Take Me Back to the Start

I watch Glee.  Every week.  I DVR it, I watch it, I re-watch it, I download the music.  I admit it: I might be a Gleek.  BUT!  In defense of a teen show that is often badly written with story plots that are convoluted at best and intellectually bizarre at worst with characters who are way too often caricatures and almost dangerous, simplistic stereotypes sometimes silly, I find myself challenged by the better episodes.  

Last week’s episode, “The Break Up,” hit upon a raw nerve that the current antagonistic political culture has exposed.  Throughout the episode, the characters are all dealing with profound change--stay together or break up, forgive or walk away, offer total support or lose love.  I thought about the dichotomy these oversimplified story-plots offered and then I thought about what I always think about: my job.  

I’ve been in a committed, faithful relationship with my job for the past thirteen years. Yes, I strayed once for one year when I wanted to see if teaching really was what I wanted, but the proverbial siren song of education called me back to Fraser High School.  We’ve been a good combination, and I feel as if we’ve made each other grow.  Teaching has challenged me, has made me laugh, has taken me on dates that last all night and sometimes even extend into the wee hours of the morning.  We fight like all couples, but teaching is patient and the papers it gives me never go away.  Teaching has given me some amazing presents on our anniversaries:  passion, purpose, the ability to multi-task, a freakish sense of hearing for the F-Bomb.  Teaching has sharpened me and I like who I am when I am with it.  

But somewhere along the line, teaching changed on me.  I don’t completely recognize it anymore.  I know it isn’t teaching’s fault; outside pressures, financial stress, an inability to communicate clearly have all contributed to my frustration with my job.  Teaching keeps asking more of me, but I am givin‘ ‘er all I got, Cap’in.  So teaching and I are in a rocky spot in our relationship.  Which brings me back to Glee.

Each couple hit the dip this week. Each couple had to make a decision to fight or to quit.  The kids all broke up; the adults haven’t...yet.  I am in the dip with teaching and I do not want to quit.  But I don’t know how to keep going forward sometimes.  Between the pressure from politicians, parents, technology, the need to evolve, I find myself looking at teaching with jaded eyes and I sometimes take it for granted.  I had a good, albeit busy, week last week, but when I sit here on Saturday almost dreading next week, I need to back up and consider what is going on in this vital relationship in my life.  

My other relationships--the ones that are so much more important than my job, the ones that fill me completely--have taught me that this is a storm I must weather.  Deep down, I kinda love this gig.  I can’t quit you, teaching, but you are really giving me a run for my money this year.