Resigned

How I looked in my classroom. In my head, at least.  

Today was my last day teaching.  I've taught a summer language arts prep class for incoming freshman for a few years now, and it's always been an easy way to pick up a little extra cash.  Not a whole lot of work, but not a whole lot of reward, either.  The kids were perfectly pleasant and I like grammar, but trying to create a nurturing and stimulating learning environment in the summertime when it's hot outside and stuffy in the building and nobody wants to be there is kind of an exercise in futility.  They aren't with me long enough to develop Stockholm syndrome, but they are with me long enough to be annoyed at how much of their summer involves me going on about indefinite pronouns and verb phrases and having them find the simple subject of sentences like "Clouds of fairies were loudly buzzing around my head."   (Hint - the simple subject is NEVER part of a prepositional phrase.)

Until this year, when I taught prep, I also taught a creative writing enrichment class for a group of artistically-inclined girls (sometimes you'll know them as the "indoor" kids) but not enough signed up this year to make the program cost-effective.  This bummed me out, because I really liked working with the earnest, journal-writing, skit-performing, poetry-screaming crowd.  Y'know, the kids who actually elected to come to a hot, mostly-empty-but-fully-depressing building in the summertime.  I missed my indoor kids this year.

Just having a little cry...

Seriously, there are few things stranger, gloomier, or full of an indescribable sense of wrongness than the school building in summertime.  Empty hallways, empty classrooms, empty desks.  Entire floors of the building are dark.  The administration is still working on reduced hours, so the offices still have people in them, but that's only one small part of the building.  You can see a few maintenance guys here and there, but really the whole place is on a skeleton crew.  And it's eerily quiet. The atmosphere is almost foreboding, like that scene in the Neverending Story where Bastian hides out in school after everybody leaves so he has somewhere to read the book in private - THAT FEELING.  When all the lights in the hallways go out and everyone leaves and you're just watching and thinking, "Oh my god, he's not supposed to be there.  He's really not supposed to be there."

Seriously, kid? Could you have picked a creepier location?
It's like he found the Room of Requirement for a sociopath.

Or maybe that's just how I remember it.  (And it's not on Netflix, dammit. Anyway, this is the second time in a week a blog post sent me to look up images from the Neverending Story and both times I've ended up sadder for it. Oh the flip side, though, a quick trip to IMDB reminded me that Bastian's dad was played by none other than Gerald McRaney.  Major Dad!  Rick Simon!  George Hearst!  Bastian's dad.  I guess I never realized how much I'd call on this movie to codify my existence.  From now on, it's The Princess Bride and Spaceballs that will help me get through the day.) 

But anyway, that's how the empty school in summertime makes me feel.  The atmosphere just saddens me.  It saps my energy. Maybe it's the contrast that really does it.  The place is usually full of happy noise and funny kids.  Sure, there are the days when everyone is dragging around like a zombie - especially the teachers - but for the most part, a school is a really lively and energetic place.  Most often, it's a happy place.  But it's almost always at least a *busy* place.  Even in the hours after dismissal, kids at my school would come bug me in my classroom while I was grading or prepping for the next day, just to talk and hang out.  There were club meetings, tutoring groups, a library that sounded like a non-stop party, music practice, show rehearsals, and kids just lounging around and sitting on the floor up against their lockers in absolutely no rush to leave.  It's nice, actually.  On days when the last thing I wanted to do was go home, I knew there'd probably be some people around in the building until 5, 6, 6:30 and I'd have some company while I got some work done.  

The first and last days are always the loudest and most exciting for everyone.  On the last day, teachers and students alike are bursting at the seams and ready to go careening out of there at dismissal.  Everyone's hugging and laughing and some seniors are crying, and nobody can believe how quickly the year went by.  And on the first day of school, everyone's laughing and hugging and some freshmen are crying, and nobody can believe how quickly the summer went by.  

But, like I said. 

Today was my last day teaching.

I had that last day of school with all the hugging and the "see you in September" partings.  I watched my kids and colleagues bolt when the time came.  But I'm not going to have that first day back.  I'm not going back on staff day to decorate my classroom and get my schedule and class lists and reconnect with my friends and colleagues.  I'm just...not going back. 

On the last day of school, I hadn't yet gotten a firm job offer from anywhere else.  Actually I had gotten a few firm rejections, but I still felt that in all likelihood I wouldn't be returning.  But my kids didn't know that.  And a great many of my colleagues didn't know that.  And that made the last day of school so incredibly awful, and painful, and a bigger emotional trial than it usually is to say goodbye to everyone.  It felt like I was about to break up with someone when that someone thinks everything is going well - no, that everything is going JUST SWELL - and has no idea what grief is immediately in store.  I'm not trying to inflate my position here, but I know I've been an important person in that place for the past 7 years, and it's been a hugely important part of my life for that time as well.  I know that my leaving has made and will make some people really sad, but nobody will be sadder about this decision than I am right now.  So every time some kid or colleague came up to say bye or waved and said "See you in the fall," it just got a little tougher.  And worse, I couldn't just leave, because I had to a) prepare for the summer class, and b) completely clean and gut my classroom just in case I wouldn't be back.  So I basically avoided people as best I could, which also makes me feel lousy.

And then everyone left, and I transitioned into depressing summer school, which now that I think about it, was better for my pockets but not really good for my head at all.  And then I got a job offer.  And THEN I had to tell my administration, and that was also really hard.

So I resigned.

I've spent almost a quarter of my life at this place; these people are like family to me.  They've been there for me through really rough times, and I'm going to miss working with them.  But I'm really going to miss the kids, and I'm really going to miss teaching.  There were moments when I was in such a state that literally the only thing that kept me from coming completely undone was that I couldn't lose it in front of my kids.  And then it'd pass, and I'd be ok again.  They got me through a lot just by being there - after all, my classes weren't going to prep themselves for a standardized test, so I had to pull it together and get shit done for them even if I couldn't do it for myself.  Teaching them gave me a feeling of purpose during moments when I thought I wasn't good for anything.   When I was struggling to do grad school AND a full time job.  When I was trying to finish my master's thesis on no sleep and too much coffee (the Asian club forced me to eat a few times.) When I was getting hit with repeated rejections from grad programs after multiple rounds of applications.  When friendships of mine were crumbling.  When for no logical reason I felt like the most useless failure of a human being.  I always felt better when I got to class - especially my Earth Science classes this year, who for some reason were always like OH MY GOD TELL US MORE ABOUT THE SOLAR SYSTEM WE MUST KNOW MORE - and kids were genuinely happy to see me.  And actually liked learning science.  And my MSG Varsity after school activity saved me a lot on therapy bills because starting work on a documentary and filming and editing with that group of kids helped me work out a lot of my own issues much more effectively.   

But for a lot of reasons, I really can't stay.  For one thing, I just can't afford it.  The ultimately futile path to a PhD program saddled me with a lot of student loan debt (not like a PhD program would have done much to alleviate that anyway) and life is just getting more and more expensive, and Catholic school pays you in metaphorical Hail Marys.  And just as the kids were not the cause of my personal instabilities, neither are they the solution, so I have to work that crap out for myself regardless.  I did try to get another teaching job, but couldn't.  While I pursued the PhD path, I never got certified as a high school science teacher, so I can't compete with those that are.  I can't beat myself up for that; I didn't know this is where I'd be right now.  One dream didn't work out.  I'll find something new.  C'est la vie.

I also got to a point where there was nothing left of me at the end of the day because of how much work the job began to entail.  So I burned out a little bit. No, I burned out a lot.  Now I'm taking a job that will be really different, but one I can leave at the end of the day to go work on whatever the hell I need to.  Or want to.  I won't get to dress up in pajamas or talk about gravity while wearing roller skates, but I'll have time on my own to do that crap.

So my last day of teaching was to a group of kids not attached to me at all.  And on my last day of work, I quietly walked out of a sad, near-empty building.  Which is actually ok - I don't like fuss.  It's sad, because I think I was pretty damn good at my job, but it's my situation now and I'm going to own it.

BUT...to cheer myself up, I came up with some funny scenarios in my head.  What if some really amazing opportunity had come along and I had known ahead of time so that I could announce it to the school and go out in style?  Like I could have had a friend hijack the PA system on the last day and say...

"Attention ladies - Ms. Sitler will not be returning in the fall because she has joined the space program.  She will be the first woman on Mars and she's thinking of building a summer home there."

"Attention ladies - Ms. Sitler will not be returning in the fall because she is going to be a production assistant for the BBC/NOVA/Discovery Channel programs and will eventually get her hands on this guy."

"Attention ladies - Ms. Sitler will not be returning in the fall because she is serving as first mate on a ship headed to the straits of Magellan where she will abandon ship and live among the glaciers.

"Attention ladies - Ms. Sitler will not be returning in the fall because she somehow went through the looking glass.  But it's ok, she's a fairly mediocre chess player."

"Attention ladies - Ms. Sitler will not be returning in the fall because she is going deep undercover to rid the world of clowns.  Her message to you:  'You're welcome.'"

"Attention ladies - Ms. Sitler will not be returning in the fall because she has chosen to live out her life as a recluse in one of the creepy abandoned buildings on Hart Island."

Creepiest. Picture. Ever. Taken.

"Attention ladies - Ms. Sitler will not be returning in the fall because she will be the lady version of Nathan Explosion in Ladyklok, the all-female Dethklok tribute band.  Years of teaching at the top of her lungs and entertaining teenagers has prepared her for this, so she thanks you.  But you had nothing to do with the black wardrobe and the rageaholism; she's had both a long time."

"Attention ladies - Ms. Sitler will not be returning in the fall because she has completely gone off the deep end.  You can find her in the cafeteria spinning around a support beam and doing her best Paul Rudd impression.

At the end of the day, Ms. Sitler is leaving for some very mundane reasons.  Sometimes life is just boring like that.  But whatever.  A friend of mine asked me if I was excited. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm going to work hard and do right by my new employers, and I'm GLAD I won't have to choose between doctor visits and groceries because the pay and benefits are very good.  But "excited" doesn't cut it.  I'm too tired for that.  Sadly, I just feel resigned.