A New Week Looks a Lot Like the Previous One

So the last time I posted, I mentioned the job interview. As it turns out, I got through to the final round of interviews on Thursday. Then I waited all day Friday, as they told me they would call me on Friday either way. Finally at 5:15, the call came....and....I didn't get the job. Now, as they had waited until the middle of happy hour to call me, I had figured out on my own that the job was not going to be falling to me. And that's okay; they have to hire the person they feel is best qualified and the best fit for their school. It was nice to be in the pool of finalists. Not sure where I came up short and sent an email thanking the assistant principal for the opportunity and asking for some advice for the next time I get an interview. Still waiting for the (probably not coming) response to that.

This is my second round of unemployment in the past three years. The first one came because my brain quit working and I ended up on disability. I can own that one. This one, however, is different. The first time I was unable to function and spent my days in anguish and despair from issues that were way beyond the unemployment. This time, I am beginning to feel anger. The first couple of weeks I was stunned and sad and walked around in a daze. But after this interview experience, the sadness turned to genuine anger. For almost twenty years I bounced around doing a job I hated until it finally consumed me. I longed to be out of it and dreamed of being a teacher. My friend Matt told me on Saturday that I had gone from a job that I hated on the best days to one I loved on the worst days. And now, it has been taken away for reasons that they assure me have nothing to do with my performance. To get to the final round of interviews and not get the job felt like being teased with a prize and then having it ripped back from my reach. And I HATE it! I assume I can find a job. What I can't assume is that it will be a teaching job, nor that I will love it like I do teaching. That leaves me feeling empty and enraged.

So, life goes on. It is not the worst life a guy could ask for. But it will never be the same. And I can't say that I am happy about it.

(Sorry this is kind of a mess. I thought I had it all planned out but once I started writing it down, things seemed to jumble themselves.)

This Is the Week that Is, Was, or Will Be

It has been about four weeks since I found out I was losing my job and about three weeks since the job actually ended. Nothing like being blindsided, but the transition has gone better than I would have expected. My principal has reminded me--and the rest of the teaching staff--that the dismissal had nothing to do with my performance, but is a result of the inane way the state funds schools. We came up 60 students short of what we needed to make budget and someone's job had to be cut. Unfortunately, it ended up being mine. However, the school has kept me fairly busy as a sub and it usually keeps me out of the house and distracted so I'm not focused on being unemployed (or underemployed, I guess).

Yesterday I had an interview at a middle school in Colorado Springs. It was a positive experience. Not sure I blew them away, or that they will call me back for the second round, but each interview is a step in the right direction. I think I would enjoy the job, as it is a similar population to the one at my old school and I love working with the kids who have some societal/cultural obstacles in their way. I should know today or tomorrow if they are bringing me back for the next step in the process. They want to hire by the end of the week and get the person working by the end of next week. I'm glad it is that quick as waiting around to hear is really overwhelming. Never got any response for the community college job, so this is my only active option. Still looking every day for something to open up. If I don't get something full-time soon, I will be applying for some positions in the community college system in Arizona. Don't really want to live there, but these days a man has to go where the jobs are.

We bought a Jeep this week, a 1992 Cherokee Laredo. Got it from a mechanic who has maintained it well. Fun to drive and four wheel drive, which is a big plus in our little community. Not much to look at, but I am way beyond caring about that at this point in my life. I have wanted a Jeep for forever...the other one I owned had a huge engine made for pulling and got about 10 miles per gallon. This one has the inline six engine and will do some better. Just love the feel of driving this kind of vehicle. Hoping it holds up well.

Well, that is the update from here. Counting down the days to Thanksgiving, anxious to spend Christmas with our family, and especially with Emilee, and doggedly seeking work again. And life goes on.

The Drought

Blogging confirms many of the poor thoughts I have about myself...especially the ones that have to do with being undisciplined and disorganized. It has been over five months since I last wrote. How does that happen? I enjoy writing, so why don't I, why can't I, write? I guess part of it could be my reason for writing. Am I writing for others to read, in the hope that they will enjoy and comment? Am I writing for profundity, that the world will be awestruck by my deep thoughts (sound of crickets chirping)? Or am I writing to help bring my soul to light and life? Perhaps if I could truly engage the my heart and soul in my writing I would write more often and more consistently.

Life is not horrible these days. I like teaching. I love the kids. I also fight the battle against anxiety on a regular basis, as I get locked up trying to plan or grade. I keep waiting for the day to come when I am exposed to the world as a complete fraud. I want to make a difference, I want to impact the part of the world I work in, I want my coworkers to like and respect me. I feel insignificant and phony. Finding peace with the demons inside me is a process I have not yet mastered. I realize I am whiny. I realize there are people in the world, students in my classroom, with real problems...the ones that aren't just self-inflicted and overinflated. Just wish I could find the escape hatch from my constant overanalysis and self-absorption. We'll see.

What is Art?

Got the chance last weekend to go to Minnesota and see my daughter in her college's production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. It was the first musical the school has done in at least a decade and I have to say that it was a lot of fun and the cast was really good. Emilee knocked it out of the park. I can't believe how much she has grown as a singer and an actress. She manages to capture the nuances of her character in ways that many at her age and with her experience are seriously lacking. She really understands, and gets how to convey, what is happening in Olive's mind. Unfortunately, that may be because she grew up with a little too much of Olive's experience.

The musical raised a question for me, however. Does a work of art (music, literature, visual, whatever) become more sophisticated if it is more profane? That seems to be the accepted truth among those "in the know." There were two different versions of the performance of this musical--one that was family friendlier and "G" rated, the other considered "R" rated. We were supposed to see both versions, but since there were no children in the audience on the opening night, they went with the raunchier version. The second night, advertised as "R" rated, had a much bigger audience and much more buzz in the theater before it started. It was generally a much younger audience. And if you were not present and just listening, you might think there were cue cards up front telling the audience when to respond with oohs and whistles. It was louder and more raucous. Which is fine, I guess.

Here is the issue, though. This story really looks into serious issues of childhood and family relationships. It explores how the pressures we put on our children affects the ways they view themselves and the way they view the way the world views them. One "boy" suffers with attention deficit issues and is convinced by his family that he is stupid. A girl senses the pressure from her dads to win, to succeed, and the devastation of coming in third causes her to believe that she has failed and that the world will hate her for it. Another is a social misfit who has great difficulty interacting with others. One girl is an overachiever who has to come to grips with how she wants to deal with expectations. Emilee played a girl whose parents are absent and at odds. She feels alone and abandoned and believes that somehow the dysfunction of her parents' relationship is her fault. These are HUGE issues that the musical handled really poignantly and with enough humor to make it bearable. Unfortunately, when they added the raunchiness, I don't think the audience was paying any attention to the real story of the play. Something was lost. Some innuendo and balanced humor make it quirky and unpredictable. Absolute profanity (especially unrealistic profanity--they were portraying twelve year olds, who swear to prove they are "big," but don't use the language in the ways demonstrated in this musical) seems to appeal to baser instincts in the audience and causes them to miss the learning moment such a treatment can create.

George Carlin was hailed as a genius for mocking society's conventions and showing how flawed we were by using the seven dirty words you can't say on television or radio. In the intervening years, society has become coarser in its language and behavior and it is no longer mocking convention to use hardcore profanity and to shock with songs about erections. Mocking convention would be doing a fantastic story like this in ways that appeal to the common decency of humans rather than the common coarseness. That's what I think, at least. I would love to hear how others respond. And if Emilee reads this, I think you were wonderful. I just don't want you to be sucked into the idea that in order to do quality work we must do work that is profane and base. I love you Olive.

Something Old, Something New

How do I manage to go so long without writing? I watched a documentary of Anne LaMott's "Bird by Bird" the other night, and one of the things she emphasizes--as do many others--is to set aside time each day to write. I seem to set aside time each quarter! That said, here I am for today. Spring break has begun and I find myself needing to work and loathe to do much of anything. I am tired, nearly exhausted, and having a hard time getting my feeble brain to focus. I will, however, have lesson plans and serious direction for next quarter set up by the end of the week.

While I am enjoying teaching (usually), I am really feeling an escalation of the good old anxiety issues over the past few weeks. Not sure what is causing it, but it gets to me and becomes somewhat paralyzing at times. I find myself back to those fears of being exposed...that if the folks who employ me really knew what my capabilities are, they would fire me on the spot. Why does this thought haunt me in all facets of my life? Others seem confident of their abilities and knowledge; yet no matter how many people tell me that I am intelligent and capable, I see myself as an idiot who is fooling the world somehow and on the verge of being found out. I have to take a subject area test this summer sometime and find myself terrified that I will fail it miserably and immediately be out of work. I hate that I think like this, yet find it comes quite naturally and is difficult (nearly impossible) to purge from my brain.

That seems to be about it for today. Talk to you all in about a month!

Standardized Tests and Nonstandardized Students

I have been meaning to write this for a week, but it seems other things keep popping up that are more important. You know, things like...LEARNING HOW TO BE A TEACHER!! Last Tuesday (and again tomorrow) it was my job to proctor standardized tests in the computer lab. All six of my classes spent an hour on the computers doing tests which may or may not tell us much of anything about them. My role was to act as an encourager and accountability partner while they did the tests and then review their scores with each student upon completion of the exam to see if they should take another shot at it. I am thrilled to report that my students did exceedingly well on the tests! Tomorrow, they have to take the reading section. I am sure they will be overjoyed.

The idea of sixty students taking the same test with the same teacher forced me to consider my kids as a group and also as individuals. Some sat down and knocked out the test with no complaint or delay. Others were a bit more challenging. One kept falling asleep. I woke him up three or four times during the hour and prodded him to stay with it at other times. Of course, upon completion, I discovered that he had done quite well on the test. It figures! One girl got an "average" score and wasn't happy with it. She took it again and did twelve points better. Her face lit up when we reviewed things together after her second attempt.

The moral of the story? I am required to teach in ways that give us the best chance of showing improvement on standardized tests. I love to teach because each student is an individual with a life both in and outside our classroom and our building. In one short month, I have become deeply attached to the individuals who grace my classes and the larger mosaic they are creating. It only took forty-five years for me to be allowed to do that thing for which I was created. As I reviewed repeatedly in our media literacy unit: ba da da da da...I'M LOVIN' IT!!

The Teaching Gig

Two months have passed and much of life has changed. In November, I was unemployed and muddling along. Since the last post, I have been hired twice and am working in my dream job. That's right, I am officially teaching. I went to grad school with the hope of teaching in a college setting and thought that is where I would end up. The more involved in the reconciliation conversation I became, the more obvious it was to me that I needed to teach in a school that would allow me to be involved in touching lives that might otherwise be forgotten. And now that opportunity has been afforded me.

I am entering my third week teaching Language Arts at the New America School's Denver campus. Our campus is considered "high-risk" and approximately 65 percent of our students have dropped out of other schools. What I have found is a group of students who have a hard time dealing with life in the structures of "normal" American school systems but are smart and engaging when given the opportunity. Unfortunately, many of these students will likely fall through the cracks as they have involved themselves in behaviors and lifestyles that will make success difficult: gangs, parenthood, drugs and alcohol, etc.

While I love what I am doing, pretty much every minute that I am not with students is spent wondering if I am going to be exposed as a fraud...that what I have always wanted to do will prove to be more than I am capable of doing. There is so much that I don't know and trying to learn to teach on the fly is definitely a challenge. I genuinely hope this works out as I love it more than anything I have ever done. Still, there are no guarantees. The road ahead is beautiful, yet treacherous. It could be an amazing journey or a horrifying crash! Too late to turn back though; I'm on my way!