By: Susan

Susan — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 14:50:24 +0000

I’d say I’m stuck now, and have been feeling so for a couple of years at least. I went back to school in my early 40’s, with two young kids, a divorce, and language barriers at my side. I graduated top of my class with a BA and BEd, but found that those high grades did nothing in the classroom, and nothing to get me hired. I substitute taught for a year, and found it soul-suckingly difficult and utterly demoralizing. This year I have a 60% contract in my school board, which pays me about what I earned in 1997 as a chambermaid, and will end at the end of June. In terms of stuck- many times I have wanted to quit, to follow some other path; I have questioned my suitability for this work, and worried that I am doing a disservice to kids. I find it challenging to see through the instability of this career and this way of life. I have a good work-life balance with a 60% contract, but financially I am always sliding backwards and have not truly supported myself financially since I quit a lucrative career as a massage therapist to have kids 11 years ago. I don’t want to move laterally, I want to move forward, but I’m…stuck. Maybe teaching will get better. Maybe I need to accept that my parents are still helping me put food on the table and that’s the way it is when you start a new career in your 40’s, maybe I need to have more faith in the way of life- but I struggle with finding meaning in it. Education is a place I can get passionate about, but there’s not a lot of room for kids in the system- it’s a mess, and I feel powerless to affect change, even in my own classroom. I don’t know what first steps to take out of the mess. I want to live with meaning and purpose, and I’m not sure if that is what I am doing.

Comments on: How Getting Stuck Leads to Progress

By: Susan