A Year in Review

I'm officially on winter break, and I'm oh-so relieved! The weeks leading up to this break often seem the longest, and I could equate the feeling with walking through Jell-O after several alcoholic beverages.

Sunday morning I flew to my hometown in the Midwest, and my mind is all over the place. The time difference and the jet lag are perhaps to blame, but more than that I'm reflecting on this year--what it was and what it wasn't.

This past year was about surviving. Let me rephrase: All of last school year was about surviving. I dodged two rounds of layoffs.

This past year was about fighting back. A year and three days ago, my car was damaged by an angry student. That was the last straw for me, and the moment I became my own advocate. In a way, this is an illustration of skewed values. I will allow my soul to be damaged, but not my car, yet this fight to repair my car allowed me to reclaim some of myself. It took hundreds of emails and nine months, but this is a victory--maybe the only victory--I won.   

This past year was about moments of thriving. Becoming an AP teacher allowed me to feel glimmers of my true teacher self--glimmers of meaningful, profound interactions. I've watched a small group of students push themselves and emerge as true intellectuals.

This year--or at least the last half of this year--was not about community. After my pre-merger school disbanded, the community I had with my fellow teachers dissolved with my former school. I've felt isolated this year, even in my own classroom.

This year was not about teaching. So much of my time is spent disciplining and redirecting, that the amount I really spend teaching is at such a minimal. This is true even in my AP class. I hate this feeling because it renders me purposeless. If I'm not teaching, why am I there?  

This year was not about excelling. Between the discipline issues and the general insanity of our school (no internet for three weeks, no paper, no books, etc.), an okay, mundane, status quo day is good enough. While complacency will save me mental and emotional energy, this is not enough.


Yesterday I went to the grocery store to get a few items, and I was thrown by what I saw. A man came through the aisle I was in with a broom and dust pan. As he walked past me, he spotted one coffee bean. One. Rather than leave it, he swept it up. That's pride. That's respect. For him and for his job. I want to feel that, and I want the kids to feel that. But how? 

A Lonely Year

Time is getting away from me this year--more so than even last year, I think. AP has me on my toes at all times and chained to a desk with a grading pen. On the other hand, my American Lit classes have me contemplating if I know anything about teaching at all. Each day I stare at the blank, quiet faces and the contrasting peanut gallery, who apparently have never head the phrase "Shut up." I'm teaching my tail off in AP and chasing my tail in American Lit.

On top of juggling two academic worlds, this year is a lonely year for me. Whereas last year I'd decompress with my colleagues in our make-shift faculty lounge, or laugh it off with my work wife, I'm very much in my own world. It's me and the kids, and that's it. My school this year has a very different culture than my school last year. We were so broke in so many ways. I don't have to repeat the whole saga--you know the story. I think the conditions in which we lived each day is perhaps what helped grow the culture our school developed. We had nothing but each other. At times literally shoved into places way too cramped--and that's how we formed this closeness with each other and our kids. While so many things were so wrong last year, our culture was one thing that was really right.

The merger butchered that. I see it on the faces of the kids from my former school. They feel it too. It's a longing for this unidentified void to be filled. Because it's a feeling I've not really felt before, I'm not sure what to make of it or how to help my kids make sense of it. I suppose that's why I hold some of them close . . . more hugs this year, more talks, more wanting to be around them rather than being forced.

There's more to say on all this, but I'll leave it here for now.

How Can We Sleep?

I made an allusion this past school year to being trapped in a burning building. Ironically, or maybe not, I was in the car the other day when I heard one of my favorite songs from the 80s by Midnight Oil--"Beds Are Burning." I turned it up, because for me, the louder the better. As I listened to the lyrics, I thought about our situation, and the words resonated on so many levels. I became angrier an angrier as I listened, and so many questions crossed my mind: How can they sleep at night knowing what they've done? How are we supposed to move on as if nothing has happened? Why are they discarding or displacing us rather than begging us to stay? Why are they pigeonholing the students and teachers rather than empowering them? 

I could almost see it in my mind--teachers and students taking over the central office and shouting one verse, and the powers that be coming to their senses and begging forgiveness in another verse.

The Teachers, The Students:

How can we dance when our earth is turning
How do we sleep while our beds are burning
How can we dance when our earth is turning
How do we sleep while our beds are burning

The Powers That Be:

The time has come
To say fair's fair
To pay the rent, now
To pay our share
The time has come
A fact's a fact
It belongs to them
We're gonna give it back

I met a young woman just a few days ago who has been laid off three times in her five years of teaching. When she is rehired, she's at a new school teaching a different grade level. That doesn't scare her. What does scare her is being #414 on the list to get rehired at her district. Meanwhile, the students she was supposed to teach get a long-term sub rather than her, #414. It's outrageous, yet her situation, my situation are acceptable in this country.

Pubic education in the United States has lost all morality. It's in a burning bed, and the government wants to impose laws that dictate how to put out the fire; the public wants to pinpoint blame on who set the fire; districts lay off half the teachers and hand the remaining ones a garden hose to fight the fire; and meanwhile, the media asks, "Why aren't the students leaning?"

It's time to wake up, America, and demand better for your children, the next generation of leaders. Unless you do, the powers that be will never chant that verse and the children's future will be consumed.

Work Wife

There are so many heartbreaking aspects of this merger, but today I want talk about one in particular: my work wife. She was the Spanish teacher at my school, and an amazing one at that.

We became friends instantaneously--probably the moment I saw a Starbucks cup in her hand. She was a returning teacher this past year, so she had years of the crazy under her belt. Right away she gave me the scoop on all I needed to know. The first few weeks I followed her lead: if she was panicked, I was panicked, and if she wasn't, I tried not to be panicked.

As I mentioned in previous posts, we did not have a faculty lounge or an unoccupied place to go after school. All our classrooms were filled with students and teachers working on the next play or rehearsing the next choir or band performance--except for my friend's classroom. At the end of the day, we all piled into her room, and while it took me awhile to get used to being around people all the time and never having a moment of silence, I realize now that is how we all became so close. We were literally shoved together, first physically, then emotionally.

Those moments after school became what I looked forward to. We had our routine. She sat at her desk, I sat at a table or a student desk next to her, and we both tutored our students. Because we shared many students, we tag-teamed if our kids ever gave us trouble. That only deepened our bond. After the kids and other teachers wandered away for the evening, we stayed, just for a bit. We talked about our day, venting about a stressful situation or relishing in a light bulb moment. At times we shared our worries, complained about the instability of our school, but we laughed too. And we always ended the day by walking out to our cars together and giving each other a hug.

As the year wore on, our friendship grew stronger. We had "grading dates," taking our work to Starbucks. If a student wrote a really amazing essay or created a fantastic project in Spanish, we shared with each other. We talked about our mutual students, and if a student earned praise or reprimanding, that student received double. It felt natural, like this was the way it always was and always would be.

My partner called her my work wife. The students even started to see us as a pair. Some of them started to refer to us as "the homies," asking us, "Are you eating lunch with your homie today?" or "Why is your homie on my case about my English grade?" A few of my "homie's" students who called her "Mom" started to call me "Auntie." As funny as this was, I felt that sisterhood with her. On the days where I could not find any reason to get out of bed and go to school, I remembered my friend. She gave me confidence and stability in a place that was barren of both.

The news of last week, the loss of my work wife, has me reeling. I'm devastated for our students who called her "Mom," for our students who she's inspired. Her unrelenting push for excellence brought out the best in our kids. I think we all taught to a higher level because of her. She reminded us never to wane in our position, no matter how much the kids complained. I'm devastated for her, because she lost her job. After five years of service and "teacher of the year," shouldn't our charter organization beg her to stay? And selfishly, I'm devastated for me. If anything, this situation has strengthened our friendship, but I don't want to know what it's like to not work aside my friend. She was the calm and the strength in the storm. She was the hope and the light in the darkness, and the powers that be have extinguished that from the students and the teachers who remain.

Utter Despair

Merger. That's a word I will never forget. That's the word that changed my life. That's the word that started the conversation on Tuesday.

Due to low enrollment, my high school, along with another high school in my charter, are to be merged. We knew layoffs were inevitable, but we didn't know the extent until yesterday.

If you've been following my blog, my school was insanity last year. I never thought children could be educated like this in America. We went without toilet paper for three days. In one of our high schools--the high school we are merging with--the only toilets are porta potties. Pigeons lived in my ceiling and their poop ran down my wall. Our one copier went without toner for weeks. The tables and chairs where our students ate lunch were confiscated in the fall because our school did not pay the rent for them, so they ate on the floor or stood up for the rest of the year. We were given no supplies, not even a dry erase marker. Our PE teacher had no equipment and no budget to purchase any. They've paid us up to a week late and our paychecks bounced once. We even faced a 40% reduction in teachers in October, but we stayed.

We stayed because we had kids we loved, and we stayed for each other. There were only eight of us left after the fall layoffs, so our bond grew fast and tight. We were in a war, and we quickly became brothers and sisters. Only the eight of us knew and understood that view from the foxhole. I grew to love them, because some days they were my only light and hope.

Yesterday, I learned all of them were cut, and I am the only teacher who remains and who will be merging with this new school. I take no pride or joy or relief in this. Instead, it sickens me.  And it sickens me to know the reason I remained--this AP class I decided to start. I guess no one else at the new school has this training, so they took one of the few joys I had and bastardized it.

If I had the money, I would walk away from this disaster, but this is the nature of their abusive way. They are master manipulators and know how to use our weakness to their advantage. I have to take it because I need their money, and I have to stay because where else am I going to find a job now? If I try to raise my voice in grief or anger, I can join my colleagues who are out of work.

I've said it before, but this situation trumps all others--I don't recognize my profession.  When I was laid off two years ago, it saddened me beyond belief.  I felt lonely to not have a classroom and students to go to.  Now, I feel gutted.  And lost.  So lost.