How I Ruined My Summer Vacation

    The nurse will call. Not if the doctor doesn't tell the nurse to call, so I let time go by on my knee replacement. This is how I WAS going to spend summer vacation, rehabbing from knee replacement. As I have said before, I really know how to party. THEN, July 31 became the earliest date, 10 days before school starts. I asked for a Thanksgiving date. I am rethinking that to fit in better with a grading period. I don't know how many corporations do this, but mine builds up sick days to a certain amount then rolls what's left every year into an annuity. Let it be said I have maximum days and a huge annuity for the length of the program. I think I missed half a day this year to go to a meeting in the building. My school is in the worst turmoil of all the new shit that is being piled on teachers and students with a chaotic administration, and for the first time in 25 or 30 years or MORE, a churning faculty. Teachers come to our school and either die or retire from it. We love it so much, I have taught the children of students, while the teachers the same age as me have taught grandchildren! Those families come back with love and we stay with love. Until now. Now our best and most experienced are looking for a way out of a miserable situation. Experience, history, connection is no longer valued.  We'll see how a churning faculty helps test scores as that is the only thing that counts now. We are NOT to help build better human beings! We are only here to teach curriculum and raise scores. These words have been said. So I am contemplating an earlier retirement and TWO surgeries in one school year! This is after being a teacher who teaches no matter what!

UH OH-- just had what I consider and exciting phone call from my principal. I am at loose ends not rehabbing and he calls with a new idea for summer school with ART for FUN and a small reading and math component-- I told him what I miss about the regular classroom is reading to my students which turned out to be something he wants! All of a sudden things just got better-- I can do skillet monsters ala Dan the Monster Man! my former 6th and 7th grade students are my targets! WOO Hoo, wonder if my eye appointment needs to be rescheduled. hmm better check.

What Tweeting Has Done to My Blog

I jumped out of bed at 5:30 with a great desire to go to my aunt's. I used to do that. Now it would be crushingly sad.

Fear and Loathing in the Afternoon

I have an unrelenting fear of retirement, and yet conditions at school are forcing me closer and closer--We have a new regime that believes our students are too poor to be accountable for their behavior and that this is the new way--no accountability, it has unleashed chaos in the classroom. I knew it was important to have support at the top, but I had no idea what it would mean to have none. I am two different people. A great teacher with good classroom management who barely needed the front office, to a failure who must send kids every day out of one class to be able to teach the rest of the class.  This is supposed to be state mandated, but I think it is misconstrued, and I think it is starting to reek of a nasty form of racism. We are actively teaching children who will some day enter a work force that they have no rules, that they are incapable of learning self-control because they are so poor.  How will this translate?  In my building the children who are thought to be incapable of controlling their behavior are brown. I think this is an insult to those students. For over 20 years I have seen children of poverty and of color succeed and achieve in high school and post high school. It is true, our poverty rate is much much higher with the loss of important employers, but I do not like the underestimation of the abilities and the drive of my students.

If I have a reader left of my pokey little blog, please do not re-post this.

The Smell of Death Wafts In

It isn't what you're thinking, it is what I think every time my quintuple bypass husband walks in the back door after a smoke break-- it wraps me in fear and anger. I am 66, he is 67. Our house is paid off, but it needs a roof, siding and windows, maybe even a couple of steel beams to hold it up... What will I do when smoking takes him as it did my parents? Yes, dear, this is what I think and feel every time I smell what has become the new smell of death to me. Not to mention it is -35 in the wind and that's a stress on the heart, too. I walk away from that smell, no point in talking about it.

sometimes when you don't publish

the timing is bad, but I am leaving it alone.

Summertime is Full of Grief This Year

One of my main goals in supporting those who have lost loved ones is to refrain from saying something stupid. Something insensitive. While giving my love and support. We've all heard them.
                                                                           God only gives you...
                                                                           God needed an angel...
                                                                           I can't think of all the stupid things I have heard, but I am sure you have a few yourself.(and no doubt I have not succeeded)   My friends and colleagues have been hit hard time after time for the past 2 years with shocking, unexpected, out of time loss. I have just returned from the visitation for a young man who disappeared 2 years ago after leaving his house without his seizure medication. His body was lost for over 2 years. And of course, even an expected death after a hard fought illness that devastates the body and mind is still so difficult for loved ones.
Many years ago my little niece, aged 4 at the time, received a terminal diagnosis. My son was 3, I had to study and learn how to deal with impending death and loss of someone like one's own, of someone like a sister to my son, of someone so small ravaged by cells that seemed so evil. I was forced to learn to deal as I had not been taught while growing up. Growing up it was "children have no business" with the business of death. I made a few regrettable decisions based on that rearing. I had to deal because I had to help my son. I read Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, I talked, I took him to therapy in advance when he woke up one morning with his hair pulled out and laying on his pillow. He was only three and felt the fear without being told. My niece lived 4 years and the last bit was horrifying. I was allowed to make her dress and the dress her little sister wore to the funeral. I have always been grateful to my sister in law for allowing me to make those dresses. I picked her up from school on the very last day she ever attended, I remember clearly the song playing as I drove down the drive to gather her up.  The mental exhaustion after that was unbelievable. Another niece was murdered at age 8 and I had to stand by my baby sister because our mother would not. I had to be the mom my mom could not be. The very next year a student had a brother murdered and I remembered saying I know how that is and talk to me any time. The awful things that happen in one's life give you empathy for the awful things that happen in the lives of others.
Today I feel like I am reeling from all this. Last year I thought we needed a grief group at school for the adults.. maybe that is not a bad idea.
I would count the major losses for my colleagues, my students, my friends, but I would miss some.

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving has changed over the years, mostly combined with loss. We used to do 2 in a day when Larry's parents were here, I could never miss my Aunt's with my cousins and often my mom. My children have warm warm memories of those Thanksgivings of long long ago. Aging parents moved away and died. My aunt died and all fell apart. One year we stayed home alone and stayed in bed with cheesecake and football and naps. It was lovely and very self indulgent in a different way than the usual over indulgence of T-day. This year my Chicago daughter is having Hanukkah at her house and it coincides with Thanksgiving. We will be going there soon, and looking forward to a great time. Her sister, my daughter with children and her family will be there. We don't usually get to see them on Thanksgiving as that is their paternal family holiday. This will be extra fun to see the boys in Leah's fun filled loft. My son and his children nearly grown, are out west and I hope they are sharing some time together. We have moved from my aunt's thanksgiving to Larry's aunt's thanksgiving. I have developed a couple of dishes I like to bring and the company, the ambiance, is great, I have watched those little cousins grow into young men and start out on their own. Another new generation was added this year, a sweet 3 week old baby. I love being in Tracy's cabin in the woods on Thanksgiving and I am grateful they include us. More fun ensues today and tomorrow, but NOT SHOPPING!