A Quitter

I used to teach high school. I used to make lesson plans that met state and county curriculum and criteria. I used to stay up late grading papers and projects. I used to make phone calls home when a student was being less than helpful. I used to worry about my students; if they were being abused at home, if they were eating, if they would lose it at school the next day. I used to wake up and wonder if I'd have to break up a fight at school that day.

That's what I used to do. Then I moved to Korea.
Now, I teach university students. I make lesson plans that meet only my criteria. I never stay up late grading papers. I answer kakaos and text messages from worried students. I only worry about my students passing the class. I have never thought about breaking up a fight or wondering if a student is going to harm themselves, others, or me in class.

And you know what?
I feel guilty. Like I gave up. I feel like I cheated somehow.
I know all of these absolutely phenomenal men and women in my home state who do.so.much. And while things only get worse for them (politics in education, pay, student behavior, testing standards, etc.) they still come in everyday ready for battle. They don't slack off. It's balls to the wall with them. They go home and worry about their students. They stay up late worrying about things they can't change. They face some dangerous kids everyday. The same kids who would scream "Don't touch me!" when I would touch their arm to wake them up, or the kid who shoved me out of the way to beat some kid's ass. (Don't worry. I grabbed that kid and had him pinned him to the wall before he could beat up anyone.)

And it wasn't always fight and defeat. There were wins. Big wins. Bigger than anything I've ever experienced in Korea or probably ever will again. Days when girls would come into my room at lunch to talk about boys (they never change), when the kid's grandma sent an email to me and my principals on Teacher Appreciation Day saying nothing but praise about me, and the day I got to tell kids who had never passed a state exam that they had passed, and not barely. Big wins people. Makes me want to run back to the classroom and join the ranks again.

But I know I won't. And I feel like a quitter. I know there are a few expats in Korea who were teachers before, and I wonder if they understand. Do they miss the classroom and those kids who you'd fight for? Do they wonder what happened to their old students; if they are even still in school? Do they walk home from their jobs, which is 5x easier than the one they left, and feel like they could be doing more? Do they think of their old co-workers or mentors and say prayers for them? Do they feel like they gave up?

But all of that everyday stuff that got in the way of teaching, of doing the thing we are so good at, and love to do, I hated it. I wanted to teach without politics. I wanted to travel and experience life outside of the usual. And truthfully, I didn't want to wake up dreading my drive to work everyday. I knew I had to make a change. The job was making me depressed and I absolutely hated teaching by the end of every week. And that wasn't me. I love teaching. I love it. I had to leave and take my skills somewhere else. Does that make me, and others like me, brave? Knowing that we wanted something different, and out of such a flawed system. Or did we quit?

Maybe the only way we could actually be quitters is if we came here to teach and stopped caring. Maybe if we were really quitters we wouldn't really be able to call ourselves teachers. But I'm still pretty proud to call that my profession. It's not what I'm doing for a couple of years abroad to pay off debt. It's what I do and I can't really quit.