My name is Erica Jacobs, and most of the year I am strung out. That’s right, as a teacher, I am plagued with serious problems. I am sleep-deprived, operating on sensory overload 24/7, perpetually overwhelmed with a sense of responsibility I do and do not have.In May and June, I suffer from paranoia that test scores will not be good enough. I begin to enjoy seeing the backs of my students as much as they enjoy exiting my room.
I am tired of Johnny and his mother, who are convinced that, given the right circumstances, he would have had a very different year. Implied: “If he hadn’t had you, he would be in hog heaven.”
I am even sick of seeing my colleagues every day, whose weary faces mirror my own. We hardly commiserate anymore on the papers we have to grade; that has become a cliché. Occasionally, we exchange a “TGIF,” or “I can’t believe it’s only Tuesday.”
Let’s not even broach the topics of Thanksgiving and Christmas, and how pathetically teachers look forward to those few days off — time to grade papers, e-mail relatives, remember that we have a life.
And snow days: those gifts from the heavens. What I hate most about global warming is the lack of those mornings when the trailer at the bottom of the television screen confirms, “Due to the inclement weather, all schools are closed.”
By the third week in June, I may not have vampire punctures on my neck, but I am a zombie nonetheless. I walk through the hallways slumped over, defeated, no longer caring.
We all know that it’s darkest before the dawn. And dawn does arrive — in the form of the end of the school year.
When the last bell rings, and we have emptied our pencil sharpeners and locked our file cabinets, we go home to the walls we vaguely remember. It’s not that we work nonstop, but for most of us, the frenetic pace renders us too weary to notice our surroundings.
This exhaustion quotient is not limited to teachers in their 50s. Oh no; I have witnessed marathon runners in their early 20s reduced to gibbering idiots by the demands of 125 students and 250 parents. (Not to mention the 10 administrators.)
Ours is a life of service; the service just doesn’t include us.
So summer is given as a benefit. Even if we teach summer school, it still counts as rehab. If we only have one or two totally unencumbered weeks, those hot days and nights warm our hearts.
Come Labor Day, we are standing tall once again.
Come Labor Day, we walk proudly to our rooms, tack up posters to amuse our charges, and look forward to a new generation of students.
Come Labor Day, we like children, like their parents, and like our jobs once more. We have been rehabilitated.
My name is Erica Jacobs, and I am a teacher.
Erica Jacobs teaches at Oakton High School and George Mason University.
E-mail her at [email protected].
