Teacher Truth

This past week has been absolutely lovely with 2 snow days and 1 more snow day for the students (but an optional workday for teachers).  The words “optional workday” should be read as “we don’t want you to stay home, but if you come in to work and slip and fall on the snow and ice that we haven’t removed yet, you can’t sue us; it was YOUR decision to come.”

The snow could not have come at a more opportune time for me.  I have been nursing a very bad cold that is trying desperately to turn into bronchitis, or worse.  The days of rest were exactly what I needed to stave off the worst.  I could take what, for all intents and purposes, were sick days without having to pay for a substitute teacher, lose sick days, or write 11 pages worth of lesson plans per day.  (By the time I’ve done all that, it’s really not worth it to stay home, which is why most teachers keep working when they’re sick.). However, these precious days of recuperation are not without their cost.

Now, most teachers live for snow days.  It just wouldn’t be a proper school year without one of these glorious little unexpected holidays.  However, MY colleagues were all moaning about the decision and wishing the days weren’t called.  There were various extenuating circumstances, like being in the middle of mid-year standardized testing and having report cards due, but the main reason is because for every snow day called, our school district will take away one of our annual leave days.  Keep in mind, we also still have to make the day up.  Two of our future teacher workdays have now been taken away and the children ordered to appear for school as usual.

Every other school district for which I have worked has built in snow days to their calendar.  They expect it will happen, and when it does, everybody just enjoys their little surprise respite from school free and clear.  Nobody has to make it up; nobody loses leave days; nobody gets hurt.

Because the leave days were taken from us, now many of us (including yours truly) will not have enough annual leave days to cover spring break (for which they also dock our annual leave time), even though we came in on the third day, walking precariously over the uncleared snow and ice in front of our school doors to be present and accounted for.  When we run out of our precious annual leave days, our pay will be docked.  I will be missing pay from my check that month, removed because I did not have enough annual leave, even though I won’t have been able to come in to my building to work either the snow or the spring break days, and despite the fact that I was even working on school duties while I was at home those days.

I swear, this school district makes an art form out of cheating its teachers out of their benefits and pay any way they can find.  When they can’t find a way, they invent a new way.  If only they would channel that energy for good purposes instead of evil, this might be a truly great place to go to school.

To anyone out there who may be reading this, I want to wish you a very, merry Christmas…no insult or offense intended.  When someone of the Christian faith wishes you a merry Christmas, it is nothing but with the best intent.  It is a wish full of love and joy and peace and blessing.

If you are a teacher, I hope you gave yourself the best Christmas gift ever…the gift of having all of your thank-you notes written before you left school for the last time for winter break.  It is a wonderful burden to have, don’t get me wrong.  I am always grateful when my students’ parents have been so generous that it is difficult to get thank-you notes written in response.

I don’t know if anyone else feels it, though, but with each gift comes this pressure to acknowledge it.  You want the parent to know their gift arrived safely and that you appreciated it.  You also don’t want them to have to wait until after the new year begins to receive the acknowledgement.

I have almost never accomplished this feat, but I did this year!  I think it helped that our classroom winter party was on a Friday, but we still had the following Monday and Tuesday to go to school before the break.  Most of the parents who were going to give me a gift sent it on the day of the party.  That gave me the whole weekend to work on my thank-yous.  This time, I was even prepared for the one or two parents that sent their gift the following Tuesday. I had brought stationery with me to school, and while the school played “Polar Express” over its closed-circuit T.V. station and my children enjoyed the respite from schoolwork and festivities watching it, I sat at my desk and knocked out the last couple of notes, tucking them into their folders, which were already stowed away in their backpacks, ready to go home at a moment’s notice should (i.e. in hopes that) a parent request their child early for pick-up.

Most years, I don’t even have time to open my presents, let alone write a note about each one, before it is time for the students to go home.  Year after year, I drag the presents home with me, open them there, make a dutiful list of who gave what, and then feel this cloud hanging over me until I can finally manage to find a day, usually sometime in the week after Christmas, to sit down and write my gratitude.  Then comes the dilemma about whether or not to mail them.  It’s so much easier to wait until school is back in session and slip the notes in their folders that go home each day.  Although, it seems so belatedly half-hearted to send it after New Year’s that way, but on the other hand, you’ve already likely spent a fortune on a gift for each child, and that postage can really add up.  Plus the added quandary about whether or not to include your home address or the school’s in the return address on the envelope haunts me.  These days, I lean toward using the school’s no matter how impersonal.  There are some parents that just shouldn’t know where I live, if you know what I mean.

So as you approach the holidays, whichever ones you may celebrate, may you fully enjoy each and every day of your brief break from your classroom, may you get lots of rest and recuperation, may all of your thank-you notes be written and in the hands of the thoughtful parent who went to the trouble of sending you a gift, (and may at least one of those gifts have been a sizable Visa gift card that you can spend any way you want)!  😉

 

My school, like a lot of public elementary schools, hosts a Thanksgiving lunch in November.  The parents are invited, tickets are sold, and the cafeteria manager goes crazy ordering extra food and hiring extra staff to handle the increased business that day.  In order to accommodate the extraordinary amount of people in the cafeteria, my current school hosts two days for this event, one for the lower grades K-2,  and one for the upper, and more time is allotted to eat and visit (40 minutes rather than the usual 25).

In past years, each class has been assigned an extra table or two to allow for the overflow of family members.  This year, however, when the table assignment came out, we were only given two tables per class.  When people started to question her table assignments, the school administrator who handles these arrangements swore up and down she had handled it like every other year and refused to change it.  As a result, by the time my class arrived in the cafeteria, the table assignments had been thrown out the window, and it was a free-for-all.  People were simply sitting wherever they could find a seat, which was fine for the most part, but it made it very difficult for the teachers, who were trying to keep the students together who did NOT have family members joining them for lunch.  It also made it difficult for our lovely lunch room monitors when it came time to dismiss a class and have the children line up to leave the cafeteria.  The monitors had no idea where the children were that they were trying to dismiss!

At this point, I need to back up just a wee bit and tell you what came before the lunch.  My team lead is always the life of the party.  If there is fun to be had, she will find it, and if there isn’t, she will create it herself.  Last year, she decided it would be a good idea for every kindergartner to have a paper turkey vest and headband to wear for the occasion.  The idea was not met with much enthusiasm at the time, partly because we didn’t want to get in trouble with our principal, whose philosophy was completely the opposite of hers (if it’s fun, it can’t be rigorous, and therefore it is not allowed), and partly because none of us wanted to track down the grocery bags and spend the hours at the last minute having to cut out hundreds of turkey parts from construction paper.  So, jumping into the deep end of the pool with both feet, our fearless leader said not to worry about a thing.  She would make ALL of them for the entire grade level.  (I’m pretty sure she didn’t think that one through before she made the commitment.)  She worked and worked and must have been up the whole night before and was STILL cutting out turkey pieces the next day after she came to school, but she presented each child with a vest and headband.  Some of them didn’t have armholes or neck holes; some of them were missing eyes or other parts, but by golly, each child had one!  The children were absolutely delighted (once repairs and alterations were made).

Having gone to all of that trouble, she didn’t want to throw the vests away, so she asked to keep them for the next year.  That brings me to this year.  With an entire year to think about it, our team leader decided that she wanted to add something to the mix.  She wanted us all to teach our children a turkey song and dance to be performed (in turkey costume, of course) for the parents after they had feasted on their lunch.  I wasn’t thrilled with the choice of songs, but I kept my opinions to myself and jumped on board the turkey “train” with one exception.  With my ever-lingering parents, I was very reluctant to have the performance in our classrooms after the lunch.  I knew that my parents would never go home.  Without a clean break, I’d either have to get rude, which makes me very uncomfortable, or I’d have to endure parents in my room for the rest of the day (no joke), which is incredibly disruptive and distracting for the children.  I suggested we change the performance to before lunch rather than after and explained my reasoning.  Apparently I am not the only teacher with parents who have a difficult time knowing when to leave, and the others agreed wholeheartedly.

So, my team leader created the invitations, although why she thought a two-minute song needed 30 minutes to perform, I will never understand, and parents began arriving long before necessary.  To make things more awkward, she had over-committed herself once again, and had not made the additional turkey vests that she had promised and were needed to replace the vests lost from the previous year through tearing and other attrition…so we had to share.  Now kindergarten teachers are very good at sharing, that was not the problem.  The problem was that I now had 20 minutes to fill off the top of my head, with the parents in the room, unable to perform for them yet, while we waited for the other classes to finish with the vests and pass them down to us.  Then, we had to get dressed in them.  (I asked the parents to help with this, which kept us all busy, which was good…a few less minutes of having them stare at us with nothing to do.)

We performed our turkey dance and song.  The parents were enthralled, recording every moment of the almost-two-minute show on their phones.  The kids were elated.  We removed the vests carefully for next year again, and headed down to the cafeteria a little earlier than we were supposed to.  My instructional assistant stayed behind to make sure all of the children unaccompanied by a family member made it out while I led the procession down the hall.  She shut the door behind her when the room was cleared, but she didn’t have a key to lock it.  We have a new policy of not keeping the doors locked this year, and I admit, it does make it easier for people who need to come and go from my room to do so with as little disruption as possible, which is nice.

We had an agonizing wait in line while parents kept trying to conference with me about how their child was doing.  I’m not joking.  By this time, I had ushered the parents toward the food ahead of me and had taken my place at the back of the line, and parents were actually giving up their place in line to come back to ask me questions and talk to me about their child’s latest accomplishments.  (This is inappropriate, parents!  If you want a conference, I’d be happy to set up an appointment with you, but please don’t try to talk to me about your child’s academic and social progress while standing with everyone else in the lunch line.  Okay?  Can we just enjoy the festivities and make small talk, please?)

By the time I finally got my lunch, I was grateful for the extra 15 minutes.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to eat.  I sat with a parent and his child, one of my students, who were sitting by themselves.  I had to initiate every sentence of the conversation, which is a strain to someone like me who is not an extrovert.  I began to wonder if I was making the two of them as uncomfortable as they were making me, and I started to wish lunch WAS over.  As it was, I didn’t get to finish my lunch, but I’m used to that.

The lunch room monitors came, blew their whistle, and called for my students to line up.  They came dutifully, and I began to do my usual headcount.  1, 2, 3, …  I was four short!  I recounted.  I was still missing four children.  I scanned the cafeteria to see if I could figure out where they had chosen to sit.  There was no sign of them.  I counted again, hoping by some miracle that they had appeared out of nowhere.  No such luck.  Where WERE these kids?  I didn’t want to leave the cafeteria without them.  I scanned the room again in desperation, panic beginning to rise.

Just then, one of my parents came through the doorway of the cafeteria with her child.  Thank goodness!  There was one down, three to go.  The mother came up to me and in broken English informed me that there were children and parents in my classroom.  She said she had told them she didn’t think they should be in there, but only she had come back to the cafeteria.  Really?!  On that piece of information, I ushered my class line out into the hallway and down toward our room.  Sure enough, when we got to the classroom door, there were the three children and their siblings and their parents, dragging books off the bookshelves and dumping math manipulatives out of their bins and onto the floor, having a marvelous time and making a wreck out of my room.  A couple of them were the same ones whose parents allowed them to trash my room on curriculum night (remind me to tell you about that one sometime), so I wasn’t entirely surprised, but still.  Are you kidding me?

A teacher’s classroom is like her second home.  It is our second home.  We spend about as much time there as we do our actual home.  I don’t care if you are taxpayers and part of your money went to pay for many of the things in that room.  It doesn’t give you the right to come in and do whatever you want.  I would never come into your home and start taking things out of your cabinets and drawers and strewing them around the floor.  What are you parents thinking?????  This was a first for me.  I have NEVER seen parents act with so little consideration as the group I have this year.  So despite my best efforts, I STILL had to shoo parents out of my room at the end of lunch, although I tried to do it graciously, more graciously than they had treated me, I might point out.  I also had to put my room to rights before we could continue our day.  Not-so-happy Thanksgiving!

 

I feel like a completely gullible idiot, but I have to tell what happened to me on Friday, just so others don’t fall prey to the same scammers.  I was in a planning meeting while my students were in “specials” when the school secretary called our meeting room and told me the local sheriff’s department was on the phone and that I needed to come take the call right away.  My first thought was that the call would be about one of my students.  I’d already had child protective services drop in on us earlier in the week to interview one of my students, and another student whose parents are in the middle of a very ugly divorce and decided to play out their courtroom drama in my classroom a few days ago when they dropped their child off the first day of school.

I was completely taken aback when I picked up the phone and discovered it was I who was under scrutiny.  The man identified himself as a representative from the sheriff’s department, told me his name, and asked if I was aware there were 2 warrants issued for ME!  He said that I had been summoned for jury duty on a previous date and that, because I had failed to appear in court and failed to respond to any of their attempts to contact me, a judge had issued one “FTA” warrant and a second for contempt of court.  I informed him that this was the first I was hearing about any jury duty and that I had always served before when summoned. He asked if I’d had any trouble receiving my mail, and I replied none that I aware.  However, in the back of my mind, I was thinking about the fact that I moved just a little over a year ago, so maybe it was plausible that their attempts to contact me had gone awry somehow.  I was also thinking that this had to be a case of mistaken identity, because ever since I got married, I’ve had to distinguish my identity from a lot of other people who now have the same name as I do.  It is very common for me to have to give my middle name or birth date in public places, such as the library, doctor’s office, even the hair salon.  My married last name is apparently much more common than my maiden name.

He proceeded to tell me that I had to come down to the sheriff’s office right then to rectify the situation.  I explained that not only did I not have a car at my disposal (my son had dropped me off at work that morning because he needed the car later in the day), I had a classroom full of children that I could not leave, but he was having none of it.  I had to come, and he wanted my cell phone number so that he could call me back in three minutes and that I had to stay on the line with him in transit, as if he didn’t trust me.

By this time, I was really rattled, as you might imagine, and I wasn’t thinking too clearly, but I went to the front office secretaries and told them my situation.  They immediately started making arrangements for someone to take over my class.  I practically ran back to my classroom to get my purse and especially my cell phone, because I had to call my husband to try to arrange transportation before this nasty man called back.

To make matters more interesting, when I called my husband to tell him what was going on and ask him to come get me, he informed me he couldn’t because our second car’s brakes had failed on him while he was driving earlier that morning, and he had taken it in to the mechanic’s to be fixed.  I was about fit to be tied at that point!  I knew the sheriff’s office would never believe this and imagined they would send an officer out to the school to pick me up.

Long story short, our sweet secretaries (God bless them!) got permission for one of them to drive me to where my son had our other car so I could get it.  In the meantime, I was wondering why this guy hadn’t called me back like he had said he would.  I had my cell phone in my hand the whole time.

Now for those of you skeptics who think you would have known better than I that something was fishy at this point, maybe so.  In my defense, however, this guy had his spiel down well.  He knew details and had answers to all of my questions.  Plus, I have lived in several different states now, and I know that each state does things its own way, but the state I live in at the moment is particularly weird.  It would not be the first time I would wonder at (and privately curse) the stupidity of the government and the way things are run, so the fact that this was happening was not as far-fetched as it maybe should have seemed.  I also have to say that I am unacquainted with these kinds of matters and don’t know how they’re handled.  I mean, they really had the WRONG girl.  I’m so squeaky clean, I’m boring.

Anyhow, to try to make this long story as little shorter.  I got down to the sheriff’s office at the address he had given me.  I gave the name of the man I was supposed to see at the front desk, and he seemed perplexed.  He asked why I was there, and I told him, and he gave me instructions on how to find the magistrate’s office.  I went there and, fortunately, met with a very kind lady.  She asked me several questions, looked up some information on her computer, made a phone call to someone who handles such matters, and then informed me I had been scammed.  Actually, the person she called said, “I can’t believe she [meaning me] made it all the way here.  Usually before this point, the guy has their credit card number and has charged a couple of thousand dollars, and there’s no way they can get it back.”  The woman apologized to me, told me that there were 13 other people in the state with my name with outstanding warrants, but reassure me that I was not one of them.  I had been SCAMMED.

I, of course, responded by bursting into tears, releasing the surmounting stress.  I will never know why the guy didn’t call me back like he said he would.  I didn’t know if there was something about our conversation that put him off (he seemed a bit taken aback that I didn’t have a car at my disposal) or if I was so shaken up by that point that I gave him the wrong phone number, but I thank God for His protection.  According to the REAL sheriff’s representative, when the scammer has his victim good and rattled, he usually calls the victim back, saying that if they don’t want to have to come in to the station, they can just pay the fine over the phone with their credit card.  I guess most people do.  That’s why they don’t ever make it all the way to the sheriff’s department.  I’m still out almost a $1000 for the brake repair, but at least it’s not an additional $2000 to a crook with way too much chutzpah.

How many teacher workdays did YOU have before school started this year?  The school district I work for decided it was necessary to have 8 of them.  Yes, 8.  I couldn’t believe it either.  I’ve never had that many before.  I’m not entirely unhappy about it, because it actually gave me adequate time to prepare my classroom.  However, most of those days were filled with meetings and professional development (a.k.a. a waste of time).

I don’t know of any other profession that requires as much “professional development” as the teaching profession.  I’m not saying that I can’t use improvement.  I am NOT perfect.  Far from it.  But why are we continually developed?  Were we not adequately trained before we were launched into the world as teachers?  Has the act of effectively educating our youth changed so radically or been so inadequate in the past that it requires us to constantly be retrained to do it better?  I don’t think the answer to either of those conditions is affirmative.

All of that aside, I love the start of school.  I would feel as if I were missing out on something wonderful if I weren’t a part of the process.  There is something about new school supplies that gets to me every year.  One of my favorite movie quotes comes from Ephron’s “You’ve Got Mail.”  When describing his feelings about the autumn season, one of the anonymous e-mail correspondents writes “I would send you a bouquet of newly-sharpened pencils.”  I totally get that.  I can think of no floral arrangement that would be lovelier.

At this point, I am deviating a bit from my previous posts.  Up until recently, I’ve been posting excerpts from a book I have written about my experiences at a private preschool.  However, if you would like to continue to read my story, please leave me a comment and let me know.  I’m investigating how to self-publish and make it an e-book.

Currently, I’m a kindergarten teacher at a public elementary school.  I’d like to turn my blog’s attention to more real-time issues and comments.  Since it is August, teachers’ attention can’t help but be drawn to the coming school year.  I’m still trying to enjoy my last few days of “freedom,” but my focus is forced toward school when I see Back-to-School ads on T.V. and when my co-workers text about upcoming teacher workday events.  It completely ruins the zen I’m trying to achieve.  If you’re a teacher or school staff member, what are YOU doing in August?

Up until now, I’ve been writing about my past.  For the first time in my blog, I feel compelled to use this platform and write about real-time events, because I believe these unfolding events are going to impact education in the United States in an unprecedented way.  So forgive me for interrupting the flow of the Annie Baker saga, but fast-forward a few years to now, where I am working as a teacher in a public school.

Many people have raised their voices in outrage at the recent appointment and major blunder of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, and at the risk of being redundant, I would like to add my voice to the resounding cry of opposition.  Her recent tweet (asking where were the pencils) was, at the very least ignorant, or perhaps at most, insulting.  If it was intended to be insulting, look out teachers and brush up your resumes because very bad things will be happening to you and your jobs in the near future.  If simply ignorant, then she is obviously unqualified for the job, which is what Senator Elizabeth Warren already pointed out in Ms. DeVos’ confirmation hearing.

Why is it that, once again, a wealthy and powerful person with no adequate qualifications has been put in a position of authority over the educational system?  It happens quite frequently on the state level.  Politicians who have no real expertise are making decisions all the time that dictate how I do my job.  DeVos’ is just the latest and the grandest in scale of all such appointments, made in the guise of “fixing” our educational system.  Unfortunately, so far, every “fix” just makes the problems worse.  I am increasingly being demanded to do things in my classroom that I know are neither helpful nor appropriate for my students.  When are the educational issues facing our country going to be put in the hands of trained and experienced educators who actually know a thing or two about working one-on-one with our nation’s children on a daily basis?

I think policy makers, and Ms. DeVos in particular, could benefit from a little “Teacher Truth,” don’t you?

The shock of having to go back to Pemberton after a week off is almost unbearable.  I want out.  It’s just miserable.  Everyone exists in fear.  We’re like a bunch of cowering dogs just waiting for the next beating from an unjust master.  Increasingly, I’m asked to do things with which I am very uncomfortable, either because they are inappropriate for the children or because they are unethical ways to treat the employees.

One of our sweet little teachers in the toddler full-day room has been hoping to become a teacher in the public school system eventually.  Like all public school teachers, she has to pass a battery of expensive tests before the state will issue her a license to teach.  She has tried several times and failed.  She’s hoping to try again in the spring, but I secretly have little hope that she’ll pass.  While she’s wonderful with the children and fabulous at her job, she’s not overly bright.  If she hasn’t passed the basic tests by now, I doubt that she ever will.

Anyway, she’s been a full-time employee with Pemberton long enough now that she’s eligible for benefits, such as health insurance coverage and a few paid vacation days.  Linda pointed out to the administration that the teacher had reached her anniversary date with the school and asked for forms for the teacher to apply for insurance.  Instead of being given the forms, she was immediately asked if she had said anything yet to the teacher about this.  She replied that no, she hadn’t.  Their response: “Good!  Don’t say anything at all.  She’s been trying to leave us.  Why should we start this process when she’ll just leave us anyway?”

Ummm, because you owe it to her?  It is her legal right?  You promised it to her?  She’s worked hard for you and has earned it?

As Crystal had still not shown up for work, I expressed my concern for her to Linda in a moment we had to ourselves in the back office.  She finally filled me in on the details.

It turns out that Crystal’s baby was afflicted with a chromosomal condition that causes severe intellectual disability and physical abnormalities in many parts of the body. Crystal was told that infants with this condition do not usually survive the first few days of life, and her baby would likely not even make it to birth.

It seems that Crystal and her husband were faced with an unthinkable decision.  They wanted that baby so badly.  I can’t imagine going through my first pregnancy and learning something like that was wrong.  There was so little hope.  My prayers go out for Crystal and her husband and their baby.  My heart breaks for them.  Sometimes this imperfect world is so harsh.

Back at work.  Yippee.  But something is very wrong.  Crystal is not here and something has happened.  Nobody is talking about it, and I don’t want to pry.  Still, I’m concerned.