Teaching: Day 70

I predicted I'd wake up in the middle of the night. I'm not always an insomniac, it's just that I had a conversation today that overwhelmed me just enough I knew it would take several hours before I actually got angry.
I knew it was a full moon today before the moon came out. Any special ed teacher has those powers. Today I was spit on, pinched, thrown chairs at, and overall beat up, all by children under the age of 9. I know that comes with the territory of my job, so I'm not going to complain other than to say that today, for the first day this year, my children stressed me out. Oh, and this all, by about 9:45am.
As I dropped off my last little friend at the end of the day, my clothes a sticky wet from spit and my legs barely able to hold me up, my boss called me into her office. It was 3:15 and she had walked in 6 minutes earlier. That's never a good sign. After clarifying with me that it had been a rough day, she asked me if I was feeling emotionally weak. I said I supposed so since I was tired but simply that it had been a physically draining day. She asked again was I weak, seeming to want a yes answer, and was satisfied when I again answered it had been a rough day. This led her into my favorite part of today. A two-hour discussion on my flaws, professional and social.
Things I do wrong in no particular order:
-not enough work. She's just curious if maybe it's because I'm tired, but then again, she simply can't imagine why I would be tired because she hasn't really seen me doing any work. It just confuses her really, and she can't figure out why I wouldn't do work when it's my job to do work, even in my contract you know, but I simply don't. I must be tired. But she's not sure why. Do I honestly feel like I can look her in the eyes and say, yes, I've done work? Because if so, that's just cause for worry, that I would feel as though I've done work when I haven't. This job takes dedication, organization and... work--and I have not shown myself to be capable of any of these very elementary concepts.
-I never let my assistants help. I do everything myself, when really they are there to help me. I don't need to take on all the work myself, and she can't figure out if perhaps I think I'm better than everyone and that's why I won't allow the assistants to help. It's too bad that I won't allow them to help, but perhaps I have a complex where I think I'm perfect, or must be perfect, or want to be perfect, but I'm simply not, and it's beginning to be a real problem that I refuse to allow them to do any work and demand I do the work myself. I'm not the only one who has a job here, and I'm not the only one who's got skills--in fact, most other people have more skills than me, and when I reach the point where I can understand that I must learn that everyone I meet has things to teach me that I must learn, I will never succeed--and perhaps this very issue is why I'm--not.
-She's not sorry she hired me but. That was actually the end of her sentence. That was her complete sentence. I didn't forget a word, she presumably did, although I do have a few guesses as to why she did.
-She's made herself literally sick over the fact that no work has been done in my classroom. She's simply sick about it, and to continue this conversation will cause her to get physically ill to her stomach. The fact is, she's getting sick to her stomach now by simply bringing it up.
-Maybe she's given me too much work. But then she hasn't given me any, really. Maybe I don't know what's expected of me. That's understandable. She expects work to be done, and maybe I'm not used to that. It's curious, but maybe I'm simply not used to that. And that's where she comes in, to support me in every way possible, but I need to make sure I'm actually working for the children... she's just so confused by what I do with my time. And I do need to remember, the assistants are there to work with me... I really need to let them do things around the room. I'm not the only one with experience, and to act like that is simply a huge, huge, huge mistake. I need to stop doing all the work in the classroom.
-The one thing she forgot to mention in our 2 hour long chat: the six teachers in my classroom alone that quit last year, before I came along.

Note to self: Reschedule phone interview with new school that I missed due to extra long meeting with current boss.