Teaching| Super honest rant. (Being in a new role, self-confidence, etc)

This is largely inspired by my amazing mentors and teacher friends who are honest as fuck when it comes to the challenges of teaching.

My teachers (both Russia and the US) will forever hold an incredibly special place in my heart and I will forever gush about them. That's just a fact. But never in life have I imagined myself in their shoes and well, I am as of November-December of 2017. It all started with the TEFL course I took in Chicago aka some of the best frickin 4 weeks of my entire life. I was new graduate at that time and knew for sure that I wanted my life to have zero to do with my degree. So in the process of figuring out what the heck to do with myself my mom mentioned to course to me and we decided to do it. (Boy am I glad I listened to her) Fast forward to now- I've been teaching English at home for several months and let me tell you, it has been quite a journey.
I've bragged about my students and what a pleasure teaching them is on a few occasions and that still holds true. In this blog, though, I wanted to talk about the other side of this new role. The one where I, not an experienced teacher in the slightest, with a degree that had pretty much zero connection to education, throw myself into this completely unfamiliar, extremely challenging path. Needless to say, every class I teach is a never-ending battle during which feelings of self-loathing, a heathy dose of constructive criticism, self-love, and self-compassion fight inside of me. Normally I would be the first to tell my loved ones to have grace for themselves and to not be so hard on themselves, but I often forget all of that when I speak to myself, especially myself as a new teacher. It has been getting better as months go by and I feel much more confident when I teach. I also feel more motivated to put in work and grow as a teacher. Most days anyways.
There is so much that being a teacher encompasses and requires of you that some days the weight of it all seems just a little much. It's like you never think that you'll actually ever get it right you know. Like when your students have the most confused look on their faces and you don't know how to help them, which in turn makes you feel helpless and utterly discouraged. Or when students don't do what you ask of them/ don't even show up to class and you blame it ALL on yourself, forgetting that certain circumstances in your& your students' life are beyond your control. Or when you, a human being, aren't in the headspace that would allow you to be 100% there while teaching and you feel like everything just goes to shit. (Guilt. So. much. guilt.) Situations like that make me question and doubt myself as a teacher big time and that's no fun.
But of course it's not all bad and heavy. There are classes after which I leave most uplifted and fulfilled. (Has been a progressively more frequent occurrence, which is nice!) There are moments when you know just what to do for your students and have just the right thing to say. There are words of thankfulness and situations when students finally get it. There are moments (many of them!) when the pride you feel is overflowing and everything is worth it.
Day by day I feel more accomplished as a teacher and get such a kick out of what I do. Today and every day I choose to hold on to those feelings and those moments. Yes, I still have more to learn about teaching than many of my students have to learn about English. Yes, for every step forwards and progress I notice in my teaching, there might be 10 steps back during some days. But I refuse to let that take away the initial love and passion for teaching that my TEFL course sparked in my heart. After all, if there is one soul in this world for whom I can be/do even a smidge of what my mentors are/do for me, my job is done.