It has been a very bad day. In fact, when I retire -- approximately June 20, 2009 -- I will look back on this day as one of the worst, probably, in my too many years at Bizarro Town High School. Am I being over dramatic? Likely. Even so. Today I found out just exactly what's going on once the library closes, and until the new library opens. And it ain't good.Still, they're not putting me on locker room duty, so that's still a plus. I am going to have a desk somewhere. Where? In the math lab. This is, coincidentally, the room in which I had geometry when I was in 10th grade, although it's not a classroom anymore, it's a computer lab. It's in the math department, and there will be math classes going on in it all day. On that note alone, it is, literally, and I mean literally, a nightmare come true. I cannot even tell you how many times in my adult life I have had panicky dreams that I was forced to sit through a math class in that room. And I have never understood a single word of what was being said.
It is also a figurative nightmare, because it means that I will be able to provide no library services whatsoever. The SCM will be in the school's main computer lab, where, from time to time, he -- and I, on occasion -- will be able to teach a computer based lesson. Mostly, he will be monitoring the spy program to make sure that the kids aren't doing something they're not supposed to do. Whereas I will be doing ... oh, nothing, I think.
The Colleague has also been screwed over, and will be put into the snakepit that is the secretarial main office of the school. As I told someone today, I can easily deal with the SCM working in another room, but the Colleague and I may have to be surgically separated. The only good news of the day is that our media person, who is most in danger of losing her job during this insanity, has a secure place to go, and the greatest opportunity of all of us to continue her regular work.
I can't even tell you how I feel over all of this. Physically, of course, I respond to stress instantly, and spent most of the day with chest pressure and gut pain. As always, I am happier when it's just the gut pain, because chest pain is scary. But I knew it was only the stress, and even the gut pain faded pretty much the minute I got home. Otherwise, well ...
Part of me feels like a failure because I have not been better able to protect my people and preserve our function in the school. Even so, I know that there really is no personal failure on my part because no one else is really faring any better, only on a smaller scale, and there was nothing within my control that could have been done differentl. Other people have had their programs disrupted, just not as massively as we have been. I know that the school and district administration have nothing personal against me or any of us, because do that would mean that they recognize us as individuals, which they do not.
Then there is another part of me that is entirely appalled that the school system is being run this way, which is to say, atrociously. (Oh, there goes the job! There goes the pension! Here's the disclaimer: this is my personal opinion, and I'm having a really shitty day. It's not reflective of the opinion of the management, except as it appears to me. Is that enough?) Listen, I have been involved with this school since the late 1960s, and with the school system for several years before that. I sent my children through this system, and I am a taxpayer in this town. Seriously, something is wrong here.
And of course, my personal dilemma. I am contemplating giving up the pretense of providing even the barest semblance of any service, including not providing a place for kids to take make-up tests or sit out of gym with a medical excuse, in which case, I can sit anywhere and it doesn't have to be in the math lab. I have to talk to the principal on Wednesday -- I'm not going in tomorrow since I have to get my taxes done -- and see. The good news is that he probably doesn't really care what I do, as long as I figure it out myself and don't bother him.
Notes to myself: No matter how bad your day is, having a cigarette and a couple of Kosher hot dogs will not make you feel better, even though you think they will at the time. The cigarette will actually taste bad and the hot dogs will make your heartburn worse. Remember that, please.
