Not so "Teacher of the Year"

This past week my colleagues nominated me as a candidate for TOTY (not the kind with whiskey and honey unfortunately).  I regret the fact that when my AP told me I was one of the three finalists, I actually grimaced without thinking at all. See, I don't feel like a teacher of the year at all right now. I came home and asked my husband what he thought about it and he said that if your colleagues think enough of you to nominate you that you should carry through with the competition.  So, I did. Tuesday is our observation and the decision will be made. Some parts of me feel like an impostor right now and let me say why.

First, I am not very satisfied with my job right now. Our school day begins too early and ends too late. Our kids have very few exploratory choices that involve physical activity and yet we wring our hands and don't understand why the kids are off the chain by the afternoon.  Our calendar is terrible and almost kills teachers before Christmas. And again, we wring our hands and don't understand why teacher absenteeism is a problem.  That's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Second, I'm not very satisfied with public education in general. I don't think ANY of the gubernatorial candidates, nor the President himself, and especially Oprah have any clue how to fix the problem because they don't have a clue what the problem is.  Teachers are better trained than they have EVER been before in the history of this country. Yet, our results are certainly not stellar. Each year we are faced with more students from broken homes, less enthusiasm and support from parents, and over the past few years, less pay. The problem is that in the US, you truly don't need an education to survive. We will take care of you. There's a fine line between helping and enabling. We've crossed it.

Lastly, I think I have this vision of a perfect teacher doting over her students, spending hours grading papers, giving students their home phone number, going to their ball games, etc.  I have a family of my own. I don't do much after school anymore. I only on certain occasions will give my phone number to students, and although I truly care about a lot of them, I cannot lie awake at night worrying about them. I do the best I can do. I work most days like the entire school's success depends on me.  However, when it's time to go home, I go home. Maybe that's how I've survived into my 13th year. God has granted me the serenity to change the things I can change as well as deal with the things I cannot change. Unfortunately, there are a growing number of issues I feel I cannot change and TOTY or not, I am really concerned that I won't be able to handle those issues all the way to retirement.

So Tuesday, the judges won't find me standing on my head, bribing kids with candy, or putting on any sort of show. My students have a killer 9 weeks exam on Thursday and we'll be working our butts off to get ready for it. That may not make me a TOTY and I'm okay with that.