This might be a long one. Also, please keep snarky/shaming comments to yourself.

A bit of background: I am a 7th and 8th grade English teacher in an urban school district. At the end of last year, I actually resigned from my position for a number of reasons, including wanting to step back from the stress of teaching during my last few months of pregnancy. However, the new administrator of my building called and asked me to reconsider, so I decided to give it another chance because more pay and better benefits was alluring after 2 months of coffee shop work over the summer.

Flash forward to now. I’m kicking myself in the butt for EVER reconsidering this position. I have a class this year who is absolutely insane and they make a game out of trying to see how much they can upset me. They crawl on the floor, throw things, hit each other, blatantly defy my requests, and scream so loud that the few who do want to pay attention can’t. My coworkers have lectured them about how stress can hurt my baby and I’ve reset expectations, called parents, and given consequences to no avail. My principal is nice, but that’s about it — she’s not actually all that helpful and we have to jump through hoops to be allowed to send a student out of class or write them up.

Today I completely shut down in this class. They were just outrageous. I couldn’t do anything to regain control. I called my husband bawling (which happens at least once a week) saying I can’t do it. I truly feel like the immense stress isn’t worth it, but I’m afraid to quit. I can still substitute teach until I have the baby (34w1d today) and get on state insurance, so that’s more of an adjustment than a huge issue, but I’m absolutely petrified that I’d be a failure and letting people down. Just looking for some insight, I guess.