As I was doing some routine maintenance to the website over winter break, I realized I had contributed absolutely nothing to this blog in 2023! I can’t believe an entire year went by without me noticing, but then, it was a pretty rough year.
For one thing, my dad died about this time last year. To make matters more difficult, his wife left me out of every aspect of my father’s funeral possible short of actually barring me from attending. However, that’s a whole other story for another day…probably a novel…therapy to process it all.
Just before that, however, I was in the midst of dealing with the discovery of my dad’s neglected state of health when my husband and I visited him in his nursing facility hundreds of miles from our home, getting him to a hospital and finding out he had not only COVID, but pneumonia, too. The week after that, I was laid off from my job, my corporate job, a job I’d had for 6 months and was working from home.
Yes, I confess, I was one of the statistics. You know, those teachers who made the mass exodus from teaching after surviving the pandemic. I had turned my back on my profession at the end of the school year in May 2022, left behind my thousands of dollars’ worth of books, teacher resource guides, math manipulatives, games, visual aids, and other files and materials for the new teacher that was supposed to take over my position the following fall, and walked out the door, never once looking back. I also have to confess: it felt good. Really good.
To be honest, I’d been looking for another job for years, an escape hatch for when I reached the point where, either physically or mentally, I wouldn’t be able to teach anymore. Let’s face it, teaching is a rather physically demanding job, particularly with the elementary grades. The younger the student, the more physically challenging, and I’d spent most of my career teaching either kindergarten or first grade, among the youngest. Nothing had ever come from my intermittent search. Nobody outside the profession wanted to hire a teacher. I applied for a job with a textbook and educational materials publisher, and someone there actually said about me, “She’s just a teacher.” Shame on you!
But one day out of the blue (and I admit, with the help of connections through my husband), someone from another company finally DID call, and they began recruiting me to be one of their trainers around the fall of 2021. A few weeks later, they backed off, saying that they wanted to wait until they were sure they had enough work for me, that they didn’t want to hire me only to have to lay me off a short time later. I respected and appreciated that, and I continued to commute to my classroom each day with nothing lost, nothing gained.
Then in March, the phone calls and emails started arriving again, and they needed somebody…quickly. I was definitely interested, especially at that time of year when student behaviors start to crank up even worse, but I couldn’t in good conscience leave my position. I told the company that I would love to have the job, but I couldn’t leave my teaching post until the end of the school year when my contract was up. I couldn’t believe it, but they were willing to wait for me. I had a new job!
I was so excited and nervous and relieved. Mostly relieved. I was not going to have to deal with the utter mess that had been made of the feral bunch of kindergartners that were due to arrive on my first-grade classroom doorstep the following August. I had already been tearfully begging my husband not to have to go back for the next school year.
I was excited about starting something new, but something that would allow me to use a lot of my teaching skills. Plus, I was going to be able to work remotely! I had always wanted to work from home. No more commute. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more risking my safety driving in hazardous conditions when our school district superintendent was too big of a coward to cancel school for fear of the backlash from parents (or was it an ego trip to prove he was a big man making his employees face the weather while he stayed nice and cozy at home?)
Anyhow, without belaboring the point too much, I had taken myself out of the education game. I didn’t have to worry about it anymore. I still had a lot to say, however, and could have written, tried to write, but most of it was so strongly worded that I was afraid to post it. I’m not trying to incite violence; I’m just looking for intelligent discourse.
Circling back to my father’s death, we got through the funeral two weeks later, and about a month after that, my husband was laid off. I knew my dad had put aside a life insurance policy with me as the sole beneficiary. He had a separate policy for his wife. I was grieving for my father, but I was also resting in the knowledge that the tidy sum he had put by for me would help keep my family afloat for a few months while my husband and I looked for new employment. When I didn’t hear anything from the insurance company after a month, I called them to see what I needed to do to collect. That’s when I discovered that my father’s wife had changed the beneficiary on the policy about two seconds after she had gained my father’s power of attorney and never had the good grace to even tell me.
Now I needed a job, and I needed it fast, and the fastest way I knew to get one was to go back to teaching. As luck would have it, my old position at my old school was vacant. It was so awful, they couldn’t find anybody who could handle it, and they couldn’t keep anybody in it. Fortunately, there was a new interim principal, and also fortunately there were enough kind former colleagues who put in a good word for me, and I was hired back.
On my second day back on the job, the school district announced that it was planning to close my school. I was given the dubious distinction of being hired one day and “losing” my job the next! There was a whole new challenge, getting my students through that rough transition and finding a new place within the district myself. Again, this is another story, several stories, for another day.
Suffice it to say, 2023 was not a good year for me. I am glad to see the end of it. Hopefully, you can see why this site has been silent, but I’ll try to make up for that now. Here’s wishing you (and myself!) a much better 2024!