I’m OK

My last post, or perhaps a combination of the last several, appears to have unintentionally set several of you to worrying about me. I’m fine, I promise, or at least I’m as close to fine as I’ve been at any other point during the last few years. I’m “fine” by post-2016 standards, whatever that means.

And, honestly, there was no good reason to be secretive about what I needed luck for other than pure superstition, so: despite having made the decision to stay at my current school back in early June, now that we’ve got a principal and assistant principal named, along with a couple of articles in the local paper about recent school board meetings, I have become fully convinced that the district has entirely given up on our school and that we are being set up to continue to fail. I do not know my new principal very well but what I have witnessed thus far has not been good, and while I haven’t even met the new AP yet he has “pushover” tattooed on his forehead. We have a new dean of students as well. None of the three have any experience in their jobs. Our principal has never been a principal and has never been a middle school administrator at all; our new AP has never been an administrator, and our new Dean has not only never held that job she’s never worked in a middle school.

Oh, and I found out that literally two 8th graders passed the math ILEARN. Two. One point five percent. I don’t know which two. I suspect I can guess on at least one of them, but I don’t have names yet. So, I dunno, probably I suck at my job or something.

Anyway. Long story short, based on all that, despite my promise in May, I’ve applied for a few jobs at another district and if I get a chance I’m splitting.. One particular school has four jobs open and I’m qualified for three of them. I formally applied for two of the three (I really don’t want to be a Language Arts teacher despite technically being certified for it) and sent the principal an email with my resume attached as well. I was hoping, what with school starting in 2 1/2 weeks, that I’d hear from the principal yesterday or today; that has not happened.

I can think of a hundred thousand reasons why no one has called me yet; I am, nonetheless, assuming that I am blacklisted for some reason. At this point I have been applying for jobs since March and have not received a single call-back from anything other than a couple of purely lateral moves within the same organization. It’s not like these folks have access to my current test scores or anything, but … fuck, people, school starts August 17. I’m perfectly fucking willing and ready to move over to your building. What the fuck are you waiting for?

Hm. This post may not have done quite the job I wanted in reassuring people that I’m all right.

How my day went

I sent this email to my principal, my assistant principal, and my dean of students this morning, after sending six students out of my classroom:

There are twenty-four days of school remaining. If I start every third and fourth period with five referrals for the next twenty-four days, then so be it. The guy who wanted to be reasonable has left the building. The ragey asshole is all they have left now. I am not spending one single additional second during this school year arguing with rude children who have no academic agenda.

Not tonight

Today has been a festering shitfest of a day, and I’m done. Just done.

In which I embrace the lazy

After I get this post written– because God forbid I not get a blog post written– I intend to be exceptionally lazy for the rest of the day, even by recent standards. I have a feeling that this is going to be a rough weekend mentally and the most difficult thing I want to have to worry about for the next 48 hours or so is preventing myself from blowing any more money on dice this weekend. I literally– this is not a joke, it happened– dreamed about dice last night. I’m fucked up in my brain-parts, I know. I can’t explain it.

But there are books to be read, and video games to be played, and technically I cooked breakfast today so I’ve had at least one Real Meal. I probably need to do something to keep the boy alive– did you know kids are supposed to be fed every day?– but beyond that … eh. It’s Saturday, and I’m in quarantine. I’m gonna Saturday today.


2:24 PM, Saturday April 25: 924,576 confirmed cases and 52,782 American deaths.

For obvious reasons

I’m not remotely in the mood for the universe right now.  George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Richard Adams in two days?  

“Fuck 2016” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

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