Saturday

March 30: The cat woke me up at 6 something this morning. If the last person to go to bed at night, and we know that's not me, fails to put him outside, he usually decides that 4 or 5 a.m. would be a good time to eat or go out. He parks himself next to my pillow (he doesn't dare try this trick with L.) and begins to tap gently with his paw, then a little harder, and harder, slowly working his way into more painful methods which involve claws and teeth. So I got up and fed him, which seemed to be the problem, and went back to bed. Ten minutes later, he stood in the hallway wailing. At 14 years old, he has developed a strange, extended meow which sounds plaintive and crotchety. He prefers the outdoors to the litter box, for personal matters, so he was summoning me to open the garage door. Back in bed again, I couldn't get back to sleep. Drat!! It's some consolation, though, that I slept through almost the entire movie last night before going to bed.

While paying a few bills this morning, I saw that the price of the newspaper subscription has gone up $10 since last time. I love reading the paper every morning. On school days, that and my coffee gets my blood plumping, especially if there's a good letter to the editor from a teacher who spills the truth about the school system, rather than some sugar-coated press release from the BOE. But $10! No, we can afford it and it's practically a necessity for me, but for a second I felt the same sense of outrage that I feel when I see the latest price at the pump, or the sudden surge in the cost of laundry detergent. I'm trying to save for retirement!

I've puttered around most of the day, avoiding what I should be doing, which is, OF COURSE, grading papers. Grades are due next Friday. I guess everyone needs at least one day a week to relax a little bit.


Paul and I took the dog for a walk this afternoon, before it clouded up like it is now. I talk about our walks so much that I thought I'd take some photos and add some real pictures of the place instead of yahoo images.

Old ladies love flowers and fish

March 28: When my son S. worked at the famous Maine t-shirt company a few years back, he always said that the old ladies loved the t-shirts with prints of flowers and fish, while the young people wanted the outrageous, psychodelic, attention-getting ones. Yes, I've definitely joined the ranks of old ladies: Did I mention that we also have an apple tree in our back yard, lovingly planted a few years ago from one of the seeds of the "apple a day" I eat? If you picture a square around the koi pond, the lemon tree is the bottom left and the orange tree, such as it is, is bottom right. The apple tree sits at the top left. Just as I never thought a lemon tree would survive the cold of Georgia, I never thought an apple tree would survive the heat. But it did. So far, no apples, but the lemon tree had a few years of blossoms-only before those giant lemons erupted, so you never know. The first blossoms of the season are just appearing now. Every year, the pond lilies blossom, and I noticed the first one today. In a week, they'll be everywhere.



Okay, now to change the subject, just to prove that I have other interests beside fruit trees and the insanity of the school system. The following is a weird topic, but as an aficianado of linguistics, I've always been tuned in to people's speech patterns. Before I begin, please note: I am well aware that language is always changing, always has and always will. Words come in and out, pronunciations change, which is why the Middle English word "knight" has a silent k, and even meanings of words shift. I've translated enough Old English and Middle English, not to mention Latin, to have a consciousness about linguistic evolution. But that said, I have to confess that one of my pet peeves for the past few years has been that strangle-y, gargle-y monotone voice pattern used by many younger women. The curious aspect to me is that only females have it. If it was a true language change, why don't males have it too?

One characteristic of the pattern is the sudden dropping of the voice at the end of a sentence, and the gargling of the last three or four words. It sounds like a death rattle. I picture words treading water in the back of the throat and never quite making it out on the airstream.

Another is the almost screechy lengthening of the short vowel sounds: Here are some examples: "Do you like HAM? (Him)"; "I'm going out with THAM (them). "What is the matter with Hair? (Her)." "I need to get PRAD(bread)."

Another is the loss of consonants at the end of words: "Molly is my PAS FRAN (best friend)."

Another is the blurring of the consonant sounds B/P, D/T, which are the voiced and voiceless equivalents of each other on the sound continuum. It's more obvious with B and P sounds: "I'd PATTER go to PAD."

Another is the flat monotone sentence with little intonation or rhythm.

Another is words sounding as though they're being spat out, one at a time, rather than flowing smoothly out on streams of air.

If you've seen the hilarious movie White Chicks, the Wayans brothers do a side-splitting parody of this language pattern.

Yet, if we turn on a movie from the 1960's or earlier, we hear speech that is so airy and intonated with peaks and valleys that it sounds almost like a British accent. This leads me to think that the old ladies of the 1960's probably sat around in their flowered gardens talking to each other about how the younger girls, who in those days would have been me and my contemporaries, had ruined the language by speaking so sloppily.

Happy weekend---it's Chinese tonight.

My idea of an ideal day, when I win the lottery

March 27: No job is perfect, but I am burned out. This morning during first block, the first fight ever in my class erupted, though it didn't last more than 60 seconds. At 8:00 a.m., "J" had been given permission to go the Guidance Office, so he got up and started down the row. The next thing I knew, the two of them were scuffling around the room, knocking into desks, and one pushed the other against the wall. The other students jumped between them and instructed them to chill ("It's your senior year...you've come too far to blow it now.") Meanwhile, I'd hurried to the phone to call the front office to send an AP. By the time the front office had summoned the AP, the altercation was over. "J" one of the two fighters rushed out the door. A few minutes later, the new AP, the real stern and intimidating one, came ominously down the hall looking like a thundercloud. He instructed the other guy, "S" to "get your things and come with me." But "J" had jumped him, protested "S," and that may have been the case. "Then you'll get a chance to tell your side of the story," growled Mr. AP, and they proceeded to the office.

When he returned, he called five students, one at a time, into the hallway to ask them what they'd seen. One of the students said the two of them were just "playing," it was no big deal. I'm still naive about student behavior, but at least I've learned to recognize when students are just horsing around. Four years ago, when I joined the secondary system, I was culture-shocked at the students' intense need to be so physical with each other, every chance they got, whether punching, pushing, squeezing, hugging, or grabbing. Their frequent physical interactions often looked so much like fights that I wasn't sure whether to call security. A 9th grader helpfully taught me, "You can tell they're just playing because if you look closely at their mouths, they're both smiling, even though the smiles are barely there." So if I ever have any doubts, I look right at the mouths.
Today, in class, though, I couldn't see anybody's mouth because the guys were moving so fast, and the other students were surrounding them. The reaction of the other students also convinced me the boys weren't just playing. Finally, my logic tells me that two seniors who have always been civilized don't usually jump up from their chairs and start rumbling for the fun of it in the middle of class.

The other student witnesses had various versions: "J" had walked past "S" and suddenly put his hands around "S's" neck in a choking hold---just to be playful---but "S" had not realized "J" was playing and reacted with hostility, and it got out of control. Or, "S" had punched "J" playfully as he walked by, and "J" had reacted with hostility. Based on the fact that these two guys always seem friendly with each other, I'm beginning to think it was just a misunderstanding that escalated, and in a way, I feel embarrassed to have called the AP. The district has adopted a new "zero tolerance policy," enacted, or reenacted, after some huge fight last month at Johnson or Beach, I don't remember which, where the principal was knocked over and a student was thrown into the glass trophy case, shattering it. The supt. held a press conference announcing zero tolerance: henceforth, students who fought would be expelled and would no longer be able to attend school in this county. No, they wouldn't even be sent to the district's boot camp school; they were outa there! Luckily, the school system is notoriously inconsistent with its intractable, ironclad policies.

At the end of first block, the door opened, and in came "J" looking pleased with himself. "What'd ya get?" the other students asked eagerly. They love nothing better than the drama of student punishments. "Three days out of school suspension," he said happily. Either he was happy that he hadn't been expelled permanently or he was happy that he now had a three day vacation from school. The other guy, "S" got two days. The AP told me later that when they both got to his office, they both claimed they were just playing. The AP didn't believe them. He told me, "They both just made that up because they were afraid of being expelled."

Speaking of ironclad school policies, last November I was summoned to a School Board hearing by a defense lawyer as a character witness for a student who had been expelled. His crime? During a school lockdown, the drug-sniffing dogs had found a "weapon" under the seat of his truck in the parking lot, some brass knuckles, according to the rumors. Until that day, he had seemed like a quiet, well-behaved young man who got his work done. I'd had no idea that on the day of the lockdown, the police arrived at another of his classes and arrested him on the spot, I assume per order of the administration. All I knew was that his mother arrived that afternoon asking me for some work to take home to him, adding darkly, "He's going to be out for a long time." I didn't ask why. Later, I was called to court. I testified for him, as did two other teachers, and apparently, the defense lawyer won the case. A month later, "M" re-appeared in class carrying the proper paperwork, having been re-instated. Over the months, he has shared with me how devastating the whole ordeal has been for him, and how deeply it has affected his life. He's a senior, but the time he missed during the expulsion has greatly impacted his coursework. He returned to school with two months of missed coursework to catch up with and has felt overwhelmed and depressed ever since. He received a couple hundred hours of community service as part of his punishment, and has had to work long hours on the weekends fulfill that obligation. I know it's true and not a sympathy plea because his father came in for a conference and told me all this.

A few days ago, the newspaper carried a front page story about a boy at Johnson High who had been expelled in a similar situation, although the "weapon" in his car, borrowed from his cousin that day, was a butter knife under the front seat. With the lockdown following closely after the supt's of zero-tolerance, they had to treat him like every other thug with weapons at the school. Fortunately, his mother is a barracuda who has taken up his cause with the Board of Education, as well as the media. Her son, a senior, had never caused any trouble in school before, was making okay grades, and did not deserve expulsion at this stage. I imagine that they'll quietly make it all go away, in a closed session downtown. If the parents yell loud enough, things tend to happen. The teachers' pleas fall on deaf ears.

Another new policy is the "Tardy sweeps" on late students, with automatic suspension the next day. As soon as the bell rings, teachers are required to lock their doors and not admit any late students. Meanwhile, the administrators do sweeps of the school, catch the students who did not get into class on time, place them in ISS for the rest of the day, and then on suspension the next day. For the first few days. this worked well. The administrators were swarming all over the place, sweeping late students. Then, as with any policy, the initial passion lifted. Fewer administrators walked the halls between classes. Students seemed to have evaded the dragnets, maybe by ducking into the janitor's closets, and then coming to the classroom door, begging.

One reason I'm thinking my season of teaching has passed, at least here, is that I can't seem to get into the angry and punitive mindset that many of the teachers hold. I'm aware that "children need discipline and structure", but. . . for example, take the uniform rule. As I've said before, I have a hard time seeing the students' uniform violations. Maybe the real problem is that I have a hard time seeing why any of this might be important. I understand the reasons for not permitting baggy pants around the knees with underwear showing; that's a matter of vulgarity. But doggone it, I'm having trouble working up a passion about the color of a person's shell or socks, as the other teachers do, or about whether their sweat jacket is zipped up or open when they are inside.

I also have trouble getting worked up into a tizzy about students bringing food into the classroom. I technically don't allow it, but just can't see it as a matter to freak out about if, during first block, a student comes in with a cup of coffee or, as a student did this morning, a cup of yogurt. I can't get into the mindset that I should be horrified and make them throw it away immediately, as the AP did this morning when he came to deal with the fight. He ordered a girl to pick up the yogurt and throw it into the wastebasket immediately; "YOU SHOULDN'T BE EATING IN HERE!" It's not as though my classroom is Buckingham Palace! It has a wall length air conditioner from 1957 that spews dust, either it comes from there or it blows in from the hallway, I don't know, but the room is dusty and at the end of the day, the floor has dirt from the shoes of 100 students tramping in and out, scraps of paper, rubber bands,and other paraphernalia.

Well, maybe if I practice harder, I can learn to be upset by the small things. Today, at 4:00, long after the students had left, I had walked into the teacher's mailroom, which is always kept locked, and was about to close the door, when a lone student, waving a dollar bill, asked if he could buy a snack from the snack machine. They've removed all the snack machines from around the school, except this one. I let him step in and buy a snack. Another teacher walked in and icily made it clear that this was a horrible violation of the rules, letting a student into the mailroom and letting him buy something from the snack machine. The snack machine is right next to the door, so he wasn't wandering anywhere near the teacher mailboxes on the other side of the room. I figured since it was long after school and the building was all but deserted, what would be the harm? But the proper response would have been to be outraged that the student had made such a request, and sent him on his way.

My problem is that there are many things that I'm "supposed" to be angry about that I don't feel angry about when students do them.

At the beginning of this writing, I planned to talk about my ideal day, not my school day. As you can see, the two are growing more and more at odds. But if I ever won the lottery, my ideal day would be something like this:

7:00 a.m., wake up. No more 5:20 alarm.
L and I read the newspaper, drink coffee in bed.
L. leaves for work (he does NOT want to be at home yet)
Go outside, feed the fish, inspect the plants, sit at the patio table and read (the cleaning person picks up, does laundry, vaccuums; the errand person drives around and picks up groceries, gets the car oil changed, takes the cat to the vets for shots).
Go the computer and write for a few hours.
Lunch by the koi pond with a good book
Afternoon: Lots of choices: go swimming in the community pool in the summer,
work with one of my charities or volunteer groups downtown, plan a weekend getaway for L, P. and I in any part of the country, decide on home renovations.
Late afternoon: Write
L. comes home
Dinner---discuss with L. what color he wants the living room to be painted and how big the new skylight should be.
Movie on the big screen
Bedtime: Knowing that tomorrow, I don't have to get up early, and that tomorrow the day lies before me to enjoy as I see fit, when I see fit, and I'll have the time and space to remember all the fine qualities and talents I have but have lost sight of during my recent career in the high school.

Giving students some choice, at my own risk

Tuesday, March 25:

As we move into the last twelve weeks of the school year, the seniors (and I)still face the last two components of the Senior Project: the Presentation and the Portfolio. For the last year, I've had rebellious thoughts about ways to modify the Project. But one of the veteran teachers of the English Department helped to create the guidelines for the Senior Project, and got it approved by the School Board four years ago. She is adament that we should leave the Project in place as it is. If I haven't described it before, let me summarize: The Senior Project is a semester-long assignment for 12th graders. They must choose a topic of interest, write a research paper, do 20-30 hours of community service related to the topic, give a power point presentation, and submit a professsional portfolio.

But after teaching six senior classes last year, and four this year, I have begun to see some flaws in its concept.

1. Many students lie about doing the 20-30 hour community project component, but I can't prove it. Oh, those students are so crafty---having had 12 years of practice in the school system. They give the required power point Presentation, re-hashing the material in their research paper, but become vague when they get to the part about the community service. Even though the slide show is supposed to include photos of themselves doing the community service, a number of presentations don't have any photos. Others include photos of the place where they claimed to have done their service, but none of themselves in action, and I think we know why. Still others go down to Greenbriar for one hour, get a photo done, and call it a day. In the time I've supervised this project, I can think of only a few students who I was 100% convinced had done the community service for the required length of time. All the students are supposed to fill out a timesheet to document their 20-30 hours of community service and get signatures from an on-site supervisor, but many of those signatures look very suspicious to me. However, I can't prove they're forged, because I don't have time to be chasing down 100 different mentors to ask if Bubba really helped repair an elderly person's home. According to Department rubric, they lose 25 or 40 points out of 300 if the power point doesn't contain photos as proof, but they can still pass the presentation without any evidence of having completed any service at all. My feeling now gravitates towards,why pretend?




2) The Senior Portfolio is a professional portfolio. It contains three college applications and financial aid forms, a college application essay, the research paper which has already been done, print-out of a power point presentation which has been done for a previous class, timesheet for the community service, journal of the community service experience, a letter from the mentor, various writings which have already been done in class, three letters of reference from teachers, and a transcript. We've already established the fact that many students don't do the community service, so we understand that that section is bogus. College applications? Many students have already been accepted at the college of their choice by the time the portfolio is due. Isn't it sort of an exercise in busywork for them to fill out applications for three colleges to put into the portfolio? Or write a college admission essay? Furthermore, of the remaining students, many are going into the military, or to work after high school. College applications and FAFSA forms seem like a waste of time. Mostly, it's compiling a lot of paper into a notebook, all of which I have to go through.

I am an advocate of the senior project concept. I even gave a presentation on it at Georgia Southern's SSFYCC Conference last year. But I have begun to believe, after sitting through many a fake senior power point presentation, that we needed to liven up the concept. Thus, I came up with an idea for an alternative type of presentation and an alternative portfolio. The students get to choose between the traditional or the alternative. I'm sure my colleagues would disapprove, thinking that the Alternative Assignments are not tough enough or don't uphold standards, but I disagree. We comp theorists already know that autobiographical writing is just as challenging as expository.

More important, why should we, teachers and students alike, subject ourselves to power point after power point of research highlights, statistics, and fake community projects when students could have a choice? My alternative presentation is an autobiographical power point, which must answer specific personal questions, such as describing three major turning points in their lives, the most influential book, song or movie; accomplishments and honors during high school, and much more. When I distributed the guidelines for this alternative presentation, many of the students indicated they would enjoy doing this one instead of the traditional one. A few, probably those who recycled a research paper used by another senior last year, will choose the traditional one because it will seem easier to copy and paste the facts into a power point show. Am I copping out, I'm asking myself, to allow students to do the autobiographical slide show? I don't think so. The justification for doing the presentation at all is so students can gain practice in delivering an oral presentation before an audience, in creating an effective slide show, speaking well publicly, projecting, enunciating, engaging. Why should it matter what the subject is?

My other idea, the alternative Senior Portfolio, requires more writing than the traditional one and more reflection, so it's not a lowering of standards, I don't feel. The completed research paper must be contained in it, just as it is in the professional portfolio, so my alternative portfolio is not an invitation for students to escape that component. The rest of the assignments are personal writings, which range from an interview with an older relative, a poem, a technology autobiographical history, paragraph-long mini-stories of the three best and worst memories of high school, and so on. I assured the students that right now, high school is the center of their universes, but that in five, ten, thirty years, they won't remember the day to day details and might value this creative portfolio in the future. But in offering some choices, I've probably risked offending colleagues who see the original Project as the tough one and would see mine as the gut version.


Today at a department meeting, we got into a discussion about the importance of sticking to our guns about the Senior project. Either the students do it and do it on time, or they fail the course. It's supposed to count 60%. Recently, the principal told us via email that the Senior Project counts too much and causes too many seniors to fail, and deep in my heart, I agree with her. But at the meeting, several teachers did the sermon about personal responsibility and choices; if a student doesn't finish the project, then he deserves his F because how will he ever survive in college or in life if he doesn't know how to meet deadlines, yada yada? Yes, that's true, but a part of me believes that the end of senior year is not the time and place be Ms. Tough Guy to the extreme. I don't believe the prediction that students who are losers or slack-offs in high school won't necessarily do well in college or the workplace. That whole new world of opportunities will awaken them to become a person they've never been before. They're not fully formed in 12th grade! Many students, once launched out of the prison-like atmosphere of high school with its ringing bells and detention forms, will blossom.

But my biggest concern is, what purpose could possibly be served by adding more 12th graders to the pool of 5th-year seniors who inhabit the school, caught in a depressing limbo where they're not eligible to attend college, join the military, or get a job because they don't have that diploma, but who are only a few points short of passing one course or one of the graduation tests? I'm not saying we need to pass the seniors who screw off and do nothing all year, and I've had a few of those, but if a senior is close to passing, I'd be inclined to do whatever I could to push him or her over the passing mark. I'm sure my colleagues would consider this a sign of weakness, but I see the bigger picture.

And if the Senior Project is, according to the Principal, causing too many seniors to fail their 12th grade comp/lit, then maybe it's time for a little more differentiation in the course---let them choose the type of power point and portfolio that's best suited to their tastes and learning styles.

Hope is what keeps people going

March 23: Beautiful weekend! I can't resist posting some pictures from our yard: the azalea bush, the blossoming baby orange tree, and of course, one of my dear koi. When we bought the new bedroom set last summer, I told L. I wanted the new bed on the opposite side of the room, facing the window. It's a treat to sit up in bed on weekends, drinking the flavored coffee, reading the newspaper, and facing the vivid pink flowers through the window.

Some things happened this weekend which I don't want to share in detail yet, but suffice to say I have gained a sense of hope that I might be able to shift away from teaching and re-invent myself in another way.

It was a quiet, three-day weekend. I talked to my oldest son D. twice which was a super treat, and also to E., my daughter-in-law, and N., my grandson. When I was talking to D. he told me that my second ex, M., had called D's dad some months ago, and had I received the email from his dad? No, I said, I had not, what was it about?


Remember those mysterious phone calls last August or September that I didn't pick up? Apparently, M. had been trying to reach me because he wanted to have our marriage, which ended 23 years ago, annulled. He was poised to re-marry, so I guess the new lady must be a nice Catholic girl. I learned that M's third wife, the one after me, died of natural causes; therefore, that marriage wouldn't be a blemish on the record. The marriage with the first wife, the one before me, ended in divorce 25 years ago, but they had children, so an annullment wouldn't work---though, come to think of it, didn't one of the second generation Kennedy men try to annul his first marriage, even though they did have children? The first wife wrote some scathing best seller about it. But maybe M's first wife is deceased, for all I know, thus cleansing his marital history, but for me. I'd have no objection whatsoever to an annulment---just send the paperwork! However, his attempts to reach me occurred seven months ago; they're probably married by now, with or without the Pope's blessing.

When I told this news to my sister, that he was or is remarried, she said sardonically, "Of course!" She feels that women of a certain age have zero chance of meeting an eligible man because the men always want the younger ones, while men of a certain age can have any woman they want. Maybe she's right. I don't know. Except for a brief relationship ten or so years ago, to a man who turned out to be an alcoholic pedophile who was later arrested,she's been alone for nearly 20 years.
She's in the process of getting her house ready to put on the market. Being of a cryptic nature, she won't come right out and say that she's thinking of moving to our area so we can have more close contact, but she's hinted at it. I think that would be wonderful.

Eye-opening meeting with Teacher's Union president

Thursday, March 20:

I simply do not accept my school's evaluation of me as Unsatisfactory, with the claims that I "don't support students" during class time (one of the categories checked off several times), along with the the "crowded room" NI, the two-minutes-not-used-for-instruction NI, etc. I will not accept it without a fight, just so my principal can compile convincing data for the supt. to glorify her own position. I will not have nearly 30 years of an unblemished teaching career tarnished by a principal with a personal agenda.


After school, I went to the Savannah Federation of Teachers Union to talk to the President. I already belong to one union, which I joined last fall because I sensed trouble in the wind, but someone at school who got a trumped up Unsatisfactory evaluation told me that SFT was a really kick-ass one compared to the first. SFT has been responsible for the recent picketing of the School Board and articles in the newspaper. I do not accept that someone who spends as much time as I do every night and every weekend searching for interesting activities, planning lessons, grading papers, and spending tons of my own money on supplies so that I can deliver instruction, is Unsatisfactory. I do not accept that someone who rarely leaves the school before 4:30 or 5:00 because I am helping students who come in for help with the Senior Project is Unsatisfactory. Unsatisfactory is Ms. P, who sleeps in class, according to many a student. Unsatisfactory is Mr. R., who lectures from start to finish and never has any activities. Unsatisfactory is Ms. O., who doesn't grade papers.

Hence, I met with Ms. G., President of the Union, and had an enlightening conversation. She held up a stack of papers and said these were the faxes she had received on this day alone from teachers who had been evaluated as Unsatisfactory throughout the district. It's a district-wide trend. It makes the principals look powerful to the Supt., who is trying to create a "World Class" educational system. She looked over my evaluation paperwork, including the evaluations from the downtown people (all of which were good), compared to the in-house evaluations, all of which were not so good, and said disbelievingly, "Are you kidding? An NI for two minutes of non-instructional time at the end of class?" Shuffling through the papers, she found contradictions throughout the in-house evaluations. She said, "If all they could get you on is these classroom management issues, then you're doing well!" The evaluation of classroom management, of course, is subjective. I told her that I'd gotten a bad vibe from the principal since the beginning of the year. "She's threatened by your Ph.D.," said Ms. G., who knows her.

She said that she just happened to have a meeting scheduled for next Monday with a Board of Education person who is site administrator over my school and would bring my paperwork with her, mention my case, and see if she could set up a meeting with the BOE person, herself, and me. I also have a right to have my case reviewed by a committee. The union is responsible for getting the School Board to form a Review Committee to consider the cases of teachers who get U's. The review may or may not get the desired result, but I want to go on record as having one.

When we finished, she handed me a packet of compiled information sent by teachers from all the schools, and I was both comforted and shocked to read what other teachers are reporting from their schools. To quote the document, "...many employees [of the school system are] on medication for high blood pressure, heart problems, stress, and other health problems because of the pressures from `dictatorship style' administrators."

The following was written by teachers at "X" school, not mine. It is addressed to the Supt.

"...We are not a staff of whiners or complainers. We are hard working professionals who are highly skilled and highly educated and until lately, highly motivated. We are currently working in an atmosphere of tyranny where the motto is `it is my way or the highway.' We are writing to you in the effort of keeping our district from losing yet another batch of highly decorated educators who not only want to meet state and local standards, but want our studens to walk away better than thjey were when they first came to us. I am writing because a number of us over the last 2.5 years have filed verbal complaisn only to have them halted at [the Board of Education]. I am putting my career, my love for teaching, and my very livelihood on the line as I take the reigns of getting this letter put together and secretly delivered to you. That this process is so full of espionage and intrigue should give someindication of the level of fear that permeates our building. However, because I do not have the strength to encourage yet another colleague to stick it out, because I am tired of crying and consoling colleagues as they cry, I am taking this chance. Why all the crying? All this crying is. . . due to unnecessary requirements by an administrator who has her image and personal career enhancement in mind and is unconcerned with her staff's well-being.. .We are asking for your help because our leader who was once great has been blinded by ego and has lost her way."

The letter continues that "on a daily basis we are belittled, berated, embarrassed, and reprimanded NOT in the privacy of faculty meetings but in the hallway or over the intercom with students present."

In addition, "No educator in our building feels as though we are being our best. What we feel is that we are putting on a performance. . .we spend a greater proportion of our time planning, theorizing, research, mulling over data and posing for visitors [italics mine] than we do practicing our skill."

The letter from X school, typed, single-spaced, three pages long, listed grievance after grievance. Much of it sounded familiar, and I realized that the same problems I'm experiencing are happening everywhere.

"Y" School states, in part, that "we feel like we are in a pressure cooker. . . we have not been able to get board cleaner, dry erase markers, scotch tae, etc. [because] the secretary said she had not been given permission to purchase anything. . . we've also had problems getting printing cartridges this year; however, we are still held accountable for being sure students get progress report or whatever else they needed. . . we are being evaluated. . . and some teachers are receiving unsatisfactory evaluations."

The document is long, so I won't quote teachers from all the schools. But reading the document made me feel validated in my pain.

The document closes with a letter written by a relatively new teacher:

"I have loved teaching. In fact, I thought of teaching as my life's purpose. I wanted to do nothing but impart useful knowledge to the students and serve as a good role model. . .When I arrived here in Savannah, I was immediately stunned by the lack of respect for teachers by the school system [italics mine]. I have seen teachers yelled at by the principal in front of the students, parents, and their peers. I have written disciplinary referrals for students only to see nothing happen to them. . .we receive write-ups in our mailboxes for not turning on the television fast enough. We are told we only get a planning period one to two days a week. We do not get lunch breaks. Teachers live in a constant state of fear for their jobs and from the principal. Is is for these reasons and more than I have come to a new conclusion. I will not be teaching beyond this year in the state of Georgia. In fact, I have lost my love of teaching. I detest it."

When our meeting ended, I told Ms. G that in addition to joining the union, I wanted to do volunteer work for them. I offered to help her write the newsletter. For the first time in months, I feel passionate about a job, even if it's an unpaid one.

Fun with Oedipus

March 19: I'm curious to see whether videos will work on this blog, so I'm going to try to upload one or two. I recently did some videos in class. Tomorrow, during one of our bi-weekly Professional Learning Community meetings, we're supposed to bring evidence of applying Marzano's non-linguistic representations. I thought I'd be a little different and bring a video instead of posters or baseball cards everyone else will contribute. My assignment required students to write a script of Oedipus, his wife/mother and the Priest appearing on Dr. Phil. They had to incorporate at least 8 of the week's vocabulary words. Then they had to act it out. I filmed it with my handy digital camera which I always keep with me. Let's see if these videos will run on a blog. Unfortunately, one of the videos captures a student who had the flu and wasn't feeling well. . . WITH HER HEAD DOWN!! So I'm not going to show that one at the meeting. Sometimes I do feel that I am really a teacher at heart but that my mojo has been crippled by the administration's dislike of me.

Speaking of weary high school teachers, P. recently introduced me to a new show called Breaking Bad. If you're not familiar, it's about a 50-year-old man, a high school chemistry teacher, who works a second job to make ends meet, has a teenage son with cerebral palsy and a pregnant wife. Then he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Facing his mortality, he decides to be b-a-a-ad for the first time in his life. Tired of being Mr. Nice Guy High School Teacher who doesn't make a viable salary, he partners up with a former student, now a meth dealer, to make crystal meth in a mobile lab and sell it. He feels alive for the first time in years. This reminds me of the plot of Blue Castle, by L.M.Montgomery. An old maid young woman (the timeline is in the early 1900's) decides to enjoy the last year of her pathetic life, and marries the local bad boy, and is happier than she's ever been. A year later, she learns it was a mistaken diagnosis and she isn't going to die after all, but meanwhile has learned to live. That's a good lesson, which speaks to me very powerfully these days.

On another note, to my surprise and relief, the yearbook is almost finished and looks better than I could have imagined. Not like the prize-winning ones we saw during the Florida workshop last summer, but okay. This year, all my attention has been diverted from the yearbook to the senior English classes because of the constant observations (guess what, I had another one Tuesday; what's the point at this point?). In addition, having to babysit the two journalism/yearbook classes and try to keep them "engaged" with something, anything, for 90 minutes has actually kept me from working on the yearbook. Isn't that ironic? Fortunately, the three carryover students from last year have essentially pulled it together, although I've certainly spent many hours scanning photos, calling the photographer, setting up photo days, etc. I've already told the dept. chair and principal that IF they want me to do this next year, and I'm not assuming they do, though I assure you, no one else in the school is jumping up and down wanting the job, I want it to be an after school club of five serious students, but NO JOURNALISM CLASSES! At least I've learned InDesign somewhat. I'd like to take some courses this summer to advance my learning and become a page or web designer as my next career! Okay, I've tried but can't get the videos to appear. That does not bode well for my next career, does it?

Dark night huddled in a closet

March 15, Saturday night: WTOC just interrupted regular programming again with tornado warnings. The map shows the red spots just to the north of Savannah. Yesterday, in downtown Atlanta, the mighty CNN building was damaged by a tornado, as were some other inner city locations. First time Atlanta had ever experienced a tornado. Right now, as I sit in the living room with P., I can hear the wind chimes tinkling on the front porch, and according to the latest interruption, Savannah is under a tornado watch. North of Statesboro is under a warning.

When P. and I walked to the docks this afternoon, the water was wavy and choppy, and the wind was blowing like fury. A boat came in while we were on standing on the dock. They climbed out and said they had taken a ride down the river but had turned around because the water was too rough.

Continued Sunday:: As I wrote this last night, the t.v. interruptions about dangerous weather kept coming. Suddenly, the house went black and silent, as the big screen, the air conditioner, and refrigerator cut off. P. and I were in the living room, in pitch blackness, so I got up and groped my way slowly to the kitchen wall to get the flashlight out of the socket where it charges full time. We have one of those battery-powered weather alert systems which sends a stream of updated information from Charleston. Shortly after the power outage, Chatham County was placed under a tornado warning, according to the weather alert. Outside, I could hear the faraway tornado siren wailing. L., who had been studying in the bedroom, decided that P. and I should get into the bedroom closet, just to be safe, so we huddled in a corner of the walk-in, with quilts and pillows. L. stayed in the bedroom to listen to the weather-alert. Then a furious thunderstorm broke. The flashes of lightning lit up the room, and the whoosh of heavy rain snd wind followed. The storm was intense and short. About ten minutes later, the tornado warning was lifted. However, according to this morning's newspaper, 150,000 people in the area had had their power knocked out.

Lightning was still flashing quietly when I crawled into bed. Without electricity, L. would not be able to wear his nightly breathing mask, so he decided to doze off in the living room, knowing he wouldn't sleep well anyway without the steady stream of air pumped down his throat. [As an aside, I must mention that I can't say enough good about that breathing mask. For years, L's snoring sounded worse than fingers across a blackboard, and deafening too. He had two different surgeries to try to correct it, but neither helped. It was not a sign of rejection that I had no choice but to move to a different bed nightly; I just couldn't sleep next to the hideous, screaming snores and the tossing and turning. I'm one who really needs sleep! Finally, about five years ago, he had an all-night sleep diagnosis, and was fitted for the breathing mask. Now, instead of hearing screeching wails and booms, I hear a soft bubbling that sounds like a brook running down a mountain or a gentle rain. He now sleeps better than he has in years, though he still is not a heavy sleeper like I am. I sleep like a baby like never before. Snoring is merely a symptom; the underlying cause, sleep apnea, can cause organ damage and illness over the years.]

The last time I remember tornadoes in the area was the day I was in Chicago for the Oprah Winfrey taping in '97. L. told me on the phone about the horrible weather they were having back in the Southeast and apparently throughout the Midwest. The night return flight from Chicago was horribly, horribly turbulent. The flight from LaGuardia was grounded that night, so I spent the night in NJ. After finally returning to Savannah the next morning, L. told me that the weather machine had beeped all night, warning of tornadoes, and had told him in its robotic voice to "Take cover at once" many times. That afternoon, I tried to make my 2:00 class at GSU. What a sight on 1-16. The night before, a tornado had cut a wide swath through the trees and fields on either side of the highway just past the weigh station.

This morning when I awoke, the sun was shining and the azaleas were blooming outside the bedroom window. L. had already driven to McD's for coffee since we still had no electricity. The lighting of the house, without electricity, reminded me of the home lighting in the movie Becoming Jane, which we watched on Friday night. Never mind that Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice slowly, with a quill pen and no backspace button, she wrote it by natural light or candle light. I tried to imagine what that would be like, to painstakingly scratch those words out on paper, stopping to dip the pen in the inkwell, by the light of the morning, no florescent light. What if it was a cloudy day? And imagine the revision process, writing out the entire 10,000 page story again, with the quill pen, if she wanted to rearrange scenes, change dialogue, or add new material. Hard as the act of writing must have been, the worst part, though she didn't know it, would have been the lack of good, strong light to see by.

I also thought about how their lives would have been affected if they had had tornadoes in England during Austen's time. Barring any structural damage on those fortress-like stone houses, nothing would change. They would still have been able to go about all their routines as usual during or after any storm, since they didn't need electricity to do anything. Imagine in the far future when our descendants wonder how we managed without such-and-so conveniences which we don't miss because we don't know about them.

A Friday Off!

March 14: Today, the school is closed for the St. Patrick's Day Parade! A parade is the last thing on my mind, but I'm overjoyed at the day off. I didn't wake up until 6:45! My next career will be one where I can begin work at 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. every day instead of signing in at 7:15 a.m. The orange tree in the back yard has sprouted little white berries, which I assume will grow into oranges.


I didn't think fruit would sprout so soon. The prospect is exciting to me. Lemons on one side; oranges on the other. What a lovely day today. I like being around the house. P. was home too because he doesn't have classes on Friday. I graded a stack of MacBeth tests which I'd been putting off, while watching A Man for All Seasons on On-demand.


This morning's newspaper carried a story about a second teacher protest yesterday in front of our own BOE. The headline reads, "Teachers March for help to fix classroom conditions." The protestors "spoke of principals berating teachers, of teachers not having time to take bathroom or lunch breaks..." etc. A similar protest, which occurred a few weeks ago, appeared on the local television news, but I missed it because I was just coming in the door from working late. L. told me about it. There's some comfort in knowing that I'm not alone in feeling demeaned and dissed; other teachers are feeling it too, enough to go out in the open and march. There was also a letter to the editor from a teacher at another high school explaining to the naive public how the teachers are blamed for test scores when---believe it or not---some students don't care, go into the testing rooms and blow it off or put their heads down and go to sleep.


My epiphany of the week is the sudden awareness that it's not a question of whether I want to teach at my current high school, another high school, a different county, or at a college. I'm not even sure I like teaching at all anymore! This insight struck me as I stood outside by the pond trying to decide whether to apply for a position at the local college, or at some new high schools which are opening in surrounding counties. I simply couldn't work up the enthusiasm for trying for a new situation. Could it be that for everything there's a season, and my season of teaching, spanning almost 30 years if you count my graduate school teaching assistantships, has passed? If it has, that's okay; I'll reinvent myself in another career, somehow. But I think it's crucial to recognize how I really feel, if that's how I really feel. I also wonder if I really am a teacher at heart but am merely burned out, as anyone would be who has been teaching six paper-heavy courses for seven months and counting. My daughter-in-law, who's a brilliant and effective teacher, left teaching for about a year to work for a company, and ended up going back to the classroom. Maybe some of us teachers-at-heart need to be away from it for awhile to know whether teaching really is our calling.

L. is home now, so the weekend is about to begin.

The Bitch is Back! Rock on, Elton John!

March 13: When the alarm rang at 5:30 this morning, I sat up in bed, and the room spun around. Many times. Uhhh...As I had not had a drop to drink the night before, it must have been the result of staying out too late for the Elton John concert and/or having my inner ears caressed for three hours by beautiful but deafening sound and my eyes blinded by psychodelic lights. Also, I haven't slept enough this week, what with grading papers every night, and the exhaustion has added up. But I forced myself out of bed and after walking around, starting the coffee, feeding the animals, getting the newspaper, and drinking water, I began recover. Thank goodness---we all know how hard it is for them to find subs; you'd better be on your deathbed before calling in.

The concert rocked! It started at 8:00. We drove downtown at 6:00 because we knew parking would be scarce with St. Patrick's Day looming on Friday. The tourists have already flocked to Savannah for the famous parade and have been wandering happily through the historic district all week, cameras hanging from necks. At 6:00, the air was balmly and sweet, with flowers coloring every square. After eating at a sandwich shop, we walked to the Civic Center. By 7:15, we were seated. When I bought the tickets the day they went on sale, they were on the verge of being sold out only hours after becoming available, so the only three seats I could get were in different sections. P. sat in one area, and L. and I were in another section in different rows. The auditorium filled rapidly with fans from teen age to old age. A little past eight, the lights dimmed, the audience woo-wooed in anticipation, the lights burst back on, and there was Elton John seated at the piano, launching into the first song. The audience screamed with joy. Two large screens mounted on either side of the stage projected close-ups of Elton's happy-looking face as he sang his heart out into the microphone while his thick fingers raced up and down the keyboard. The screens also intermittedly zoomed in on members of the band strumming away or slamming the drums.



For the next three hours, Elton pounded life into that keyboard and sang all the famous songs from Yellow Brick Road, Benni and the Jets, and Philadelphia Freedom to Daniel, Candle in the Wind, and Your Song, and many more with such richness and soul that I can still feel and hear his voice vibrating through me. Maybe that's why I felt dizzy this morning. P. had never been to a concert before, and after, he told us how exciting it was, how he stood up in his chair with the other fans to sway, dance, and sing along. Elton managed to get the entire audience to sing the refrain of Crocodile Rock while he stood silently, motioning everyone to sing. Elton stopped after every song and pointed randomly to people in the audience and bowed to them, as though in a gesture of human kindness. He walked along the front row of the stage, shook lots of hands and signed lots of autographs. L., P. and I sang all the way home. The radio station was playing Elton John songs in honor of the concert. I knew it would be a rough day today. I didn't fall into bed until almost 11:30, and was already too tired. But the concert was a treat.

----

Today is the anniversary of L's arrival in los Estados Unidos. He arrived here 27 years ago today! He was only 21---Paul's age now---when he stepped off the plane in New Orleans on that March day. I've seen photos of him standing at the airport in Caracas flanked by weepy Mama and stern-faced Papa just before departing for the states. He looked so handsome in that tan suede jacket. As I said in an earlier blog, he has now been a gringo longer than he has been a Caracan.
Contrary to his no-good wife who can't seem to do anything right on the job anymore, he is doing spectacularly at his job, with continued excellent evaluations and a nice bonus pending (the city gives annual bonuses for good work.) I'm so proud of him!

How Mr. X. got fired last week

March 10: Approximately one week ago, first thing in the morning, Mr. X. a teacher across the hall from me was escorted out of the building for the last time. I did not see or hear the incident which led to his abrupt firing in the middle of the year. But first, some background.

Because of our close proximity, we talked frequently. He was very VERY nice. They say he was a former pastor during his long career in the military. He'd been teaching in high school just about as long as I have. In fact, he and I attended Armstrong together to get our teacher certification. I think he was in the Classroom Management course with me in the summer of 2006. His field was Information Technology. Oh, so nice! He went out of his way to help me get the electronic grading system, Integrade, onto my flashdrive so that I could take my gradebook home and enter grades there too. Who wouldn't prefer clicking in grades in front of Law and Order to sitting in that empty school building at 6 p.m. entering grades? He explained how to copy the gradebook from the L drive onto the flashdrive and then re-copy it back the next day.

We had lunch duty in the same spot on the same day, so we had additional time to chat. I learned he was happily married with five children and some grands too, and was three years from retirement. I also learned that the administration was trying to get him fired, he said. How do you know this? I asked. Because they were all over him all the time, he said, criticizing his classroom and criticizing his teaching. We often talked about how they were currently all over just about everybody. He said he had emailed some of his responses to observations right to the Supt. He said he'd been criticized for not having Marzano's 9 strategies posted on the wall, nor the standards, nor any word walls, so I'd promised that I would have L. print some of those out on his giant blueprint machine that creates poster-sized print-outs. Interestingly, I had overheard students weeks before (and believe me, you learn EVERYTHING by discreetly overhearing student conversations in the classroom) saying, "they're trying to fire Mr. X, blah blah." How they learn these inside details, I'll never know, but their knowledge about what's going on in the school is often dead-on accurate. Hence, I keep my ear to the ground.

On that Monday that he was ushered out of the school, I heard his name spoken among the students during first block, along with the words "stick" or "can only take so much" and "such a nice guy," but I didn't know anything about the firing. Between classes, I noticed that there was a substitute in his room. Finally, the Spanish teacher next door filled me in. The students in his class were brats, had been brats from the beginning, and had done a lot of idiotic things since the semester started. They steal the mice from the computers, they bring food into the room and smear it into the equipment while he's standing at the door (we are required to be at our "posts" between classes), they fight...I don't know how many times the AP's have been summoned to that room to break up scuffles. On the Friday before the Monday of the firing, the students had been behaving like brats, and several started throwing their mice at him. The story goes that he picked up some object, ranging from a crowbar to a stick to a broom according to the rumors) and held it up threateningly at them, telling them to stop throwing the mice. The students went running to the front office saying that Mr. X. was threatening them.
On the Friday of the incident, about 5:00, I heard his name being paged to the front office, and the random thought flowed through my mind, "They usually can people on Friday afternoons." But I had no knowledge of the incident at that time. The administration apparently decided that they were within their rights to fire him on the spot, so on Monday when he reported to class, he was escorted out.

I did not see the incident in his class. I know that we teachers have to put up with mountains of crap from students daily, ranging from bad attitudes to laziness to insults, and I know better than anyone how easy it would be, if you did not struggle every moment to stay emotionally distant and strong, to turn into the Incredible Hulk and "act inappropriately." And I do understand that the teacher is supposed to be the grown up and always remain calm, but did the misbehaving students receive any consequences? I would really like to know whether the punishment was equally distributed. My heart goes out to Mr. X., because he is such a sweet, kind guy. Maybe there's more to the story than I know, too. Someone told me recently that he also didn't have any curriculum, plans, or assignments for the class, ever, and more or less let them chill for the class period. I don't know if that's true. But regardless, I'll miss him.

Book idea on the way home from Wal-Mart

March 8: This morning, L. and I went to Comcast to pick up the box for on-demand and recording t.v. shows. We've been wanting it anyway, and the Elton John conflict next week gave us a reason to get it. Now P. can see Elton John live in concert at the Civic Center without missing his beloved American Idol. We stopped at Publix and picked up a few items we couldn't live without for the next few hours, stopped at Walgreen's to pick up a prescription, and got home about 1:00. P. went to weight training, while L. worked on setting up the new box. I did laundry and worked on the ever-present clutter, and finally, at 2:30 I thought about grading papers. But I began to get tired, and took a nap, which I rarely do, but I'm still tired from the stress of the work week. I dreamed I was walking along a mountainy or hilly trail, and my mother was there. It was winter. The ground was covered with soft slush that squished under my feet. The air smelled of snow, but it wasn't cold,just fresh and brisk. Because it was late afternoon, the sky was deep lavendar, with barely enough light to see. And I couldn't see very well because for some reason, I didn't have my glasses on. Mother was young, attractive, with long, wavy auburn hair, wearing a thick fur coat that I have seen on her in many photos. As I climbed over a steep embankment, I remember calling, "Mother?" knowing she was somewhere nearby, but I couldn't see her. Then I woke up.
At 5:00, L. and I went to Wal-Mart to pick up the remainder of the groceries. Of course, as we drove, I was talking with him about the work situation. As anyone who reads this blog knows, my mind has been weighed down with the problems at work. I know I'm not alone. On Friday, one of the former teachers at my school, let's call her "S," visited. I hadn't seen her for almost a year. Last summer, she was "promoted" to a position at the Board of Education, "downtown" as we always refer to it. Many teachers believe that being "sent downtown" is an enviable upgrade for the lucky few who are "chosen." They now get to work with other adults, they usually get paid more, have more prestigious positions, and are looked up to. After all, they're now part of the management. No more dealing with smart-acre students or discipline referral forms by the ton! After S. and I exchanged a few pleasantries, she asked how things were going at the school, and I told her frankly that many teachers were struggling and felt disrespected, unsupported, and overwhelmed. She said she had heard as much from many teachers throughout the district; it wasn't just happening in my school, and it wasn't just happening to me. Principals all over were racking up the NI's for teachers so they can "prove" to the Supt. that they're doing "something" to improve the schools. Then she began to open up about HER job. She despises it, she confided. The Supt. is a slavedriver. She is expected to do the work that four people did last year and she can never keep up. Therefore, the Supt. is always unhappy with her. He demands a weekly report justifying what she has accomplished that week, and never seems to believe that she works like a dog, constantly. "I hate it so much. And I could get fired anytime!" she added despondently. "There's absolutely no job security. He could walk in today and tell me not to come back tomorrow. And now there's no summer vacation to look forward to." At this point, she looked like she was going to cry. It was so bad, she continued, that sometimes she slips out to her car, sits for five or ten minutes to cry and pray before she can bring herself to walk back into that building. She goes to bed at 11:00 p.m., and lies awake till 4:00 tossing and stressing about how much she hates the job. She had never wanted it in the first place, but she was told that she would take it, or else they would transfer her to Beach H.S! Trust me, no one wants to go to Beach. So considering the alternative, going downtown became an offer she couldn't refuse. "I am so miserable," she told me. "I've applied for five or six other jobs outside of the school system, but nothing has happened yet. I'm even thinking of asking your principal if I can come back here." Hah, I chuckled to myself! Talk about the grass always being greener. Actually, she was here before and knew what it was like, but apparently, whatever she has now is bad enough to make a job at our school seem very good. That gave me pause.

Continuing on Sunday, March 9: And after talking to "S" in the school hallways Friday afternoon, I listened to NPR on the way home from work. Every Friday, they feature a work guru, whose name I've forgotten, who gives workplace advice on all sorts of problems. People call in and vent about their jobs. Listening to this show, I began to feel the comfort of not being alone. Whatever injustices I feel that I'm enduring at work, at least I know countless others all over the place are suffering too and often from worse situations. Then, who should I meet at Publix on Saturday but another colleague, "M," who also used to work at my school but, like S., was also "elevated" to a downtown position. I asked her how it was going, and she said "Okay" in that struggling way in which someone is tempted to say, "It sucks!" but would rather not open up the floodgates. She told me she no longer works downtown as the Title I coordinator, but was transferred to Savannah High as a Literacy Coach. At Savannah High, they are currently "in turmoil," she reported, because the principal had been abruptly "transferred" (dismissed) a month ago after several violent fights broke out one afternoon, causing the school to go into lockdown for three hours. Now they had an interim principal who was trying to bring about order. No, I inferred, she was NOT a happy camper.
On the way to and from Wal-Mart, these thoughts about unhappy employees were on my mind, and I was talking about with L. He told me he had received a resume for a position in his department from someone at the School Board who was in no way qualified for the position, but didn't this reveal the person's desperation?
Then I told L my budding idea: "Wouldn't it be interesting to write a self-help book about unhappiness in the workplace? I think it's very widespread. This would NOT be a Pollyanna-ish "find your true self by quitting your job" approach that you'd hear about on Oprah or read about in women's magazines (female CEO's making $700,000 a year decide to quit and buy a cattle ranch in Wyoming!), no, it would be more of an empathy book, full of stories, aimed at middle-class people who, with the impending recession, can't find other job options and/or don't have the financial option of just up and leaving their jobs---for example, they have children in college, debt, are too close to retirement, etc., so they need to find a way to get the best out of the jobs they have now and push the displeasing elements to the back of their minds. I felt oddly comforted on Friday when I heard people on NPR sharing the problems they were struggling with at work. I picture a book which contains the honest, raw workplace stories of people in a range of occupations in a lot of geographical locations, based on anonymous interviews. Sort of like a Studs Terkel book, but with the specific angle I've mentioned. The primary purpose of these stories, woven into a framework, such as MMW, would be to make readers feel comforted in knowing that they aren't alone. It would also contain advice on handling various situations at work and how to keep a generally positive attitude about a job. The advice would be research-based, but I'd also like to test out some premises on my own."

This is the embryonic idea that is slowly growing in my mind at the moment. I'd like to do it for therapeutic reasons as much as anything. By the time it hits the market, I'll have to retire because they'll fire me anyway when they read about my experiences in their workplace!

Why I want to win the lottery

March 4: I've started to weigh the pro's and con's of going back to college teaching. But I know that L. would hit the roof because of the salary cut, so I dare not think about it. This morning, I momentarily had a fantasy of myself stringing a clothesline across the backyard to save electricity, planting a vegetable garden, baking bread again, and driving myself to a part-time college teaching job at Armstrong or Savannah State where I might be able to recapture the joy of teaching again. But I know if I bring this up with L., he'll be tripping, as my students would say, and will make me feel guilty and paint a bleak picture of a dismal, dark financial future. According to him, even if we won a few million in the lottery, we'd still have to work for another five or ten years because nowadays, even millions isn't enough. My position on this is that if we won the lottery, I'm retired, period!

But let's consider the situation without the complication of a lottery winning, which occurs frequently in my dreams but is probably not going to happen in waking life. What if I retired from the school system and found myself in a fresh, clean college classroom, with state-of-the-art equipment, facing students who obediently did everything I asked, including homework, who could have a mature class discussion, without shouting across the room that so-and-so was expelled last week? Sounds very pleasant. On the other hand, the workload would be almost as large as I have now. College classes grow larger all the time, though they try to cap them, and when I was at GSU, tne numbers of long papers that always lay in wait to be graded seemed insurmountable. Five or six page papers required LOTS of marginal comments. On the pro side, though, I also imagine the freedom of college classes that meet at a variety of hours, not 7:30 a.m. every day, and I imagine the free time between classes, without having to necessarily meet them back to back. I fondly remember the time between classes spent schmoozing with colleagues at Lakeside Cafe. But I also remember how tough it was to keep up with the cost of living on the GSU salary that, once I got tenure, seemed to freeze in place.

My sister is doing a temporary contract job in Denver right now. One of the workers has been chronically lying on the time sheets about the hours she's putting in, spends lots of time internet surfing, and does not appear to feel guilty about earning the same money as the rest of them, for less work. "She just doesn't care," says D., who wonders what it's like to have a job and not worry constantly about performance. It runs in our family, obviously; my performance anxieties have been all over these pages for months.

Some people simply have laid back personalities that allow them to shrug it off if they're not winning kudos on the job. One person who comes to mind is the English teacher at work who never carries any work home. Rumors say she is leaving the school this year to go back into her original field, law. She strikes me as the type who, if told she was officially unsatisfactory, would go home, drink a nice glass of Charbonnay, forget about it and plan a trip to Europe for the summer. However, I'll bet the reason she is able to do this is not because of innate personality but because she has money. A nice stash of money gives people endless options and the power to choose among those options.

I could write the script right now for what L. would say if I mention that I saw some Lecturer positions open at Armstrong, but I'll go ahead and listen to him say it first, before I record it.

Depressing day

March 3: Would it surprise you, after all that I've written about this matter, that the principal called me in the office this afternoon and said that I am now officially an "unsatisfactory" teacher because of the "Needs Improvements" marks I've received, for such things as the crowded room, students who slump, etc? As I've said before, I've gotten the vibe right from the get-go that the principal doesn't like me for whatever reason, and I've picked up the idea via plentiful teacher rumors that the school administration is going out of its way to give out a lot of NI's to teachers to justify the school's failing AYP. Yes, I realize I'm far from perfect, but everything seemed fine in my first three years in the school system; my observations were always fine, until this year. What a coincidence. But the sad thing is, now I can't even transfer to a different school because I'm officially on an "improvement plan" and those on the plan are not eligible for transfer. You'd think since they think so little of me that they'd be happy to give me a satisfactory rating just so I can get out of there---then everyone would be happy!