I Did Not Used To Be Angry

 

    I used to enter my old building a bundle of nerves and anxiety. I never knew when the next attack was coming, and living like that for years eventually made me angry. I would struggle to stay positive with students, but it came out around staff. I don't have a thousand friends in that building. 

    When I was finally escorted from the building, like a criminal, the anger collapsed into the anxiety, causing a full panic attack. For Days. For Weeks. I could not focus on anything, I was just panicked. How could I have let this happen? What was I going to do? Where would I work? How would I pay my mortgage? I was physically sick until I was hired, mid year, in another district. My body relaxed a bit, the anger seemed to abate, but there was no time to process anything that was happening. Or that had happened. Let alone what would happen. 

  I could have dug in and sued, I could have fought, but something deep inside of me kept saying "March".  I could see the word in front of me, and did not understand more than somehow, the month of March was important to my decision. I was going to be on leave and receive my salary until March. If I chose to fight, I'd have to sub until May, and possible work at Starbucks or something until it went to court, which the union said would be dragged into the fall. At least eight months without a salary. I assumed that is why I kept seeing the word "MARCH" as this big dead end. I assumed God was telling me not to fight because it wasn't worth the sacrifice of losing my salary in March. March of 2020. I was seeing this in October 2019, there was no way I could have known anything, predicted anything. Nothing. All I knew was that I was panicked, and sobbing and barfing,and somehow March had everything to do with applying for other teaching jobs and letting this one go instead of suing.

    I started in the new district in January of 2020...this is the first attempt at processing at least this part of it. If I had dug in and sued, I would have lost my salary and any opportunity to substitute teach, or any chance to make money at all. If I had sued, I would have tanked my family financially. In March of 2020, we honestly would have been fucked. That's the first time I've said it. And now I have to process that as well...

    I've been in this job since January of 2020 and still have had no time to process anything. Not a thing. No Thing. I scrambled to teach theatre online, then scrambled back in person, to combat behaviors unlike anything I'd encountered before, and after eight months of that battle...I am angry.

    Again.

    I hate the kids. I hate the building. I hate technology, Infinite Campus and Google Suite. I hate cell phones, Tik Tok, Snapchat and any and all video games. 

    I hate the young choir teacher who has the chance to get out of this shit hole.

    I hate the IB teachers who teach in a different school, and have no idea that I teach in a shit hole.

    I really, really hate the choir teacher, because choirs can function when kids don't show up for class but theatre cannot, we cannot function when nobody comes to class and many who do refuse to participate. You can hide in choir. You can't hide in The Odd Couple. You can't hide in an improv circle. I hate the kids who show up and refuse to participate, and I hate those who don't show up, wrecking the enrollment numbers for next year and cutting my classes back to 4 from 6.

    I hate that I had to take this job, that's it's punishment. This place is my punishment for bad behavior, and I can't rebuild this department at all because I'm so mad all of the time, every day.

    I do not remember what it's like to not be angry.

    I hate that the choir teacher is here of her own choice and I am not and she's having success with the choir program and I can't figure out how to make theatre work here.

    I do not think it is a good idea for someone who hates all students and staff and the building and the education system to be teaching.

    I've been having intense dreams lately. All symbolic. Some obvious, some not. Like last night, I was working in a restaurant and for some reason we served live rodents that were covered in what looked like green frosting, and you thought you were eating a dead rodent but then it would move. There was a rat's head weirdly on a plate, that I expected someone to eat, or maybe I was expected to eat. Dunno. Dream Moods dictionary is unclear, since I am unclear, on what the hell it means. Lotsa theatre dreams, again, some are pretty specific and easy to suss out, others just leave me feeling sad.

    None of the dreams are helping me feel any less angry. The anxiety is gone, Covid took care of that. Funny how that worked out. Now I'm just mad. Menopause is happy to help out on that front, so is depression. And I keep writing this garbage waiting to write THROUGH it and have it done with. Nobody wants to hear this anymore and I don't want to talk about it any more, but every time I sit down to write it's there. it finds its way into my fingertips and the keyboard and I look down and realize what I thought was a good idea for a fictional story is just more whining and bitching about things that I can't control in education or garbage from the last building that I still haven't thrown out but apparently I keep thinking I did.

    As I'm writing this, the following is unfolding: My Acting 1 class has 12 kids enrolled. On a good day, six show up. It is has rarely been the same six. The last two weeks, the same five have been showing up, and we've had some success building original improv scenes with just the five. We can't do scripts with scene partners, because there's no way to know who will show up. Today three of them showed up, plus one rando who hasn't been to class in weeks. The missing two were leads in the scene, and asking the remaining three to redirect to become the leads led to them sitting on their phones.

    It's like this constantly. I am out of ideas for a class this small, inconsistent and unwilling to participate.  I can't even be mad any more, it's a waste of energy. Planning is a waste, as they don't follow through. I have to shift halfway through a 58 minute class because they are so relentlessly apathetic. How are they like this? And what am I supposed to do about it?

    Same thing I've done with my intros: turn it into a Hist/Lit class. Read plays. Learn history.

    Which they will not learn from, or remember, or engage with, which will make me...angry.

    The definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same thing and expecting a different result.  The problem is that THEATRE is repeating the same thing, and learning how to get a different result. But that requires dedication, engagement, willingness to look stupid, to do yoga, learn improv and combat, rehearse rehearse rehearse OH YA AND COME TO CLASS EVERY DAY.    

        The definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same thing and expecting a different result. The problem is that WRITING has become that same thing...

As I Lumber Along ( a new fiction)

 

    I do my best to walk steadily into my office. The lunch bell has just rung, and the weather is wreaking havoc with my bad knee. All teachers have bad knees, if someone were to give me a research grant, I'd happily uncover why that is. In my case, it's the combination of  a skiing accident at thirty and wrecking my motorcycle when I was fifty. In my previous building, the ex hippie theatre teacher had two bad knees. He was over six feet tall, and looked very much like a sasquatch when he lumbered through the halls. That visual has stuck with me all of these years, and has served as my biggest fear. I don't want to lumber through a high school, looking my age and moving slowly. 

     I don't want to lumber along.

     Today is 25 February 2022, the beginning of what has become The Hardest Year In Teaching. It's a bitter 20 degrees out, every joint is swollen and screaming at me, and Russia invaded the Ukraine yesterday. I am neither Russian or Ukrainian, nor are my students,  or anyone I know. It is just an added burden on my psyche. 

    As much as I need to be quiet for the twenty minute lunch I am allotted in my day, I have allowed the floating art teacher to share the office with me. He was hired after the shooting and subsequent shuttering of the band classes, two things that are not directly related. Admin turned the band room into an art room. He has done an impressive job of putting artwork in front of the cages that contain the brass instruments. They looked like animals awaiting adoption at the shelter, and always depressed me. His choice to cover the bars with Monet and Renoir did little to cheer up the room, but went a long way to masking my association of abandoned animals to the instruments. I don't have to walk through there, thankfully, my office is in my classroom. There is a band office, but weirdly he does not seem to want to use it. He's on a one year only contract, just finishing out the school year. I guess bringing in his own fridge or microwave would be too much like a commitment. He seems to be pretty adamant about being temporary, he has no desire to stay. It wasn't just the shooting, he just doesn't seem to connect with this population. Which is the politically correct way to talk about a building that is 80% Latin X. I'm not sure when that happened, sometime while I was teaching in a district that called itself "A Premiere District", we stopped referring to schools by their socio economic demographic. We all knew "Premiere District" meant white, and we all know "This population" means not white.

    I am unsure if dealing with this population has anything to do with the art teacher's transitional status. He was born female, and is transitioning to male. He left his old district due to homophobia and an acceptance issue among the staff. He never told his kids about his life, so he has never said anything directly to students, but believes that they know. Last week he overheard kids in class discussing a Tik Tock trend that involved killing "trannies". Several young girls have been murdered locally, which does not seem to be related to what he is hearing, but that doesn't matter. I do now know what it is to live that life, and his fear is valid. If I was a younger woman, I'm sure I would be worried as well. They are being killed and dumped on the side of the road.

                                                                *****************

    "So it's so interesting...." he starts every sentence like this. I try not to be annoyed. I invited him to share my microwave and fridge when he was hired, so it seemed rude to sit and not speak to him. I `    have noticed that his social skills are lacking, and if I do not respond or make eye contact, he keeps talking, so I could technically just type away on my laptop. But I was not raised that way so I face him and listen.

    "The artwork of these students is ...I am going to sound insulting...my last permanent sub job was in a middle school, and this work feels like middle schoolers, not high schoolers.

    "Why would I be insulted?"

    "I don't know, I just don't want to insult anyone."

    I shrug. "Their development was arrested for two years. Our freshmen have not been in a building since the seventh grade. They've been home, with laptops and phones. I think we've lost an entire generation. The littles will recover, but from sixth grade to freshmen in college...they're not OK."

    "You're right. Your view is always global. I so enjoy talking with you. It's so interesting, I finally found out what happened to the band teacher."

    I squinted at him. "Nobody told you when you were hired?"

    "I knew he was hurt, and that he quit, but I guess I thought it was the shooting."

    "Nope."

    "Was the kid who stabbed  him charged with anything?"

    I shrug. I stopped asking questions within a year of coming to this building. I am not going to like the answer, so why ask. "He wasn't the target, it was like Mercutio getting stabbed instead of Romeo. The kid was after the AP who suspended him."

    "They asked me if I'm applying for this job again next year," his social ineptitude was clearly driving the bus. "They're going to need another art teacher upstairs, and they're going to hire another band teacher I guess. I'm gonna go to the bathroom before the bell rings. Have a good second half of your day." He left the room.

    I open the microwave door, adjust my chair so I can look inside of it. I sit, staring at the empty microwave, like a child watches cartoons.

Dogs

 

     We call him "Danger Muppet". 

    He looks all fine, friendly and floofy, low to the ground and loafy, with shaggy cow patterned paws. But if he sees a dog he does not like, he will ramp it up and waddle right over at a whopping .005mph and attack. Remaining teeth bared and snarling snapping.

     I foolishly thought he was too old and fat to really move, and he was actually too beefy for his harness so I acquiesced to the leash only. His chest barely clears the ground, how fast could he go?

     A few years ago, he attacked another floofy dog at the dog park. It seems he hates dogs who look like him. So, we banned him from the park. He has been banished to the back yard, and to walks down the street ever since. He loves the idea of going for a walk. We get all of the head banging dance moves and excitement when we say "walk?" to him. He can hardly contain himself as he is harnessed. But by the time we reach the end of the driveway, which is apparently where he remembers what a "walk" actually is, he starts to slow down. If we walk too far--he can easily make it to the pink mail box, but not all the way to the Brown's house--he will stop walking on the way back down the hill. He will simply sit down in the street and look at me, an accusational expression on his face, suggesting trickery on my part.

    On this day, he was overdue for the groomer so the additional fur added to his heft prevented the harness from snapping onto his torso. So I allowed that he could wear a collar and leash, and off we went. 

     All was fine until we turned around at the mail box. He spotted a husky mix coming up the hill toward us. Apparently, even though I've never laid eyes on this other dog, it has been antagonizing Indie for years, and he lunged at him. I was able to pull him back, which caused him to stop altogether. Assuming we were now finished, as refusing to move is his universal symbol for "I'm done", he instead reversed his loaf shaped self and backed out of the leash. Before I realized he'd done so, he was headed straight for the husky at a speed I had never witnessed, which I judge to be roughly .005 mph (I don't know decimals). He growled and snarled and snapped, as the owner iced me with his glare. How could I be so irresponsible as to allow such a terrible dog on the street with good dogs?

    This is when the show got fun. As I do not move very quickly, either, due to a delightful concoction of arthritis, a motorcycle accident and knee surgery years ago- one of the reasons I like walking an older, fatter dog is that he matches my pacing-so when he decided to speed things up, I was unable to catch him, yet we were both moving at a slower pace than other dog walkers. It was very commedia, a lazzi at half speed, worthy of the likes of a super slow mo Jim Carrey "Let's look at that play again, shaalll weeee?" But in real life and not as funny, 'cause it's an old lady and her fat dog. I would have laughed had I been watching instead of participating. The guy with the other dog had a look of pure disgust on his face. I believe he thought Indie did not have a leash at all, and that I was just toddling up the street allowing my Danger Muppet to roam free as the scourge of W. Virginia Dr. had he been paying attention at the top of the previous paragraph, he would have known that Indie had a leash, he simply chose to back out of it.

    That's all the fun I have the energy for today. 

Ageism Is Real And I Am Under Attack And Burned Out

 

    I am as tired of my voice as you are, trust me.

    I am also tired of being a "Cautionary Tale". I'd like to have my own life now, please. One I chose. One with llamas and alpacas, a career that I enjoy and no money worries.

    I desperately want to be happy, but like Martha "I do not wish to be happy, and yes, I wish to be happy".  To be fair, we are all exhausted by our own psyche and the needs of the psyches of those we love, or in my case, don't love but have to be supportive of because I am their teacher.

     I feel like I have owned the situation that I created for myself because I cannot shut up and lost my career. I have paid my dues, I have done All Of The Things, and still, I feel trapped in my punishment. "Trapped" is real in teaching after you cross about year 15, as you cannot hop districts without losing years. If you add to that the fact that you have crossed age 50, you are living your worst absurdist nightmare, devoid of a companion or even a hat. Or a turnip, I'd take a turnip. I can't say that I've ever eaten a turnip. What even is a turnip? I looked it up. It looks like an onion, like an onion, it grows in the ground like an onion. Why would you eat a turnip raw? Is there something I missed in Beckett's choice of carrot/ turnip?  All the research is focused on the carrot, and how it gets worse the more you eat, which right now feels like a metaphor for living life, which gets worse the older you get...but what about the turnip?

     Perhaps I am the turnip. Ugly, mistaken for a carrot. I'm actually nothing. They wanted a carrot, but got me. I'm a fraud. They wanted a carrot, and I'm crunchy like a carrot, but the older I get, I taste more like a potato. I do not know where this metaphor is going.

    In practical terms, the situation is this: I ran myself out of one building and in a panic, took a job in another district. Now I can't get out, I can't even get an interview. I have no idea why. We are allegedly in A Teaching Crisis, but from where I stand, this only applies to younger teachers. My colleague who is 29 and in a similar content area, has had six interviews. I have had two. Neither building would say it, but I know once they saw me all bets were off. I'm old. And they assumed (they are right) I will not accept their pitiful offering of a pay scale beginning at eight years, when I'm sitting at nineteen. Which is ageism as the bottom line, and why my absurdist nightmare will never end. I am trapped in this building, trapped in this district. A colleague this morning said "When you sign on here, you are trapped because nobody is going to pay any better than this district."

    Everyone knows teachers are hideously under paid, but they don't know that ones leaving can afford to, they have their 30 y ears. There are many of us who cannot leave because we started late, and would love to switch districts for safety reasons, but cannot because nobody will pay us enough to pay our mortgages. 

    Another colleague called them "Golden handcuffs", but that is not accurate, as I have no hope of retiring alive. Somebody's gonna shoot or shank me before I reach 65, which is when I will be able to retire. So I'm staying in one place because I cannot find another vocation that will pay my bills, and I labor under the delusion that IF I stay, I will reap the bountiful benefits of a teacher retirement plan.

    And so, all in all to sum up and in conclusion: Ageism equals not getting hired because you are too expensive in public schools, or because you are old and they assume you are close to retirement, burnout is real, and one should not try to improve one's circumstances if one is over the age of 50.

      

    

Football Shots

 

    The boys on the field were from different buildings in the district. Two of the schools had such low turnout for the teams that the decision was made to simply create a district football team. Of course that meant that there was no opportunity to play one another, except for Peak. Peak Academy was not quite a charter school in the district, but their schedule and rules were different than the rest of the district, and they had a football team. So the District Football Team, comprised of the other four high schools, could play one other high school in the district: Peak. The coach shook his head at this thought, he still had no idea who they were going to play. But based on how the team was assembled, he knew that the "Who will they play?" question was low on the priority list. First, they had to get enough kids in attendance to run a practice. At the moment, they had managed to scrape together thirty four kids from four different buildings. He stood counting and checking the roster, and so far only twenty nine boys had arrived. Practice should have started fifteen minutes ago, but he was waiting for stragglers. They were all stragglers, the concept of arriving on time was Gone With Covid, which was the title of the ongoing novel in his head. He stood looking at them on the field, wondering how exactly any of this was going to work. What the uniforms would look like, and who would pay for them, was on the list right above "Who will they play?" and below "Find a coach."

    The boys were scattered around the field, in varying warmups, clumped in twos and threes. The kids did not even know each other yet, and so were sticking to their established friend groups. He blew the whistle three times, which he had learned over the last year was how man times kids needed to be asked to do something before they heard the request. They may not  do the thing being asked, but three times seemed to be the magic number to have the request heard by at least half of the kids. The boys began to move toward him. He yelled "C'mon, hustle, move like you have a purpose," and wondered not for the first time in the last twenty  minutes, How The Hell Is This Going To Work? All high schoolers had begun to move at the speed of global warming, and there seemed to be no hustle in any one, any more.

   The group gathered around him. He realized two boys still had cellphones on them, jammed into their pant pockets. "You're kidding me," he shook his head. "Put them in your bags, guys-" he was cut off by gun shots. He looked up after the first round, and saw no additional people on the field. "Inside, guys, now!" He herded them back toward the building as the second shot rang out. He realized it was not coming from anywhere near the field, but from the shopping center a block north of the school. There had been three shootings at that shopette since January, all of them involving district students. He noted the boys moved more quickly toward the building than they had when arriving to practice.

    Once inside, the security guard informed him that they had to end practice due to the gun shots. He could hear the sirens blaring past the building. He watched the group as they were told the news, and could not read any of their faces. They were blank slates. That face was another new element of these Covid times. Facial expressions had Gone With Covid. One kid, a freshman, sighed deeply. "Coach, man, I just wanna play football."

Today's Rando Postcards

   Brain damage in general is fun. I feel for Bruce Willis, I've said I have dementia for years, but a real diagnosis is scary. I'm seeing it everywhere now. I realized last night at Mines that nobody else seems to understand it the way I do. If you haven't been teaching the last two years, you have no fucking clue how bad it is. I'm directing a college show that is, for all intents and purposes, a high school show. Why? These kids lost two years of their lives, two important, developmental years, and their development is arrested at whatever age they were in March of 2020. I need a government grant to do the research and publish my findings that simply validate my observations and then I will be rich and I can stop teaching and watch 30 Rock reruns all day. So it tracks that my psyche ceased to grow or change after I left Littleton in December of 2019. I never dealt with that trauma, there wasn't time while I was doing nothing but trying to learn how to teach theatre online and then worrying about Jim's job and paying bills and then teaching hybrid, whatever that means, or trying to figure out livestreaming without any cameras or video equiptment, which I think I just misspelled, so really, I have no excuse for not being OK because I had two years "off", just suck it up, you're fine, it's fine, I'm fine, stop looking at me I'm fine.

  My friends in Canada are relentless gardeners, they move the gardens around and build sheds and shelves. I told them that trait would be why they survive the zombie apocalypse : they'll have their own food. I do not garden, but Jim has guns. That is the difference between Canada and the US right there, isn't it?

  Today's Depression Highlight: staving off tears alone in the office, listening to Zen music and contemplating eating either the banana or Atkins chocolate breakfast drink, because leaving the building to get food takes too much energy.

  Remember when you were under qualified and really just wanted a shot, but knew your time would come because you were young and ready and willing and gung ho and believed all the crap Lin -Manuel spewed as Hamilton? I don't remember what that's like. I am now old and over qualified but too eviscerated mentally to give any energy to my jobs, which are plural because I'm overqualified and booked, but am royally failing at all of them. I spent all of my energy the last two years trying to keep employed, and what little energy I have left is buoying my students who are decimated emotionally, and too young to understand what has happened (see paragraph one). I just want to die, but I won't kill myself because I would devastate my family, who would blame themselves and I don't want that, I just want out. Where is my Opt Out form for life? I was talking to a former colleague who said he's never been this depressed, he would never kill himself but he wants to die...or maybe he didn't say that, it was subtext and I put it into text because that's where I am and brain damage is real. And I get it. Why can't a car just take me out on I70? Hello? It's a shit show out there, it's really not that hard, they're doing 80 in the breakdown lanes. Remember when Robin Williams declared "It's Road Warrior on the freeway!" Or Steve Martin shouted that the first day of spring was open season on the LA freeway. That's I70 daily. Weirdly, I take a different route to work because my nerves can't take it, but if I wanna get hit that's the way to play the odds. How funny. My anxiety won't let me end the depression. Fun Day. If I drew comics I feel like this would be a great opportunity to explore that idea. But I do not. 

  I would love to be a better writer, I know it's there, but getting past this garbage has been an impossible task. For five years I have attempted to dead lift this depression, but channeling Arnold and Sly has been unsuccessful. So I turned to Steve and Robin, who can find the true humor of the human condition so effortlessly, and failed at that. So.

  And I can't talk about what's going on in my building, because that has historically proved to be a poor choice, but it is not helping my mental health in the least. I will say it is not personal this time, it's systematic.  "The quiet racism of lowered expectations." Everyone from George Bush to Bill Cosby has been credited with that magnificent quote, in which I am now living.

  OK, I will say one thing. A 60% does not equal a grade of "B".