trapped in October
a winter snowfall gets lost
among leafy trees
my dog doesn’t care.
he loves snow as he loves me:
unequivocally
sometimes his love hurts
so pure is his devotion
(unreturnable)
like these autumn leaves
that can never give the tree
what it gave to them
This is my seventeenth year of teaching, my seventh in this school district. I have taught seventh through twelfth grade English literature as well as English Language Development to every level of English Learners. I have co-taught seventh- and eighth-grade science and social studies courses, and I have even taught a computer applications middle school elective.
At this school, I have taught a new curriculum for at least one of my classes every. Single. Year.
This year, I have four preps. Every other year, I’ve had at least two, if not three.
In addition to these preps, I have to spend a minimum of five hours every week sitting in data meetings, leadership meetings, and planning meetings.
On top of these meetings, I have to make sure that my students understand enough English to be able to take the bus home. To find the food bank. To sift through the clothes in our donation closet for coats and gloves for a sudden October snow.
For the course I’ve been teaching consistently for the better part of seven years, I have worked tirelessly to build a curriculum when there was none. I have listened to my school, my neighborhood, my district, and my world tell me about how fucking important a grade-level standardized test is even if my students are still learning how to correctly form letters or decode words.
I have built assessments based on those standardized tests, based on the grade-level curriculum, but tapered down, sheltered, supported, for my students.
I spend anywhere between thirty and forty hours a week PLANNING the lessons for four preps, trying to teach my Newcomers everything from how to greet strangers to present progressive verb tenses to vowel-intensive phonics identification. Trying to teach my level 3 ELLs how to become fluent readers, how to effectively present information, how to listen to, write, and correct dictated sentences, how to create a cohesive paragraph supported by text evidence.
Do you give me time to meet with other ELD teachers?
Do you give me a curriculum that includes common assessments?
Do you visit my classroom and see that, oh, none of my Newcomers know how to write the letter ‘k’ because none of their languages use that letter, and maybe I should spend more time teaching them how to do this? Or see that my ELD Seminar kids spend each Tuesday sifting through grammatical rules to correctly identify their errors on their SAT-style assessments? Or see that every word I teach my kids, whether it be “north” or “however”, is built upon a concept or misunderstanding from a previous lesson?
Have you ever looked at–let me break some shocking barriers here–my GRADEBOOK? Do you think, just for a moment, that it is possible that I progress monitor my students there each week? That I look at their scores and determine what I need to reteach? That my students meet with me to retake quizzes and revise written work based on the scores that they receive, and that I endlessly allow this?
Oh. I forgot.
You don’t have time to visit my classroom.
You are running this and seven other meetings this week.
You are sharing SAT data with the entire staff.
You are making me fill out a graphic organizer that analyzes how blatantly biased standardized tests are against ALL OF THE KIDS I TEACH.
You are here to criticize what I HAVEN’T done. Not to offer:
This is my seventeenth year of teaching. I know I have taught longer than you, probably more than all of the admin team combined. I think I have an idea of how to monitor the progress of my students.
Do you have an idea of how to progress monitor your ability to listen? To support? To collaborate with those of us who are in the trenches?
I didn’t think so. This “meeting” is adjourned.
My daughter’s face perfectly encapsulates my day, my motherhood, my career. Straining to run through the burning sun of a late summer day, pushing the limits of what she’s run before, and wishing for a closer finish line.
Disgruntlement at a too-hard, too-narrow concrete runway, making it nearly impossible, impassable.
Fear that her time will be worse than before, that the heat will beat her, that the world will beat her.
A sliver of hope for that final push, that final lap, that is just around the corner yet feels like twenty thousand steps too far.
In the background, teens cheer. “You got this!” “Just one more mile!” “Keep it up!”
Parents chase the runners, crossing the park’s midsection while they wrap their legs around its exterior shaded walkways. Parents trying to get the next best vantage point to capture that pic, that glimpse of angst that is in every athlete’s face.
Coaches stand on the sidelines, their own cheers tight with passion, with expectation and longing. “Lift your legs!” “Raise up those arms!” “Just like at practice!”
Her expression, their words, the globally-warmed, never-ending sun, beat down on the tumble of meetings that began and ended my day. The constant admonishments from my administration. The constantly shifting expectations and placement of people in power at my school district. The constant lack of a curriculum for the students who need it most and don’t have the right words, the right expression, to beg for that finish line. The constant task of preparing three hours of sometimes-failing lesson plans I must place in front of my Newcomers.
The rush–my god, the rush. Three weeks back, adding item number one thousand and seventy-three to our Google family calendar, Bruce rearranging his ever-strict hours to be able to make this meet, the shuffle of only-two cars, three girls in three activities with varying times, my after-work meeting, my cycle down the bike path, my fifteen-minute window to cross a park three times to gather this glimpse, my Torchy’s Tacos stop, bike locked and unlocked, bathroom locked and unlocked but only with a code, taco bag ripped on the rush up the elevator, only to find a buffet of snacks waiting in the final meeting room. My race to beat the moon home because it would never be light enough, our car in the shop for nearly six weeks, and I don’t even have time to fix the chain on my bike, let alone buy a decent headlamp.
All of this is in my daughter’s face. All the angst, the cheers, the backtalk, the doubts.
And just like her, I am racing to the finish line. It is never close enough, but both of us, somehow, have made it today. We have made one more race, one more step, towards what we hope will be better on the other side.
And that is enough. For today, it is enough. 
welcome back, Pilot
we’re sorry we wrecked you, girl
please forgive our luck
reality hits:
school supply shopping, grading.
at least there’s a pool.
the storm has arrived
enough to bring shrieking youth
joy none of us find
yet the lake beckons
with its endless, silent joy
should we ask for more?
or live like ancients
who treasured every birchbark
for the life it gave?
strawberry rhubarb
can’t save our relationship
no matter how sweet
i’ll have to find words
to fill the lattice loopholes
between bites of love
I have twenty-eight students with one to two essays due EACH WEEK in my new University of Phoenix class, my second job that pays $225/week on the occasional basis that I am granted a class.
I haven’t taught this particular class in over two years, so of course, they’ve changed the entire syllabus, I have to read two different textbooks, and I need to update all my rubrics. Also, all of the online discussion questions have changed, so I will need to respond to thirty different questions with a new set of thirty 200-300-word responses.
Part of the reason I keep this job is that it’s online, and I can squeeze it into (every possible free moment of) my day.
Another reason I have kept it, at the moment, is to fund the $2000+ I’m paying, in addition to doing hundreds of hours of work, to try to obtain my National Board Certification, which is the only possible way to get a raise at this point in my career without investing thousands of dollars and hours in another degree (I am MA+30).
The disheartening reality of what every teacher I know does to survive, every teacher who isn’t lucky enough to marry rich, or at the very least marry someone with guaranteed job opportunities and a forever-steady income, is that we must jump through every hoop imaginable to make ends meet.
We teach summer school. We do home visits. We spend our own money on advanced degrees and credits with the hope of improving our instruction and earning mediocre raises.
This is on top of the fifty or more hours a week we spend planning lessons, grading papers, counseling students in trauma at lunch and after school, attending meetings, sports events, professional development, and student recruitment events (because we have to sell our schools now).
So when my state, my “blue” but really purple (perhaps leaning red) state, calls us actors on a “political theater” stage, I am at my wit’s end:
“Criticizing the most recent teacher pay bargaining session as ‘political theater,’ the head of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment urged the Denver school district and its teachers union Monday to work harder to find common ground — even as he expressed skepticism that the two sides would reach a deal” (Chalkbeat).
Was it theatrical that we gave up the tenth evening in as many weeknights to wait for our district to come to the table with an actual proposal rather than a cost-of-living increase already in the budget?
Was it theatrical that young children stood behind the fraudulent superintendent with signs begging her not to deport our teachers after the HR department more or less threatened their right to work?
Was it theatrical that we have negotiated for fifteen months, yes over “philosophy disagreements” because the PHILOSOPHY OF OUR DISTRICT IS TO SHUT DOWN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, TAKE OPPORTUNITIES AWAY FROM STUDENTS OF COLOR, AND GENTRIFY EVERYTHING FROM NEIGHBORHOODS TO CURRICULUM?
And. Just. Like. That.
All the hours. All the years. All the goddamn blood, sweat, and tears have been put on stage for the world to see, chart-paper and all, chants in the background, livelihoods on the line.
For political theater of the worst show you will ever wish you didn’t buy a ticket to see.
fish chowder, biscuits:
sometimes a weeknight work night
is worth every bite
with a broken fridge,
limitations on dry ice,
and carpool circles
to pick up daughter
from uncalled-for punishment,
my Monday sucked ass.
driving home in rain,
she told me the whole story
and other teen truths.
then shared her essay:
perfectly satirical
(writer at fourteen)
the rain flooded us
and we laughed until we cried
knowing that truth hurts.
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