No Words.

It's been a hard seven days.

Last week...seriously...all those things I ever thought were the worst things that I ever had to do now seem ok, a little bit less terrible. See, last week I had to tell an eight-year-old boy that his mom was dead, and not from natural causes.

This is something that will affect me for the rest of my life. Screw my life though - little F. - his life - for the rest of his life whenever anyone asks anything about his mom, he'll remember the day that his ex-con dad took him out of his new school and drove back over to his old school where his dad hoped his second grade teacher still worked. He'll remember sitting outside my classroom, not knowing that I already knew - that one of his cousins had told me that morning what had happened over the weekend (and thank God he did - I think it would have been a lot more difficult if I hadn't had time to process that this woman - a woman I knew and liked, and who was the mother of one of my favorite students - had been shot to death).

He'll remember me coming outside, finally, and walking him and his daddy into the building. Into that room where the teachers went to get their coffee and eat their lunch away from the kids. He'll remember wondering why this other lady he didn't know (the school psychologist) was there too, and why I locked the door and then sat so close to him on the couch.

He may not, but I will always remember all this. I'll remember the confused look on his face when I told him his mother was with God and the angels (I spared him the details and facts - that his mother and stepdad were in the wrong place at the wrong time - outside a liquor store where two opposing gangs started shooting at each other - typical case of a good person getting caught in the crossfire). I won't forget his tears. His sad, sweet face, his body curling between mine and his father's on that hideous, sea foam green vinyl sofa in a room smelling of stale coffee and seven different kinds of reheated leftovers.

His dad told me he just couldn't do it. He couldn't tell the kid what had happened to his mom. He wasn't sure what he was going to do now - he was for all intents and purposes homeless (he slept in the mechanic shop where he did part-time work for a friend), had more or less given up on himself and had accepted that his ex and her new husband would raise his precious son, his Junior, his only child that was born when he was all of sixteen years old because they'd be better parents. The stepdad didn't want to keep the boy, and the mother's family was nowhere to be found, somewhere in Honduras and unreachable.

I don't know what happened to F. Senior and F. Junior. I talked to the father once after this meeting, and told him to take his son and go back to Mexico where they had family and people who loved them. That in his situation, being without a place to live for himself and the child - they'd probably take his son away. I don't know if it was the best or the right advice, but it was all I could think to say at the time. I didn't hear from them again after that, and I never heard from Child Protective Services (I was required by law to report the situation) again about the matter, so I like to think the two of them started a new life with their family in MX - maybe F. Senior remarried, learned to stay out of trouble - and junior got to grow up with cousins, aunts, grandparents...

I'll always remember these two and will always wonder about their fate.

Coming up for Air

It's kind of funny that I thought the first year was bad. Second year seemed awful too, but, wow! Nothing compares to this year!

I'd like to thank some people:

1. Thanks, George W. Bush, for No Child Left Behind [Subtitle: All Teachers Left Behind...or maybe All Schools Left Behind When All The Teachers Quit...joking!] which has made my job so much better. It's good to send very high demands down from the top, scare all our administrators into scaring us, and then tie our hands when it comes to resources. Please, cut education funding some more! Send ALL the federal education money straight to Iraq.

I think I will do a fun experiment in honor of NCLB. First I'll tell my students that they're going to be required to do a lot of things. A lot of paperwork. A lot of studying. A lot more work than they've ever done before, even though before some of them - many of them - were trying their best. Now, they're going to be excited to hear that for all this extra work, there are no extra rewards or incentives. Instead, there will be harsh punishments for those not meeting standards on the new work requirements. Finally, right before sending them off to do their new work [in addition, of course, to everything they were doing before] I'll quietly let them know that I won't be providing their supplies - the pencils had to be sent to another country to build pencil cabins. The paper's being used to help start campfires somewhere else. Sorry, kids, if you're going to get this stuff done, you'll have to purchase your own supplies. Oh - and it's all got to be done on your own time - no extra time during the school day to take care of the new demands!

Think that would go over very well with parents? With administrators? Why is it acceptable to treat our teachers like this, then? Why is it ok to increase our requirements and responsibilities without any resources or extra paid time to do the work?

I'm lucky. My school was awarded some kind of grant that at least allows for teachers to get paid for before and after school tutoring. We even have funding for some elective programs, like soccer and a manners class. There is not, however, money to compensate teachers [like me] who need to spend no less than 10, probably 15 hours a week outside of school doing school work. Between all the meetings after school and training classess during planning periods [illegal, I must add] and constant interruptions in the classroom, there's little time to get anything done.

2. Thanks, DISD, for the OASIS program! OASIS is our fun new online lesson plan and objective tracking system. Uh, it sucks. I mean, the idea is good, but this program is so messed up I can't even explain how messed up it really is. It's bad enough to force people to do their lessons online. Making them use a program that is confusing, filled with errors and just plain annoying to use is downright horrible. It's also cool how even though we're supposed to be tracking our progress with the TEKS online, we still have to have paper copies of this same information. Same thing with the lesson plans, Scope and Sequence, and other district documents. What the hell was the point of putting it all online if we have to have a stupid binder filled with all the papers in our classrooms anyway?

I sometimes like to imagine that the people downtown play a game where they blindfold themselves, run around in a room giggling, and then write district policies.

3. Thank you, Science department, for requiring us to spend 50 percent of class time doing laboratory experiments, but making it difficult for us to obtain the materials we need to do them. I think it's possible to get materials for experiments, but I'm not sure. The one time I tried, I was told to go to the middle school near my school to see if they had the chemical I needed. Many, um...all of the things I have used to do experiments this year have been purchased with money from my wallet. There's no such thing as being reimbursed, either.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know. Teachers have been complaining about this same kind of stuff as long as there have been public schools. Still doesn't mean that these things are acceptable, does it?

Mickey Mouse

Ugh. My caurrennt sthate of sthilence is due to the 20 shots of novacaine I've received in the last few days, and the fun that came after the injections. No amount of numbing agent can stop the pain of a drill in your gums and files removing the interior of your teeth.

The pain, stiffness and gore left behind by Dr. Wonderfuldentist's instruments made my voice sound pretty silly today - I had a lisp like a four-year-old girl. The children told me I sounded like Mickey Mouse about four sentences in to my reading from "Socks." And this was the nice class. I'm so glad I don't have to see the sassy class this week due to - surprise surprise - district-mandated testing.

The Complaint Department

Lately I've been grouchy. I have terrible allergies, my stress level at school is higher than ever, and yesterday I even had to have a root canal.

Various corporations and organizations have done little to help my mood. My phone bill has been completely wrong for the last three months. My bank was overcharging me for bill pay. I found out that one of my favorite restaurants has been lying to me for years - there is chicken stock in their Minestrone!

So, I started writing. I figured the only way I could resolve my issues with these businesses was to communicate my problems.

SBC was my first victim. Withholding payment money from them had done nothing more than earn me a late fee, therefore I finally broke down and spent more than an hour one afternoon on the phone, settling my problems with the bill. [Overcharged $90! When you only have a small amount of money to live on per month, $90 is a lot.] I figured this was the end of my troubles with SBC until I got my next bill. It, too, was very, very wrong.

This time I couldn't stand the thought of wasting 60 more of my precious minutes on a conversation with an automated system. [Well...10 minutes automated system, 49 minutes on hold, and 33 seconds actually speaking to a human.] I visited the SBC website and sent them a nasty letter.

Four days later, I received an email with the corrected bill amount included in the apology.

My next target was a local Italian chain restaurant. I've been eating at this place for a long time, and have always had the Minestrone soup. I've asked many times to make sure the soup is truly vegetarian [no beef, chicken or other animal stock] and have always been told the soup is safe for me to eat.

Last week, the waitress serving me mentioned that the soup contained chicken stock. I couldn't believe it! I was so angry that I went home and emailed the company headquarters. I wasn't rude; I just let them know that they need to be honest about the contents of the food they serve.

Not only did the manager call to apologize, he sent me flowers. Uh...no one's ever sent me flowers at work, not even my boyfriend or mom. I feel bad now about getting angry at the restaurant. Had I not written the letter, I'd still be annoyed with the place, and would tell lots of my friends not to eat there. I might even cost the company some business besides my own. Now, though, all because of a simple phone call and maybe $40 on a vase of flowers, I'll go to the restaurant and will tell other people that it's a nice place, too.

Not all of the recipients of my letters felt inclined to try and earn my business back. I'll be switching to Green Mountain Energy as soon as possible due to my annoyance with TXU.

I'll admit that this one's petty. But when you think about it this way it makes sense: if 100,000 people pay their TXU bills online next month, the company will receive an extra $225,000 for doing nothing. SBC, T-Mobile and every other company I deal with allows customers to pay online without any fee. TXU charges an outrageous $2.25 per transaction. When you add that with the $6.95 Wells Fargo was charging me for Online Bill Pay each month, it makes the small price of stamps seem ok. [Wells Fargo's gotten a letter from me too, cancelling Bill Pay. Chase bank not only gave me a free checking account with free bill pay - they gave me $100 just for opening the account!]

Now I've just gone crazy with it. The Albertsons by my house is disgustingly filthy all the time, and is too crowded with too few cashiers. I can't shop there because it's so awful. Albertsons got their letter this afternoon, as did the lovely Kroger down the street, though their letter was complimentary rather than filled with complaints.

I don't know anyone else who does this - who cares enough about getting good service that they complain or compliment via mail or email. Listen. I sent my dentist a thank you note because he worked me in one busy afternoon and got me out in time to make an afternoon meeting outside of town. Is the problem that I have too much time on my hands, or do I just truly love talking [even by way of writing] that much?

Perhaps I'm old fashioned. Maybe it's because I spent so many years working in stores, shops, dry cleaners and restaurants. I know how easy it is to please customers. Be polite. Thank them for their business. Be honest when you make a mistake, and do what you can to remedy it. That's really all it takes to satisfy most people.

Next on my hit list is Comcast. Tomorrow is round three of sitting here for hours waiting for the slow tech repair guy to show up and do nothing. My cable's been garbage for two weeks. I'm not paying my bill for this month. They can forget about that. They've wasted so much of my time!

But then again, how much of my own time do I waste? Ah...it doesn't matter. Never forget the power of the pen [Or the keyboard, as the case may be].

The Joy of Sex Ed

On Saturday, while the rest of DISD's thousands of teachers were happily resting in bed, out enjoying the sunshine or doing chores, I, along with about 40 other people, was sitting in a comfortable chair, enjoying delicious, FREE coffee out of a real cup, and eating a tasty slice of banana bread. They were, they said, trying to make the idea of being at DISD training on a Saturday morning not seem so bad in comparison to what we could have been doing.

And would you believe it - they were actually successful!

I kept looking around to make sure I was in the right place. My experience at past training sessions was that if you wanted coffee, you'd better stop at Starbucks or be prepared to pay $0.50 for a Styrofoam cup of lukewarm motor oil and some powdered creamer. Heck, even at my school if we want coffee, we have to pay, or at least bring coffee supplies. Not at Sex Ed training, though. There, both the coffee and fresh cream containers were of a shiny silver, and always full. That was really enough to make me happy for the whole day - free coffee and pastries that were not donuts served on real plates with real forks. It was hilarious how many teachers made comments like, "Wow! Real forks! For us? Wow!" You'd think we'd never seen forks or decent food before.

But that was just breakfast! Just the start! At lunch, which was in a room separate from the training area and provided for us, again, free of charge, we were amazed again. Everything was so fancy, from the white tablecloths to the amazing chocolate cake we had for dessert. They even made a special meal for vegetarians like me. Well, I was the only vegetarian, yet they still made accommodations for me. I felt so special. We all felt special. And relaxed, and comfortable, which, of course, let to us feeling prepared and ready to do what we were there to do - learn.

Boy, did some people in that room learn. Human sexuality isn't a topic without controversy, obviously, and a few of the topics we discussed definitely raised some eyebrows. This first segment was only background information for adults, not students, so it got pretty graphic. The idea of that alone - giving us background information, making us more educated adults before sending us out to share knowledge with children - that was brilliant. Of course, many of the things we learned were not intended for us to share with the kids, but being totally informed on STD's, AIDS and alternative lifestyles will do nothing but make us better at our jobs as newly-minted campus sex ed teachers.

It's weird to say this, but I'm actually looking forward to the next meeting of this three-part training course. Dealing with focused, organized, and highly intelligent trainers and guest speakers was so incredibly refreshing. It was so different from the usual - cramming ourselves into kid-sized desks, no refreshments other than the occasional pile of candies in the center of the table and leaving feeling you've gained nothing more than another packet of handouts to file away - that many of us felt like we weren't DISD employees that day. I mentioned this to the director of the program, and she said, "Good, that's how we wanted you to feel - like true professionals." Mission accomplished.

I may have left with nothing to carry out but two Planned Parenthood pamphlets and a full tummy, but my brain left filled with many new ideas and more knowledge than I expected. I also gained hope - hope that DISD can be good and successful. The district's department of Human Growth, Development and Sexuality is proof that even in the zoo that is DISD, when the right people are in charge, things work.

Oh, and the icing on the cake? We actually got paid for this! This is my third year with DISD and the first time I've attended training where teachers receive a stipend.

Now, when I start actually teaching Sex Ed...we'll see how that goes. I'm already dreading the questions they're going to ask...

Sick AGAIN

Maybe it's the building - it's been around since before modern safety codes. Place is full of mold/asbestos. Yuck. Maybe it's the kids. I guess their parents don't really have the money to take them to the doctor when they're sick. They just send them to school. Maybe it's me - a sorry immune system, not enough sleep...

Whatever it is, I can't get a month into school without medical trauma. Fever, sore throat, sneezing...I've got it all. We do the hand sanitizer thing, cover your mouth when you cough thing, wash the hands frequently thing, and nothing works. I still get sick all the time, every year. Right now I'm miserable. I woke up in the middle of last night with firethroat and beatenwithhammer head. I kicked its butt all day and made it through my eight hours, but now I'm paying the price for working through the pain.

I'm so frustrated with so many things/people at my school that I could scream. I do enjoy sixth grade far more than I did the younger grades, but these people come with their own set of problems. Romance drama, hormones, and cursing fill my days. And that's just the coworkers...only joking. Teenagers are insane. I realize this is news to nobody, but I'm only now realizing the truth in the statement. The only previous experience I had with teenagers was being one, and I, of course, was nothing like the stereotypes. [ha...]

The students are the least of my worries, though. They're helpful and respectful enough to truly seem to feel bad when they dissapoint me [read: when I catch a bunch of girls cursing and/or talking filthy] or get caught doing something wrong. They do their work and are as responsible as 11-13 year old people can be expected to be.

My main trouble is the adults I work with. I've been through this before so I'll spare myself going through it all again... Didn't these people have to attend college? You'd think that a bunch of 20-40-somethings would have outgrown high school, but that brand of drama is alive and well amongst my colleagues.

[One might say that I am no better, ranting away on my little website instead of confronting people I have trouble with, and I accept that. However, I separate myself from work-related drama, keep to myself and stay out of the gossip circles. Therefore I feel I am exempt from any and all high school comparisons, unless, of course, we're talking about the people who look at me and think I'm still in high school. I'm all for that.]

Blah Blah Negativity Blah. Just writing about these things makes me feel worse. On to something happier.

Things I have to Look Forward to in the Coming Weeks:

1. Training this Saturday. No joke - I'm happy about it despite the subject matter: Human Growth and Sexuality. Yep - I get to give the girls at my school The Talk. Perhaps it's due to the fact that I get to feel some degree of pride in knowing that I will share with these girls information that could keep them from having a baby as a teenager, or maybe it's the $375 I get for attending, since the district has a nearly impossible time getting anyone to sign up for the course. Either way, I'm not dreading training for once. Pretty cool.

2. Day at the Estee Lauder Spa at Neiman-Marcus next Saturday. Obviously this was a gift - teachers can't afford fancy spas. I'm going to feel like the most spoiled, pampered princess in Dallas.

3. Two root canals. Again! Probably shouldn't be happy about this, but the ends definitely justify the means, and I can't wait to be free of dental pain.

4. Payday! A week early! God bless the union for fighting for us! Instead of an erratic pay schedule that sometimes left us six weeks without a paycheck, we'll now get paid every month on the 15th. I hear we got a raise too, but I'm not getting my hopes up. 

5. May 2...wait. That's really far off. Oh well. I guess there's Winter Break to look forward to...

One is not the Lonliest Number

My first solo flight [as a passenger, of course, not a pilot] was to London in 1997. I was 20 years old, and visiting a friend who had been an exchange student at my university.

Thanksgiving break was coming up, so I planned my trip for the long weekend. That's the folly of youth, I suppose, choosing a time period of only five days to embark on a trip involving two transatlantic flights.

Everything about the flight was so exciting to me. I could order drinks! Under 21! And it was legal! The airline provided a little goodie bag! With slippers! Free slippers on a plane! It amazed me. Even the flight attendants were spectacular - I had a headache and this lovely employee of British Airways gave me Parecetamol out of her own purse. I was immediately in love, convinced that the British were the kindest people on Earth.

The trip involved loads of [solo] train travel, a long bus ride from Sheffield to London, and, of course, lots of time in the subway. I'd been on vacation before - but never anything like this: it was so amazing to discover the joy of traveling alone.

Most people I know wouldn't consider going out to dinner alone, much less taking an international flight with no one to talk with during the long hours in the air. I see the situation in quite the opposite way. Traveling or dining alone gives me so many opportunities to meet new people. I'll never forget Hugo, the sweet man from Norway who let me in on the drinking under 21 on flights secret by ordering multiple screwdrivers for us both. And I'll always remember Sam, the guy I shared a flight to Atlanta with back in 1999. He and I had so much in common; the three hour flight, well, flew by. I've met corporate women away on business, grandparents going to visit grandkids, and, once, even an entire Swedish soccer team traveling to America.

These days I've got another solo flight in mind. I'm dreaming of going around the world alone. I'd like to start with a train trek up the middle of the USA, head West, and the fly to India from California. A stop in Russia and a little time in both Eastern and Western Europe would round the trip out. It's a huge goal - personally and financially. The world's so messed up anymore, though, that I want to see all these places and experience the people and cultures this planet has to offer before it's all gone. That's pessimistic thinking - I take it back. I have faith in the good of humanity; kind people will prevail, eventually.

Of course, I think it might help if we, say, got a new president in a couple of months...

Ahem. My advice to you is this: if you have never done anything by yourself, try it. Go to a nice restaurant alone. Order what you like - you don't have to worry about paying for someone else or worry that the person paying for you is worrying about the price of what you order. Then take it a step further. Go on a day trip alone. Visit the flea market two hours outside of town and see how delightful it is to spend as much or as little time as you want at a booth. Jump on a plane to somewhere far away and notice that you feel more relaxed not having to consider another person's hunger, fatigue, or desire to visit some over-promoted tourist trap. And if you're the one who wants to tour every wax museum and old building your vacation spot has to offer, you won't have to endure the impatience and rolling of the eyes of your travel companion.

The greatest part about doing things on your own [aside from the confidence you gain by doing things like mastering a forigen city's subway system] is that it gives you a clear chance to figure out who you are. You get to see what kind of choices and decisions you make when you are the only person they affect. You have an opportunity to experience the things that truly interest you and you alone. Maybe you never go to seafood restaurants because your spouse/partner/kid/whatever hates the smell of fish. On a trip alone, you can have lobster every night. Or perhaps you really don't care for art museums, and your usual travel companion can't go through a city without seeing every gallery it has to offer. Alone, you can spend all your time outdoors or in cooking shops or clothing boutiques or anything you want, really, because you get to set the itenerary - or not, if an itenerary-free trip is what you desire.

I'm not promoting a selfish everyday lifestyle. However, I do feel that just a little time alone every once and a while helps keep me grounded, in the same way that visiting an old friend does. Reconnecting with people feels good, even if the person you're connecting with is the same one you see in the mirror each day.