and even though I do everything I can to stay out of things, the people around me seem to be drowning in it already.  All my free time at school is spent hearing about it and being asked my opinion.  A neutral, "I'm not really sure..." or "I won't want to get involved..." is neither acceptable nor enough.
And finally, as I wrote about last week, the first two weeks are rough because I don't know my kids yet.  When you can only talk to students about parts of speech or definitions of literary devices, things get boring and you wear out fast.

Everything added up quickly, and when we got an email from our curriculum director that we had to read a book outside of school, on our own time, everything seemed to crash down around me.

(Let me clarify: I don't mind reading a book for my job, and in fact I'm looking forward to this book, which is In The Best Interests of Students by Kelly Gallagher.  It's the timing of that email that sent me into a tailspin.)

As I drove home that afternoon, a thought struck me: I really need a job that doesn't consume my entire life.

It was terrifying.

Most of the time, I really like my job.  Talking to students is a cool way to expand my perspective on the world, and I learn things from them every single day.  It's fulfilling to help them learn, and on most days, I feel like my time is well spent in building the future.  (My thoughts aren't always so pointed; some days, I'm collapsing at the end going "At least these little bastards understand characterization now!" and the thought of their bright futures never enters into my mind. But you get the idea.)

Suddenly, that seemed to change.  The prospect of doing a job that I hate disgusts me.  Why do something that makes me miserable?  But suddenly I was worried that I was miserable.  That what I was teaching wasn't enough.  That the education system would always want more until every waking moment was consumed by it.  That I wouldn't be able to do anything else, learn anything else, enjoy anything else.

It was awful.
Luckily, in that awful moment, I remembered that conversation from last year, that everyone has a crisis of faith their fourth year, and I was just caught up in it.

And even more luckily, those feelings of helplessness and total consumption by the system started to go away.

By today, writing this, I'm feeling better.

I know my students a little better this weekend than I did last weekend, and I'm not so worried that I'm going to hate them or vice versa.  I've set up plans and schedules for reading that don't destroy my life with commitment to my job.  I'm doing my best to truly step out of the politics and support my friends from the sidelines.  I'm trying to focus just on my students, on whether I'm helping them and doing my job to the best of my abilities, and I'm not worrying about everything else.

I'm hoping this was it for my fourth year crisis.  The recognition that I was spiraling actually helped me snap out of it, and I no longer feel like I have nothing to give nor take away from my job as a teacher.
I don't doubt that, at some point this year, I'll do this again.  But I feel prepared this time, whatever that means.  I can do it.