Yeah, I need a new career because this teaching thing ain't it.
After about 12 years of this, nope nope nope nope.
This semester has been a spiral of burnout. I've had to cut classes 5 minutes, 10 minutes, some 20 minutes short because I legit had nothing left to teach.
Five curricula, only one of which has a textbook that's super difficult to teach out of unless I do 90% of the lesson in Chinese. The book was written for students from India, clearly, as all the articles and compositions reference people and places in India more than anywhere.
The rest of the classes, I'm still building from scratch. It takes me about 2hrs to do one PowerPoint/a set of lecture notes and that's not including any practice sheets or classroom activities. Those, by the way, I either have to think up on the fly or search for online. (And those that I find online, I have to tweak ad nauseam, otherwise the kids won't follow and the whole segment of the lesson is just pulling teeth).
I'm not enjoying this. I'm putting in waaaaaaay too much work, to the point where I'm walking into the classroom 3 minutes before class begins, my mind a total blank, as I have no idea what the hell could be taught for the day.
So I'm having to put in my best Oscar award winning performance, winging an entire lesson until.... nothing.
"Welp, that's all I got for today. Stay in this classroom please and stay seated. You can do other homework or whatever until the bell rings."
It never feels right. I can't plan AND research AND get activities together AND do homework/exams AND grade things for 5 courses.
It's embarrassing because as a teacher, if i can even call myself that, I expect students to be hard working. I can barely put a homework sheet together without them zooming through it. Online worksheets are never enough, as the ESL ones are either too easy, waaaay too difficult or are poorly put together.
If I could just have 2 or 3 courses.... like everyone else... not 8, not 5... I wouldn't have to worry about students complaining to their homeroom teachers behind my back about how we're not doing enough/anything.
I can't tell students that phones or laptops aren't allowed or that they aren't allowed to play games because I'm literally doing nothing.
I can't ask them not to chat with their friends idly during lessons when they're already expecting the lesson to "end early".
I can't explain or reveal to the students that the reason why they rarely if ever have homework and almost never have exams isn't because I'm a "laid back teacher who's just, like, blah-whatever chill lol" but because I'm exhausted and don't have the time because I spent all my energy and resources doing that for other classes.
Something tells me that the fact that I can't find a single person who can relate with this much detail leads me to believe there's something wrong with me.