I started out really really wanting to teach. I wanted to use my creativity, humor, and compassion to make a positive change in my students' lives. I also love my subject, mathematics, and knew that there aren't a lot of role models for kids showing them that women and minorities really can be successful in math and thoroughly enjoy math. I know as a role model that I have had a positive effect on many of my students. However, it has taken so much energy and time to learn how to be anywhere close to effective as a math teacher and still parents and students constantly look down on teachers and treat them in degrading ways. Moreover, I have learned after all this time that the way to be a more successful teacher is to be all about organization (a lot of secretarial work is involved really) and relatively serious presentations, rather than being more laid back which is my style of presentation (I like whole group discussions generally but this doesn't always work well with middle school groups who hate math and want to give you a hard and harder time). I am feeling less and less that creativity has much of anything to do with it really. Certainly not the kind of creativity that I excel at and I think I want to return to one of the design fields that I was initially interested in right after college. I am very disappointed that teaching was not what I thought however and very disappointed with the rigidity of the school system and of a negative school culture that teaches kids that school is a looming behemoth, a gray prison that you should use all your energy to resist passively and aggressively. Another reason I am leaving is that my colleagues recently argued that it was necessary to serve kids soda with pizza and that we should charge kids to come to an in-school holiday party.

Illogic sometimes seems to just creep in and rules where angels fear to tread.