kethrai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My mother says she deliniates her life with cards. I've lived several different lives. I'm not talking in the metaphysical sense at all--but it seems like my life divided itself pretty sharply into phases, and the contact between the phases is only tenuous--the constants being me and my family. There are pluses and minuses to this-- I'm not often confronted with daily reminders of past fuckups, but then I don't have many "old friends", either, people I've known for a long time. The separations are sometimes so severe it's hard to remember "who I was" at certain points in time. When I was a student, and then for the two years after college, I was in a holding pattern. I dated the same man through all that time, and my degree was in English with an Education minor--I was going to be an English teacher. I looked for a teaching job for two years. I worked retail. That was that phase--waiting for the man to move down to be with me, waiting to find a teaching job, waiting. Then there was my Teaching Year. And then post the Teaching Year, there was the Year of the Telephone Answering Service, and now, for the last several years, it's been back to the same area, more or less, that I grew up in and a succession of office jobs. This is the longest phase so far--my life seems more contiguous in the last 7 years than it had ever been. But this is about the Teaching Year. I had always planned to be a teacher, from high school on up. I taught and tutored my way through high school, tailored my college education to become the best educator I could, and when I graduated, I spent two very very long years looking for a teaching job. So when I got an interview for an 8th grade English position in the middle of the state in the middle of one August, and then a job offer, I was more than ready to just move to the New City and start a New Life. Many good things came out of that year-- I met the Darling Husband, I changed a good deal of my life that needed changing, I recreated myself better and stronger. I cut my hair. And I taught. And it was a disaster. It was a horrible year, dear Nonscheduled Readers, as much as I loved my kids--I was hired too late in the year to order textbooks, so I had none (mind you this was an English classroom), I had a homocidal child in my class (no lie, he'd spent a year in a mental institution for trying to do in his sister--in FOURTH GRADE) I had to buy dictionaries out of my own pocket money...I was a first year teacher, stumbling from pillar to post, and at the end of the year I was handed my pink slip. They said it was a termination without prejudice, they had reorganized my position out of existence... (which in most states they can--there's no such thing as tenure anymore) but I had the sinking feeling I had fucked up beyond belief. I did recognize even at the time that I'd been screwed--the lack of textbooks and resources alone was ridiculous--but I also knew that NO teacher is a good teacher in their first year, and I chalked it up to one more thing that I'd not quite managed to do at all right. I was always a person with Big Plans, and here I was, not-quite-making-it. It's part of why I evaluate hobbies VERY carefully now-- no sense buying all the equipment and then deciding I don't like it. In my wryer moments, I think of teaching as the most expensive damnded hobby I ever had. (Leading to amusing exhanges with the Alumni Association from college--"Ms. Kethrai, would you care to make a donation to support Ye Olde State School?" "On the very day that I make more money in a year that I paid you for tuition, I will take the three goddamned dimes, tape them to a fucking postcard with a moose and a lighthouse on the front, and mail it to you. Until then, FUCK OFF." They haven't called back.) But the niggling sense of failure has tagged along with me ever since. After all, you don't get fired unless you screw up, right? And I knew what my screwups were in that job--extensions of my core flaws-- bad at keeping up with the paperwork, letting myself get overextended and overwhelmed. I did hunt for teaching jobs a bit that summer, but the market still sucked and I needed to pay rent. Which led to the Year of the Answering Service, which is another whole little old pocket o' hell, but there you go. I've spent most of the years since then trying to stay solvent, not looking for teaching jobs for economic reasons and burnout reasons, and hoping in a vague sort of way that I hadn't fucked over my students too badly. So the other night my MIL called. She had run into one of the 7th-grade teachers from the school I had taught at. They were chatting, and my MIL mentioned that I had taught in that school district. Mrs. K couldn't place me at first (MIL has conveniently forgotten that I did not adopt the Darling Husband's name wholesale...grr...) but then MIL mentioned my maiden name, and Mrs. K. started absolutely frothing. Turns out the principal liked new young teachers. Would wander from one to one, and the ones who didn't look like they would play ball (people like me...I've never been an approachable sort of person, I'm told) or who flat out refused to play ball--ended up not teaching there too long. He would lean on their team members to make things that much more difficult for them...which suddenly made clear why most of my co-teachers were singularly unhelpful when I asked them for resources or help. Can't blame them, exactly, since Mrs. K made clear that they knew their jobs were at risk if they helped me. I knew from various scuttlebutt at the time that the teacher previously in my job had been sleeping with him, but didn't realize it was a pattern... further, Mrs. K said that the parents of some forty students had specifically requested me for the following year--something unheard of for a first-year teacher--and were very upset when I didn't return the next year to teach. All in all, Mrs. K apparently gave MIL an earful about how badly I'd been fucked over for...er...not fucking, as it were. Further scuttlebutt included the fact that my successor had the principal's child, proved it, and was paid off VERY expensively to not tell... But of course, all the teachers knew. They always do. It's a rule. And apparently there was a huge amount of bitterness about it, for Mrs. K to go off like that, eight years later. For eight years I've been carrying that year on my back in one way or another. I've tried to find neutral ways to explain why I'm not teaching anymore to each new employer--I had to find a whole other set of skills to work in offices instead of schools--I've reminded myself that teaching took a toll on my immune system to the tune of running a 103 degree temp on the last day of school. I was never so sick as I was that year, and never worked so hard before or since--80 and 100 hour weeks were normal. It's one of the things I carry around as a failure, something I passionately wanted to do, worked hard to do, and then...couldn't, very well. It's so strange. I'm not sure if I'm angry, but to know that I wasn't just...screwing up, that people were actively working to sabotage my classes...that it wasn't just me...and that despite all the folks who were trying to make sure I tripped up...I was still getting requested by parents for their children... I think I should maybe call Mrs. K and say thank you. But to have this come back to me, so many years later, when I am now in another life...it feels rather like too little, too late. My mother says she delineates her life phases with cards--when she was young, it was happy shower, engagement, wedding, baby cards. As she got into her 30's and 40's, it was happy First Communion and entry to HS for her friends' kids. Now that she's a little bit older, she's sending out cards to people whose parents and spouses are dying. I feel a little like a card saying "Congratulations on your college graduation!" just came in the mail. Wierd, a little spooky, and totally disconnected from where I am now. I'm not sure I could go back to teaching now. Even in the eight years since I taught school, the public school systems have become more about herding and less about helping. I can't afford to, either-- teachers make substantially less than I do in my job, and as long as I am head of household, pay cuts are not an option. I also suspect I'm no longer respectable enough... who's going to hire a teacher who works at Ren Faires in a corset? But for the first time in eight years, I feel as if I could go back if I wanted to. Happy graduation to me. And welcome to my next life. 8:06 p.m. - 2003-03-04 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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