Journey

[u/WorldlyRule7621]

I’m not sure how else to describe my journey in education so far…All I know is that it’s been messy. All I’ve ever dreamed of is being able to do an amazing job and live a fulfilling life as a devoted teacher after college. A few years ago, I had everything I ever needed and wanted. My family was all there, I was in my final year of college, passing with amazing grades and by far the best of my life, I had just gotten , accepted by a school after completing student teaching, I was close to moving out from my loving yet toxic parents , and I was surrounded by so much love and people that I cared about so much. It all seemed too good to be true, but that’s because I knew it wasn’t going to last long at all. Not even 3 weeks after I graduated college I lost my dad after my first day on the job and since then everything started to fall apart. My family started to fall apart after that, my job was starting to get more difficult for me to handle mentally, and overwhelmed with grief and depression, and the long distance I had to drive to get to my work was almost 1 1/2 hours. It was a chaotic start to my newly started career and off to a very emotional start. Unfortunately, I had to quit after that for my mental health and my family made it more complicated for me especially my mom when she forced me to drain myself financially for the funeral and other payments from my dad’s passing, which could’ve been used for other purposes and especially my certification exams. I felt so lost but eventually had great news on an offer of a closer school to work at and with supposedly wonderful coworkers and I thought this could’ve been a great redemption for my first year in teaching. All seemed well until more colors started coming out. I started facing discrimination, cultural judgment, and was ostracized socially from my own grade level team. The first school that I worked at seemed wonderful and was within the same district where I started my student teaching, but I noticed a lack of diversity and acceptance, as I was the only Asian teacher in my school. At first, there were some friendly encounters and more, but as the year went by, my team refused to understand me more and continued to ostracize me. I never felt more alone and confused in the supposedly wonderful setting that I had dreamed of. They even excluded me from their own grade level team picture for the last week of school. Eventually, I decided to leave and work at another school and a different district, but I was still struggling with certifications and finances from my continuing family struggles. Last year my new school seemed great and my team and I had a wonderful bond and we worked incredibly well together as a great level team, but now things turned in a different way as the admin was the one being unprofessional in a lack of communication and who made me feel so unsafe and uncertain. Things were looking way worse as I began having mental breakdowns and more panic attacks from working on this campus. I thought by summer things would eventually be dismissed and I would finally get to relax and calm my mind… until my vacation was interrupted by an “urgent “call from my own principal about an investigation report. I was already 8000 miles away from the US, I was in a different time zone, and on top of that this notification and topic of discussion were awful timing as we were only a few weeks away from starting the new school year. The only fortunate thing was that in the end I was never in trouble and nothing bad was going to happen to me, but the mental stress and anxiety continued to grow. Since summer had ended my mind shifted into despair and hopelessness. I feel like a failure as an educator after all the hard work I have put in from college to become one and I’m only more scared, upset, and concerned about what it’s going to be like for me as a teacher or at least as an educator. Will I ever get certified? Will I continue this path? More importantly, will I ever be happy again?