Dark Thoughts

I am sorry I have been absent for a few days.  I have been struggling with something for about a week now, and am still trying to come to grips with life as I know it.

Don't panic.  It is nothing earth shattering.  My family is healthy.  My marriage is strong.  I still have a job.  When looking at it that way, I really have nothing to complain about.  Still...

Last week, my boss approached me with an offer of more work.  You may remember that the district forced him to cut my contract, resulting in a net loss of over $500 a month, or about $6,300 less for the year.  The cut in pay couldn't have come at a worse time for our family, since Bill's bike accident put him out of work for 6 weeks and wrecked havoc with our finances.  My boss was sympathetic to our situation and frustrated at being forced to reduce the arts in the school (as a side note, the forced cuts in the art programs also had the terrible side effect of destroying the after school choir and orchestra that he was so proud of, too).

So.  My principal offered me a job tutoring small groups of students who are struggling with key core concepts.  It pays hourly and sandwiches before and after my actual contracted time as the visual arts teacher.  The hourly pay rate is terrible ($8.37), so he sweetened the offer by including a $2000.00 stipend to make it worth my time.  After talking it over with Bill, I accepted the position because, dang it!, we need the money.

If it weren't for that need, I probably wouldn't do it.

"But why not?!?"  You wonder.

Well, besides the fact that I like working part time much better than full time?

To fully answer that question a flashback is in order.

It is the 2002/2003 school year.  It is going to be my third year teaching, and I have agreed to transition from the part time visual arts teacher position I have held for the past two years to being a full time 6th grade core teacher.  Two of the teachers from the 6th grade team retired at the end of the previous year, and the one remaining teacher recruited me to join her because she liked my teaching style and thought we'd make a good team.  I was flattered, of course.  And the increase in work load would also double my salary.  


The year started out OK.  I am still stuck in a trailer, which feels very isolating.  My greatest worries, though, are for the kids in my class who are performing well below grade level.  What in the world am I supposed to do with 6th graders who are reading on a FIRST grade level?!?  They do go to resource for language arts, but they come back to me for science and they can't read even the most simple texts.  I have my students keep daily journals.  Whenever Travis bothers to write in his, it says "i hate skol. i hate skol. i hate skol..." over and over.  How can I blame him when it is all so much over his ability level?  How did he fall so far behind and how am I supposed to catch him up 5 grade levels in one year... especially since he 'hates skol'?!?


We have been in school for two months now.  The principal called me in to his office to let me know that he got a call from the superintendent about me.  Apparently, there is a parent who wants her child taken out of my class immediately because I yell all the time.  ?!?  What?  She says her daughter cries every morning and doesn't want to come to school because I am so mean.  I am flabbergasted.  This is my star student!  She is the best behaved, sweetest girl in the class.  She is very quiet, yes.  But she is always willing to answer and I would never have thought she was crying right before school or was reluctant to come to my class!  The mom and dad (in his cop uniform) ambush me in the library wanting to know why I yell at the class.  I don't!  It is true that there are a couple of difficult boys in the class, but the class as a whole is just fine.  The principal is frustrated that the parents jumped right over every one's heads and went straight to the superintendent without even talking to me first... or him for that matter.  So, my star pupil is moved to the class the parent's insist on to smooth things over.  I find out later that her best friend was in that class.  Opinions on the faculty are that the little girl manipulated her way into getting into the same class as her best friend.  Still, my confidence has been shattered.  I am gun shy of every parent contact, now. 


Four months into school.  I am having difficulty sleeping.  My mind keeps jolting me awake with anxieties over the low performing students in my class.  I am so tired and worn out stressing over other people's children that I have no patience to deal with my own.  My children are in after school day care for a couple of hours every day while I work and they are picking up some dirty language and ugly behaviors.  Another student is pulled out of my class.  This time, his parents decide to home school him because he isn't 'getting what he needs' from me.  He never got his work done in class, never took his homework home, and just kept cramming it all into his extremely messy desk.  I did everything I could think of to get him to stay on task, do his work, and keep his desk clean.  I wish his mother better luck than I had.  Still, another perceived failure and my self esteem takes another blow.


It is the end of the year and time for core testing.  They don't let me see what is on the tests (to keep me from teaching to the test), but the other teachers have all gone through the testing process before and know what the questions will be like.  I don't have any idea and I'm terrified I haven't prepared my students enough!  Testing will take a week or two.  One of my students takes two minutes flat to fill in random bubbles and hands over the test with a cheeky grin.  He knows that I know he just blew off the test.  He doesn't care.  Does he know that my perceived effectiveness as a teacher is based on his answers to this test?!  I encourage him to take his time and check his answers (to take the test seriously), but he refuses and insists he is done with the test.  Mike, my most troublesome student, gets expelled from school half way through the tests.  He has been so difficult to deal with all year that the school recommended he be put into a special unit for students with behavioral disorders.  The special unit wouldn't take him because his parents wouldn't cooperate with them.  So he remained with me... that is until he beat up a younger student on the playground and threatened the playground aide.  His tests get turned in with half the bubbles blank since he wasn't around to finish them.  That ends up showing on my class results, too.

That was the only year I worked full time as a core teacher.  It was so full of pain and angst for me, that I decided the money simply wasn't worth it and I requested a return to the part time visual arts position... which was granted, though I was welcome to stay in the 6th grade position, too.

I love my job as an art teacher!  I love what I teach and most of the kids are very well behaved in my classroom because everyone enjoys art.  There is no concrete leveling.  You don't see people label kids as being on a 1st grade level in art when they should be on a 6th grade level.  It doesn't keep me up at night and I have never had a parent request to have a child taken out of my art class.

The extra work my principal has given me is a new program implemented in the district called 'Double Dosing'.  In this program, students who are struggling are identified by their core teacher and invited to attend before or after school tutoring sessions in the core concept that needs to be strengthened.  I am to be that tutor.  I am working with the 3rd and 4th grades.  Currently, I am working with 3rd graders who still struggle with addition fact families.  That means basic addition like 5+6=11.  These kids are still working that one out on their fingers at a time when they are supposed to be ready to start learning multiplication.  Some of the kids are only struggling a little and are quick to catch on to my game/lessons.  But there are a few that are giving me flashbacks to those struggling 6th graders.  For instance...

This morning, I was working with them on the fact family of 9+7=16.  We had talked about using 10+7=17 as a strategy for helping us to figure this one out, then we wrote the full fact family...

9+7=16

7+9=16

16-9=7

16-7= ...

Then I asked one of the little girls to supply the final answer.  She sat there puzzled, with a deer in the headlights sort of glazed look and said, "5?"  Oh!  I'd hate to know what it feels like to see the world through her brain!  She must live in a constant state of confusion.  It makes me sad for her, but also very anxious because I don't know how to get through to her!

Aurgh!  I have only been doing this for a few days and I am already feeling my stress levels climb through the roof!  I am losing sleep over trying to figure out how to help them succeed.  Literally.  I woke up 5 times last night feeling anxious.

And, just in case I wasn't feeling stressed enough... I got a phone call from the high school orchestra teacher on Monday.  Apparently, Helena hasn't shown up for class in over a week!  I was at a conference down at Utah Valley University at the time I got that news.  A quick phone conversation with Helena ensued, and I cut my conference attendance short (I missed the last presentation) to go home and have a mother/daughter conference, instead.  She doesn't want to do orchestra anymore.  I don't want to pay my bills anymore, but that is still happening!  She agreed that there are things we have to do, even if we don't want to.  She meekly apologized to both me and her orchestra teacher and resumed attending the class.

Then there is the fact that both of my kids have 'locked' credits because they need to make up tardies (absences in Helena's case) at tardy/attendance school.

Season ski passes are only offered through Halloween and I really wanted to get one for Will, but I am not sure if I can come up with the money.  And the marathon registration fee will go up by $10 by then, too, if I don't register early.  I hate money.

Oh, and Bill wants to get the ball rolling on a house refinance since rates are so low right now.  I think it would be great to save some money (of course!), but I just dread the additional paperwork and deadlines involved.  Just right now I want to crawl in a whole and disappear for a month or so.

Sorry for the long winded and very depressing post.  I have been trying to weed my way through my feelings and needed to compose them on paper (computer screen) to analyze them.  I think what I have found is that I am not one of those people who thrive on adversity and challenges.  There are lots of jobs out there that are much more stressful than teaching.  There are also teachers who deal with much more difficult and daunting challenges than trying to tutor a few struggling students.  I know that.  I certainly don't deserve any sympathy on that score.  Big deal that I now put in more hours than I wanted to?  Or that I have returned to teaching high stakes subjects?  We all have to do things we don't want to in this life.

I have also wondered why I am so 'normal' for an artist.  You know what I mean.  Most artists have ... interesting ... personalities and some could be described as downright ... odd.  weird.  messed up.

I think I am so 'normal' because I avoid confrontations of all sorts.  I thrive on peace.  I am very laissez-faire.  What will be will be and all that.  When I am faced with a situation that doesn't fit those parameters (like trying to get students caught up to grade level when the odds are stacked against it, or parenting a teen for that matter), I start to freak out.  Headaches, Insomnia.  Distracted thoughts.  Feelings of panic.  Depression.  Dang.  I AM one of those crazy artists.