I know I'm bad at my job because I got put on an Action Plan today.

I don't have the money to get cut by TFA, so I've got to pay attention to what they say, but I don't have even one iota of interest in being on an action plan.

I never should have let TFA convince me to be a Spanish teacher. My instructor, from the University of Michigan, was down in my class today. She accurately pointed out that I don’t speak Spanish in class.

She also accurately pointed out that I don’t speak Spanish at all.

I am a bad teacher. Realistically, I should leave the classroom. In the state of Michigan, I can’t add a History endorsement to my credential, and even if I could, realistically, I couldn’t get a job doing that in a million years.

It’s a pity because that’s the only type of teaching I’d be even marginally good at. It’s because it’s the only subject I know anything about.

In class, I speak in English almost 100 percent of the time. Speaking in Spanish was nice for me, because I like how I sound in Spanish, but it was hard to be heard over all the conversations the students were having, because they tuned me out completely. It’s because I suck at motivating them at all.

In teaching the students Spanish, I let them say “doble derecha” and “doble izquierda” which is fucking Spanglish if I’ve ever seen it.

In teaching the students, I’ve allowed them to mix up “tu” and “usted” forms. Why? I do it all the fucking time, because, as I mentioned above, I don’t speak Spanish.

I don’t know what to say to any of the things my students do or say. I don’t know how to respond to “you don’t teach us nothin.” I don’t know how to respond to students calling each other the n-word, or gay slurs. When I say “no homophobia in my class,” we spend the next fifteen minutes loudly questioning my sexuality. I don’t know how to respond to students having their phone out in class, because if I tell them to put it away they ignore me. I don’t know how to respond to students telling each other “ignore him, don’t be a punk,” or cursing, or sleeping, or eating, or drinking, or talking, fucking talking in-fucking-cessantly.

I’m bad at discipline for one reason, and one reason only. I’m not teaching something I know, and so I’m not justified in being angry at the students for not caring what I say.

What I’m doing isn’t fair to them and it’s not fair to the school district I’m defrauding of hard-earned taxpayer money.

I can’t believe I let myself get down this rabbit hole so far. I really can’t. I thought I was smart. I thought I was competent. I thought I was capable. I thought I could do something worthwhile. I was wrong.

If I was teaching history, I could use stories, or songs, or costumes, or other adventures. I could also use the fact that I know what the hell I’m talking about, and maybe not feel my daily combination of profound guilt over lack of subject knowledge, incompetence in management, and powerlessness to change anything.

Or maybe I’m just imagining that too.