Under-appreciated Teacher
I had a bunch of jerk-face bosses who were looking all school year for reasons to fire me. It got to the point where I was turning in three times the number of lesson plans despite already having less freedom to do my job than any other teacher at that school. It was all personal too. Very unprofessional stuff like “my son is in this guy’s class and he does it this way, so you should do it that way also”. Meanwhile, I’d walk by that same teacher’s class and he’d be showing the Peanuts Christmas Special.
They said my lesson plans weren’t detailed enough, so I asked for their best lesson plan from any other teacher to compare, and mine were clearly more detailed, a fact that shocked even me. They spent so much time telling me I was a bad teacher that I actually began to believe it. Now, this school had a free year’s license to Rosetta Stone, so I switched my language to Korean and learned Hangul. Almost weekly, there would be someone who would say, “Korean!? Who the hell knows Korean!? What would you ever do with that”?
At the end of the year, they told me not to come back, but all I could do was smile. I said, “Thank you, but I just got a job in Korea”. They had the dean in there to make sure I didn’t make a scene, and I think even he was surprised that I was almost laughing as I walked out of the office and shook hands with everyone with a big sly grin on my face. Right now, I am sitting here at my desk in Korea, the only native English teacher at my school, and they love me. To tell you the truth, I might have stayed at that job another five or 10 years. Getting asked to not come back was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Story credit: Reddit / BiblicalMC