Female Seeking Great Escape

Work has been really emotionally draining lately. 

Now, don't get me wrong, I love the students I teach. I respect the careers of my peers and supervisors, and I went into this knowing full well my capabilities, weaknesses, and strengths. This is a good fit for me. Maybe not perfect, but good. I fought long and hard for this. I earned the right to do what I do. I don't know how long I can keep doing it. Isn't that sad to say? There is so much stress involved being a functional special needs teacher with testing, paperwork, planning, organizing, and dealing with the protocols, daily flubs, and daily struggles. It is wonderful to see student progress and to celebrate milestones, but it is devastating to find flaws in your system, cracks in your facade, and holes in your plans. When things go bad, they can go really badly in relatively little time. One second, peace, the next..boom! chaos. 

Sometimes I feel like I am alone in my ocean of responsibility and want some company, and sometimes I would rather be alone in the ocean and handle things my way. 

When you work with other adults in the same room, there has to be a clear leader. 

I like to share leadership and take turns. This reduces stress.  I like to delegate tasks and have time to stop and think and plan for the next stage. Sometimes this irritates people. They think they are doing my job. They don't realize I need them to be a sounding board, provide fresh perspectives, advocate for the students they are closest to, and to help out with more than the mundane cleaning, managing, and grading papers. I haven't yet learned the art of getting people to do what I want while making it all seem like their idea. Instead, I accept the ideas of others.

The other half of the coin is doing everything the government says I have to do to be 'in compliance' and to keep the 'school grade' high. Some of this is really political. We all play nice, but those that know the right people are the ones who get things the fastest. Sometimes I feel like I won't ever understand a person and that is holding me back. I have to be forced to contact them and make my requests.

I can get along with almost anybody, work with a myriad range of personalities, but sometimes I get overwhelmed by trying to hold it all together and trying to see the forest for the trees. Sometimes I stay quiet and observe when I need to speak out and put a stop to some actions. It happens. Then I feel guilty.

Mostly, it is not guilt that plagues me, but a sense of inadequacy. I feel overwhelmed and out-maneuvered. 

I feel like if I just get through this day, go home, plan for tomorrow, think, come up with a solution to the problem, vent, rant, rave, eat chocolate, and sleep. I can get up tomorrow and magically have a better day.

Work is WORK, man. 

When do I have time to be ME? You think teachers just give homework, but they take home as much baggage as any student and plan and give and nurture and spend their money on their students. 

Many of you would say, "yeah, well, what did you expect going into the teaching field?"
I knew full well what I was getting into. Really, I did. You don't do this without knowing the sacrifices.

But oh, the sacrifices! Sometimes they catch up to you. 

This month, heck, this time of every school year, is full of the overwhelming sense of being bogged down and mired in the daily grind. While the daily struggles are new, and the tasks are many and varied, and it is never mindnumbingly boring, it is emotionally draining. Can I be better? Can I do more awesome things? Look at my failures. Look at what I have not accomplished. Look at what I forgot I planned to do by February. Look at how much time is left until Spring Break! Why are they whispering about me? Why is everyone frowning?

Okay, so some of that is paranoia, but when you get ..prickly.. it feeds the monsters and they grow to fill the spaces between the planning, organizing, testing, and failing. Sometimes you need a little space. And being snowed in is not very space-giving. I know February is about Love and Support and I have a very loving and supportive husband, but he is sick of my ranting. He is one of those "work is WORK" people who tells me to suck it up and problem solve with my logical half of my brain and just figure a way around it.
So I am.
And my creative side is longing for a great escape. I've been watching travel shows, reading books, and planning writing escapes in my bits of spare time.

(Anyone got a winning lottery ticket?)

Coexist: Shift Your Thinking

I was behind a car with the Coexist bumper sticker, you know, where every letter is a religious symbol? Yesterday as I sat there, I realized that it's not saying that we should all change and become a Giant Cult.

The sticker is saying we should be peaceful.

There is a push for peace out there. I think there always has been, but why hasn't it happened?

In order to truly live and coexist with your neighbor in peace, you have to be willing to do two things: Love, and Forgive.

Now, first of all, when I say love I do not mean that you are bubbling over with affection and care, I mean that you have to not hate them with a passion.

This takes Like, Teamwork, and Cooperation.

Liking someone means you have to put aside your differences, find common ground, work as a Team, and Cooperate when necessary. If you put this in the perspective of a community, there is no gate, but there is a Housing Authority and it's rule is: whatever your neighbor does, accept it, forgive them, and help them if they allow you to.

It begins by understanding that not all people are out there to hate you.

It begins by knowing that people of other religions are mostly peaceful. Just because they worship a different God doesn't make them evil.

Religion is a big part of being healthy, because it makes you think outside of yourself. No matter what God you pray to, you open up to something bigger; you hope, you thank, you count your blessings; and then you begin to think about your family, your loved ones, the problem with your neighbors; and then you think about what you can do to fix that problem, and maybe the solution is for you to stop hating them.

They need to make a Coexist bumper sticker with people of different skin tones and nationalities using their bodies to make the letters, because racism is still epicly abundant.

You can't love others, in a general, you-would-serve-the-homeless-soup kind of way, if you are afraid of someone because they have skin of a different color.

Or if they are lesbian, gay, or transgender.

I am supposed to love everyone. We are supposed to leave the judgment for Judgement Day. I don't truly know what is in someone's heart until they tell me, and to do that, I'd have to have a relationship with them that includes opening up, sharing, and trust. Faces, attire, hairdos can all hide the true feelings inside a person and show the world only what the person wants you to see. I can dress up fancy to feel fancy, but inside, I may hold hurts, hate, and fear.

The way to accept others is to get to know others and begin to see them as PEOPLE instead of as a stereotype. It's easy to love an imperfect person with feelings and things in common with other people. It's hard to love a religion, a color, or a lifestyle. Those are inanimate things.

Shift your thinking.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Ferris Wheel Scalper

We went to the fair, and  I had already bought my tickets in advance. I paid half price, because advance tickets were on sale.No waiting in long lines a the ticket booth! Score! It was 'dollar ride night' or 'one ticket a ride' night, because the tickets were one dollar a piece.


Simple, right?


Well, MY tickets are different, they are striped and printed on them is .50 because they were a special deal. The man at the giant slide handing out wool blankets explained to the girl taking tickets that the striped ones were some 'online deal' and they were good.


Every ride accepted them as one ticket. The Tilt-a-Whirl dude had no idea what special was going on, just took whatever you gave him. He looked at our tiny ticket squares - that's what they were this year - with amusement, and also like they were psychedelic. He was really nice, but I think he had just woken up. I had the feeling he'd probably let us on for a sandwich... but I digress. Just because I was frugal, didn't mean my tickets counted any differently.. until the ferris wheel.


I (and my son) get up there and the man says, "He needs to ride with you."


And I say, "Yeah, there's two tickets."  I give an encouraging smile.


"No ma'am, it's dollar ride night, these tickets are 50 cents. It costs a dollar."


Confused, I attempt to straighten him out. "I paid a dollar PER ticket, it's one ticket to ride."


"Look Ma'am, this says 50 cents. It's a dollar to ride." He shows me the ticket, where the .50 is printed clearly.


"These are ADVANCE tickets. Each ticket is WORTH a dollar. The lady said.."


"Well she told you wrong! Take it up with her! Go on." So I turned and ushered my son back down the entrance ramp.


"Fine." (I always have to have the last word, don't I?)


"Mom, we aren't going to ride the ferris wheel?"


"He kicked us off, he wanted two tickets instead of one."


The man watched me for a good 30 minutes after that. He was thinking I was chicken for not going to the office and complaining right then. He was thinking I had PLANNED to dupe him, that I was devious.


Hopefully, you people know me better than that.


While my post is mostly about a miscommunication in the terms "Dollar ride night" and "One ticket per ride night", I was reminded of this story (rant) by a link to this crazy policy in a New York restaurant.


After reading about the way the man was treated over some 'policy' (It's always easier to blame the system isn't it?) I was thinking of the daycare policy that made me leave the daycare.


The contract sets forth that parents who pay cash must pay the daycare provider during holidays and vacation days that they are closed and not working. I was not working either, and not getting paid, so I was unable to spend money I didn't have. I explained that I could pay her back over time, but that was a breach of contract. If they let me do that, then they had to let ALL the OTHER parents do it too. If I did not pay, and chose to withdraw my son, I could never return. I didn't.


Rather than accept a late payment by a parent who pays cash, they chose to fill that spot with a kid on assistance from the state, WHO DOESN'T PAY WHEN THE CHILD IS NOT IN ATTENDANCE. The state doesn't pay them for vacations, so why should I?


I get that a business needs to know it's costs and income, but partial payment is better than no payment. Even the state sometimes pays them late.


In this case, the anti-discriminatory policy discriminated against ME, the PAYING parent.


Policies are weird.


So are carnies.