This afternoon I got in my car and cried about getting laid-off from my teaching position. It's been a month since school got out for the summer, and I still have no idea what to do. I've been avoiding hauling all of my stuff out of my classroom because I don't want it to be over. Last year I got hired back on the last Friday that school was in session, June 2
nd. Maybe I'm still holding onto a shred of hope that I'll somehow get a reprieve?
I worked so long and so hard to become a teacher, my kids and I sacrificed so much. I was a parent aide at their school from the time they were little, then in July 1997 I quit my job to go to college. I had no illusions that I could parent three kids and work and be a full time student, so I called a family meeting. I explained that I wanted to go to college to become a teacher, but that I would have to quit my job and that we wouldn't have as much money. My kids supported me 100%, and I remember Gabe even writing it into his list of family values when he was in 8
th grade.
I was a first generation college student and I wasn't sure I had what it took to go to college. After all, maybe there was a good reason no one in my family had gone to college, maybe we just didn't have what it took. I was afraid of failing,
consequently trying so hard that I graduated
summa cum
laude. Yes, from a state university, so not like from other places, but still important to someone that hadn't graduated from high school. I wanted my kids to know they could go to college too, that they were capable.
It took five years to get a degree and a teaching credential, and then I got my first teaching job in September 2002. I was living my dream, my son Gabe had gone off to college with a full scholarship, and Katie did the same the following year.
In April 2004, Jason was a a sophomore in high school and Gabe was a sophomore in college when Katie died and our world came crashing down. It felt like we had dared too much, and I remembered the tale of Icarus flying too close to the sun. It was the only Greek myth I'd read in elementary school, and I remember being sickened by it at the end of second grade. Katie was only 18 when she died, and I wish to God I could have her back. I was 39.
After Katie's death, I applied for a job in my local school district, went to an interview and was hired. I happened to have the skills they were looking for: teaching
kindergarten and reading
intervention to first graders. A few months after I took the job the district announced that our school site was being taken over by a special program, and I was trapped for three years as the regular
neighborhood program was shut down. I followed the kids up in grades as they closed behind us, having a three year
relationship with some of them. Parents with any sense got their children out, as by the last year there were no resources and huge needs in my class. My students were forgotten and ignored by the district. I was isolated and tired when I was finally assigned to Shasta.
When I arrived at Shasta, Ron the custodian had told me "Teachers don't leave Shasta, they stay here till they retire, this is a good place to be." And within months the school district budget began circling the drain. I was laid-off of course, and spent the spring really worried about where I would go from there. Chico Unified seemed to be the canary in the mine, and soon many other school districts were in trouble. I was so relieved to be rehired last year, even as a sixth grade teacher, which changed to second and third grades combo class by the start of school. Then the whole state of California went down. This spring I got laid-off and I didn't get rehired, along with over 100 other teachers in Chico Unified.
So where the hell does this leave me? What do I do with the rest of my life? Just collect
unemployment and wait it out? As a permanent status teacher, I have 39 months of rehire rights, that's three years plus one summer. Oh, and I almost forgot, the district will be calling me in to sub at the same rate I made as a student teacher eight years ago, $78 a day. According to state ed code, if I sub for 21 days out of 60, the district will have to pay me my previous rate of daily pay. So will they just make sure that doesn't happen? Teachers have already been told that they will no longer be allowed to choose their own subs, and they're not happy about that. It's harder to leave your students with an unknown sub and feel okay about it. And they will be calling us in to sub K through 12, kind of frightening. I could be called for junior high PE one day and high school chemistry the next, that takes a lot of guts to deal with and I'm feeling kind of beaten down right now.
So after seven years of teaching, where do I go from here? Am I still a teacher if I don't have a class?
