Mental-Health Timeline of A First-Year Teacher

The Practical Side: How it Happens (Or, where’s that light again?)

I promised you a light, now, can we get overnight shipping on that?
(in all seriousness, consider investing in some kind of light therapy. My roommate came home with a lamp one of the many Sunday evenings on which I was feeling too overwhelmed to do anything at all. I immediately hijacked the lamp, took off the shade, and left it blazing in the middle of my floor -- along with my own desk lamp, the overhead light, and a halogen lamp – for the remainder of the evening and the larger part of the next two weeks)

So how, in six or eight months’ time, do you get through the “hardest year of your professional life” and manage to come out clean, and why can’t we just tell you all our secrets so you don’t have to be painfully, heartbreakingly miserable for a good number of those months?

No idea.
RJ told me that by the Spring I wouldn’t want to take days off. I thought he was crazy. (he is). But the week before state testing, there was a tournament in Huntsville I wanted to compete in. I would have to take Friday off school to make it there in time, and I thought “well, I really need that time at school … I’d rather be with my kids.”
IT HAPPENED.

Here’s how it happened for me:

First Nine Weeks:
Running on adrenaline; still think the hardest thing I’m going to have to do is plan stimulating lessons for various evaluations

Labor Day is the last time I remember caring and/or having the energy to effectively influence a) what I was wearing OR b) my physical surroundings (apartment, classroom, car, etc)

The phrase: “we are living in squalor” became a convenient expression of our communal state of mind

Second Nine Weeks:
Surprisingly healthy and happy for the first half, I fell fast towards the middle of that deep dark pool around November. Check-mark grading became a must (hats off to RJ). Days off were necessary not for relaxation but in order to get the absolutely critically necessary work done. Managed to grade NOTHING for each half of the term until reports were due.

Deeply felt the inarguable truth of MD’s crushing statement: The hardest thing you will have to do is get out of bed every morning.

Christmas break:
Ignored school, ignored my grades, cried for two days before I had to come back. Spent the first week of third nine weeks grading and avoiding the office until I finally got it together. Vowed to be more organized/on top of my stuff third nine weeks.

Third Nine Weeks:
WORLDS BETTER. Tons of stress, but somehow manageable.
Fly in the ointment: Oxford five out of eight weekends

Fourth Nine Weeks:
Worlds better again.

I don’t know what these magical changes are that happen. It’s not easy, I’m not on top of my game, but I’m not out of my mind anymore either.

Things do change.