Break the cycle…of my own inner thoughts!

I’ve been so busy…it’s testing season. UGH

I’ve had a difficult and challenging year of students.

My homeroom of 25 is a conglomerate of the society we have created with unlimited/unmonitored technology and self-absorption and more concern for finding our own happiness above all else and disregard for others we find to be “less than” and the touch of a finger for anything we could ever desire…entitled, disrespectful, needy, and unable to truly think for themselves or ultimately see beyond themselves.

Then my partner’s homeroom (who I have for the second half of my day)…a group of 25 also…with strong beliefs of right and wrong, who want to do good things, who do what is right for the sake of being a good person, who recognize that their education is important and have parents who also encourage this belief, who know that I am here to teach them and they strive to learn all that they can with my guidance.

A challenge throughout this year is an understatement.

Then throw in the random parent that attacks your abilities because you mentioned that their child needs intensive tutoring more than what their classroom teacher can provide and offer to help facilitate this arrangement, and they blame you for “giving up” on their child.  It’s like taking your child with cancer to the prompt care “doc in a box” and expecting them to heal them…the doc tells you to take your child to a specialist who knows cancer and can treat the patient, and you say “you just gave up on him because you didn’t even try!”  It’s frustrating.

Throw in there the typical run ins with the ex…

I was recently “called to the carpet” because I didn’t respond to a text telling me he was running late picking up our kids.  Apparently it is “more than a common courtesy” to respond that I received his message…and then it turned into “I had a problem when we were together that I let too many things go, and I shouldn’t have.  I’m not letting this go, it bothers me, so I’m letting you know.” and when I didn’t respond apologetically, because I didn’t really feel that it was necessary in this instance because I had truly done nothing wrong, then it became “here you go again, just like you always used to do, you never listen to me and you always come back with how you’re right and I’m wrong.”

Um.  Obviously our marriage had issues.  We’re now divorced.  We’re moving forward with separate lives that only overlap because of the shared children.  I don’t need to go back and rehash with you the intricacies of how our relationship failed.  It has NO BEARING on what is happening TODAY!  I will deal with issues that come up regarding  the kids in the most respectful and business like manner I can muster.  I will acknowledge that I didn’t do what you said, I will tell you why I didn’t respond (because I was dismissing my students, therefore WORKING, and frankly afterward, I was arranging everything that needed to be arranged so I could get the kids to where they needed to be SINCE YOU WERE GOING TO BE LATE!!) but I will not “apologize” for an interpreted “slight” that was not intentional…and that had NO BEARING on the safety or security of the children or their schedules.  Responding to his text was about HIM…I don’t fashion my life around what pleases or displeases HIM any longer.

I wish I could say that it didn’t affect me…I wish I could say that the power he holds over my belief system of who I am and what kind of person he makes me out to be is non-existent.  I’m getting better.

I have a personality flaw.

I care about what people think about me.

I have a strong personality, so I have a lot of thoughts/beliefs and I know many don’t agree with me.  Most things I don’t worry that people don’t agree with me, I feel I am right for me, not for them.  However what they think of me BECAUSE of those beliefs is sometimes a different story.

It is my Achilles heel.

Even with the parent that is crazy about their assertions that I am the reason their child is failing math…I know I am not, yet their opinion that it could possibly be MY fault affects me.  It makes me question if maybe, just maybe, it truly IS my fault.  And maybe I COULD have done something for this child that I DIDN’T do…

just like with my marriage…

and the cycle keeps going round…

UGH.

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