It's a lot of work

      I am teaching three blocks out of four four this semester.  For all the other teachers in my school, this would be an easy semester, the semester when they have a spare.  For me, it's exactly the opposite.  I'm the guidance counsellor and so I've spent the majority of my career not teaching, sitting in my office talking to students and parents as individuals or in small groups.  To be on stage for 250 minutes a day is too much stress.  I always feel on the edge of control and I can't stand the disrespect.   It doesn't help to only teach non-academic students.  It's because you're good at it, I'm told.  Sure, they can be good but they can also be very, very bad.  And yet, I know I can't hate them.  As soon as they feel hated, they get worse.  In point of fact, you've lost them.  So, I have to suck in their disrespect and their contempt for learning and all that I believe is important in the world.
     Today, I let  Grade 12 students  leave at the end of the day if they'd completed all the work I'd assigned since the beginning of the year.  I needed to give the slower students a chance to catch up without assigning more work to keep everyone else busy.  Naturally, they all wanted to leave and whined incessantly if they couldn't.  Unfortunately, they were not at a level of maturity to realize that school is meant as a place for learning, not prison.  It doesn't help that they are not academic students so learning does not come easy for them so they're not going to want to do it.  Still, there's no reason they couldn't see the logic of my actions.  They should be able to realize that I'm trying to help them, not punish.  Eventually, practically every student that I've taught has come to realize the sincerity of my actions.  It's the beginning of the school year that I always find so stressful when they're testing, testing, testing.  And now, I have to teach more than ever.  It makes me dread going to work in the morning.