Since 22nd March I have been staying at home. No salary, but I don’t have to focus on my cell notifications.

During the year I have read a lot of posts about how young teachers are depressed.

I am still challenging myself. I left my job, not for stress but for a new plan.

I have been working as an ESL teacher for nearly two years. I read different students’ books and teachers’ books in the first year. Besides, I kept following how other teachers do not my colleagues but teachers around the world.

I am not alone. And I tried my best not too busy. I didn’t get a good salary, but I didn’t need to buy much.

I concentrated on the connection between teaching English as a first language and a second language. While English is not mother language for me, during the epidemic I read a lot about how teachers have remote courses and collected many teaching resources.

So, there was a systematic structure of English teaching but I cannot do it at that time. I can do it as long as I go to a better team. That is, I need to join a team that has more professional teachers and I’ll have met students who really need this teaching style.

Therefore, I left my job and started this blog. I registered for my Japanese N1 test. So I post more about how I practice these days.

A few days ago, I got Japanese reading and writing materials for native students, and I know how to use them. I won’t copy texts from others, but I am going to re-organize them and write down how to use them.

At last I noticed this. It is a reply for a first-year teacher who wanna quit:

“The first year is the hardest and this year has been hard on every teacher no matter how long they’ve taught. Now, if working with children and being in the classroom is not for you- you can’t really change that. However, teaching can often lead to other things. You might find yourself interested in designing curriculum, writing about education (publications pay for your opinion pieces or advice pieces. This is what I do!), administration, teaching higher ed, or teaching support (no kids in the classroom). Also, I have had a very rough first year. I have a background in preschool education (15 years running my own successful preschool although this is technically my first year in public school education). I student taught in first and I felt like it was a natural grade/age for me. Then, I got this job as a third grade teacher and by January there was some kind of hormonal change in the children that made them harder (in my opinion). I’ve also struggled socially because I have never worked with a team before and I was surprised at how the dynamics of different personalities can make things harder. I’m socially awkward and currently going through a diagnosis for autism. It took this job to really point out how different I am and how difficult it is for me to understand humans and their behavior. I think this contributed to my difficult year. I am moving schools and I think this will make the difference for me. Sometimes it is where you’re working. If the environment is bad or there is a new admin team and the teachers are all adjusting to that, it can make things much harder on the new teachers.”—-by Crystal Gammon