It’s the last week of the trimester and I’m really in the weeds right now. I have a ton of stuff to grade, tests to create and scores to input. I’m trying to stay on top of everything so my students know where they stand at the start of the Thanksgiving break. My finalized grades are due the Wednesday we get back.
Posts here are going to be sparse this week. I apologize for that. I’m doing the best I can.
I drank too much at the mezcal tasting yesterday and woke up this morning with an incredible hangover. I haven’t felt that bad from drinking since before I had kids. I still can’t believe I made it through the day, on the drive to work I wasn’t sure I had it in me.
I had to get my allergy shot too and my upper arm is now the size of a cantaloupe. I just downed some children’s Benedryl which means I probably have another hour in me before I pass out.
I can’t remember the last time I was this excited to go to bed.
My husband and I are about to get 24 hours of together time. Without the kids.
It’s been a while since we’ve had this. A couple of months maybe? I know some people go years without a night out alone (how they manage to keep their marriage strong without one I DON’T know), but we try to take advantage of living close to my parents and take a 24-hour date night every once in a while. When it’s been over two months, it feels like it’s been a long time.
Things between my husband and I have deteriorated somewhat in the last month, which has been very stressful. I’m worried that it will take so long for both of us to decompress that we won’t manage to reconnect in any significant way, but hopefully the decompressing will happen, at least.
Of course my husband still has his man-cold, and my throat has felt scratchy for almost 24 hours now, so I’m worried I’ll come down with it at any point. I’ve watched four people I know get some intense laryngitis in the past couple of weeks, and my husband’s cold had it, so I’m really worried I’m going to start feeling horrible any minute now. Laryngitis always gets me.
My husband also rammed his knee into a wall (don’t ask, I didn’t) and is now limping around like a middle schooler trying to get out of PE. (Yes, I know, I’m not a very kind, nurturing wife.) So yeah, we’ll see how this date night goes.
The good news is tomorrow we are going mezcal tasting with my friend and her husband and I’m really excited about it. I love going out with my husband and other couples, because I am reminded how incredibly smart and funny he is when he’s being himself for other people. It’s almost like I get to see him through someone else’s eyes when we’re out with other people, which allows me to look past so many of our entrenched issues and remind me why I fell in love with him in the first place. If I manage to stay well until tomorrow afternoon, it could be just what our marriage needs right now.
Because the entrenched issues remain, well, entrenched. I haven’t brought up how hurt I was by my husband’s behavior on Wednesday: he DID sulk for most of the evening, finally declaring that he didn’t appreciate that I asked him to do pick up to teach him a lesson. Actually, what I said was I hoped it would help him better understand my perspective surrounding pick-up, but hey, I guess we hear what we want to hear. We definitely need to talk if that is what he heard.
And yet, I don’t want to talk. Or better said, I don’t know what to say. Even if I figured out what to say, I wouldn’t know how to say it. I wish I saw a therapist so I could go over all this stuff with her, and show up to a discussion with my husband armed with all the right phrases. I KNOW that how you say something is more important than even what you’re saying, at least sometimes, and I know I SUCK at saying things the right way. And honestly, I’m not even sure what I’d like to get out of a conversation like that anymore. It feels like we’ve had that conversation SO MANY times, and it doesn’t seem to get us anywhere. It’s hard not to feel hopeless about making any progress on that front.
Then again, maybe I’m not giving him, or us, enough credit. Things have changed, just very, very slowly. And I suppose every one of those conversations moved us incrementally towards positive growth. Still, each one has also taken its toll. It’s hard to know if we’re coming out ahead.
I try to remember how good things felt between us, just one month ago. When I can get a hold of that feeling, I know it’s worth talking it out. I just wish I had the right words ready when the time comes.
I’m at work today, trying to get caught up on grading. The trimester ends next Friday and I would like to spend a day during the Thanksgiving break getting ready for the next trimester, with only some final tests and projects to grade and enter. Grading and entering scores is definitely my work-kryptonite. I’m perpetually behind.
Obviously spending a day-off at work is a bummer, but I do appreciate the time to get a ton done. It makes me miss my classroom though. My room used to be like a home away from home. I had cool posters all over the walls, and interesting stuff everywhere. I had a mini-kitchen set up around the sink and an oil diffuser and an extra sweatshirt for when I got cold. My classroom was where I stored stuff from home I didn’t have space for, and where I put up pictures of my kids and friends around my desk.
I don’t have any of that anymore. I sit at a work table in one of the classrooms I share and I get done what needs to get done. It feels very different. It doesn’t feel like a home away from home.
I miss my room so much. Every time I walk in there (it shares a door with a room I teach in so I can visit it from time to time) I get that pins in the back of my eyes feeling, but I refused to cry. It seems silly, I’m sure–it just a classroom! I honestly had no idea how much it meant to me until they took it away.
Well, I better start grading papers. That’s what I’m here to do.
Wednesday are usually my one day to get a workout in during the week. Sometimes I can squeeze one in somewhere else, but Wednesday is generally sacred. Except yesterday there was a meeting to communicate our concerns about the delayed construction to the board, and well, I felt I should be there. Of course it ran late and then I didn’t have time to run before I picked up my daughter and her friend from a drama class they go to together.
I was feeling really frustrated, especially since I really HATE picking up from the drama class because it’s a PITA to get to, and there is no parking, and it takes forever to take the friend home and then get back to our house.
{Then why do the class? Because our daughter has been interested in drama and we aren’t very good at signing her up for outside classes, so when my friend said her daughter was going, and she could take them, I jumped at the opportunity, because I couldn’t get up to the city in time to get them over there. So my friend takes them from aftercare to the class and I pick up. Also, my daughter really likes it. So I suck it up and do it since our daughter never does anything while her friends are constantly taking swimming lessons, tennis, soccer, softball, art, and other fun stuff.}
So I was stewing in frustrating and anger about missing my workout, when I remembered my husband had attempted to go back to work but had come home after lunch because “that was a BIG mistake.” He could pick them up for me!
So I called him, and of course he was not at all interested in helping me out. First he felt too shitty. Then he didn’t know where it was or how to get there. (Um, GoogleMaps much?) Then I wasn’t going to be home with the car in time (I picked up our son AND was home in PLENTY of time).
I had already cancelled my call to Guatemala because I knew he couldn’t manage bedtime by himself, so I was feeling pretty frustrated that he wasn’t going to do this for me. I ALWAYS do afternoon pick up, I was the only one to drive them both to all their swim lessons, I took my son to his soccer, I take our daughter to Girl Scouts. I do freaking EVERYTHING afternoon or extracurricular, and he couldn’t do me this one solid?
{Also, once he had me take our son to school when I was staying home with the flu and it was FUCKING awful, and I had to stand in line at a Walgreens to get myself medicine and the line literally parted so I could go first and pay, after which the woman CHANGED registers because she didn’t want to be near anything I had stood in front of, that’s how bad I looked. So in my mind, asking my husband to drive when he has a man cold isn’t off limits.}
So I told him fine, I’d do pick up but he had to do bedtime, and I’d workout then. Except I HATE working out that late, and I knew he’d be slacking and I’d end up picking up that slack after working out so I called him back and said, nope, he was going to pick them up and that was that.
So I rushed to get our son and brought him home, then handed over the keys so HE could drive through that super annoying part of the city and HE could park four blocks away, and HE could herd the two girls back to the car and HE could field questions about whether or not there was a treat, and he could sit in traffic on the way to the other girl’s house, and then HE could drive back to our place.
{I was really nice in getting our son because he gums up every part of that sequence, ESPECIALLY the driving part because he wasn’t desperately to participate in their conversations and games and they want nothing to do with him, which never goes over well.}
I’m now almost done working out and he is probably just dropping off our daughter’s friend, if that, and I am SO HAPPY I stood my ground, even though I’ll end up doing bedtime by myself, and he will probably pout until he collapses into bed, the poor sick dear.
Things between my husband and I really have been better, which I think is why I’m so baffled (and frustrated and hurt) by our recent exchanges. I think it’s the cumulative effect of some stress at work for him, my increased responsibilities at my daughter’s school, and his parents glaring absence. They used to help us, and especially him, a lot, and they just aren’t here anymore. I suspect it’s hitting him harder than it’s hitting me (although I REALLY miss how they used to pick up our son once a week).
Whatever is going on, we’ll have to find some time this weekend to talk about it, because I don’t want things to keep being like this.
Monday night my husband came home sick. He went directly to bed, while I made dinner, took out the cans, emptied the trash, recycling and compost into the cans, did bedtimes, washed dishes and prepped for the next morning.
And then I woke up and did everything that needed to be done again.
I found myself being kind of snippy with my husband, which I didn’t like. He clearly wasn’t feeling well, and I wanted him to have the time he needed to get better. But I was also deeply envious of his ability to just climb into bed and know that everything would get done, and to simply call into work the next morning and explain that he wouldn’t be there.
As a teacher, taking a day off is the biggest pain in the ass. I can’t just call in one morning and say I’m not going to be there. Missing a day requires hours of writing sub plans, and many times I actually need to go to work to set things up. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dragged my sick-as-a-dog ass to school in the wee hours of the morning to get ready for a sub, a sub I wasn’t even sure would show. I had to write a week’s worth of sub plans while I was in labor, when my daughter came two weeks before she was due (which was supposed to be a week after the school year ended).
It’s similarly impossible to really take time off as a mother. My kids have crashed almost every sick day I’ve taken since they were born, meaning they wake up sick when I’m staying home sick and I end up spending the time I should be recuperating taking care of them. If I am so sick that I really can’t do everything I usually do, the vast majority of the work is waiting for me when I feel better. The idea of taking a day off to rest and recuperate is a foreign concept for me — the work I have to do before and after makes it end up in a wash.
I’m definitely hitting a wall right now, and am desperate for a little time to rest and catch up. It’s not going to come for a while, probably not until the winter break, and until then I have to keep on moving forward. For me there just isn’t another option. And that’s why I seethe with envy as I watch my husband take the time he needs. I wish it were that easy for me.
What do you do when rest feels out of reach?
Am I the only parent whose kids are still falling asleep after 9:30pm, even after falling back?
No matter how early we start bedtime, they are still up asking for things (water, a trip to the bathroom) after 9pm!
Blerg.
There is a lot of talk in any venture, really, about figuring out your “why,” the idea being that if you know why you are doing something–eating more healthily, budgeting or saving money, embracing minimalism–you will more easily find the enthusiasm and will-power to commit to your goal. I have been thinking about this a lot, identifying my “whys” in life, because sometimes I forget the reasoning behind the decisions, or commitments, I’ve made and it’s hard to move forward productively without remembering my “why.”
I was already considering writing a “my why” post about the PTA, in an attempt to remind myself of why I am doing this thing that creates so much stress and busyness in my life. Surely there was a reason for committing myself to this position, and surely if I can articulate that reason it will help me identify what I’m hoping to accomplish and prioritize my efforts moving forward.
Then a comment appeared on my last post that really stopped me in my tracks.
“The PTA sounds like a joyless venture.”
Damn. I bet it really does.
It got me thinking, “Is the PTA a joyless venture? I mean, for me? this year?” If it is, I really need to figure out what the fuck I’m doing. That is when I decided to write my “why” post about the PTA. (This was weeks ago, by the way, but, you guessed it, I was really busy with the PTA.)
So why did I volunteer to be the PTA president at my daughter’s school, where I know that parent involvement is low and the administration is new and pretty much clueless about what needs to be done (as far as the events PTA most prominently participates in)? Would it be weird if I said those were two of my biggest reasons?
I am an educator. I’ve worked at a public school in California for 13 years. I also went to public schools for all my K-12 education in the States (about eight years). I know how broken public education is. I also know how incredibly important parent involvement is to the success of a school.
Do I think parent participation, and financial donation, should be necessary for the success of a public elementary, middle or high school? Do I think the amount of money a school or district can raise should determine whether or not schools have access to technology and other valuable resources, or offer arts, music, or language electives? Or even robust physical education, science and history programs?
No, I absolutely do not.*
Do I understand that right now, at this point in our country (and state’s–California is, after all, 48th in per-student spending) history, that it is the reality? Yes, I do. Of course I would like that reality to change, but I know it won’t in my children’s lifetime, so I have to work with the system I’ve got.
My daughter’s school serves a low socioeconomic population. 92% of the students quality for the free or reduced lunch program. Its families are predominantly of Latino and African-American decent, and the education level of the majority of parents does not reach the college graduate level (I know a few who stopped attending school in 2nd or 3rd grade and learned to read as adults). This is not a school with a large population of parents that are able to support their own students’ education in very effective ways, let alone step up to tackle the challenges of the entire student body.
Because so many parents are not able to take on parent leadership positions at the school, the ones who do shoulder increased pressure and responsibilities. Then they get burned out and stop participating, which leaves the school with even fewer people to help. And if very few people are helping, very few events are organized to promote community and inspire pride in the student body, and very meager funds are raised to support programs and offer valuable resources and opportunities.
So yeah, I could just say no, I’m not going to do it. And then probably no one would, and my daughter’s school would be worse off than it already was.
Could I get her into another school? Maybe. In SFUSD it’s exceedingly difficult to transfer your child to another school, especially if you’re trying to stay within the Spanish Immersion program (which is small and popular). But even if I could transfer her out, am I comfortable using my privilege to perpetuate an entrenched problem, without out at least trying to affect positive change first? No, I am not.
We all have the causes we feel passionate about. Public education just happens to be mine. Right now I can’t afford to work in SFUSD, but I can afford to send my daughter to a struggling school there, and I can afford to fight to make that school better instead of fight to transfer her to a “better” school.
Because I really and truly believe that a group of parents can help turn a school around. If there is enough active parent presence at a school to make other parents who have the resources to support the school send their kids there, or at the very least, for those parents to give the school a chance if their kids get placed there, it could absolutely turn around the culture of the school. And maybe, some day, enough schools will be successful enough that the majority of upper-middle class families won’t leave the city (or apply to private schools) when its time for their kids to enter Kindergarten. And then maybe all the lower-income students who have no other choice but to stay, will get a quality education that provides them with increased opportunities when they are adults.
Do I really think I can make a difference? Probably not. But I think that if more parents made the choice to stay and to try to affect change at a struggling school, we absolutely could make a difference. And right now, I’m not ready to give up on that possibility. If I won’t do it, how can I hope that others will do it for me?
You know what they say, be the change you want to see in the world. I want to see upper-middle class parents stay and fight for the struggling school in their area, instead of leaving that school, and those students, to their perpetual cycle of disadvantage. I want them to send their kids to the school where not all the students look like their kids (even though most of them won’t, if given the choice,). I want the parents with the resources to stay and make the powers-that-be change the system, because when we don’t stay, when we leave the struggling school, we not only perpetuate the system that created it, we condone it. When we all we can muster is a, damn, it’s just not right, and then go along our merry way sending our kids to the “better” school as we shake our heads dutifully at the injustice of it all, but don’t actual do anything to change it, then we are a part of the problem.
And I get it, we’re all part of some problem, some really important, some deeply entrenched, crippling-our-society or destroying-our-planet problem. We can’t all be the solution to every problem. But we have to acknowledge that, we have to own our part in the problem while we continue making the choices that perpetuate the it. I am a part of a lot of problems that I don’t know enough about, or that I’m not yet willing to change my life in an attempt to address (because I will admit that I am absolutely ABLE to not perpetuate the most important problems, I’m just not willing to do anything about them yet – it’s hurts to say that, but it’s true).
And I get that these our children we’re talking about. These are the people who depend on us to make the best choices we can for them, to put their best interest first. And I get that every situation is different. Sometimes we need an aftercare option that isn’t available at a certain school. Or a child has special needs that require resources not available at a certain school. Or there is a certain program that we’re really interested in that is only offered at one school. Or maybe we just can’t get to a certain school when we need to be there. Maybe our parents sacrificed everything to give us better choices than they have, and we are going to do the same for our kids, no matter what. Maybe we live in an affluent area that doesn’t have a struggling school.**
But if we do have a choice, and we choose to avoid one school because of its API score, or its student population, we’re making that choice at the expense of other people’s children, other people who don’t have a choice. When we aren’t willing to send our kids to a school that other kids don’t have any choice in attending, well, we need to recognize that we are perpetuating a system of inequality, instead of fighting to make it more equal.
{I recognize that I am invested in my daughter’s school because it HAS a program I am passionate about (Spanish Immersion) and it’s located relatively close to me (though there are schools closer). Also, it has an after care program that I really like. Those things help me stay invested even when other factors are a cause for concern.}
I know this went off on a pro-social justice school tangent. And maybe the connection isn’t immediately apparent. But I guess what I’m saying is, my why is that I want to send my kid to the school most white, upper-middle class parents won’t send their kids, and I want to be an active member of the parent leadership there so that positive things happen. I want the students at that school to feel like someone cares enough about them to make sure the things that students at other schools take for granted–the resources that make their classes more interesting, and the events that make their school a place they can be proud of–happen at their school too. Because kids notice these things. They recognize the difference. They internalize the injustice. They learn that they are not as important, in the eyes of, well, pretty much everybody.
I want to show other people, by my example, that it is okay to send their child to the school that none of their friends are sending their kids too. That their kids can be happy there, and thrive. That their kids can learn things at that school that they can’t learn at a school where everyone looks like them. And that the students at that school deserve their support.
And yes, being PTA president makes my life more stressful and busy, and yes there are days I wish I could walk away from the responsibility. But I CAN do it. I have the time and the energy and the financial means, at least for the time being. And I’m not ready to walk away until I really and truly don’t have those things anymore.
I know I perpetuate a lot of really big problems, but I’m not prepared to perpetuate this one. Maybe some day I will say enough is enough. Maybe some day I will take my kid out of this school and use my privilege to give my daughter opportunities the kids at her school won’t get. But I’m not there yet. And as long as I’m able to do something positive at my daughter’s school, I will be doing it. Right now leading the PTA is the best way I know to be a positive presence. Hopefully, in the future, there will be other ways for me to do good thing at my daughter’s school. And hopefully, by then, someone will be ready to take the responsibilities that I’m shouldering now.
*I believe public education should be funded adequately enough to make parent involvement peripheral at most (I’m bringing treats for the Halloween party!). I think the reliance on parental support to provide resources, and even the funding of full-time positions, shows the absolutely failing of our society to prioritize public education, and to fund it adequately. I believe that the fact that the location and economic status of a school’s student population overwhelmingly determines its resources, course offerings and overall student outcomes, is a moral failing of this country.
**I’m sure for many people there is no struggling school to avoid, but in San Francisco, I see many upper-middle (or straight upper) class families not get the school in their (or some other) affluent neighborhood, or simply not get one of the few schools that raises $300K+ a year, and they immediately pull their kid from the district and put them in a private school and/or eventually move out of the city all together. Here, it is very common for upper-middle class families to avoid the struggling school.
{I realized, 2000 words in, that identifying my why didn’t really answer the “is PTA a joyless venture,” so I will be addressing that question later this week.}
I used to love falling back. While I’m not a fan of changing the time in general (we would keep DST all year if I had my way), and I HATE when it gets dark so early, I always loved gaining an hour in the fall. Who doesn’t love more time?
I learned the answer to that when I had kids. Not only did falling back an hour totally fuck with my kids already erratic sleep schedules, and warped a decent 6:30 or 7am wake-up into a way-too early 5:30 or 6am wake-up, but it added an hour to the weekend! Which meant one more hour I had to kill with my kids, in an already interminable day.
I know that is not how parents are supposed to feel, but for the last seven years it’s basically been my attitude. Falling back sucked not just because it made the afternoons and evenings darker, but also because it created a really, really long day.
I’m happy to report that now, with kids that are 7.5 and 4, I don’t hate falling back so much. I was hating it this morning, on minute 40 of a really long meltdown, when the day felt like it would never be over, but two hours later, when we’d pulled it together and made it to the Academy of Sciences during the coveted Member’s Hour, I was pretty stoked.
And sure I really messed up napping time, thinking that I should push it to 2pm because 2pm was really 1pm (nope, it was really 3pm), but in the end it all worked out. We had fun at the aquarium, made it to Girl Scouts early for the first time, and enjoyed a family movie night. It’s just another reminder that parenthood is getting easier, at least in some respects, slowly but surely. This post gives me hope that things might continue in that direction.
What do you like about falling back? What makes you hate it?
We had yet another PTA event today, the last one for a while. I suppose it could be called a success, but nothing we ever do for PTA ever feels like it’s really worth celebrating. It always feels like things could have gone better.
I supposed that is because I always wish we made more money. We need to find a way to raise at least $3K more this year, so the days when make $500 are nice, but clearly not enough.
Still, it didn’t rain. It was overcast, and the ground was wet from the rain earlier in the day. And sure the sun came out and it was beautiful the minute the event was over, but at least it didn’t rain.
A good amount of people came, almost all of them from the neighborhood. And while it’s frustrating that not even free tacos and can get the families from our school to show up, I suppose having people from the neighborhood is even more important.
I do think the PTA is actually making a difference as far as re-branding the school’s imagine. And that is one of our goals. So even when we don’t raise much, an even can still be a success. I need to keep telling myself that.