education – Teacher Truth

Annus Horribilis

It has been almost a year since I’ve posted anything online. I feel badly about that. I was surprised to learn I actually had subscribers, and I feel I have let them down. I have a good excuse, several in fact, but still, I don’t like to leave readers hanging.

To borrow the words of Queen Elizabeth II, it has been an annus horribilis, a horrible year. It began in January 2024 when I developed diverticulitis for the first time. I was in quite a bit of pain but still trying to teach through it while I was visiting various medical professionals attempting to figure out what in the world was wrong with me. That was followed by days and days of trying to teach with pain while sticking to a purely clear liquid diet (in other words, no energy). I lost five pounds the first week and another five the second, which was great because goodness knows I need to lose far more weight than that, but as a weight-loss program, I don’t recommend it.

Then about the same time, my husband began to have a lot of swelling and pain in his right leg. It became so bad that it was too painful to walk. I’ll spare you the description of not one, but three, nightmarish trips to the emergency room and the series of mishaps and misdiagnoses on the part of our local hospital (another story in itself). It all finally boiled down to the identification of a huge blood clot high in his right leg and a hospital stay of several days after the doctors performed a surgical procedure to try to break it down as much as possible, because by this point, the clot was too large to wait for blood thinners to take care of it.

The unspoken question between my husband and me then became, “Is the cancer back?” You see, the only other time he has had blood clots was when he was first identified with colon cancer five years before. He had gone to have a CT scan for the cancer when the doctors found blood clots and called him to immediately go to the hospital emergency room. Fortunately, the cancer was in its earliest stages, and they were able to remove it with surgery. Since then, he had kept every appointment, taken every test, and had come back clean. He was coming up on the five-year anniversary of his original diagnosis and was expecting to be dismissed by his oncologist and released from his more frequent visits and tests.

The agonizingly slow-arriving answer to the cancer question was, “yes.” It was now stage four. It required chemotherapy.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the week after he received his diagnosis, my husband was laid off from his job. In the blink of an eye, we went from doing better-than-alright to not-alright-at-all. The loss of his paycheck meant a reduction in our household income by 75% and all of our health insurance, because men in the corporate world are compensated far better than women in the public education system. No amount of savings could make up for that drastic loss, the first of many this past year.

Reality and a very frightening picture of our future came crashing in on us. My husband and I had always planned to downsize as soon as all of our children were out of the house, but we hadn’t thought it would be anytime soon. However, with his age and now the cancer to deal with, his prospects of quickly landing another job were very doubtful. We could not afford our home on my salary alone, especially not with the rapidly mounting medical bills. We decided to take advantage of the current housing prices and sell our home so that we could buy something much smaller, a lot cheaper, and a home that (hopefully) couldn’t be taken away from us as easily. I needed that security. I needed to believe that I wasn’t going to end up homeless.

A real estate agent friend of ours took the lead, almost before we were ready. In the blink of an eye, our house was turned upside down with painters and handymen trying to get everything in the best shape possible for putting the house on the market. He and his wife came into our home one day and decluttered every room while I was at work teaching. I came home to discover my house turned completely upside down, topsy-turvy from top to bottom. I couldn’t find anything. It had all been put in boxes and taken to the basement.

We had an offer on the house before we had even put it up for sale, but we held out for a better offer. We had that better offer within about 24 hours of putting the house on the market. We accepted. My head was spinning. I was very grateful, but everything was moving so fast.

Now all of a sudden we were faced with having to get out of our house and find someplace else to go. We started looking, but there wasn’t much to choose from in our price range and ended up in a small town duplex with no basement and five fewer rooms than the metropolitan suburban home we were leaving. It wasn’t in great shape and needed quite a bit of work, but it was what we could afford and put me a lot closer to the school where I’d been teaching. My commute was cut by more than half, which was nice.

The next challenge was lining up all of the work that needed to be done on the new house before we could move in, all with an eye on the imminent deadline imposed by the closing date on our old house. Along with that challenge was the even more overwhelming need to get rid of five rooms of furniture and a lot of the stuff that was being stored in our basement.

We tried Facebook Marketplace, offering items near and dear to my heart (read: inestimable) for a tiny fraction of their actual value. What we discovered is that there are a lot of people on Facebook Marketplace who aren’t actually interested in your stuff, only in trying to cheat you and steal your identity. Thankfully, I don’t believe they were successful, but needless to say, we turned to other avenues to get rid of our things.

We didn’t have time to put a garage sale together. I was trying to wrap up the school year by this time and get prepared for summer school, for which I had applied to teach in order to bring in a few extra bucks. My husband had started chemo treatments. Instead, we made many, many trips to Goodwill with the trunk and back seat of our car loaded to the gills. However, that didn’t help us get rid of the furniture pieces. For that, we called several charities, like Habitat for Humanity, that would come to your home and pick up items. Even they wouldn’t take a lot of it, though we had nice pieces of furniture worth thousands of dollars.

In the end, we were forced to call 1-800-JUNK. Yes, we actually had to PAY someone to haul away our beautiful things. It was sickening. We were simply out of time, cutting it right down to the wire, and had no other choice.

Next came the actual move. I could write pages about this nightmare alone, but I’ll just give you the highlights. My husband hired someone recommended by our agent, but we must have gotten the crew from hell. I left that morning for an 8:00 dentist appointment and returned to find my hardwood kitchen floor covered with water and absolutely no one in sight trying to avert the flood. The movers had tried to disconnect the refrigerator and had broken the valve on the water line. A very kind neighbor had taken my husband to the hardware store to try to find something to stop the water line from flowing. I ran around frantically trying to find anything absorbent, which wasn’t easy because by this time even the rags had been packed away. Just as soon as our wonderful neighbor had fixed the water line in the kitchen, we heard a shout from the moving crew in the basement.

My neighbor had just left to return to his own home across the street when we had to call him back, because when we got down in the basement, the sump pump, which had given us absolutely no problems in the six years we’d lived there, was spewing water all over the place. What our neighbor found was that a part inside the sump pump was turned the wrong way. All he had to do was turn it back in the right direction, but it was obvious that someone on the moving crew was messing around rather than working.

However, the day had just begun. The crew couldn’t get the basement refrigerator out through the basement door, and they wouldn’t take the doors off the refrigerator because they hadn’t been trained to do that. (That was the point at which we called in 1-800-JUNK.) There were crashes in the driveway followed by “oops!” There was our solid oak kitchen table that they didn’t bother to remove the legs before they loaded it and then, unbeknownst to us, loaded on the truck right side up, after which they loaded as many heavy boxes as they could fit on top of it. Needless to say, we no longer had a kitchen table at the destination end of our move, just a pile of splinters. That was only one of several major pieces that were broken.

The day ended around 10:00 that night with the movers trying to get our kitchen refrigerator through the kitchen door, which was about ¼” too small to accommodate it. Again, another lecture about how they couldn’t possibly remove any doors to help facilitate getting it through. I sat down on my broken couch, looking at the gouges they had put in my newly repaired and painted walls of what was now my home and fought to keep back the tears. This was not my first rodeo. I’ve moved thirteen other times. I know what to expect. But I’d never experienced anything like this.

As the year has progressed since then, there have been many other losses, like the death of my mother-in-law at the end of the summer. A lot of this is first-world problems, I know, but it has been a lot with which to deal. So. Much. Loss. To add to that, it has been an absolutely horrible year at school, as well, but that is another story for another time.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

When was the last time you attended a parent-teacher conference? I’ve just come through another round of conferences a couple of weeks ago, our third this year. I can remember when, as a child, my parents only had one conference with my teachers in the fall. That was all. The only reason anyone ever had a spring conference was if the child was struggling in some way, usually academically, because a behavioral problem would have already been addressed. (Correct me if my experience has been different than yours, but back then, the behavior issues were far less serious and numerous than they are today, and they would have been dealt with swiftly and decisively by both the parents and the teacher. The rule at my house was always: if you get in trouble at school, you’ll be in twice as much trouble when you get home.)

Then a few years back it became de rigueur to have two conferences every year, a fall and a spring. I thought that was a little unnecessary. As a teacher, if I need to meet with a parent, I just reach out and ask for a meeting, no matter the time of year. If I don’t need to meet with you, I won’t bother you. However, I complied, of course.

Then along came the pandemic. A third parent-teacher conference was added (via Zoom) to the school calendar before the new classes began in August. This one was to allow everyone to meet each other virtually and to allow the teacher, who had now also been given the task of acting as a kind of social worker, to check on the well-being, not only of his/her students, but of their families as well. Additionally, it allowed the teacher to explain how distance-learning would be handled, a process new to both educators and parent-guardians alike. It was not only understandable, it was absolutely necessary and quite helpful.

Finally, the pandemic subsided enough that in-person learning could resume, much to the relief of almost everyone. For most students, distance learning left much to be desired and did not produce the same level of achievement as in-person, which should not have been a surprise to anyone. We did our best, but it was not an ideal situation. Strangely enough, however, the third parent-teacher conference did not go away, and to be honest, most of the teachers I know, including myself, while we wish we had that time to work unencumbered in our classrooms, appreciate the value of getting to meet our students and their families and allowing those families to begin to get to know us. Everyone seems to feel more relaxed and prepared knowing a little better what they or their child are walking into on the first day of school.

But still…three parent-teacher conferences a year? Couldn’t we get rid of the spring one unless we need it?

Now, come to find out, our state doesn’t even recognize the legitimacy of those before-school conferences! We had quite a few inclement weather days in January this year, much more than the make-up days we had built into our district calendar, so we were trying to work with the state auditor to see how we could make up the missing required hours. The auditor informed the school district that those conferences held before school starts in August don’t count because they don’t contribute directly to the students’ future success. Like heck, they don’t!

The other issue I have with parent-teacher conferences lately is that it has become standard practice to bring the child to the conference. Back in the day (yes, I sound like an old codger), the children were left at home with a babysitter. That’s why they’re called parent-teacher conferences, not parent-child-teacher conferences.

I really needed to meet with a parent by herself last fall because her very clever daughter was trying to manipulate the both of us, and I felt it would be better if she and I could share information and strategize without her daughter taking in everything that was being said and trying to outsmart us. I asked the parent if it would be possible for her to come sans child and unintentionally completely freaked her out.

Now before you jump all over me, let me just say that I recognize that paying for babysitters can be prohibitive. If that is the case for any of my parents, I don’t want them to miss their conference because of the cost of childcare. I teach in a Title I school, and I know firsthand that can be an issue.

I am also aware that there are such things as student-led conferences, and they have their benefits, as well. I’m not devaluing them. It’s just that sometimes, as the old saying goes, “little pitchers have big ears,” and the grown-ups need the opportunity to speak freely without the child around to hear it. Sometimes children misunderstand, sometimes their feelings are hurt, sometimes they’re given too much of a voice in the conference (in other words, more than the parents themselves).

I’m also tired of having to hurriedly clean up my classroom before the next parent arrives because some student’s younger sibling has destroyed it while the parent sits through our conversation ignoring the behavior, never correcting it, and leaves without making the child pick up the mess. Does that sound familiar to anyone else?

Teacher Unappreciation

We were in the middle of eating dinner when the phone rang. My husband, being the tech-savvy guy that he is, not only has his cell phone hooked up to our voice mail from the land line, it makes a written transcription of what is said, so he is able to convey the message immediately. We were expecting a call from my father, so my husband checked his cell phone right away. It was not my father.

It was a robo call from the superintendent of the school district where I work. This is the man who has made my life more miserable than it already is for the last two years. You know, the man who wouldn’t call off school until the last second when the pandemic hit, the man who pushed us into hybrid before the schools were ready to start, before they had a plan, before all of the safety protocols had been put into place because he was being pressured to do so. This is the man who, in order to get what he wants, flat out repeatedly lies to the parents of the children for whom he’s responsible and the board that makes decisions based upon his guidance and leadership. He is the man who makes decisions that are clearly not in the students’ best interests, contrary to the office and responsibilities that he holds.

It was his minions, acting on his behalf, who ordered us to set up websites on Google sites, and after giving us a week to teach ourselves how to do that (no training was provided) and countless hours designing and creating and more time explaining our sites to the parents of our students, then told us to scrap them. He decided after the fact that they presented a security risk. (Shouldn’t he or one of his minions have researched this thoroughly enough before they wasted all that time and effort and…yes…taxpayer’s money to realize that risk? Not to mention making his teachers look like a bunch of idiots in front of the parents.)

He’s the one who made all the teachers learn Zoom and start using it to conduct our classes remotely only to decide a few months later that it wasn’t secure enough and made us all switch to Webex (again, without any training or help other than the website’s own videos). Then, come to find out, the fault did not lie with Zoom, which was a preferable tool to use for teaching than Webex. It was with people who were posting their meeting links publicly. (Duh!) Therefore, the same issues were occurring on Webex.

This is the man who wouldn’t allow me to remain teaching remotely when I asked, who coerced other teachers instead to go remote when they didn’t want to, who forced me to be teaching in four different modes simultaneously. (I’ve got news for you, bud. This is NOT what they meant by the definition of “hybrid.”) He also decreed that we would return to the buildings fully in person by March 15^th while having no idea or concern about the details necessary to bring that about. He makes his proclamations and leaves the peons (a.k.a. teachers and principals) to sort it out. He made us return, even though all of the safety protocols were not in place. The masks he promised? Only one was ever given to me these past few months we’ve been attending in person. The face shield I was given was so flimsy, it didn’t hold up past the first week. The students were given plexiglass shields for their tables, but there was a shield that only covered a third of the horseshoe-shaped table I use and none for my desk. After we’d already been in the physical school buildings for several months, they finally installed some air purifiers throughout the rooms in the building. (This is after he’d had his minion drone (dare I say, lie) on and on for over an hour one night at a very lengthy board meeting spewing numbers and data that were completely false, testifying to the adequacy of the schools’ ventilation systems to provide fresh, uncontaminated air throughout the buildings.)

He allowed parents anything they wanted. I refer to this as “Burger King” education. Have it YOUR way! If a parent yells loudly and threateningly enough, he’ll give it to them, even if it means going back on his word. For example, parents were given a cut-off date to decide whether they wanted to return their child to the physical school building or whether they wanted to stay learning remotely. After this time, he warned, no one would be allowed to change…NO EXCEPTIONS! Except, after months of working with my current roster of students establishing routines and procedures and behavior expectations and truly cultivating a cooperative and caring class, when two of my students’ parents who had chosen remote learning decided they wanted to switch back to my classroom, he countermanded the principal’s decision and told us we had to let them switch. It completely upended the classroom culture the children and I had worked so hard to create.

This man didn’t listen to his teachers when they begged him and presented logical, well-articulated reasons why it was too soon to return to the classroom. The same jerk who, in a video speech sent out to the district, said with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders, “Can I tell you that none of [the teachers] will get COVID? No.” His indifference gave me cold chills when I witnessed it. He put all of our lives at greater risk needlessly.

So now, here he is, sending me a canned message about how much he appreciates me just because it’s Teacher Appreciation Week. My husband asks if I want to hear the call. Heavens NO! I can’t even stand the sound of the superintendent’s voice anymore. He’s already said enough to me this year, and he said it with every decision he made. He told me loudly and clearly that neither I nor any of my colleagues mean a thing to him. Contrary to his words, he does not value us. Actions speak far louder than words, Mr. Superintendent, so I’m not listening to your words anymore.

Teacher Appreciation Week

Like many of you, this past week was Teacher Appreciation Week in my school district. It was nice to have a treat each day. On Monday, the staff lounge was supplied with Costco-sized boxes of various snacks paid for by the school or the principal, I’m not sure which. On Tuesday, we were thanked for making our students such “smart cookies” and provided with a cookie of our choice, donated by the local Subway restaurant. (Thank you, Subway!) On Wednesday, two or three parents on the Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO) arranged for a lunch in the school cafeteria catered by a local Italian restaurant that was fabulous. On Thursday, the nearby Sonic donated a large drink for each teacher. On Friday, our Panera sent us donuts and coffee. (Thank you, Sonic and Panera!)

If I hadn’t taught anywhere else, I would think this is great. If you think about it, though, only a handful of parents had anything to do with expressing their gratitude. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that long ago that I remember teacher appreciation weeks where nearly every child’s family sent in a gift. It might be a gift card to Starbucks or a favorite restaurant. It might be a mug or some lotion or a candle. Sometimes it was a live plant or flowers that I could put out in my garden or hang on my porch. We were given personalized items like reusable water bottles and key chains. Some teachers even received clothing items like skirts or scarves. The best gift, though, was the year I had a particularly motivated room parent who organized the other parents and collected monetary donations. She compiled all the money into one very large ($250) Visa gift card. That was amazing! It was a significant chunk of money that I could spend any way I wanted. (Of course, I turned around and spent all of that and more on things for my students.)

A few schools had a schedule of things the students were supposed to bring in each day and give to their teacher. One day might be a single flower, so that the teacher would end up with a beautiful bouquet representing each of her children. Another day, each was supposed to bring their teacher’s favorite beverage or favorite candy. The next day, it might be to bring your teacher a note of thanks from the child on paper provided earlier by the school. They were inexpensive items, but it gave the children a chance to participate in the process of expressing their gratitude.

As for food, we were fed and feted royally by the parents all week. One morning they would bring us the breakfast of our choice from any restaurant we chose. Another day, they pushed around a cart loaded with snacks and soda or bottled water, stopping at each classroom along the way for the teacher to select her treat. Every day lunch was provided by the parents, who signed up in advance to bring a dish, and each day had a different theme. The parents would decorate the staff lounge to go with the theme of the day, and they would lay the smorgasbord out on our huge table in the teacher workroom. The aromas and flavors that wafted from the workroom were unbelievable. On Friday, we would be given a sit-down meal in the media center with table cloths and decorations and door prizes, catered by a very nice restaurant, all paid for by the PTO. By the end of the week, the parents left no doubt in your mind that you, their teacher, were truly appreciated.

This year, not one family sent in a gift, not a single parent wrote a note of thanks, and no child made me a picture or card. Okay, I thought, it’s a COVID year. Many parents are barely making ends meet. The parents probably all feel like they did most of the teaching this year anyway. Why should they have to thank me? But they didn’t do most of the teaching, did they? I spent hours and hours of extra work preparing materials for them at home, researching new ways to deliver lessons, teaching myself new apps to communicate in new ways, reaching out to check on them and make sure they had enough food and medical attention and anything else that they may need. I spent way more time in conference with the parents than I would in any given “normal” year. And after all that, most of them didn’t sit with their child during their lessons. They didn’t make sure their child completed the lessons I’d assigned, or if they did, a large percentage of them completed the assignment FOR their child! Heck, if they attended at all, they didn’t even make the effort to get their child out of bed for remote class. They just propped the iPad near their child or plopped it in their child’s hands while they were still in bed, pajamas, tousled hair, blankets, and all. I got to watch children eating their breakfast. I got to watch them sleeping. All the while, I was diligently trying to deliver my instruction as professionally as if we were in the physical classroom. If anything, I worked harder this year than ever before to educate my students.

Now in case you think I’m a completely greedy and selfish lout, let me say that this is not about the food. It’s not about the gifts or the money. I would have been thrilled with a quick email from a parent that just said “thank you.” It would have cost them nothing but a couple of minutes of their time. It’s about the attitude, the lack of appreciation. It’s about the fact that these parents don’t value what their teachers do or the knowledge that we’re trying to impart. In their eyes, we are nothing more than babysitters, a place to dump their kids so that they can get on with their day unencumbered. The education doesn’t seem to be of any importance to them. They don’t see the opportunity for their child to succeed, to have a better life, that education provides. Nor are they modeling for their children the character traits of empathy, gratitude, and thoughtfulness. Everything is taken for granted, expected as a right. If things don’t change, these children could become an entire generation of ignorant, selfish, unsuccessful, entitled, demanding adults. I keep hearing teachers say, if these children are supposed to become the adults that take care of us in our old age, we’re in trouble. I fear they are right.