Education Disillusion

When I was a little boy growing up in a rural community outside of Riverside, CA, about sixty miles east of Los Angeles, among the things I did to pass the time was to play school in my bedroom.

With Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts gang as my students (I was an absolute Peanuts freak), I would pretend to be a teacher; calling roll, giving lessons, the works.

Fast forward a few years As I got older and saw my mother and many of my relatives enter the field of education and the teaching profession, and be successful at it, the combination of that and the fact that I’ve always been attracted to the school atmosphere made education and a career influencing young minds appeal to me that much more. I found myself planning to join the family business.

There were other reasons why I wanted to work in schools

1. Teaching, being with, and being a leader of kids sounded like a fun way to make money.
2. The school schedule – working weekdays, with weekends off. I always liked that kind of schedule as a kid, and I saw no reason to change that as a working adult.
3. Having two and a half months off in the summer. Again, I loved having that time off as a youngster, and saw no reason why it could not continue.

After over fifteen years working as a tutor, a noon playground aide, a coach, and a physical education teacher, and after having quite a few bad experiences and episodes with different kids, parents, supervisors, and principals, never lasting more than three years at any one school, I ultimately realized that I was not meant to work with children in education.

After years in the field, working as hard as I could, even entering a program to get my master’s degree in education and a teaching credential ( and doing very well in the classes), I found myself disillusioned with the whole thing. That’s the best word to describe it.

Several factors contributed to my feeling this way in this profession, and eventually giving it up…

First, the students I worked with that had bad behavior and attitude problems and a lack of respect wore me down and burned me out, to the point where I simply could not deal with it – and them – anymore.

Over the years while working at different schools, I have been viciously cursed at, called bad names, and nastily talked back to on many occasions. I even had money stolen from me, and it wasn’t even my money!