Kickin It Old School

My job is stressfull.  Perhaps not end of the world, push-the-red-button-and-we-all-die stressfull, but still it’s tough.  The other teachers that I work with are nice to my face, but pretty much everyone talks about everyone else behind their backs.  It’s uncomfortable.  It’s pretty much to the point where whenever you see two teachers talking together you’re concerned they’re talking about how much you suck at your job.  The boss even held a meeting to discuss my co-teacher’s behavior … with everyone present but that particular teacher.  That’s pretty bad.  So there’s that. 

Also I’m surrounded by dozens of 3-5 year old children all day (I even have to eat lunch with them and I get no breaks at all) who are constantly shoving papers into my face (”see what I did!”), relentlessly tapping, hitting, and pulling me to get my attention, or just screaming my name repeatedly across the room.  Plus the majority of them are generally doing something they’re not supposed to be doing, whether it’s playing with their work materials or kicking each other in the head.  So there’s that too.

There are definately times where I want to just start screaming and shoving children away from me, like when Will Ferrell gets darted in Old School.  But, like a good person, I don’t do that.  I try to take a second to remind myself that, yes, they’re really annoying and aggravating and doing stupid things.  But they’re 4 years old.  And as such, you kind of have to give them some slack.  But in these situations I end up holding in all of the stifled screams and stress.  And since I have no breaks, I don’t get a chance to release it.  I think this is making me more stressed out and easily upset.  And I don’t like that.  I don’t like not being able to fall asleep because I’m worrying about random stuff from work.  I don’t like having dreams about kids mobbing me because they want something from me. 

I want to find a way to get rid of everything that I’m carrying around, but I don’t really know what to do about it.  Generally I just carry it inside and it eats at me until I blow up at someone.  But that tends to not be the best course of action.  So does anyone have any ideas of things that I can do either during the day or when I get home to release all of this stress and tension?  I’m thinking that I may just need to invest in a punching bag for the basement so I don’t have a screaming fit in the schoolyard.