Why am I teaching?

One of the teachers has a chart for the first year teacher. There are many stages to being a teacher for the first full year. Apparently the ending step is “victory,” or something glorious like that. In the middle somewhere there’s a stage something along the lines of dismal, depressing, the great valley of doom, maybe not quite that exasperating sounding. Anyways, I’m in that valley of certain doom right now and it’s a really dumb valley to be in. I’m pretty sure that I’m wasting my students time, I think that they all hate me, none of them want to even talk to me, they make fun of me all the time (who wouldn’t make fun of their teacher in middle school?), and I can’t control anything inside the classroom. This week is exams for the second quarter, which is nice. I’m half way there, but nobody told me that the halfway point would also be the valley of doom from which I would never leave. Or at least that’s what it’s feeling like at this point. What ever happened to the library? I’d love to be sitting in the library reading with kids right about now…where for art thou library? Deny thy name, for if thou wilt not be but sworn my books. I would deny my classroom…it’s a modern teachers rendition of Shakespeare.:)
Anyways, this whole stage of dismal depression is getting a little bit depressing at school; I can’t wait for that victory stage at the end. “Chariots of Fire” will be playing in the background, my kids will all have 100% in the class, I will be schooling them all in soccer (not just math), but most importantly everything will be happening in slow motion.