Perfect

Sometimes it's interesting to have so much free time I can almost allow my problems and responsibilities to inundate me. Today is one of those days. I just needed to unload here before I decide to do something more productive. My primary concern is with my day job. Not that I hate it. Not that it doesn't help people who need it, but sometimes it leaves a sour taste in my mouth for sake of the system it is a part of. I'm an educator. Or to be more specific I'm a teacher. A damn good one I like to think, but not according to the Department of Ed.

Apparently, I'm too new for a lot of things. Too young to have wisdom. And too naive to realize I can't keep putting my all into these kids every day. Each day I leave the school building drained. And being like every other Black man with something to prove, I go and do a million other things. Because the mundane does not satisfy my insatiable thirst for knowledge. I like to think my lesson and unit planning skills are decent. And every now and again the activities I try to incorporate into the Core Curriculum are new and interesting.

Problem is, I hardly teach. Truthfully, my occupation this year was playing guidance counselor, parent, authoritarian, and life coach to children coming from places I couldn't even imagine. A great day consisted of me actually getting to the Assessment and Follow-up line of my lesson plan--which was rare--and having the kids legitimately retain some of the things we discussed or understand the concept therein. It just sometimes leaves me feeling sort of incomplete and empty because much of what I do isn't teach. I spend more parts of my day telling young men to pull their pants up and young ladies to cover themselves than I do discussing the complexities of having a mixed economy and when government intervention is necessary because the Sherman Anti-Trust Act permits federal involvement if it's protecting the general public.

No, my kids don't want to be a part of a roundtable that deals with the circular flow of a market economy and how we as one of the factors of production and the consumer have considerable sway on the economic outlook. They'd rather buy expensive ass jeans and look at me crazy. It just sometimes makes me wish I wasn't wasting so much time with people who don't necessarily want it. Truth be told, I was never one hundred percent sure I would teach forever, and after only my first year I'm almost positive that this will be the case.

Nevertheless, I love my kids. And for however long they have me I want to do right by them. I don't know. Maybe I'm just setting my expectations too high, but many days it leaves me slightly disappointed. Teaching isn't one of those gigs where you can give your all and everything turns out mostly right. It's not one of these occupations, where at the end of the day I can wipe my brow, pat myself on the back, and go "job well done." There's always more work to be done.

It's one of those governmental jobs you don't hear about. Ya know, the ones where you work long hours phone banking and cold calling for an unknown bill that probably will never get to the House floor, but since it's not killed in a subcommittee you live to dial one more stranger's phone number. Yeah. As a perfectionist, it's a lot on my heart to have to do something like this every day. I don't think I can retire out of this system. It's broken. And until someone admits that fact, I'm just another worker bee who hates honey. Smh.