Beyond my Control

It doesn’t matter how well you do your job, or how much the children need you, you could be fired at the end of this school year because you haven’t worked for the district as long as other counselors.

Deja Vu?

Yep. 

Here we go again. Budget cuts in the oil-rich state.

And you can say to yourself, don’t think about, stay positive, you didn’t get cut last year, you’ll hold onto the job you love. But if you don’t prepare for losing it, your family’s screwed. You’re the breadwinner. The girl with the graduate degrees, the Master-Master, the only one in the house with a paying job.

And yet you can’t just come home and sulk, or work on your resume, because there is “school” to play with Olive, followed by “doctor”, and you need to sit at her little plastic Dora table and eat a wooden fried egg and carrot.

And then there are pages of numbers in your head, percentages, yards of them, all below normal, not a surprise but always hard to see, Elias portrayed by tests and assessments. You had his three-year eligibility meeting today, where you sit around a table with all your colleagues who work with Elias and review his scores to determine if he still meets the criteria for Special Education.

Which of course he does.

But when your lives are controlled by bureaucracies, you fill in bubbles and hope you don’t get fired at the end of the year.

You sob in your gutted bathroom thinking of all the children you care about at Airport Heights and how you don’t want to be another adult in their lives who just disappears. You swear you will tell them it’s not your choice, you don’t want to go.

(But you know when it comes down to it, you won’t burden them with your story, with the politics of cutting educational support to the bone while demanding more from our teachers-- as if teachers can possibly cure societies woes.

As if teachers have power over poverty, consumerism, abuse, the media, divorce, neglect, wars, suicide, prisons, celebrities, oppression, video games, the death or a parent way too young.)

And yet if you are let go, you know you will hug your students one last time and return home where your own children will force you out of feeling sorry for yourself by their constant need for your presence.

Mom. MOM!  MOMMY!!!!!!

You will get down on your knees and play school, where the student teacher ratio is two to one and no one ever has to fill out any forms. Where after a warm lunch, cooked on site, everyone naps, nestled with their favorite pillow and teddy bear.

You will say to yourself: It was beyond my control, it was beyond my control, it was beyond my control...

Comments

[fleming]

I am so sorry that you have to live with this "not knowing" AGAIN. Fight for it the best you can. Don't give up. We are rooting for you!

[Christy]

Thank you Karen, I feel valued by staff, students, and Mike, and I think that's what kills me, b/c to the district I'm just a number. And when they do this, two years in a row, with talk of it again next year, it makes me want to pull away from my job instead of engage more, and I know staff feel like this at schools across Anchorage, and that's just not helpful for kids.

Thanks Fleming, not sure if I'll speak at the board meeting again or not. They are also cutting supports from special education so I'm tempted to wear my parent head and speak about that too. And yet part of me just wants to be a gardener, grow flowers, and counsel the kids who come over to my garden for free. (If only that would pay the bills.)

[Kate]

Sorry this is rearing its ugly head again! So stressful and so much uncertainty complicated by your immense sense of commitment to the kids yet a desire to walk away from it all. I totally get all of that. There is a lot of similarity with our work here. I cant remember whether i already sent you this last time if so, apologies This poem that really helps us is :http://www.dbooth.org/guat2000/small/teresa.htm
Not because we are particularly religious (we,re not) but because of the sense that we must continue the work no matter the obstacles because it is the right thing to do. I think you too will find a way to continue your important work whether it is there or somewhere else. Hugs!

[danielle in zurich]

Dammit. Sorry to hear this--again.
Time o write that book, Christy. Did you check out the link to Literary Mama and their submissions??
Rooting for you from across the Atlantic and the lower 49...
D