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...
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