Parent Teacher Conferences

 Last Thursday was my 25th first marking period parent/teacher conference night.  I know a lot of teachers cannot stand these things.  It is a late night.  We always have a full day of school the next day.  When it is right before a holiday, it is even harder because we are wiped out and the kids are wired.

I happen to enjoy the conferences.  I like meeting with the kids' representatives.  On recent occasions, I have even gotten to meet with the siblings of students when they step in for a working parent, and those siblings end up being former students.  Even when I have not-so-great reports on the students, it is still a nice time.  Some years I have such a good time I wish I could offer coffee, tea, and pastries and just call it a social gathering.  Most years, I have been the last one out of the parking lot because the last parent and I end up chatting for a while.

Many years, three of us guess how many teachers will not be there and which one of us will get the most visits.  Well, under the new administration, it's anyone's guess what teachers are missing and there is rarely a greeting to start the night.  So there goes part one of our game.  As far as the second part, I lost.  I only had five representatives come see me.  

Since it was such a quiet night, I spent the down time looking through photo books for samples to show two of my students seeking reassurance or inspiration.  I also nearly fell down a rabbit hole:  early color photographs, one formula being doubted and only recently proven correct.  

My life is profoundly sad lately, but some of the rare bright spots come from my students, and sometimes their parents/caregivers.  

12 November, 2023

 Well, blogging did not go as planned for the first marking period.  I am so swamped that my heart is racing and I am near hyperventilating almost daily at work.  I am not an outlier.  Other colleagues are crying on a regular basis.  Some have sought medication to deal with what is going on.  Despite what family thinks, I have been seeking extra help, but have failed so far.  With the world falling apart, there is a dearth of good counselors with open calendars out there.

Last night, I was at a colleague's wedding celebration.  A former French teacher from my school was there with her new husband.  He is a teacher too.  I congratulated them on finding each other because I am now of the belief that the only significant other who can fully appreciate a teacher and truly support us with all of our needs and stresses is another teacher.  

I saw some other people from work.  Our retired director of Special Ed, a retired department head, a former video production teacher, and a couple of former students.  One former student told me she had actually gone on to major in Photography for her associate degree.  The former department head was kind to me despite our past differences.  The former video production teacher told me some kind things including her disbelief that the staff were too ignorant to not elect either me or the colleague we were celebrating that night as union president because of how much better we would be at that job.  

The SpEd department head had the kindest things to say to me.  He and I worked together on a group he led for students with anxiety and such.  He told me that I was the best he had with that group.  His girlfriend told me she could tell how good a person I was for the kids because of my kind face and demeanor.  I had also taken part in two of the teacher groups he ran - an anxiety group for staff and a group for AP teachers.  He knows my work ethic and how I care about and for the students.  He knows me well.  To hear those kind things meant a great deal to me.

All the kind, caring things people said to me last night will help me get going tomorrow morning when I return to the classroom after our convention break and the end of a harrowing marking period.  I hope to post more regularly.  I think I need to do what I tell my kids to do - write a reminder to myself so I do not forget.  Or maybe I should make a Google Classroom for myself and post this as an assignment with a due date!  How teacher of me.

Year 25

 This is my 25th year in the pension system.  It is my 26th year if I count my year subbing, which included a long-term coverage, but it does not count.  So this is my 25th year as a permanent teacher.  I thought I would keep notes about how this year goes.  Twenty-five is a milestone, a big deal.  We shall see how it goes.

We had students yesterday and today is the second day of their school year.  The kids seem ok.  There are a number of changes in the building and I will reserve judgment until next week when we go through them all.

In the meantime, I want to treat myself this weekend but I don't know if I will manage it.  We shall see.

I started my 23rd year of teaching two weeks ago.  We are full time, in person, but all people in the building must wear masks.  I am vaccinated and content with that.  I no longer have to be fearful of catching the virus and passing it to my dad.  He died in March.   My mother-in-law died the previous July.  I think at this date, eight or so people I knew personally and cared about have died since the pandemic started and less than half of them died from the virus.  Cancer, overdose, and unknown are the other causes.  I have not travelled anywhere since November 2019.  Fritz has been sick since December 2020.  Multiple misdiagnoses, the removal of a mass from his colon, possible FIP, cancer diagnosis ruling out FIP, then the true diagnosis of FIP.  Nearly 100 days of injections, and into the seventh day of three months of observation.  The first Saturday in June, we nearly lost him.  The club has reopened but my social anxiety has kept me from getting over there all but three nights since then.  It is the one place I can go to and feel like I belong, but anxiety is tough.  In some ways the time since March 2020 has been profoundly terrible.

In some ways the time since March 2020 has been amazing.  Teaching remote was wonderful because I had total autonomy and didn't really care if I got into trouble.  We were instructed to teach with care and I did.  I let the kids keep cameras off, against the rules.  I was flexible with due dates and how they approached their projects.  I really felt the kids were happy to see me, even if I never saw some of them.  Lots of them told me they appreciated my respect for them in letting them keep the cameras off.  One kid I never saw, who I thought was bored in my class, took me again this year because of his experience with me last year.  Another kid, who I no longer have, emailed me last night to tell me about a cool find in a local park.  I thought the work I was getting from my kids was the strongest in years.  When I put the art show video together and saw the work from the other classes, I was even more pleased.  My students created such deep, thoughtful photos.  I have not had so much work impress me so much since 2013.

I loved not seeing a single person from my building.  I loved not having the face-to-face encounters that always involved bitching about the administration.  I loved not having to pretend to like everyone.  I loved not feeling like I needed to watch my back.  I loved not having to walk past that unity garden.  I have had positive experiences with three people in other departments in the past year, but I would be kidding myself if I ever categorized them as friends.  But they are good colleagues.  Communication from others is always so negative and, luckily, that trickled to nothing over the summer.  In the days since our return, I have had few visitors to my room and I am close to happy.  We have new administration and while people are acting as if this is wonderful and a 180 from the previous administration (who they claim was horrible) I just do not care.  I don't care that people tell me I am wrong about my feelings about the previous regimes.  I don't care about any of them, their feelings, or opinions.  I am in that building to teach young adults to be photographers and good people who will learn some wonderful things in their time with me.

And I feel great about that.  I like being alone in my room, cleaning and repairing equipment, tinkering with new processes and methods, looking into new ideas and photographers to present to my kids.  I like knowing I have time to watch cool videos from museums around the world and think of how to use them with my kids.  I am so sad all the time, but nearly happy as well.  It's interesting.

Three minutes before my lesson starts last night, my sister texts me.  Kraa died.  I couldn't cancel my lesson.  I had practiced all week.  I was nailing the songs.  Then he calls.  My hands were shaking.  I could see him wince a couple times as I played.  I mixed up the two Joy Division songs I was playing.  I couldn't tell him why.  What does he care? By the end of the half hour, I felt a bit better, but sad.

I immediately went upstairs to get the next record I needed to practice to.  I just tried to play without the music while sitting on the sofa.  I had to go to the bathroom to take a break.  I am really sad.  A lot of who I am is a result of high school.  Kraa was part of it.  Not all, but a part.

When I transferred to that high school, it was because the art program was way better than the parochial school I was in.  Her name was Mrs. D'Adezzio.  By the end of the year, we were to call her Kraa.  By the time I was a senior, we all called her Kiki.  I found out from a former student of hers that she had gone through a nasty divorce prior to my class's arrival.  When I had her, she had finally been able to shed her old name.

She was a working artist who showed us her work and where she exhibited and what collections it was in.  Her father had been an artist.  They were Scandinavian and she never lost the accent.  She would exclaim "I don't vant crvap!"  Sue and Julie locked her in the storage closet once.  I would never have done it. but we all giggled when she yelled to let her out.  And she laughed when they let her out.  By senior year, I spent the last three periods of every day in that room at the end of Shop Hall.  

I sat at the back table, all alone, to work on my art.  Mat would sidle up next to me, beg me to braid his hair - smelling of milk and fart - and I said only if he would wash his hair.  Daryl - an upperclassman - stopped farting in class once I sprayed his ass with Lysol.  Kiki had no problem with that.  John and whats-his-name stopped harassing me and Julie after we all got to know each other hanging out in the art room at lunch.  I still see John once in a blue moon around Morris County.

There were lots of burnouts in the art classes.  They commandeered the radio.  I went from non-stop Led Zeppelin on repeat on the cafeteria jukebox to 102.7 classic rock in the art room.  Trust me when I say I hate classic rock.  I know it well.  She let us use the largest guillotine trimmer I have ever seen in my life.  She trusted us.  Even after we would dip our fingers in the melted wax pot used for batik.

When I found out John was stealing the jars of Liquitex Acrylic paint, I squealed like a banshee.  How dare anyone steal from Kraa.  But we busted her chops and called her name - Kraa! Kraa! - like screaming crows.  We laughed that she only ate lunch with Dudy Schindler, the librarian's assistant on the softball bleachers across from the room, but as a teacher, I now know why Kiki never bothered with anyone else.  She couldn't mix well with the others there.  I don't mix well with the other teachers here.  

She didn't guide me to art school much.  She tried, then it dropped off.  I have a hunch my mother made a phone call.  But she was cool, fun, knew her shit, was tough, snarky, and did the best she could considering what she must have been dealing with at that time.  

I guess a lot of what I do is from her, now that I think about it.  I began seeing her at high school art shows.  She joked that my sister and I were her competition because our students' work was now winning awards too.  I couldn't believe the compliment!  I felt cool.  At the Ringwood show one year, the host was calling me for something and I didn't hear.  Kraa yells "Melanie!" and I was snapped back to that room at the end of Shop Hall, circa 1990.  If COVID had not hit, I would have seen her this year at one show or another.  But I didn't.  I didn't get to see her and her man (lurking in the background).  I'm sorry.  And now a part of me is gone.  

 When growing up, we didn't have enough money to go away to fancy places.  We went to DC a lot, and other places that did not cost a ton.  I didn't get to leave the country until I was 35.  I have left every year since, even up to twice a year.  I still go to DC every year.  It is the single place I feel truly at home.  

We have not gone anywhere since our November DC jaunt.  The coronavirus has put a halt to that.   

When growing up, my parents - or maybe just mother - liked to move a lot.  The family called them "the gypsies".  They had live four different places by the time I was born.  I have not started my education in one place and ended it in the same place.  

When I started working at 14, I made a habit of doing my thing at a job, leaving when I got bored or felt I hit a plateau, and moving on.  I did go back to three different places - put two out of business! - but I never stayed a place longer than six years.  The place we lived when I was in fourth to college was the longest place my parents ever live in one house.  The current job I have is the longest I have ever worked in one place.  

My mother always told me I was too picky when finding friends.  As a result, I befriend people who are not compatible with me.  Even those never last long.  I get tired of the things that bother me - racism, stupidity, ignorance, poor treatment of me, and so on - and let the association dissipate.

Nothing in my life has lasted long, out of boredom or frustration, for the most part.

We have lived in our house since the early 2000s.  However, I have been getting restless.  Really restless.  Like, dying to get out and move.  I am looking at homes, looking at our finances and trying to figure out if we can get a really tiny place to try out a new area.  I am finding myself riding in the car and dying to leave.  And I don't really care if I see anyone here again, for the most part.  I mean, there are a couple of people I keep in touch with in other parts of the country, so if a connection is meant to last, it will.

I love the kids I teach.  I love my house and yard.  I love the town I live in.  I love the places I can go hiking and bike riding.  And, once the pandemic is over, I will love going back to the club and seeing all the friends there.  So why do I need to get out so badly?

I realized a couple of days ago that my traveling satisfied a need to get away.  When I go away, I immerse myself in where I am.  I rarely go online.  For that duration, I sever all connections.  This place in New Jersey and the people here do not exist for me.   And I am myself, enjoying the wholeness of the place - art, music, pubs, food, architecture, hikes, gardens.  Yeah, I have no friendships there, but there doesn't seem to be much missing when that happens.  It's not like I have any truly trusting, deep friendships here.   But that loneliness doesn't matter when I am away.  The miles negate the sadness.  I am in my element and no one treats me badly.  I am not expected to do for others who will not give back in return, or if they do, there are strings attached.  And that satisfies my restlessness.  

If everyone keeps doing the things that keep this virus spreading in this godforsaken country and keeps my passport useless, there might just be a "for sale" sign in the front and no more Vasa in NJ.  I need out.

 We were without internet/wifi and land line for seven days.  Usually that is preceded by rain or strong wind.  Nothing this time.  Whenever this happens, I think "I hope people trying to get in touch with me don't think I am ignoring them."

I need not worry.  Only one person contacted me the whole time.  A recent graduate.  She texted me and talking to her made me feel good, like someone wanted to be in touch.  Not to brag about something in their life, just to keep in touch.

So you probably think I should have just used my phone's data.  Well, there are three phones on the plan and all three combined have a total data limit of 2GB.  I rarely use data.  However, I had to check email to make sure my bass lessons were not being rescheduled and I had to do my language lessons each night.  That little bit was a lot, and I did not want to use up all the data.

I make it known that I lose internet often.  Verizon has refused for about four or five years to replace the chewed line.  They will only patch it.  So, you are probably thinking I should give people my number so we can keep in touch that way.  Ah, and there is the problem.  I have.  There is the person who texts me a question, I respond in timely fashion, and remain unread for weeks or months.  Then there is the person who claimed my number was lost when all Instagram DMs were lost when they got a new phone.  Nice one, except your DMs stay with your Instagram account, not your phone.  It is the text messages you lose when you get a new phone.  

You see, people will lie to me to explain why they do not want my number.  It's kind of pathetic. But they will not hesitate to DM me if they need something from me.  The person I was friends with who did actually keep my number - we texted often, and even talked on the phone - has not contacted me since I declined to give him money for rent.  

So, seven whole days with no internet, I don't post for a week - I post on FB regularly so a disappearance is odd - and one whole person tried to get in touch.  My one friend knew I was without phone and he got in touch when he saw me online.  That's it.  I could actually disappear and no one would notice until they needed something from me and found me gone.  I know I have complained about this before, but damn, it hurts.  So many people talked about doing things differently, reassessing how they treat others after this whole pandemic.  All I see now is an impatience and rush to return to the old ways, including how we interact, treat each other, and keep in touch.  I do not think many people have learned a thing from this.  Those of us who do so much for others and thought that more people would become kinder and more giving are facing some harsh realities.  

I know this might sound petty, but I have made a decision that will help me feel better and less let down.  Hubby and I talk about leaving the area when I stop teaching.  I have decided that when I decide to retire/quit, I will do so without telling anyone.  Of course, I will submit my resignation with the required notice.  I would never leave an employer high and dry.  I never have.  We will move and only tell a few people.  Just walking away, without dealing with people pretending they will miss us will be so much better for our self-esteem.  It might seem like a "gotcha" kind of thing, but it is not.  I think about how I always have these hopes - friends will want to do something with me for a special occasion, people will want to do things with me - and I am always let down when I try to reach out and offer.  Just quietly planning, with no selfish or fake opinions from others will feel empowering.  Leaving this area and all these people behind with no warning will feel good.  No dragging things out.  No sadness or lingering doubts.  Just leaving.  The two of us doing something just for us.