Anyone who has read these posts since the 2nd of January can easily decipher the angst beneath. It’s been a difficult year and has driven me into the arms of a counselor (not literally!) and into flirting with the idea of changing schools for the next year. A colleague I’ve turned to many times told me the other day that she “had an epiphany about me.” ”Oh?” ”Well, I tried to think about what has make this year different and harder on you. I think it is your loss of social contact. You’re up on the third floor in the corner, you don’t have lunch breaks with the people you used to…” I’m nodding. I remembering how strange I thought the teacher was who told me that teaching is the most isolating profession. I felt it the first few years, but not last year. I had lunch with my friends on the first floor and had a good friend right next door to me. Then another classroom move. Another change.
If I had the time during that conversation, however, I would have told her she was wrong. Sure, being disconnection was part of it, the loss of a stress relieving outlet, but that right there is the crux. What is different this year is loss. I haven’t had the time to synthesize the loss and let it become a healed part of me. Right now I’m still at the phase where I am trying to identify, list and sort it out.
First there was a string of deaths leading to but not stopping with the death of one of my students. There was the loss of her, never seeing her grinning, open, and bright face again, although walking through the halls I think I see her all the time. With that came another loss I don’t know if I’ve recovered from. That strong demand that I’m making a difference in these kids lives, one of them at a time. I used to know that if we pulled together as a school community and as a staff and worked hard, never lost our patience and never gave up on these kids, one by one, in the long run, we’d make some differneces. Know I really know how it can be taken away with a few easy pulls on a trigger.
Then there was an assist. admin removed from the building and asked only to come back a week later for a meeting. Would he keep his job? He did not and was transferred to another school in the district. This was not only a loss of an ally and an administrator I respected, but a loss for our school community. He was a strong leader, he got things done. He did his job and expected others to do theirs. We thought he could make some changes, but when he tried, he blew up and said the wrong things, although they were the right things, to the wrong person, they didn’t see their errors and attempt to step up. They won the power play. We lost our sense of feeling justly treated. We were who suffered, not him. He has moved on to bigger and better and our school is caving in. We lost any sense of power to change.
The our secretary, the glue that holds us together, was out for mental/emotional reasons AND/OR put on a suspension. She as well as another one of “the good ones” was called into question. Are you doing your job? We looked at who was getting called onto the floor and couldn’t believe it! For me, it made me question our leadership, is our principal an ass or does he just not know any better? This is is first year, is he just making mistakes? Either way, he fell in my eyes but I couldn’t stop the doubt from creeping into my mind…maybe I don’t know who the real hard workers are in this school. Maybe people are not good at their jobs and yet I’ve always trusted them. That is what was lost here, trust in my staff. Would I be questioned? There seemed no logic, so maybe I’m next on the chopping block.
Then we had a brawl between a teacher and principal. Whatever the real story is we were all shaken. Could we/when will I/explode? When will I fray and do something completely unprofessional that I never thought in a million years I’d do?
Then colleague after colleague and now friend is jumping ship. The great math teacher down the hall, the librarian and all the services he helped with that no one else will step up and do, now a great art teacher. I will miss her greatly.
Possibly, all I lost was the rosy colored disillusionment. Maybe I was disillusioned I could make change, that I had any power over the people that make decisions or the decisions that were made, maybe I actually have no power over when I will explode, and with loosing piece after piece of a good staff, maybe I have no hope our school can become any better.
Lupe says:
Your child’s future was the first to go with budget cuts
if you think that hurts then wait here comes the upper cut
the school was garbage in the first place that’s on the up and up.
He is not talking, and neither am I, about the students or the staff being garbage. He’s talking about how our country either throws these schools, and these kids with it, in the garbage, or when they’re playing attention, try to throw some garbage solution, or even less effective, blame, at it so then can turn back around and not have to deal with anything.
We are talking about what happens being garbage. Our country simply does not care about educating it’s youth.
There will be a quick post and then back to restorative sleep for me!
