I appreciate Lindysalsagal. I've been doing this type of job for over 20 years and I love teaching. I choose to work with this population and I see, year after year, great progression in my students. I 100% know that reaching these kids, teaching them how to be students, is essential to their well-being. When I was a kid, a lot of my students would have been shuffled into mental facilities and drugged heavily. Nobody taught them how to fit in, instead they were removed from society. My brother was on that path and spent a chunk of his life in a psychiatric hospital followed by juvenile detention.
I am willing ot take some to take some hits and bruises to change the course of a kid's life for the better.
But it isn't always easy, and the system is stumbling. The local ice cream shop pays their counter help more than the district pays our paraprofessionals. The district has teachers on conditional licenses all over because of the teaching shortage. That is only going ot get worse as they burn out. As they burn out, teachers like me get their students, causing our rooms to become unbalanced.
I'm sticking with my profession, it is the only job I've ever had that I love like this. But, I see we need to fix the system and I have long realized that fixing a system from the inside a necessity.
= new reply since forum marked as read