In which I’m fine, God, leave me alone

So it turns out that one good way to have every single person in the building stop by your classroom to see if you’re okay is to say “fuck this” and leave work before advisory has even finished. Being out Wednesday and Thursday was already pre-ordained, but most of the building didn’t know that, and apparently as far as anyone knew I’d walked out and just not come back for a few days. I know that one of our seventh grade teachers took the entire week off explicitly as a mental health restorative and one of my other team members was forced into a panic attack on the same day I left, if you were wondering if it was just me.

The interesting thing? I don’t know if I actually mentioned this, but the Tuesday before last our principal and AP let the staff know that they’d been fired as of the end of the school year. Now, to be clear, if you’d read everything I’ve been saying about how work is going all year long, I wouldn’t cast aspersions upon you for at least considering the idea that a change in leadership might be necessary. I will provide this data point in their defense and then move on with the post: virtually no one left their jobs last summer. Our building was one of the only schools in the corporation and absolutely the only middle school that began the school year with no teaching vacancies. We had a couple of people who left for one reason or another but their jobs were filled quickly.

And from what I’ve been hearing over the last week and a half, I strongly suspect whoever replaces the current admin team is going to have to rehire at least 2/3 of the positions in the building. People who were already thinking about leaving, like me, have made their decisions. And everyone else is now at least thinking about it.

Anyway, as of about ten minutes ago I’ve now applied to 29 jobs since January 28. I’ve heard back from two; both “thanks, but no thanks” rejections. I applied to a couple today that actually seem pretty exciting. Hopefully soon I’ll start hearing back from somebody.

At any rate, it was a decent-to-good day. No referrals of any kind, which is always a plus, and one of my notables wasn’t in class and another had one of the best days he’s had in a long time, so I’ll take it. I’ve got a fair amount of grading to do this weekend, so hopefully I’m not going to have to send another email to all of my parents reminding them that all of their kids are still fucking failing. We’ll see what happens.

Next week: four days, since Friday is an e-learning inservice day for the teachers. The following week: four days, since Monday is Presidents’ Day. I think the week after that is a five-day week, but the week after that will be the last week of the quarter and therefore Friday will be a teacher record day. I’m gonna try and make it to the end of the semester without missing any more days, or at least without missing any days beyond taking a personal day when Elden Ring comes out. Again, we’ll see.