Musings

I'm feeling a lot better today, now that Tommy Boy and Miss Mamie are taken care of. This last week has been very stressful, with the constant rain, farm stuff and work stress. I had to get to Masonville, almost 50 miles away, by 8:30 for a staff development workshop. I cut it close as usual and, as luck would have it, was stopped for a five mile long road paving project in South New Berlin. I couldn't believe it. When I finally got there and found a parking place in the back of the campus, and found my way through auto body and down three floors to the cafeteria, the two meetings were started. I saw my GED counterpart at the sister school in the room along with my department's teachers and stayed in that meeting. It was the wrong meeting and when I was spotted by another teacher trying to be helpful and moved to the right place, my supervisor was not amused. She had sent me a "See Me" email on Thursday and, try as I would to catch her eye and talk to her I couldn't. See Me emails are rarely good. A new batch of bureaucratic protocols having to do with attendance were handed down this year, on top of the new IEP design, and HOLY COW who needs more bureaucratic crap to deal with??? We are constantly told to "build relationships" with students, and I like to do that, but when we are being snowed under with paperwork it's not easy to relax and build relationships. Couldn't catch her eye all afternoon yesterday, which means she's pissed at me. I'm beginning to understand the pecking order that is public education. All this crap gets handed down from the top and the supervisors have to make the teachers do it. Teachers, being naturally militant and hyper-sensitive with huge fragile egos, rebel and have to be threatened and cajoled by supervisors, creating a terrible tension. I periodically go through this "take this job and shove it" period, then come to my senses. With a husband who has no benefits and who gets sick all the time, plus all these animals to take care of, quitting my job is a pipe-dream. So I go about my business of building relationships and trying to win the paper-work war. Let me go out into the barn and check on the survivors of the purge. Time to go buy more hay, the story of my life and the reason why I will show up at school on Tuesday with a smile on my face, waiting for my marching orders.