Welcome to Season 4, episode 9 of Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers.

I'm your host Angela Watson, and I'm here to speak life, encouragement, and truth

into the minds and hearts of educators, and get you energized for the week ahead.

Today I'm going to share some thoughts on how to fight disillusionment in teaching

when the school year is just not going how you plan.

Visit truth for teachers.com to get the transcript,

links to recommended resources,

and to share your thoughts on the show.

The first roadblock of discouragement tends to hit a little

sooner than most teachers are expecting. When you're new to the profession, you assume

that disillusionment is something that you won't have to deal with until you've been in the classroom for years.

So when you realize on day three of your career that the reality of teaching isn't going to even remotely align with what your expectations were.

You might experience this moment of panic where you're suddenly questioning all of your life choices.

But it's not just new teachers that this happens to.

When you've been in the profession for a while, you realize that some disillusionment is a normal

part of teaching, but you convince yourself that this year will be different.

This year, you're more prepared. This year you're

more experienced. You're going to be ready for whatever comes your way and so it

still manages to surprise you somehow when it only takes a week or two of school before that great plan that you had for the year starts to fall apart.

And all your prior confidence just feels like you were being really naive and all your preparations

feel kind of pointless like you'd been planning lessons and procedures for this

fantasy world that just doesn't match up with what you're actually teaching him.

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