i think it’s better to acknowledge. having both my kids in spec. ed. i have seen teachers not be so good at it and not admit that they are. this is not a diss but i applaud you for standing up saying that you know you are not the best.

there is always time to change fields.

I know this was a couple of months ago, so how are things going now?
I taught 4 years at 2 schools before going to teach at a school in a class that made me feel like a failure. The children had such emotional stress in their lives and came from a background that I could not understand. I was gentle with them and their feelings, but it was eating me up emotionally, and I felt that we weren’t making progress. If I had not had success before that I would have quit teaching. Instead I decided that I needed a break and that I might have to consider teaching in an environment where management was not such an extreme issue (i.e. private school). I began a masters program, then I took a job as the literacy specialist at a lovely public school. It is so unfortunate that the state of education drives good teachers out. You deserve to teach in a situation where your talents are being utilized.

I think you are just being too hard on yourself.

As the old saying goes you are making mountains out of molehills.

I think it is a real shame that your principal was not a trifle more positive when he/she spoke to you. Perhaps he/she belongs to the old school that thinks it is better to criticize than praise. With time you will learn to have more confidence in yourself, and you may have already found that everything gets easier with practise.
As my grandmother use to say “you get more results in life using sugar than salt.” Find something positive to say to each and every one of your students find one thing they are doing or trying to do and point it out with praise you only need to do this once to change a life and it will all come back to you a hundredfold.

Your not a failure you have just hit a small bump on the road of life, get over it and go forward.

All the best for the future.

I was very distressed by reading your post. I have recently found myself in a similar situation where both my head teacher and the Deputy Principal told me that I’m unsuited to classroom teaching altogether! As a new graduate, they subjected me to a performamce review earlier this year and then told me my performance was unsatisfactory. Yes of course I had some serious classroom management issues as any new teacher does and yes there were moments where the kids drove me to distraction. This made me feel
like a complete failure, and I ended up going through severe depression where I cried myself to sleep almost every night from the stress of it all.

The point of this post was to tell you that quitting teaching has been the best decision I made all year! Yes, I admit it was scary to leave a job without any clear direction to follow, but not nearly as scary as facing up to the collegues from hell as well as students I couldn’t control because my confidence hit rock bottom!

Nothing, I repeat NOTHING is worth that amount of torture. You would feel so much better about yourself for leaving teaching. Never forget teachers have so many transferable skills for other jobs!

Just take the plunge…