"Pressure, pushing down on me..."

All I can think of right now is that stupid song by The Police and how it totally describes how I currently feel. Tomorrow is our first day back to school from Winter Break, and I’m having a huge panic attack thinking about how it’s going to go. No matter how much I tried to prepare for it, I have a sinking feeling that I just won’t be able to anticipate just how overwhelming, draining, and discouraging it will be. Yes, I know that all teachers say that all of the students will be off the chain because their malleable minds have been on hiatus and have therefore gone to mush. This of course means that they need to be molded back into a form that knows how to follow class rules and procedures so they can actually learn something. But how do I know if I am capable of molding them? Who am I to say that I have that power? And if I don’t have that power, what’s going to happen to me in these next two weeks or so?

I want to say that I’m a fighter. I want to believe that I will be able to overcome my classes of unruly, judgmental, and hurtful kids and become a music teacher that can actually teach them. But there is a very large part of me tonight that fears I won’t have enough fight in me. I fear that the amount of strength I can muster from this tiny body will be succumbed by the dominating attitudes of my kids. Instead of molding these important minds, I’ll be brought down by their ignorant and defensive behaviors.

But maybe I am just overwhelming myself. Maybe I will get back there, get back into the swing of things, and surprise myself. Maybe I really have grown a lot more than I think I have since I first started this school year.

So maybe I should be focusing on the other song that keeps running through my head:

“You may say I’m a dreamer/But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you will join us/ And the world will be as one.”

I guess we’ll see tomorrow.