Trying Times

I've started four different entries and haven't finished any of them... sitting here right now I figure all the stuff swirling around in my head needs an outlet and so I turn to my trusty blog. The kids are having lunch with their dad and the house is quiet. I've been putting away laundry and cooking... preparing for dinner tonight. It's gonna be a good one: chicken pie, rice, green beans, baked carrots, baked apples, rolls and tea (sweet of course). I've even made dessert: homemade brownie that will be topped with ice cream and homemade fudge sauce. Why all the trouble? Well, son leaves tomorrow to go back to college. This is the start of his last year and he's really excited. Daughter also starts school tomorrow so we are having a big end of summer celebration with all their favorites. I like to cook but don't do it as often as I could I guess. I've been told I should, simply because it's something I enjoy doing but most of the time there just doesn't seem to be a point. It's usually just daughter and me - we don't need much. The other night I made homemade mac and cheese and we had a few vegetables... that was a good dinner. Maybe I will make an effort to do it more... after all I have the time.

I have the time because I don't have a job. After working for nine years at the same job I find myself out of work. I worked at a small private school my kids attend(ed). Daughter will be going back for her 8th grade year. After that all bets are off and she'll probably be attending one of the local public schools. She's sort of made that decision... she wants a change of scenery she says, after being in a class with the same people since she was 4. Her class has a dynamic to it that can often times be unfriendly. The girls are especially cruel - 12/13 year old girls caught up in the allure of $300 Coach purses, spreading rumors about other girls who don't have them. I've also been concerned about how prepared for college she'll be should she stay at this school... son and several other grads have cautioned they didn't get properly prepared for college academics. I've talked to him about it at length and he seems to feel his sister going to another school wouldn't be a bad idea. Everyone seems on board... so that's tentatively the plan.

I'd been there nine years when they came to me this spring and said they wouldn't renew my contract - they wanted to combine my job with another and hire one person to do it... someone with different qualifications. It made sense, couldn't argue with the logic, after all don't we want what's ultimately best for the kids? I sure do/did... but now I see what they've done to replace me and it wasn't what they had said they were going to do - they hired two people... the one doing my job is only working part time now. It's hard to explain all this, the work environment, the people in charge, the ineptness - without making it sound like sour grapes. The woman who made the decision not to have me back never liked me. She's an abrasive woman to begin with and I don't know many people who like her. Those who know her well don't have much respect for her either. She founded the school and now only hangs around in an advisory role. She does college counseling and all the scheduling. She's taken over the website. The headmaster is a man with limited intelligence. His wife works in the office. There are a lot of shady goings on around there... just ask anyone.

Now I say this woman never liked me and I promise I am not being overly sensitive. She would often schedule me to have two classes at once. When I would ask her about this she'd tell me I had no choice - to stop complaining. It was hard to have a class of 17 or so 2nd graders there in the library to check out books and have story time while there were also 16 or so high school students for a study hall. I don't exaggerate... that's exactly what happened. Now when people saw this, and teachers complained - you'd think they would do something about it? But no... they didn't... and while the numbers never got to be that bad again I still had years where I had classes and study halls at the same time.

One year the football coach (also the headmaster) had a lady at school do a football program. They paid her $250 to do it. It was done in Microsoft Publisher and the program had pictures of the boys, their stats, etc... each boy had to sell ads - they had a local guy do the printing and he pretty much did it at cost. It was a good fundraiser for the booster club. The next year that lady was gone and headmaster/coach asked me if I could do it and I said sure and for the next three years I produced this program. I coordinated it, did all the art work, took the pictures - all of it and because it was for the booster club and son played football I didn't accept money for the work - it was my contribution. But the founder lady - the disagreeable one - decided her brother should do all the printing - but here's the rub: he charged them full cost to do it. He was late getting them done. He was difficult to work with... but because it was her brother... the next few years they kept taking it to him. Eventually they decided not to do a program anymore... wasn't cost effective enough.

But doing this program got me noticed, and the lady who had been working with the yearbook wasn't coming back the next year - she talked to the headmaster and it was decided I would be the perfect person to take over the yearbook duties. But when scheduling came out yearbook was given to the science teacher - who had no computer experience and was also battling cancer at the time. A publications class was started that year also - the founder decided she would teach it but first I had to teach her how to use Publisher. She often had to miss teaching that class because of other commitments - and eventually gave the class to the science teacher who really didn't want it... last year they published two newspapers... I hear this year they won't even have a publications class. The frustrating thing has been I could have taken those classes and taught them well. It was discussed that I would take them... but the founder/scheduling nazi didn't want me to teach them - instead she found me to be better utilized keeping study halls. My class schedule for elementary school was designed around my study hall schedule.

My fellow teachers often came to me for help with various things... they relied on me, valued me, respected me. I worked closely with the former athletic director by handling his secretarial duties. I created kindergarten diplomas for each graduating four and five year old class. Anytime I was asked to do something I did it well and in a timely manner with a smile on my face. But that's not what those in charge wanted. There is a strange lack of community there. It's not about what you do for the school... it's about what you do for three specific people and if you serve no purpose to them, then you serve no purpose at all. I ceased to serve a purpose.

Over the years I have watched great teachers come and go - one teacher was asked to change her grades because too many members of the football team were failing (she left before the end of the first quarter)... one teacher with thirty years experience was told she was figuring her grades wrong and told to do it differently because one student (founder's son) made a B instead of and A... college professors teaching college classes were told to "dumb down" their expectations because after all they were teaching to high school students, not college students even though these high school students were talking college classes (none of these college professors have been back)... one teacher (with a doctorate degree), hired to teach world civ, was advised to offer extra credit so the kid's grades could be brought up - too many of them were struggling and making C's instead of A's (he refused to come back the next year).... one teacher with a doctorate was told to accept a paper late after she had given this student a zero on his paper because he turned it in three days late (guess who's son that was?)(oh and she refused to come back)... there are more and more examples... years worth of examples... and then you have the fact grades are changed - which is a complicated thing to explain but basically the founder/schedule nazi takes a college grade and pads it (usually three points, sometimes five) for the high school grade when kids take dual credit classes. Because she does this she ends up inflating all GPA's... no one really knows a student's true GPA.

Do I sound like sour grapes?

So tomorrow I will be taking my daughter to school... driving her to the door and leaving her. I've never done that before. Tomorrow will be a hard day and I'm dreading it - trying times....