Occupational Depression. I don’t know if the term exists or not, but imma go ahead and claim that I coined it. It is a temporary depression brought on by the unhappiness of one’s workplace. Coincidentally, as soon as I resigned, that cloud of darkness lifted. I had a coworker tell me yesterday that she feels like she’s getting a true glimpse of who I am. Yesterday, I went into her office and was laughing and making little corny jokes. That place literally beat all the life outta me. And trying to laugh and smile and be grateful through my circumstance felt like absolute insanity. Trying to change my mind frame was a temporary fix. And if I had one more person tell me that at least I was making a paycheck and benefits I think I woulda just ran out into traffic 😑. I am grateful for what that place provided me. A chance to see a glimpse of how public education works. To see the well-oiled governmental machine that thrives on the oppression, subordination, and ignorance of its students… and its staff. I learned that I can be a pretty shitty employee if I am unhappy (but weirdly, also I felt like the most sane one). I slept in meetings, or skipped them all together, I complained or yawned out loud, sometimes I would congregate with my peers and perform jokes about why a certain meeting was a complete waste of time. And when I did go to meetings, I would be fashionably late, sit in the back, and I would take the opportunity to work on something more meaningful like my budget for the month. I had become one of my students. One who truly saw the mockery called education and didn’t realize the value. I kicked, screamed, cried, and questioned the entire way. What were we really doing to help our students? Why does this place drain me of creativity and continue to pull out from my already dried out corpse everyday? It’s an interesting dilemma because on one end I would say the students don’t really operate the same way. While I was a student that could potentially sit down, read, and teach myself (I’ve learned that I can have the attention span of a gnat however), these kids simply cannot. I felt like a performing monkey trying to teach them for 90 minutes; trying to switch up activities every 15-20 minutes. But then on one end, I had students who while they did not seem “booksmart” educated me and got my life together real quick on a regular. “You know Ms. Heard, school ain’t about learning no more, it’s just about passing,” My response, “Hmm… you right.” I can’t tell you how many students would ask me how learning about a particular author would help them with their lives right now. Or have a student tell me that she thought a particular assignment pointless. Or, tell me that a particular teaching method of mine was unfair. I accepted all opposition and encouraged all shared feelings with openness and dialogue. Why? Because from what I saw about this peculiar institution was that it expected students to scurry along, “learn,” and take exams without questioning the status quo. I welcomed their thoughts and questions because I didn’t believe that I had all the answers. I was not there to control or impose my beliefs on them, but to facilitate and encourage open dialogue.
And the truth was— I didn’t even know why I was teaching what I was teaching. Now a huge part of the problem was my inexperience as a teacher. I could only imagine how many of my students had teachers that were inexperienced, stressed out, tired, or depressed during their educational careers. I could only guess about how many of my students were simply pushed along and passed to avoid the extra paperwork that comes with possibly failing a student. Different barriers imposed to keep graduation rates up and not leave any child behind. Personally, taking time out to document calls, documents, conversations, and behaviors for a student simply didn’t rank in priority when I didn’t even have a lesson plan for the following day. I am at a title one school and the harsh reality is most of my kids will not enroll into college or don’t see the value in it. Can you blame them? If you go your entire life not really being taught the value of a real education (not whatever the hell we call ourselves doing today) why would you see it as anything other than a requirement? The ones fortunate enough (or maybe unfortunate) to make it to college don’t see the value in it either, why is that?
Nashema's Blog 