The Devil - When the Classroom Becomes a Prison

We have now reached the Devil card on our journey. This card is the complete opposite of Temperance. While Temperance is all about balance, harmony and patience, the Devil is all about oppression, addiction, obsessions, and fears. I feel this card is a great representation of the dark side of teaching. If we don't face our shadows, it can and will lead to burn out.

It is usually around this time of the year that I begin questioning whether or not I should stay in teaching. If I am perfectly honest, even after nine years I still don't feel I am cut out for this. It was my childhood dream to become a teacher because I loved being a student. But things look and feel a lot different behind the other side of the desk. When I went to college and did my student teaching, I felt somewhere deep inside that this job was not for me. But I loved reading and writing, so I hoped that would be enough. After all, with student loans looming over me and not wanting to face parental disappointment since they had also shelled out a lot of money to help me go to school, what other option did I have than to stick with the course I had mapped out for myself?

Although I have learned to make peace with my decision to stick with teaching, it hasn't been an easy one. It is one that I continue to question again and again, year after year. But as I approach my tenth year of teaching, I am starting to realize that my problem isn't with teaching. My problem is the emotional crap that this job stirs up for me.

The Devil card represents a situation in which a person feels stuck or imprisoned. Teaching brings up a lot of feelings of oppression and bondage for me. My core desire feeling is freedom. I am a true free spirit who doesn't like to feel tied down to anyone or anything. I have only discovered this recently about myself through shadow work and working with Danielle LaPorte's brilliant workbook called The Desire Map. Being a teacher makes me feel the opposite of free. Let's face it - there's hours of grading and planning, there's boring after school meetings, there's following up with emails from parents and students - it's a lot of freaking work! And I am not a lazy person by any means. On the contrary, I am quite ambitious, hard working and competitive. But at my core being, I want to feel free.

I also feel oppressed when I feel my time and energy are being disrespected. It really angers me when students talk while I am talking or when I catch them texting, sleeping, or trying to do another teacher's homework in my class. I hate when they roll their eyes, suck their teeth, and swear under their breath about what a bitch I am. I hate when I put a lot of time into my instruction, provide models, go over rubrics - only to find that my students have not paid attention, not taken notes, left my rubric on the floor and then turn in a low quality piece of work and are absolutely indignant when they receive a low score. I hate when parents email me to complain about their child's grades and imply that I am either too unreasonable, too difficult, or too incompetent and that their little cherub deserves an A just for turning in something, even if it is a piece of garbage that was scribbled five minutes before it was due!

But if I am going to survive this profession and stay with it until retirement, then I have to face my shadows. It it imperative that I stop taking things personally, that I stop obsessing over every infraction, that I get over feeling like a failure. I need to apply what I learn through yoga and meditation to become a more Zen teacher.

The Devil card is a reminder that we are not truly trapped by anyone or anything other than our own perceptions about a situation. The fact that the naked figures in the card are not truly chained and are free to go at any time suggests that we too can be free, but only if we are willing to face our fears and our shadows.

What bad habits, negative thought patterns, or fears are holding you back from being the teacher you want to be? This week's spread will help us identify these issues and look for ways to overcome them.

All my best,

Amy