Being a teacher is heartbreaking
In my final year of university to be a primary (kindergarten) teacher, have a part time job as a teaching assistant.
It’s the parents. Some come to pick their kids up and it all makes sense why their kid is a bully, is unsociable, is angry. Some parents are just so rude and horrid with the way they speak to their children, and lack empathy or patience. I know of children that didn’t know how to play with toys before they came to school, or speak to peers with language that should never come out of a 5 year olds mouth.
I get told in whispers by other teachers about my students family’s and about abuse or neglect. And the worst part is I can’t do anything about it. My job is to teach and support, not fix.
My reason for coming onto here for the first time was what a child said to me a couple weeks back that’s been playing on my mind since. For context I have an absent farther, did his best at times but overall shit. When I asked a girl (7), what she was doing over the weekend, she said she was super excited to be seeing her dad and was going to the park. I asked whether the park was special, she said what was special is that she hadn’t seen him in a long time.
I asked when was the last time she saw him. She paused thoughtfully and just shrugged ‘I can’t remember’. I saw my father very sporadically during my childhood and had the best time doing basically what any other good farther would do, like going to the park, because I got to spend time with him, only to be heartbroken that this pattern of absence didn’t change through my teens to adulthood.. it really hit home.
The worst part is a can’t cry, or pry for more context. I just smiled and was happy for her. Now her situation may clearly be very different to mine. But to be confronted with an unhealed part of my own childhood by a child that may be experiencing something similar in real time, it’s very difficult.
But I love my job, and can’t wait to be a teacher. But I often have moments of regret because I didn’t realise the weight of the emotional side of being in this job.