I have started to write this post about 3 bajillion times over the last 2 months. I get about two paragraphs in and then delete the whole thing, worried if I'm really capturing what I really want to say using the 26 scrawny letters we have in our alphabet. Worried if people will take what I write the wrong way. Worried that if I write the post and things change I'll have a lot of backtracking to do.
But I am tired of worrying. In fact, I'm just plain tired, especially of dodging the question I get asked the most: "How's your new job going? Do you like your new job?"
Unfortunately, the answer is pretty much "no" to that second question.
Don't get me wrong, I like parts of my administrative role. I like working with teachers, watching ideas spread between them, and watching them do things that are good for kids. I like watching all of the excellence in teaching around me, and this time I get to see it from kindergarten to twelfth grade, whereas I came from sixteen years in a 9-12 world. My appreciation and respect for all that teachers do has grown exponentially in these few short months of being a new administrator, precisely because I just stepped out of the four walls that surrounded me in a classroom and I now get to see the bigger picture of all of the interconnected systems that make up a student's education. And, at the heart of that system are the students-with their teachers.
But I'm not happy. I don't love it. Not like I loved teaching from the beginning, loved coming in every day and seeing my smaller humans grow and learn and be goofy and have fun. Not like I loved creating experiences for my students so they could create their own meaning. I miss creating.
I'm not sure I'll learn to love this role. Maybe I will; maybe I will look back on this post a year from now and think of how silly and maudlin I was and have a good cringe, shrug my shoulders, and move on. I want to love this role; I really do.
I just have to figure out how, I guess. Figure out how to be happy where I am.
Sorry this post is such a bummer, but it's one that I just needed to write and get out there in the universe, so I can start doing something about it-much like defining and stating the problem in a PBL unit. Talk about a real-world problem, huh?