~What Bites
2004-10-07 - 6:09 p.m.

Do you know how, sometimes, one little, unimportant thing can just plummet you into depression? Well, maybe you don't, maybe it only happens, to over-sensitive/under-confident Janette...

The day's been fairly good - the week's been fairly good - but, just at the end of it, one or two things kinda got me down. I think maybe a part of it is that we have to put in our preferences for year levels and teaching partners next year (even if our contract is up at the end of the year). We were talking about it after school today, and I don't think Lien's going to list me as a preference for a teaching partner - or, at least, not a high preference. And, I don't know, when I came to look at who I'd want to work with, there really aren't many people I'd choose to work with at APS. I don't know most of them well enough to know whether I'd suit working with them or not. I mean, I could probably get along with everyone but, especially when we're sharing a big double room, I don't want somebody who's intimidating or tending towards the critical rather than the supportive.

Lien seemed to have about six or seven people she wanted to work with and her trouble was narrowing it down to four. I was stretched to think of four. So, not only do I now feel like Lien doesn't really care if she never teachers with me again, I feel like I've been too unsociable and that's going to look bad when reapplying for my job.

Now, I should digress just slightly for a moment to comment that I'm not yet used to going to bed early enough to wake up at 6:30 every morning again after the holidays and my neck/upper back have been a bit annoying, so I've been a bit headachey and tired this week. Of course little things are going to get me paranoid and glum...

Anyway, back to my whiney paranoia.

I don't want to change schools. I love working at this school and I love my grade, I love this year level, but I'm not sure how much I'd love teaching if I was with a less supportive (or even just a less like-minded) teacher in a year level I wasn't comfortable with. I'm not even sure how little or much these teaching preferences might make a difference to the impression I give for reapplying for this job. I suppose it really wouldn't be such an issue if we didn't have this silly double-room business. It's nice in someways, but I treasure the very few times when Lien's class is out of their room and I don't have constant background noise.

I don't know...it's not really any one thing in particular, it's just a bunch of little things that I do that make me doubt myself, especially when everyone around seems so calm and competent and confident and sociable, and I feel like, for all my natural ability in relating to students, I really am not ultimately suited to being a modern teacher.

I don't know...I am better than Lien at teaching in many ways. Certainly, my Literacy ideas are far better and there are certain ways of teaching things, such as being open-ended or following the Technology Design Process that I seem to grasp better than her. I still feel that her organised nature means that she just bites the bullet and gets things done, while I pussyfoot around all the time and her confidence means that she often comes across better. I suppose I just need to stop stressing about it and tackle this final term in the assertive way I've planned. One of my problems is that I'm too introspective and honest, so I question and analyse everything I do, notice all of the negatives, then find it hard to be honestly totally positive when people talk to me, there's always a little bit of me that finds it hard to just say "yeah, all good!"