My years generally run from one school year to the next. They have since I was a child, and so as a teacher I continue to think in terms of what I do from one school year to the next. My energies are focused primarily on my career, even when I was married. But lately, I've been distracted and seem to "fritter away" my time. I've been out of sync, and have been since September 2007 when I was removed from my Tech Coordinator position by a new principal, who thought she did not need a TechCo. She placed me back in the classroom, where I spent most of the school year "dealing" with bored, disaffected freshmen, trying to teach 9th grade English in the lowest performing high school in Chicago.
I spent 75% of my teaching time dealing with discipline problems, constant disruptions of instruction, and intrusions from students walking into my room from the hallway, which did not have enough security to monitor and contain the ongoing problems. And there in that capacity, I languished until the violence of the drastic unwelcomed and undiscussed change in my career, paired with dealing with the most difficult students in the school, pushed my blood pressure to levels that precipitated my taking a medical leave of absence for the last eight weeks of the semester. As the school year progressed, it was clear that this new administration was in way over their heads, and instead of taking the lead from and consulting with their veteran teachers, they chose to ignore or harass us.
I came back for the second semester to the news that our CEO and the Board of Education decided to Reconstitute the school, which meant that the entire staff would be replaced after the end of the second semester. That really pushed morale at the school to an all-time low and helped create more discipline problems for all of us. Students would tell us blatantly that they didn't have to listen to us, because we were fired. Thank you Chicago Board of Education: you didn't support us and when standardized test scores continued to stagnate, instead of addressing the problems that you created by your policies, you blame the staff!
During last school year, I watched as every technology initiative I helped develop and bring to the school, and the network itself, crumble, the new principal bent on disassembling anything that she had not designed. Once again, reinventing the wheel and washing the baby down with the bath water seemed to be the prevailing policy that precluded all management decisions at the school.
Finally, I stopped fighting the insanity (I perceived most of these policies and subsequent actions, including the Reconstitution of the school, as insanity, and certainly something I had no control over) and finished the school year, focusing as much as I could on teaching the best that I could. But, undoubtedly, this had been The School Year from Hell.
I went out of town on three occasions since my last entry. My first trip was to New Orleans for a Shorts Reunion, for a long weekend before school let out. The Shorts are the group of guys from college, most of whom lived on the second floor at one time or other during the late 60's at Farwell Hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. Our last reunion marked the 50th birthday for most of us, so this coming ten years later marked the 60th birthday for most of the guys.
In July, I drove to Tennessee to visit my cousins Blair and Monica in their Smokey Mountain vacation home, and on the way back to Chicago, visited Sal in Louisville for the weekend. Sal is one of my college buds, who I roomed with the previous month in New Orleans.
In August, my oldest friend Don, who I've known for the past 56 years, met me in Denver. We rented a car and drove to Breckenridge for a three day break before returning to work. The highlight of that trip was our bike ride from Breckenridge to Frisco and back. The high altitude, beautiful scenery, and rigorous mountain bicycle path left me gasping, sometimes for air. This was a three day rendezvous, as Don lives in Oakland and I in Chicago. He had to return to his teaching job before the end of the week, and I had to return to my job of looking for a job, which I will continue to do until the end of next week. At that time, I will be substitute teaching four days a week with Wednesday as my designated job search day. Unless I find a job that synchronizes with the direction I have focused my career on, technology integration and professional development, I will retire at the end of this school year.
One thing I've done this past year to manage the external turmoil in my life and create more balance in my emotional environment has been to listen to New Age and Meditation music making it the backdrop to my home. One person in particular whose music brings me peace and harmony is Dean Evenson. I, also, continue to work necessary Steps of my CoDA Program.
Dean and Dudley Evenson
[via FoxyTunes / Dean Evenson]
