Pros and cons of me (as a teacher) in 2026 I used to be ambitious and want to please professors.
Now, I wouldn’t stand on my hands for anything on the syllabus. Schools and colleges will blow your whole donation on one firework during the fireworks on alumni weekend in May. But now I’m a teacher. They didn’t completely stop me and I just kept stepping forward every once and awhile.
Why I rock as a teacher now—I do “fun” science experiments that make a mess. We made paper mache planets, we tested whether ice melted faster in salt or sugar (they melted the same), we did a “float or sink” test with stuff in the room in a big bucket of water, and we did the egg drop challenge today. Off of a ladder in the room. We broke at least 4 eggs. Some kids were overwhelmed bc they realized too late that there weren’t going to be “instructions” other than “build something with this stuff,” and they were too ambitious to make decisions leading to an imperfect outcomes, so we made stuff for them. The coolest one I thought was where we put an egg in a balloon and then blew it up, and tied it to other balloons. It didn’t crack when dropped. In the past I’ve helped kids make slime, make paint/snow sludge in the garbage can (more something I let them do than that I planned), leading me to a strength and weakness: I don’t plan If I plan, I never follow my plans It seems like it goes against my nature. I quit my last job as a teacher when I realized they needed me to follow my lesson plans because I just can’t. It’s like trying to shit when you aren’t ready to go. It feels wrong. It’s like eating food separately, when it could be enjoyed as one giant salad (the way it should be). I gotta do me, you know? I just don’t want to follow plans. I hate making plans. I hate thinking about something difficult that I could just assign to my subconscious and have faith that that person inside me will have or make a plan. She always does. Honestly, she’s never let me down, not on even one impromtu lesson.
I definitely had supervisors for whom this wasn’t good enough and as soon as they said so, I said, that’s fine, but I’m moving on just looking for a good fit, where I can be me.
I don’t read scripts. I don’t memorize scripts. I just initiate various school type activities and provide materials. I model the thing we’re doing, if needed, and then directly assist. We don’t need lesson plans.
Graduate school was so hard and so unnecessary teaching would never be as hard as graduate school for teachers especially at Hunter. I ended up not liking them, and it was mutual.
If I’m going to teach special education, I gotta do it in a special way because I’m just as trifling as anyone else. And I’m slow. And I can’t make decisions until they have to be made based on what’s happening.
I’m just doing the least work possible. I’m not a superhero. I’m not training for an academic marathon anymore. I’m just teaching kids basic shit during times of war. I’m spending every day with them, reading, writing, arguing, picking movies, eating together, while the united states blows up our own body, our mother’s body, our baby’s body.
Why I’m a bad teacher: I already said.
To be honest, if I had 1 or 2 more days to myself not with the students, I would plan. When I do plan, I feel way less anxious, overwhelmed, and confused because sometimes I’m still high when I arrive and all the piles of papers get mixed up, and I forgot what class is next and skip something because I teach all the subjects and always have.
Lesson plans are like gumballs in my gumball machine brain.
I have a million ideas and I just put in a quarter when it’s time to teach.
Deep down I want to make every day a movie day and just meet physical needs. But the day would get too long and boring. However I make my class sit and wait patiently for the next thing and I think it’s good for them. In life, you don’t get to be entertained every fucking second and a lot of times, it’s just you and your thoughts, so you might as well get comfortable with mastering your thoughts and your breathing and your mood, now. “What am I supposed to do?!” This child demands attention and engagement 100% of the time. You can draw or read a book. What am I supposed to draw??? Boy, Draw anything. This is your life. Enjoy this five minutes because when the timer’s up, I’m handing out the next assignment for the next activity.
Nothing pleases him. So spoiled! He’s doing good with us, actually. But he crashed at the end of the day, and we had to kick him out. And we swore. I swore. My teammate swore. All day we kept swearing. I lacked patience today. I had a flat affect (that part is fine). I had no idea what we’d be doing when I arrived late to work, which means I had to figure that out, and print papers, while interacting with kids, and a million things are going on, which is just harder. With another day or two, and a basic plan, even if I don’t follow it, I wouldn’t have the stress of “okay what are we doing next” and knowing my team is like “this teacher is a hot mess.”
They help me though. I couldn’t do it without them. They compliment me. I used to be a passive aggressive snitch. Now I either say something or just accept it. My position is, the less I snitch on people, the less they snitch on me. It’s an instant karma thing. Based on multiple blind trials, it’s a scientific fact. Snitches get stitches. on the street
but snitches burn bridges at work. Talk to the person yourself. If you can’t? Then forget about it. Suck it up. You’re not perfect either. No one is.