Something else?

 Good morning all,

I'm having really mixed feelings about continuing in education.  I love my students, even/especially those that are difficult sometimes.  Humans, all of them, are difficult sometimes.  But the overhead that comes with teaching , especially pandemic teaching, is sometimes too much to bear.  It caused me to sleep away my Friday night, much of my Saturday, and be up worrying again at 2:30 this morning.  

Maybe I'm just bad at this job.  Maybe pandemic teaching is too much.  Maybe I'm not putting enough effort in, but I can't put more in without reducing my self care to dangerous levels.  As is, I come home emotionally and physically tired, so tired that I almost immediately nap when I arrive home.  I'm running from student to student, responding to questions in my headset as I run from physical student to physical student, answering questions on the google meet chat, the goguardian chat, emails, physical students and virtual students speaking in my headset.  I clock more steps than I ever have before in my career.  And yet my students aren't doing the assignments.  My grades are too low.  I arrive at school at 6:30 am and tutor students before and after school almost every day.  Yet this isn't enough, or isn't working.  Their grades show growth in the Iready assessment, and their assessments, when students take them, show growth too.  But they don't do the Khan or Quizizz assignments that they have time to do during class, even when I monitor them on goguardian.  They don't have homework, not really - 30 minutes of Iready Mypath which they have time to complete in class.  I'm running out of ideas to engage them, and I'm feeling pressure from above, below, sideways and upside down to pass more students even with literally 0 evidence of their existence, never mind understanding of my curriculum.  Some of them never join the meet, and those that do sometimes, "log in and walk away/become unresponsive."  This was joked about by my students attending physically in class Friday - they said knowingly that those at home are probably not even near their computers anymore.  Add this to the pressure I already put myself under to make sure that all students learn, that they are safe and happy and healthy and that they enjoy my class - and it may just be too much.

I'm seriously considering other careers, and I'm worried that far too many educators feel the same after this year.  I'm a 15 year veteran and I like technology.  But hybrid isn't working for many students, because the students in the room don't get the full me, and neither do the students at home.  It's not working for me either, since I haven't the energy to do both jobs at 100%.  

This year, most of my parental feedback has been positive.  They like the way I speak to their students (my audience is their whole house/living room in many cases), and their students seem to enjoy my class too, which is not something that 7th graders would usually admit.  Why, then, do I feel like such a failure?  Why am I feeling like I'm failing, when evidence both statistical and anecdotal tells me otherwise?  

If you've read this far, I really would appreciate feedback.  Am I doing it wrong?  Should I be satisfied with the success that the students who ARE paying attention are achieving?  Should I be happy that they seem to be meeting socio-emotional learning goals?  Are you an educator who has ideas that have been more successful?  Please share them.  I read a quote recently - "be teachable, you aren't always right."  I firmly believe the motto of my old school, "we learn not for school, but for life."  I want to continue learning and improving my craft.  I want to not give up.  

I hope all of you are having a great morning so far,

~Mark