Dissociated Thoughts

Courage and Grace

Day 3212: August 30, 2021
Prompt: "Courage is grace under pressure." Ernest Hemingway
Write about grace under pressure.

         As a former teacher of middle school and high school science, I was able to experience first-hand what it means to have grace under pressure - and discover where I am lacking in that particular aspect.
         I believe most teachers will experience a good deal of pressure during their tenure and as such will learn whether or not they have what it takes to show "Grace Under Pressure". Teachers have to plan their classes, usually weeks in advance. They are expected, however, to be flexible in their plans enough to be able to spend more time on areas where their students are not grasping the topic. Easy enough, right? Well, add in poor behavior from students, parents who think their children do no wrong, limited resources, being forced to teach to tests and restricted from teaching certain topics within their discipline, and excessive scrutiny from administration (especially toward the end of the school year, testing time). Not to mention, if you are teaching for a school that holds a certain sport or sports in high regard, you are pressured by administration, coworkers, and parents to "give" athletes grades that they did not earn for themselves just so they can continue to participate in sports - thereby creating an unfair atmosphere for the non-athletic students in your class and those who work hard to make passing grades. Standing by your morals can sometimes cost you your job - or in many cases, lead to a breakdown of health and/or mind. There's that pressure, where's the grace?
         How do you live up to all of those demands on top of the ones you put upon yourself daily? Like I said, it can lead to breakdowns or poor health. In my case, in the end, I had to remove myself from the public school platform. I apparently did not have enough grace under the load of pressure working in a public school had placed upon me. And I am not a fan of being told to give someone something they did not earn. I cannot abide dishonesty. I found that my love of teaching could not keep me away from teaching, however, and started teaching at a private school instead of a public one. While there are definitely fewer pressures placed upon a teacher's shoulders at a private school, there are still pressures (this is life, after all). But learning from my mistakes and holding to my morals, I did well in the private education sector, until my health showed just how bad it had really gotten due to the stresses of my job.
         Nowadays, people say I show grace in how I deal with my illnesses, that I must be courageous and strong to live with all the pain and all of the illnesses in general. But I don't see myself as strong or courageous. I do it because I have to. Because if I don't, I wouldn't really be living - I'd just be a shell of a person wasting the oxygen of those who are really living their lives.

         But in the end, maybe that's actually what courage/grace under pressure is all about; doing what we have to do because we have to do it in order to live our lives within our own standards, to continue to be ourselves. And you know what, while the pain doesn't go away, it becomes easier to tolerate eventually. So do the other obstacles we have to face in life.

LeJenD'Poet - Just ME