Resigning

My teaching career is nearing an end. By the end of the month, I had to either re-sign or resign: funny how two words that are spelled the same have such drastically different meanings. I officially submitted a letter of resignation today.

When I share the news, people ask me how it feels, to which I typically respond that it feels no different since I've known I wanted to do it for months now and it won't actually take effect for four more months.

That said, I feel like a quitter. I don't want to let the public education system defeat me. I don't want to let the [adjective deleted] students defeat me. My goal was to enter this profession to change these two powerful entities, and instead I slink away after two years having fulfilled neither. They defeated me.

It hasn't been a waste. As cliche as it might seem, I'm genuine when I say I've learned so much more than I've taught. (When I wrote that last sentence, I initially typed "so much more than I've taughted" which goes to prove my point.) I'm a reflective learner, so I'm cognizant of how I've grown and how important that's been. Unfortunately, my students largely don't take ownership of their learning like I do, which is perhaps at the root of many of the problems. It's been a major point of contention as well as the primary lesson I've tried to teach. Nothing I could teach my students would be as important as learning to love learning and the pursuit of knowledge. If I could instill that, everything else would naturally follow. But I can't.

That's the thing about intrinsic motivation: you can't force it. Even though it doesn't make sense to, I've tried.

I'll miss the inevitable anecdotes. I'll miss the summer vacations that I've never actually had the opportunity to enjoy. I'll miss having a forum to address subsequent generations. And perhaps more than anything, I'll miss being able to say I'm a teacher because that makes everything I do -- like mooning someone, for example -- all the more absurd. If it weren't for that element of irony/inappropriateness, I doubt I would have made it this long.

What's next? I'm not sure yet. (I'll accept any suggestions.) I may have given up on teaching, but I haven't given up on changing the world. I just need to find a different avenue that uses my skills to accomplish that.