As a kid I did not get the holiday blues. This was the best time of the year, dammit! Present and mountains of candy and cookies and parties. As I have aged it has come into focus how the holiday season forces reflection, and that's not always a fun thing. I think every year of Christmases past, and the people I celebrated with who are dead now.
I also tend to think about what I've done over the past year. In this second COVID year it has been a bitter reflection. The year started with the dark COVID winter and it is ending with the Omnicron surge. Back in June I was naive enough to think it was ending. Oh how wrong I was.
That also coincided with the end of the end of the 2020-2021 school year, one where I had to completely alter my teaching practice from top to bottom not once but twice. First to go remote, and then to go hybrid. I worked twelve hour days every day and dealt with having to go to work when my kids' school still had them remote.
My reflection has become bitter because I have realized that all of this labor has added up to nothing.
I am not getting a single extra penny of compensation from my job. I have not been given any more respect, either from my employer or my students and their parents. All that effort and work was appreciated by my students in the moment, but its long-term impact is basically zero.
Meanwhile my kids' education horribly suffered, and I failed to halt it because I was spending all my efforts teaching other people's kids. What reward did I get for this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Looking back on it I can't believe what a complete sucker I was.
Well, as the old saying goes, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, same on me. The days of heroic sacrifice for no reward are over. I wonder when school leaders are finally going to figure this out.
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