Teaching while on the Spectrum might look like mainlining cocaine or speed
Yet it’s really anxiety-soaked adrenaline pushing daily seven-hour manic states
Come home, crash, weekend cries until the shakes stop but sleep never comes
A decade of internal doubt, of constant failure, fear of being seen as a liability
The job is important. Science must be taught with conviction rivaling zealotry
While a world shuts down borders and free thought, reason and medicine
Threadbare hope, grains of success not measurable during observations
Motivate with all the optimism and joy in the tank, leaving nothing for thyself
11.22.19
I just wanted to make sure the parent I was emailing was the right contact
The kid gets in trouble because he literally will not shut up about some
Party over the weekend that apparently other preteens got drunk at
Separate problem all-together, but now he’s been asked five times
Focus on your work, stop talking, get to work, stop talking, turn around
So I move him and email his parent, but the last names don’t match up
Our database is slow and there’s eighty important things to get done
So I ask to make sure I’m getting the right person. Somehow that becomes
I asked who his real mother is, and he texts his mom and goes to an AP
I’m just trying to hold a kid accountable for being disruptive and so he twists it
So the mom will turn against me and get upset and not punish him
When she should be upset he’s failing multiple classes, cheating, sneaking in to
Girls houses and generally throwing away his chance at an education
This is why I’m going to quit teaching, this right here, what should be simple
Becomes an ordeal because kids lie, parents deny, and there’s no listening
To a man begging you to understand that shortcuts get you nowhere in the end.