I was reading a non-math blog this morning and a girl was talking about how she knew what she wanted for her life and it was frustrating that it just hadn’t happened yet.
When I wasn’t yet, I was dying to be a teacher. All through college and in my credential program I just couldn’t wait for the opportunity to have my own classroom. When it took me 5 years to finish college (with a transfer and what not) I was heart broken at about 3 1/2 years because I wasn’t going to be done. That year and a half seemed painful. It dragged on and on. I wanted the future and I wanted it right now!
Now, I am a teacher. I’m pretty okay at it. But I want to be better. I wanted to be a second year teacher at the same school. I had a pretty good grasp on my future. Then I lost my job and that future changed. I am okay with all that, my future just changed coasts and I can deal. I like change and travel and adventures. I just I want my future now. I want to be settled in NY. I want to have friends, a community and maybe even a relationship. I want to be a great teacher at my new school and I want to have established myself. I want to get to teach siblings of my former students and the same students for more than one year. I’m ready for all that, life, where you at?
In about a week I will be to busy to think about all of this silliness but I feel like I’m not alone in this feeling. I rarely ask for people respond to my post but I am wondering is there some point in your future you just want now? Is it everything? One thing?
a brand new line. 
I’m with you. A second year at the same school. Here’s hoping that we both get that one soon.
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I want to feel like I’m working towards something tangible and attainable. Right now I’m working towards something ephemeral and vague (“being a better teacher”) and I’m not interested in administration. What that is, I don’t know. But something I can produce, or point to, and say: that’s me, that’s mine, I did that. You can’t point to class lists of graduated students and *know* you did anything for them.
So I want to be at that point in the future where I have a stronger sense of purpose, direction, and an end goal that I can point to and attain.
Hm, for someone who really loves concreteness, this is about the least concrete thing I could have written, ain’t it?
Sam
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For me, at the moment, there actually isn’t anything in my future that I want to have right now. There are things I’m looking forward to and things I want to accomplish, but I know that they’re coming soon enough, and I’m not in any rush to skip the time between now and then.
I know that’s not the kind of comment you were looking for, and I don’t mean for this to come across as unsupportive. I totally understand where your feelings are coming from. But I want to remind you not to focus so much on the future that you miss the present. I’m sure being an extablished teacher and teaching your former students’ siblings will be great, but I bet there’s a lot of good things about being new at your school (so many new teachers to learn from!) and teaching the students whose siblings you will later teach. So when you’re getting impatient for the future, try to remind yourself of something that’s awesome about the present.
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I just want to have a place to teach. I was a long-term substitute last year, but the position was lost to attrition, so I was sent off on my merry way. I was the “runner up” in two hiring processes this summer, and I just want to have a place where I can actually teach the same students every day. It’s hard to go from being a regular classroom teacher to a substitute teacher.
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This is tough. I have only had a 2nd year once. I hope to have a 2nd, 3rd, 4th year very soon. With budget cuts and so many other issues, it’s tough for we young teachers to have this opportunity. Hang in there! Your future will happen and you’ll look back and wonder were the past went.
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I think it’s important to ask the right questions. Why do you want to skip to the future? Is there something about getting there that you would rather avoid? Why? Also; what is it about being in one place for a number of years that is so alluring to you? A reputation? A legacy? Does moving around make you have less of an impact on your students? Remember that their perception is much different from yours-to them it’s a school year. Who cares if you were there before or after that year. They don’t. You got a chance to make a difference in their lives every day for that year. It sounds like you make the most of them. Bonus: you get another group every year to do the same thing. Does it matter which group it is, or where you live? You’re a teacher who loves teaching. Period. You’ll settle in somewhere, and you’ll be glad it happened the way it did; with chances to learn from all of it.
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This is a really interesting comment and I try really hard in all my education discussion to bring it back to the point you just made, “how does this benefit students?” I really like that point. This post for me though was about what is best for me. What I want for me. Sometimes we as teachers do a really good prioritizing students needs over our own. We work to long, we don’t eat, we don’t sleep, we rarely see our friends. So no, nothing I said up there is about what’s best for students its about what I want for me for MY life. In about a week I will go back to being a teacher and not have time to think about me. this is about me.
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For me it’s more about uncertainty in the future right now. I don’t know where I’m going to be living in a year due to not knowing yet where my spousal unit is going to do his post-doc. Might be California. Might be New England. I just want to KNOW so I can get to the planning and preparing. This will be my last year at my school so there is heartache at having to leave the only teaching job I’ve ever known, but a lot of excitement about adventure and living somewhere new and the possibilities that entails. Grad school? Private school? Barista? Just have to wait and see and make sure that I am prepared as well as I can be for the possibilities of the future.
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I want to know about my future everything
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