Confidence

What is confidence?
How come I don't have that much of it?
When I sing my tenor part with a quartet my voice wobbles and becomes unsure and I have trouble looking out into whatever audience I'm singing to.
I tend to belittle myself. Especially regarding teaching, which I know I am very good at. Other teachers have told me that, my students, over and over again, and their parents, also over and over again.
I cared for them, mothered them, loved them, was so so patient with them, tried to talk to their parents always with a solution in mind we could work towards together, never made the kids feel stupid or belittled, or slow, or like they couldn't eventually figure out whatever we were doing. I bolstered their confidence, encouraged them, showed them I cared, helped the walls of their mind open by making them feel safe in my classroom. I never yelled, worked through discipline issues with clarity and lack of emotion, decorated my classroom with tons of posters and inspirational sayings so that if the kids found me boring sometimes they could learn by reading the things on the walls. I was non judgemental in my listening to them, fair in my questioning strategies, did not pick favorites and made sure that every student felt confident in yelling in the hall that they were my favorite student. I worked so hard at learning how to talk to kids, read so much dealing with adolescent psychology and child psychology, to create that loving safe environment so that they could learn math. Math, which is such a difficult subject for kids.
Math, which moves way too fast and which we teach in America, one inch deep and a mile wide. Math, which feels like hitting your head against a wall, as you are trying to teach it.
Yet my kids and their parents loved me. Loved that I was teaching their kids, that I helped them to love a subject they may have previously hated.
Yet, here I am without a job.
Here I was last year stuck with a cruel, heartless principal, who saw none of my talents, but only faults. Who was so powerful that she could tell the district that I was no good and that I should be gotten rid of. The district allowing her to do this because it is in her jurisdiction to get rid of any untenured teachers. Here I am in a state with over 20,000 laid off teachers, trying to get a job, having my fragile confidence hurt with every unreturned call or unheeded application.
It has been a hard year, just now I am almost getting over the blow that it was to my teaching self-esteem.
I really only miss being loved by the kids. Not so much missing the actual frustrating teaching part, the whole teaching system in America, the Politics, which are so rampant here and in the education industry.
I was talking today to a teacher who is still at my previous school, and she reminded me how I was so great for the kids and how they loved me as well as their parents. I was encouraged and reminded of all the things that made me a great teacher. How come I had forgotten?