Not everyone will like me

 I'm halfway through my summer break and it has been wonderful. Our family traveled to Scotland this time and we had the best time exploring a beautiful country with lovely people. I felt so relaxed and it was so wonderful to make memories with my family. Especially my children because they are becoming young, independent adults and time is flying. 

I am so relieved and happy my 4th year of teaching at perfect school is over. I'm going to refer to it as perfect because that is the image it wants to really portray. Regardless of how much it preaches "everyone is family." Because I am a genuine human being that truly cares about people and is emotionally intelligent, I did cry when I said goodbye to my students. I know they were little shits to me this year, but deep down I know they are just children and it's their parents faults as to why they can be such entitled, loud, rude little people. I do hope they have a nice summer and a great new school year next year. I do know that I will love having any of them visit me. 

I haven't thought about my job too much this summer. I haven't done any planning. Nothing. And I don't feel guilty for once in my life. I am taking advantage of this time to just relax as much as possible because the rat race will begin in a little over three weeks. 

I am changing grade levels next year and that is fine with me. I actually really love 2nd grade. They are still little and vulnerable to wanting to please. Most of the time anyway. The teachers on my time seem like they will be nice to work with. One particular teacher I really adore, Ms. Smiley, is someone I am really looking forward to working with again. She is a teacher that doesn't get recognized enough for her hard work, sweet demeanor and positive energy. I think this happens because she is not the stereotypical cookie cutter cut out person that my administration recognizes. I really feel they judge people based on their brown nosing abilities. Ms. Smiley isn't fake. She is genuine, like me.

Like Ms. Smiley, I feel my school looks at me this way. I had a confrontation with a teacher at the end of the year. I was super stressed out because of report cards, cleaning out my room, organizing my materials, taking care of my son, looking after my house, trying to stay healthy with my newly diagnosed autoimmune disease and still grieving my sister. I know most people's response to my long list of woes would be "well everyone is busy or everyone is stressed out." I hate that comment. It's like you don't matter. We're all stressed out, no one is an individual and shouldn't be seen like one. Because I felt like I would have a nervous breakdown at any minute, I wanted to get a head start on getting my room ready to move to the new classroom. I came in over the weekend with my wonderful husband who always supports me with this insane job. He wanted to help me organize my materials and as I was looking at my new classroom, I was very distraught as to how it wasn't organized and the teacher didn't do a whole lot. I did have a brief conversation with this teacher asking her if she was going to move her things, but she said she only had a few things and most of the materials were from the retired teacher she took over. I explained this to my husband and then left to get my classroom more organized to possibly move a few things. As I was doing this recurring stressful task, like every end of the school year, my sweet husband proceeds to move everything out of her room into the hall. Yikes! At first I was worried, but then I thought it would help her out since she was moving out anyway. 

I guess this assumption was bad on my part. Sometimes when I'm really stressed out, I don't think clearly. Perhaps I am being selfish because I want to get things done. Is that really selfish though? After my husband cleared out her room he came back to help me and later the teacher's mommy popped her head in chewing me out for moving her daughter's things out of her room. She told me "that was not cool and no teacher would ever do that to another teacher." Basically implying that I was a selfish asshole without hearing the explanation. I realize she went into her momma bear mode, but she spoke to me in a very disrespectful way. I am always shocked when people talk to me this way and I really hate confrontation. I did try to proceed to tell her I didn't know her daughter was a first year teacher. I'm not a mind reader. Her response as well as her daughter was I should've asked. All the responsibility was placed on me. No accountability on the mom and her daughter. I was the wrong one. I even apologized and offered to help move her things, but she responded with a "no. I don't want to talk about it anymore." Really mature. 

Now, I wonder if this would've happened if I was the popular, white, blond teacher that everyone goes "ga ga" over. Probably not. People are so biased and rude. I realize this is a silly thing to be upset over, but I am very sensitive and I don't intentionally hurt people. And for that mom and her baby adult assume that about me is very disrespectful. I hate assumptions.

So, I didn't really end my year very well. But, I will continue to hold my head high and I know what kind of person I am. If people don't care, then I shouldn't give a shit too. My goal is to work on a more bad ass personality where I don't take shit from anyone anymore. I don't deserve to be treated in a disrespectful way. I've worked so hard to get where I am. It's really ridiculous how silly the moving classroom scenario is not that deep. But I also think it's because I struggle with I don't like people not liking me. I think that has to go back to pleasing my very abusive mother. I have to understand not everyone will like me, just as I don't like a lot of people. I am going to treat this work environment as just the job and really try and focus to not be so emotional and more matter of fact. I can't let people hurt me anymore. I deserve better.