Month: October 2022

Okay, this is real now

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I’ve started telling people I’m leaving— just a couple, so far, who have direct need-to-know reasons. I haven’t decided how long I’m going to wait to tell everyone who doesn’t need to know.

I think the plan right now is that the 19th will be my last day in the building. That’s the day before fall break, and it’s a Teacher Record day. I have sick days and personal days left, so I’ll start burning those the next week, and take that week off from both buildings. I’ll start at the new place on … Halloween, which seems to fit how this year has gone so far.

Here we go.

Pros & Cons

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

It’s gonna be a raise. Possibly as much as $10K.

I actually make plenty of money right now, and I’m getting so much extra on class coverage
that “you’ll get a big raise!” isn’t the motivator you might think it is.

It’ll be a less chaotic environment.

Maybe. And the building is old, and the classroom has no exterior windows, and there’s
not enough whiteboard space, and you had that technology in your room in 2007.

You get to teach honors classes.

I have to leave my current kids, who I really like.
The commute’s gonna suck.

It’s literally a ten minute difference each way.

… right, at 7:30 in the morning.

You’ll get home earlier, and you really only have to get up an hour earlier.

Dude you can barely drag your ass out of bed in the winter now.
You get to keep taking your kid to school every day. You love that and you know it.

…okay, you have a point there, but it’s a small one.

That’s what she said.

Shut up. Are you really willing to be the last teacher standing?

Are you willing to be the reason four or five other teachers leave?
Because if you jump a whole bunch of people are going to jump.

That is not my fault. They’re grown-ups and make their own decisions.

Look me in the eye and say that like you mean it.

Shut up.

There’s also the St. Mary’s kid to worry about. You gonna fuck up her semester?

Again, I’m not convinced that’s my fault, and I’m sure St. Mary’s has encountered this before.

Two weeks of conversations about how you’re leaving.
Because you know it’s gonna get out. You can’t do this in secret.

How many summers in a row have you tried to get out of this district and failed?
You can’t count on switching this summer. Everybody will be looking to go.
What happens if some parent decides to get litigious about the fact that their kids’ IEPs
aren’t being followed? You psyched about getting sued?

New District is probably laced with Republicans.

I note that you’ve changed the subject.
You’re teaching Math. Dude, you taught at a Catholic school for three years and got along.
You can handle this. Just teach Math. What if they actually do close the school mid-year?
They’re gonna reassign you someplace. You up to that?

I don’t have an answer for that one either.

That sounds like “leave” is winning.
Also, you’re already nearly out of sick days because Covid. Moving hits reset on that.

That’s not a good reason. If we’re gonna use that we may as well
point out that we’re a lock for Teacher of the Year this year.

Okay. You get some meaningless resume-padding. Everybody who sticks around gets that eventually.

Three times? In three different jobs in two different buildings?
You stand a chance for district TOTY this year.

And then you’ll leave anyway. Kinda rude, bruh.

Don’t say “bruh.” You’re 46.

Right. And you’ve done your time. You don’t owe anyone anything.

There’s no guarantee this school will be better. Not really.

There’s no guarantee of ANYTHING.

Shut up, Epicurus.

You enjoyed that reference a little bit too much.

I am LITERALLY a pedant.

What’s the best reason to stay?

The kids.

There will always be more kids. You can’t leave teaching without disappointing someone.
Shit, they use that against you. “The kids!” is how they know they can fuck teachers over
endlessly and keep getting away with it. Because they know we put up with it.

Okay, what’s the best reason to leave? Money?

The sneer is unbecoming. And the best reason to leave is your sanity.

It’s not that bad.

How long is that going to last? Do you really want to see what February is like,
after three more months of being short teachers?
We had eighteen people out on Friday. Imagine that being every day.

Friday was kinda fun, actually.

Downtown is not going to start emptying out every day to fill positions
at your school and you know it. They’ll close you first, and then you end up with NO control.

I hate that you’re probably right.

Can you find a SINGLE ADULT who will tell you they think you need to stay?

I haven’t yet, no. Including other teachers. Including co-workers. Including my wife.
Fuck. Are you winning? You’re winning, aren’t you?

The only real reasons you don’t want to go are that you don’t want to disappoint
your kids and you don’t want to have to tell everyone you’re leaving.

These are not minor reasons!

Half of them are literally cowardice.

Shut up.

I’m right and you know it.

You’re right and I hate it.

If you can look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t think this is going to
get worse, you can stay.

It might not.

I said if you can look me in the eye and tell me you don’t think this is going to get worse.

You’re a computer screen. You don’t have eyes.

Ah, yes, dodge the obvious point and retreat into humor.

… I need to go take a shower. It’s 2:15. I should be dressed by now.

That’s what I thought.

Proof of life

On By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I have nothing in particular to say today, but I wanted you to know that I wasn’t saying it.

And now it’s go time

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Welp. There’s a job offer on the table.

There are still issues to be discussed– salary, most importantly– but there’s an offer on the table. I went over to the school Monday and had an in-person interview and looked around the building and saw the classroom and everything. My interview was very honest– I told the principal that I was a giant flaming liberal with a BLM flag and a Pride flag in his classroom and asked if she thought that was going to be a problem (although, for the record, I don’t plan on hanging either flag in the new room, at least not the first year) and I also made it clear that if I got an offer I was going to ask for 24 hours to think about it and then I was going to have probably the hardest night of my life while I thought about it. I also said that if I decided to stay that it was going to just be through the end of the year, and that there was no way I was returning to my district this fall– and that shit is one hundred percent the fucking truth. I know I’ve said that before but this is it. I’m done with this district, either in the next few weeks or at the end of the year, but there will be no 2023-24 school year with these people, period.

Right now I’m leaning toward not going, because I’m an idiot. But the number after the dollar sign will have an effect on that.

I think I’m actually going to ask to wait until Monday to make the decision, too, because … well, it’s 7:30 on Wednesday night and I just got the email, so I’ll call them back tomorrow, and 24 hours would give me until Friday, and … well, it’s Friday. They don’t need to know on Friday. They can wait until Monday.

Expect me to talk about nothing but this for the next few days.

On exhaustion and bad parenting

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, Music5 Comments

I have done some grading tonight, but not much, and I regret to inform you that you cannot make me do any more. Nor can you make me get any lesson planning done; this week is going to be by the seat of my pants, more or less, and it’s going to be fine anyway because this shit is muscle memory by now. This weekend was kind of nuts; my father-in-law’s memorial service was Saturday morning in Plainwell, Michigan, which means I got up earlier on Saturday than I typically get up during the week and spent the drive up hurriedly composing the eulogy I was supposed to deliver in my head, sans paper, because for some fucking stupid reason I hadn’t written it yet.

Don’t leave eulogies to the last minute, people. I pulled it off and everything went fine because I am exceptionally talented, but … don’t do that.

Oh, and the … hole? Is it still a grave if you’re just using a box with an urn and some Beefeater Gin in it and not a casket? Well, whatever it was, the Goddamned thing was too small, and everyone got to take turns digging the hole wider and deeper with what I think were technically stolen shovels before the service started. My wife briefly considered putting the box in sideways, an idea that was quickly vetoed out of existence, and we all just sucked it up and got to digging, my father-in-law’s amused laughter echoing from inside his box.

Afterwards the whole extended family went out for Mexican, because really, what else are you going to do? Sure.

And because emotional whiplash is how we do things nowadays, we had tickets to see Barenaked Ladies Saturday night. By “we” I mean all three of us; it was slated to be the boy’s first concert, and I think he was pretty excited about it. Which meant we were all a bit surprised to be leading a sobbing child out of the theater barely four songs into BNL’s set, meaning that we really only got to hear the (shitty) opening band’s set, and we didn’t get to hear the one BNL song that the boy has memorized and really wanted to hear, as I’m sure it was the last song of the night.

Parenting advice! Concerts are fucking loud. This particular concert was perhaps too loud. And, like, I mean that as a reasonably veteran concertgoer; it was too loud for me, and I’ve seen shows in that venue before. That said, though, like, BNL doesn’t need to be blowing my Goddamned eardrums out. This isn’t a hard rock band or some shit like that, and even the shitty opening band was too fucking loud, and they were going for some sort of pop/bluegrass nonsense or something like that, so they definitely didn’t need to be super loud.

Anyway, we were unprepared. We should have brought headphones and/or earplugs, or at least warned him thoroughly, and we did none of those things. I’m not mad at him and this is one hundred percent our fault as the adults in the scenario. He doesn’t necessarily Have Sensory Issues in the way people generally mean that, but we should have been able to see this coming and we didn’t. The worst thing is that he was clearly upset about ruining the concert for us, and it’s hard to convince an upset eleven-year-old that you’re not mad at him and you’re not disappointed in him when he’s absolutely certain that both of those things are true.

So … yeah. I’ve mostly laid around like a lump today. I have started the new Stephen King book; it is terrible, and I am currently deciding if I’m going to drop it or hate-read it. It is about a seventeen-year-old who is somehow actually however old Stephen King is, and said fake teenager uses slang that no teenager, including King when he was a teenager, has ever used, except it’s not about that somehow. We’re supposed to believe that this ancient old man who refers to earning money as “folding green” is just a regular teenager and pay attention to the rest of the story, where he’s inexplicably befriending an old man, except the old man is actually an old man and not an old man masquerading as a teenager.

Anyway, it’s bad and I’m tired and I’m a shitty dad and somehow I have to go to work again tomorrow and I kind of want a redo on the last couple of days.

Monthly Reads: September 2022

On By Luther M. SilerIn Photography, ReadingLeave a comment

This is easily the smallest stack of books that I’ve posted since I started doing this series some number X of years ago, and while I really didn’t get a lot of reading done in September, it’s worth pointing out that I started Ken Liu’s thousand-page Speaking Bones in late August and it took until the 11th to finish. So while this was still a light month it’s not quite as light as the pile indicates.

Book of the Month is Nicholas Eames’ Kings of the Wyld.