Heidi's Guide to Four Letter Words

by Tara Sivec

I don’t even know when things changed, really. All I know is that within the last six months or so, every morning when I got up to get ready for work, I did it with dread. I dragged my feet and I grumbled and moaned through my morning routine, pasting on a fake smile as soon as I walked through the school doors. Don’t get me wrong; I love children. I adore them. I want to have my own children someday in the distant future. But being in charge of other people’s children for eight hours a day just didn’t excite me as much as I thought it would. Dealing with angry parents who yelled at you because they thought you weren’t doing enough, yelled at you because they thought you were doing too much, or just yelled at you because they had no one else to yell at when their son or daughter was struggling in school wasn’t what I signed up for. Neither were the politics or the gossip or the stress of not being allowed as much creative freedom as I wanted, since every decision I made on what to teach and how I taught it had to be approved by someone else. I wasn’t passionate about my work, and that made me sad. Shouldn’t you love what you do when you spend more time at work than you do at home with friends and family? I spent four years going to school, another year getting certified, and then taught on my own for two years. And I can’t remember one single moment during that time that I was absolutely confident this was what I was meant to do.

THIS IS ME