hard decisions

The last few days have been really intense, largely because I had a kick-ass session with my own Coach, got really honest with myself, and arrived at a choice that terrifies me even as it thrills me:

I am taking a leave of absence from teaching.

Here’s what happened: Thursday night I arrived at my Coach’s place in a total funk. I blame it on Mondo Beyondo (in the best possible way). The thing is, when I signed up for the course what I thought I would get out of it was a chance to connect with other like-minded souls, to have fun playing around with wishing and dreaming, stuff like that. In my head, the importance that I attached to it was all very light. It was more of an attitude of, “This will be fun,” rather than “This will change the choices I make in my immediate future.”

Taking a few weeks to focus on wishing and dreaming puts a mirror up for how I am living my life and how close I am to living the way that I want to live. When I made my Mondo Beyondo list, I was pleased to realize/discover that my desires were not so very far off. I was at least on the right track, I realized. But like a seed planted, all of these little ideas that I had written down, made public, and started to talk about suddenly had lives of their own. I kept thinking about and was stumped by this: You know what you want, Kate. So what is keeping you from going after it? If you’re thisclose, what are you not stepping into?

I didn’t even realize, until I made that list, how close I was to what I was wanting in so many areas. What was keeping me from fully embracing it, then? And again and again, what kept coming up was a feeling of fear and the thought, “I can’t quit teaching.”

So, okay–Life Coach Red Flags, here. Red Flag #1: Making choices based on fear. #2: Noticing that I was holding on to the fear rather than just letting . #3: The word can’t.

And as I kept writing and journaling, what I kept coming to again and again was that in this moment, I want to let go of teaching English.

I do not know why this would be such a hard truth to admit. Plenty of people dislike their jobs, and I wouldn’t even say that I “dislike” teaching English so much as I have realized–not at that moment but after the last five days of parsing it out–that I simply do not believe it is good for me to continue right now. But what immediately came up, aside from fear over money replacement and loss of health insurance, was all of this…gunk. I have never had gunk come up like this before. Sure, it was scary to start doing photoshoots (confession: before every one I do, I still have thoughts like, “What if I completely mess this up???” It’s a weird photographer’s stage fright!). Sure, it was scary to start my coaching training a few years back and then to develop a coaching business and then to take my first coaching calls. Sure, it was scary to go to Europe for 30 days and to live in Florence this summer (what if I’m lonely? what if I get mugged? what if Andy and I grow apart because I’m gone for too long? what if not speaking the language completely overwhelms me? what if…?). Sure, it has been scary to send out my writing and it has never felt good to receive a rejection notice.

However, I have just courageously stepped into all of those previous fears. Nothing ever felt so big.

Letting go of teaching is BIG for me, mostly because my relationship to it has been sort of like a dysfunctional relationship with a boyfriend you know you need to let go of, but there’s some good stuff there so you kind of hang on, hoping it will work out. I have known that teaching was not working for me in all the ways I wanted it to work for me, and yet I also knew that there were areas where I was out of integrity, or that teaching held gifts, or that there was something new for me to discover, so I held on (that and, I love working with the students. Whenever we laugh in the class, whenever I see groups excitedly discussing a new idea, whenever a student who was previously failing gets it and starts rocking out, I feel like a million-bazillion dollars, so I was hoping that this would carry me through).

Every semester, I have finished the semester identifying habits that I want to work on or shift for the next semester. I think it’s a great teacher practice. And every new semester, I have walked into the classroom thinking, “That’s it! This is the semester I will…”

And it’s so funny, because it’s always blown up in my pretty little face. I was sort of talking about this with my Sept 3rd entry (not sure how to link to that). I would get better at XYZ thing that I had said, “Teaching will work better for me if I master ___” about, and then that XYZ thing would get better but then something else would crop up–immediately! Within weeks of the new semester! It was crazy! So I’d get to work on that, and then the cycle would repeat itself. I’d say, “Maybe teaching just isn’t working for me anymore.” I’d list all the things in my head that weren’t working. And then I’d think of how really great the students are, and maybe I’d think a few fearful thoughts about not having perfectly steady income, and I’d go, “Nope. Not going to let go, just yet.”

And then this semester…oh, good god. I did all of this work last May with my coach around showing up more powerfully in the classroom, recognizing where I am fearful of students not liking me and then getting lax on my own rules and resenting them when they take advantage of me, things like that. And this semester, I have walked into the classroom more powerfully, and that fear is gone. It has hit the dust. I am not afraid any longer of my students disliking me.

No other problems have walked in to replace that problem. The semester is progressing smooth as pie…

…And I still want to let go of the job. I still struggle with not resenting getting up for work. I still get these massive headaches before I am supposed to go in to teach.

I’ve coached many people who are dissatisfied with their jobs and some think a new career path will make them happy. Many of them have even already considered that maybe the job isn’t the problem, but how can one know the difference between blaming a job for problems versus just not being in the right line of work? I believe it all boils down to integrity. If we are out of integrity in many areas of our lives, there’s inevitably something (a relationship, job, body image, etc.) to be used as the blame for why we are unhappy. If we are totally in integrity, to the best of our ability, and we still notice dissatisfaction in these really huge ways, then that means something just isn’t in alignment with our vision for ourselves, and the dissatisfaction is trying to tell us something.

This is why I’ve worked so hard to figure out how to become the best teacher that I could be. I have never liked the idea that I might let go of one line of work and bounce around to another when the real issue is me trying to avoid being totally in integrity with myself. These past few days of soul-searching have shown me that I am as in integrity as I know how to be, and it is time for a real change.

I’m excellent at what I do. I’m knowledgeable about English instruction for the levels I teach and the demographics served (remedial, ESL, learning disabilities), I’m willing to try new things, I’m innovative, I look for every excuse to bring creativity into the classroom, I try not to assign anything that would make me yawn myself. I dislike the commute but I arrive on time, every time, almost always early, I’ve developed systems to ease grading, I avoid dealing with bureaucracy almost entirely, I’m now a seasoned rock star at diffusing discipline problems, I get that grading done and come in and lecture anyway even if I feel physical problems, I work on managing the stress, I don’t check my email nearly as often as I used to and don’t do a stitch of teaching-related work on the weekends any more, and I’m organized to the point of annoyance and usually keep pretty on top of remembering things. I am interested in my students and want them to lead remarkable lives, I talk to them outside of class if they need support, I hold extra office hours. I recognize, during difficult student encounters, that everyone is doing the best they can with what they’ve got and that whatever challenge is presented by a student is one that can teach me something. I recognize that the hostility often comes from some source of pain. I have cultivated more patience than I’ve ever thought possible, and the experience of being a teacher has taught me more about classism in our society than any book.

If I can learn all of that, and still not quite feel right with myself when I wake up in the mornings to teach a class, then that tells me that at least for now, I have some exploring to do outside of the classroom.

I am typing all of this in the afternoon, just hours before I will drive in to my department and talk to my Chair and offer my written notice. I am setting this to post this evening, after it’s all done (because I’d kind of be an ass-clown to announce something like this to the Internet before I spoke to my immediate supervisor). I am nervous, and excited, and…all swirly.

There is so much more to say–especially because since making this decision Thursday all sorts of new and exciting stuff has come down the pipeline–but will have to leave you with this, for now.