The Ghost in the Classroom

I struggled this year as a teacher. Hired mid-year and sharing a position, I faced many challenges. In fact, the year itself was a challenge. My son was not adjusting to daycare and was self mutilating. He got diagnosed with a speech disorder. I moved. My work supervisor was involuntarily transferred and I ended up without an official supervisor. I didn't know anything about the school and had to learn and stumble as each day progressed. I ended up loathing my job. With no support, no network, and procedures and culture against my philosophy of education, I was left downtrodden. I felt the school did not support what students needed, leaving them to be lazy and crazy in the classroom. Add in pregnancy hormones and whoa. What a year.

Any time I had a question, concern, or need I had no clue who to contact. I would hear names and see faces and yet never knew who was who and no one wanted to help me. I was never formally observed. Often, office memos would skip me until the last second; once we had a lock-down drill and no one told me it was a drill. No one checked my classroom. It was like I did not exist. And as the classroom swelled with noise and every bit of cohesiveness crumbled, I felt invisible. Like a ghost in my own classroom.

I ended up with mild depression every day, dreading work. I even began the resignation process but realized it meant more harm than just sticking through it. I counted down the days until the end, days that never seemed to come.

And here I am, with three days left. It feels bittersweet. Once again, I will look into a silent, dark, empty room, a place I spent too many hours in, and say goodbye, closing a chapter of my life. See, teaching isn't just a career but a lifestyle. I will remember the classroom but it won't remember me. Someone else will fill it, and likely stay many years. The students will forget the teacher they had part time, part year, even if I won't forget them. The staff has already forgotten me, and no one in charge seemed to know I existed. As I lock the door and turn in the keys, I will in a sense, disappear forever, just a ghost in the classroom, and only I know I exist.

Grandma's Story

I wrote in a recent post, http://disorderlywanderlustblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/flowers-for-florence.html about one of my grandmothers. I gave her a list of genealogy questions about her life about a year ago, because I realized I knew nothing about her.

Sure, when I was young she lived an hour away during winter and I'd go spend the night sometimes, and I remember eating pomegranate jam, squishing unripe olives and kumquats to watch them burst, hiding in her avocado grove, scaling her chain link fence like a ninja, and hating her loud clock that tick-tocked all the time and often served as the only sound in the house.

Every summer we'd drive out of state to her summer home, a log cabin my grandpa built, on a few acres along a bend in the river with a gorgeous view.

Grandma and her brother in their teens, circa
about 1940

However, I don't remember much about my grandma, so I decided to ask her some questions while she is still of this earth. I mean, I can't fathom knowing so little of my grandma. I know she loves  and I mean loves yard sales, burritos, and donuts. She hates to cook and outright won't do it. She was adopted and went to college and worked as a real estate broker. She grew up during the depression. She likes country music, dogs, and inexpensive wine. She was married twice and I know her birthdate and names of family members. And that is it.

I can't tell you her personality, likes, dislikes, passions, interests, or drive. I can't tell you her fondest memory or greatest fear or anything regarding her past. It's like she is this acquaintance I barely even know, but she is my own flesh and blood. It is almost as if she is two-dimensional and lacks a personality or history, but I know this to be untrue.

She must have a secret side, as no one seemed to know her. She kept shrugging off answering my questions even when I told her she could ignore any painful or weird question.

Finally, over a year later, my mom and grandma were stuck on a plane to Costa Rica with nothing to do for hours, so on the plane, there, and back they began to unfurl my grandma's life. My mom said she has had a fascinating life, and that they laughed and cried reminiscing. My mom learned so much about her mom and realized her mom was a familiar stranger to her, and this opened a book of life that she is glad to have discovered.

I can't wait to read the answers. My mom insists on typing it, but she is not computer savvy so it will be printed to me, mailed, and probably lost in the shuffle of my paperwork. I wanted to take some photos of my mom's mad scribbles for antiquity, and perhaps transcribe them, but she informed me they are in her "own invented shorthand" so only she can read it. She says she will try and get it typed within the next month......argh! I want it now!

Why am I so impatient and eager? Well, what I think would be cool is to write a book. Okay this is 1 of 3 books rolling around in my mind, never seeming to be written. But I think it would be neat to use what I find out as a jumping off point to write a historical fiction/non fiction book about some of my relatives lives. I'm  a sucker for family sagas and movies like Forrest Gump, and everyone's life has a great story to tell. To use a favorite quote, "the mundane is beautiful" and I want to capture that. I can't get much from my other grandma who guards every bit of her life, or my dad who adds some hyperbole to his tales. My mom doesn't recall her childhood, and my grandpas are well past gone. This is my one person, my one chance.

I just hope I can somehow capture her voice. I mean, I know what she sounds like, what her voice itself is, but I want to capture her voice in the literary way, her diction and colloquialisms and somehow encapsulate all of her into each and every word so that it is more her writing about her life than myself.

Flowers for Florence

My youngest grandmother is 89 I believe, and age has finally caught up with her. I am not particularly close to her, but I do love her and have fond memories.

Something that really set me into tears this week was the unexpected call from my mom. "Honey, grandma isn't going to be around much longer. Maybe not even the year. Please come visit her so she can see you all one last time. I'm losing my mom" my mom mumbled as she choked town tears and ended in a fit of sobs.

Sure. I have dealt with death before, when my mom lost her dad. But I was four, so the guy that put beets in his salad and had a green lawn was suddenly gone. I remember my mom getting the phone call and putting the receiver down and crying but it was all foreign.

Suddenly hearing my strong mother turned weak, and being a mother myself...I felt like I was the mom trying to soothe her fears and dry her tears and yet there is no bandaid for this. I can't fix my mom's tears and when grandma goes, I can't bring her back. I am suddenly the daughter soothing the mother, and I am not sure how to do it. I want to just hug my mom and make it all better but it isn't that easy. I can't work a miracle and it is playing with my psyche.

Also, it makes me peek into a deep dark part of my mind I keep under lock and key- my own parents' mortality. What do I want to do, give, share with my parents before they go? What will I regret? How will I cope with their passing? Who will try and dry my tears?

Last night, it all came to me in a dream. Okay, my dream didn't give me any answers or fix a darned thing but it gave me some solace. It was a simple but symbolic dream.

A path led through a mountain peak, the path and everything covered in sparkly white snow. It was silent out, that almost deafening silence of a deep snow at dawn, before anyone is awake. I was walking with a few silhouetted figures in the daylight, and saw to my left, strewn along the path, white fake roses with icy dew, laying atop the snow. I asked no one in particular why they were there, and was told that they were there to honor the passing of my grandmother. I was filled with a contemplative silence and a gentle warmth just knowing this.

$1,000 a lesson

Should one single lesson cost $1,000? No. But I am one who only learns from mistakes. Expensive ones.

Like the $1,000 phone bill in college.... I had a boyfriend who lived out of the country and I felt all grown-up, calling the phone company and setting up a 10-cent a minute plan. Go me! I assumed it, you know, was the plan I had since I called and set it up. I certainly didn't talk to my boyfriend for a million minutes (or whatever ten cents a minute at $1,000 becomes....I don't like math). Yep.. So much for assuming things.

I learned my lesson for a little over a decade and now, I'm back at square one, assumptions biting me in the ass. Hard.

So I have student loans since almost 8 years of college isn't free, even with scholarships. They switch from company to company quicker than you can say (whatever you feel like saying) but they have stuck under the umbrella of ACS and AES for a while.

I'm kinda dyslexic and so ACS and AES discombobulate me...E,C, C, E, blah blah. So sometimes I pay ACS twice. You get the idea.

So I got an email from....one of them, let's say AES, and they said I was waaaay behind in my payments. So I groaned and paid a bunch of overdue money. See, we moved and the post office did a huge SNAFU and all our mail was lost for THREE MONTHS. I talked to various supervisors in person and via the phone who all assured me that all was well. Each time. Like, ten times. So my bill supposedly was lost in the mail SNAFU, even though during this melee I made sure AES had my correct information. I've still yet to receive a bill or other correspondence via the mail, but, whatever. They are paid off(well, no, but paid up, no past due debt)/. In one big ugly hairy lump sum.

So ACS calls me but as you know, I'm dumb, so I think it is AES and they say I owe X amount of money. The same amount to the dollar that I paid in that ugly lump sum last week. I get ornery and ask hubby to check our bank account, since this loan lady is claiming I didn't pay it and I did, dammit. We see a withdrawl so hubby is pissed cause umm...we now have $500 missing! I call my university and bitch to them.

Then I use my not so smart phone to access my account which takes a half hour and probably took a year off our lives as our blood pressure skyrocketed in the mean time.

AND I SEE IT.

SHIT. I think in my mind and wrack my brain and write down a ton of psychotically scribbled Cs and Es and numbers and confirm my oh shit moment. I owed $500 to AES. I paid them. Yes. I also owed, at that moment, an additional $500 but to ACS. Cs, Es, the death of me. I shakily mumbled to hubby "ummm....we just spend another $500. We're caught up now." We yelled and went silent and had a crappy rest of the day cause of my $1,000 mistake.

All because I assumed something. I assumed ACS was on auto withdrawal. I assumed since I corrected my contact info with ACS and AES, they'd both have my correct info (one did one didn't). I assumed that you know, if I was months past due and owed hundreds of dollars, someone would try and contact me (they both had my correct email and phone number). I mean if I am a day late on my car payment, less than $500, I get a few calls that very day. So I assumed since I'd heard nothing, I had nothing to worry about.

Assumptions are asses. See, they even have ass right in them.

The Historian

I'm the family historian, able to have tracked a few threads of our lineage back to the 1300s. But I kind of suck at knowing anything about anyone recently, these mysteries just fuel my passion for my dorky awesome genealogy hobby.

I have many mysteries that plague me. My parental grandpa, who passed in 1996, remains a mystery. He lived an hour's drive away, but I know little to nothing about him. I remember his Scots-Irish meets Exxes-Cockney drunken accent, and that's it. I have no clue what he looked like, no memory, and no one has a single photo or memory of his appearance.

I have a half-brother, who the entire family minus myself and my parents, haven't a clue about. Imagine, not knowing you had another cousin or grandson! And yet he grew up IN THE SAME TOWN as the vast majority of his half-family!

Then there my great grandma on my maternal side. A lot is known of her adult life; she was an eccentric (and certifiably insane) woman of high standing, lest you forget it. Her origins are clouded; there is another family we're somehow related to (let's call them the B family), and a photo of someone looking an awful lot like great-grandma, cradling her child, but the photo lists an entirely foreign name, with the surname B. From what I can surmise, she was born this long forgotten B name, to a batty mother and more normal father. Both parents re-married and she and her brother were separated. She was then raised by her grandma who married many times and changed her grand-daughters entire name.

No one alive today knows of great-grandma's young life or family history, she kept mum on that. But her one and only son had a photo album which he held in secret, and gave to my mom as he was on his death bed. The album looks circa 1910(?) in Sacramento and lacks any names or information; it's a gorgeous album full of questions and no answers; but it looks to be (and syncs up time-wise) to be of great-grandma as a small child, and her family.

I want to share it because I love old photos- I could look at old photos of my town or family all day and still be fascinated. I hope to capture your fascination too. I think just looking at photos that could be over a century old is an honor, to hold them in my hand feels special. And all I can do is wonder...I wish these photos could talk as they speak volumes, in a language too quiet for even a whisper. I think they show a fascinating life.  (apologies for any shoddy images; they are a century old and I did my best not to touch them as your hand;s oils are damaging....even the air is!)

I've contacted Sacramento Police to see if they want copies of these images or can identify these men in their force. No reply, even though there is a website chock full of Sacto Police History. I've tried to i.d. these men based on their photos but cannot.

Women in pants? In 1910-ish? Blasphemy! This makes them cool women in my book...want to know the story behind these photos.

Can't find a Harriet or Anna in any lineage, even adopted, married-into, etc.

More cool police photos...look at that old car!

This makes me laugh, at the avant-garde mooning they were giving. Again..I want to know the story!

Of course, no clue who these folks are but it is just a set of photos that seems to say a lot, I just can't hear it.

Who is the African-American boy? Why have a photo of him from back then....with such racism, why would you take a photo of him and keep it? Is the dog significant?

I just like this from an artistic point of view.

The Thomas Incident

My husband and I have wanderlust- hence my blog name. We cannot stay home for more than a day without going stir crazy, so we are always driving "down the hill" into civilization to wander around.

So today we went down for breakfast and then over to Bass Pro Shops so my son could see "ish", their tank full of fish.

nooo! My train is swimming
with the fishes

See the blue dot? It's Thomas, being stalked by
a catfish

Oh boy did we get a fish experience. Next to the tank is a little stream stocked with catfish and....a train. Yes, a train, my son's eagerly reluctant addition. See, he likes to throw things into the bath tub at bath time, so the stream enticed him and plonk! In went Thomas. Out of reach. A monumental level tantrum ensued.

Hubby had to go to the fishing department and ask if be could get a net and fish out a train. I stood by the creek, glaring at the catfish in case they were dumb enough to eat Thomas. A kind employee came over with a huge net and diligently worked on Thomas. He almost didn't make it out, as fishing nets are designed for fish and not toy trains. Out came a stinky slimy train , which I doused in purell multiple times. Hubby was ingenious and wiped up the puddle left from the extrication using a super absorbent diaper.

My son was reunited with Thomas and all was better with the world. I got multiple kisses of

fishing out Thomas

appreciation and he kept giving this look to Thomas that said, "oh Thomas, I will never leave you again".

And such is motherhood...urban train fishing.  

Does it make me a bad mom, in that I was laughing and taking photos the whole time?

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Uncharted Territory, A Rebel with a Cause

I am a struggling educator, and I’m not talking financially but sort of…spiritually and philosophically. Like many great people before me- John Taylor Gatto and his “I Quit,  I Think” letter (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue2.htm)  and recently,  Gerald Conti (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/06/teachers-resignation-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists/) quit.  I think.

 I have a long two months ahead of me, waking before dawn to go to a job I hate.  As the work week rolls around, I honest-to-God go through a day of true depression and utter dread at what I must face. Teach, manage, and control children in ways I hate. See their joy diminish, their hatred for learning bloom, see their future crumble, and their creativity and imagination- well, I don’t even see that anymore. See that I can do little to nothing to help them, inspire them. I try, but I cannot make the difference I want. I hate it.

Standardized testing is coming up, so we are in full test-prep crazy mode, and have a plethora of staff meetings and memos regarding all the policies- cover your clocks, they could cheat off that, cover your walls, separate desks, no bathroom breaks, all social media will be patrolled by newly hired goons (my term) scouring the net for cheating or even mention of the test. Forget to remove a poster, let a child talk, mumble “whew what a test” to a co-worker, or not catch a child Facebooking “that test blew” and like an episode of 24, ninjas with lasers will triangulate your location and the school and YOU the teacher will be in deep you know what. Don’t let that happen, staff.

I’m tired of “managing human capital” as the Common Core Standards propose. I’m tired of A,B,C,D answers and no critical thinking. I’m saddened that great literature is being tossed aside by big wig idiots with power and title, dictating what I MUST do in my classroom when they have never even met a single one of my students. They don’t know these children’s needs or desires, their burdens and passions. All everyone sees is a top down, prescriptive formula and some dollar signs at the sake of our children, our future.

And I’m done. I can barely wait for school to let out, and yet I’m terrified, as I don’t know what else to do with my life. I simply know  I cannot tell another child “no”, “because you’re tested on it” “because I have to”.  I don’t know what to do, but what I’m forced to do isn’t working.

I can no longer be part of the problem and I don't know how to be part of the solution so I will just quietly exit when no one else is looking. And, trust me, it is not the easy way out.

 

Wish me luck as I leave everything  I love and hate behind, as I embark in uncharted territory, a grown woman restarting her life and reclaiming her philosophy. Too bad the journey alone won't pay the bills but it will set me free.