Questions: Education & Career

In my career as a teacher I started out being what I now consider to be a complete unreasonable prick. I would assign work over the vacation as well as frown upon parent/student chosen off days. I wouldn't even give any consideration to cuts of class when the student was having personal problems (think like crying in the bathroom, family crisis, had to work, didn't have child care - yes, I've had teen parents as students, etc). I still shudder when I think that I was that awful person.

Like everything else in life I lived and I learned. I now ENCOURAGE IF NOT DEMAND students to take a day off and I tell their parents explicitly "If adults can give themselves a day off why can't kids if they're not up to it?". I realized that there is nothing going on in my classroom that is more important than the lives that they live. The entire concept of giving school work over a break is so ludicrous to me now! It's called a "break" for a fucking reason (plus HW of ANY kind has ZERO discernable statistical difference in grades, retention, class satisfaction, etc).

My entire name is muslim/arabic name. I'm not from anywhere else neither were my parents or theirs, fully American. But my parents became muslim and gave me this name at birth.

I'm not muslim myself. But I only keep the name because I don't feel like going through the hassle of changing my name on all of my legal documents, bank accounts, and online accounts already with it.

I've applied to so many jobs in the past and in recent months that I have skills for and demonstrated it and I've applied to lesser jobs, but none seems to call me back or even reach out.

So I'm just wondering and trying to find the best approach.

It might shock you which famous person quoted this.

But I personally believe it’s very true. It’s always a lot easier to get up in the morning when I know I have something I look forward to doing.