Emotional Vomit and My First Year of Teaching.
I found the picture for this blog at the Edvard Munch website . He was this amazing expressionist painter, and this is one of my all-time favorite paintings. I think it expresses so many things. Teachers almost always shudder when they tell you about their first year. It's usually overwhelming, depressing, frustrating, and downright frightening. It does get better by year two or sometimes even three, but in the middle of year one...it's all we can do not to run away screaming. I wrote a lot of poetry that first year teaching, but I can't claim that it's any good. It's angry, and it's what I like to think of as "emotional vomit." You know, where you write whatever feeling or thought flows through your head without any pre-planning or editing. You just vomit up your feelings onto the page. I actually really like teaching now that I'm finishing my fourth year...but that first year... If it hadn't been for the gigantic amount of student loans I had...