A Sick Day

I'm not at school today. I'm on the couch. The cat is eyeing me up as a warm bed. I have coffee on hand and Zenyatta Mondatta on the turntable. It's cold and wet outside and, because the heat turns down on school days, it is cold but dry in here. I'll keep a blanket on, my hoodie zipped, and wear a wool hat. I'm in for the day.

I hurt my back last Friday playing basketball at school. I teach English and help lead basketball for gym. I took not one but two shots to the head and neck and by Saturday, each time I stood up I couldn't get my back to unwind. The electric shock stopped my breath each time I tried. Yesterday, thinking I had healed, I played basketball with kids only to have one land on my shoulders and back as he came down with a rebound. This morning, I'm right back to where I was Saturday. I sent in plans and alerted my colleagues.

Being out inconveniences the people with whom I work. I try to be a good colleague shouldering my burden and not putting others out. Today will be a pain for them because we have no substitutes and people will have to take time out of their routines to cover my classes.

Last September the superintendent emailed all staff defining good work ethic in ways not in the negotiated contract. The email said that our absences hurt students and colleagues. This was reinforced to me in June with a counseling memo for my personnel file stating that I had taken too many days (though fewer than contractually allotted). Should I continue to take sick time, management may dismiss me.

Such administrative actions have a chilling effect colder than an October morning. I resisted taking today because I don't want further memos in my personnel file or to risk being fired. My back injury makes moving challenging and I have a physically demanding job even without gym, but I worry about being sent to the principal's (superintendent's) office for being a bad boy. Then I realized a few things:

• I fulfilled my responsibility by sending substitute plans.
• It is management's job to provide substitute teachers.
• Any inconvenience to my colleagues is not my fault or responsibility.

I'll rest and hope to be healthy enough to do the job well tomorrow. Whether or not I face discipline for these things is entirely up to management. I'm still worried I'll face discipline. That sucks. It's one reason I don't love my job.

I just got up when The Police record ended and put Supertramp on the turntable. "Sister Moonshine" starts side one of Crisis? What Crisis?:

When I was a small boy,
Well, I could see the magic in a day,
But, now I'm just a poor boy,
Well, maybe it's the price you have to pay,
If you lock your dreams away
If no-one wants to listen.

My back twinged hard when I got up. I took deep breaths while the needle bounced in the end groove and another needle shot down my spine. I eventually straightened up and switched records. I'm back on the couch, under the blanket. The cat is still eyeing me. Her only concern is warmth, not a personnel file or dismissal. I've really got to learn to live a cat's life or at least remember what is and isn't my responsibility. I'll rest until I can stand up without seeing stars. Today that's my only job.

I'm Not Feeling This Today

I get the students ready to write. We have our packets and a prompt. We have pens and pencils. We have two minutes on the timer because today we'll write four short bursts that become something like an essay or a poem. I ask, "we ready to write?" and a kid says, "I'm not feeling this today. I ain't doing it." He's waiting for me to say he has to, waiting for me to push back. Instead, I become a ghost and say, "I know what you mean."

We write. Four two-minute bursts. That kid isn't feeling the writing. He ain't doing it. We keep going. I end up writing about him. It comes out great. I should thank him, but I don't. He would think I'm mocking him.

After writing, I ask each person the same question: "Is there something you wrote today that you can read to us?" I give two answers from which we choose: either, "yes, and here it is" or "not today." The second answer is to leave the door open for next time. These students are reluctant to share. They aren't feeling it. They ain't doing it. I invite and give them a way to decline without deciding they'll never ever share.

When I get to that kid I say, "I know you weren't feeling up to writing, so I won't mess with you by asking if you want to read." I turn to the next kid: "Is there something you wrote today that you can read to us?" He says, "not today."

After sharing, we move to reading books. Everyone but the kid grabs their book, fills out the box on their writing packet listing the author's name, book title, and their starting page number. They begin reading. I encourage the kid to grab his book knowing what he'll say. "I'm not feeling reading. I ain't doing it." I almost smile. He stares into his phone and keeps showing it to someone next to him.

Quietly I say, "I'm going to find you a place to chill so we can keep reading and you can do your thing." He starts to get upset about being sent out of class, but my tone is light, friendly, earnest. "Come on," I say. "There's a place right out here..."

He's gone now. I could have gotten in his face, told him he had to read, but I wasn't feeling like getting a fight started. I ain't doing that. I'm feeling something else, something almost good. I don't want to get in the way of that.

Out there, he's probably still on his phone. When I left him I said, "thank you for coming with me and being cool." He looked to see if I was messing with him and saw that I wasn't. He shrugged. I don't know exactly why, but I thanked him again. Maybe it was just because I was feeling it.

Out The Window And Inside

The assignment:

1. Look outside. Write that for two minutes.
2. What's stressing you out? Write that for two minutes.
3. What's one thing you can do about it? Write that for two minutes.
4. Look outside again. Write that for two minutes.

The idea was to show how we can compose in mysterious fashion, sandwiching inner feelings between two accounts of the outside world. What follows is what I wrote over four classes.

---

The First Class

The sky is open and light blue. Not the deep blue of August or the aquamarine of the Caribbean Sea. No, the light blue, trying-not-to-be-grey of October Syracuse. A blue that says, it will soon be winter, that says, enjoy this moment which is already gone. The leaves seem already to be falling. Blades of grass reach up in one last wish for love.

This job is stressing me. Another teacher in the system resigned yesterday. That teacher was brand new in August and will be gone by November, a leaf on a tree falling from the branch, drifting on the autumn wind, settling somewhere new.

Envy does me no good. Better to be happy for someone living that dream and feel it as fuel for my own choices. My autumn winds may be coming. Naomi Shihab Nye writes:

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

The sky is bluer now than it was. It's almost summer vacation blue, the blue of hope and faith, the blue of believing. That's the blue under which grass still grows and leaves reconsider falling, the whole world alive as if all of us are ready to be reborn.

---

The Second Class

I need to slow down. The sky tells me so. There is no wind to push my sails and take me anywhere. The day is still. Even the birds just stare. A plane arcs across the sky, it's engines throttled down. No hurry. We are all coming in for some landing. The grass will catch us. The ground is soft and forgiving.

There's too much to do and too many people after my attention. I want to be left alone with my pen and the blank page. I want to be alone, in solitude, all by myself. The stress of all these people is like the Nikki Giovanni poem:

Sometimes
when I wake up
in the morning
and see all the faces
I just can't
breathe

My heart beats too fast. My lungs go shallow. My mind races ahead out of this moment into nothing, into darkness.

And so I write. I breathe through the pen. I can't send these people away, stop teaching, quit the job, but I can sit inside this body, crawl inside my head, and accept how things are. I'm my own man and despite the stress I choose the life I want and what I will feel as I'm rocked by outside forces.

Out by the side of the road an orange sign with black letters stands as a warning. The way through is passable but not smooth or easy. Drivers are waved through one at a time. The tires kick up dust that rises and must fall somewhere. The drivers pass onward under an almost perfect blue sky to places I'm imagining and finding in my dreams.

---

The Third Class

It looks peaceful out there, but a kid just said, "it's brick." I'm old and don't know exactly what that means, but it can't be good. It's cold as October should be. I can live with that. Cold isn't bad. Not when the sun shines. Not when the sky is blue. Not when I'm breathing and getting through the day.

It's tough being around negative people who complain to and about me. I get that it's not really about me, but it feels that way when people are cruel. They're all hurting. I get that. But I wish we could get along for just this hour. I want them to understand that it's easier that way, but they don't believe.

I can complain and beg them to change, but what good will that do? It's me who must stop expecting them to be other than who and how they are. Their lives are theirs. The more I accept that and let go, the more peace I'll find.

The leaves are changing. Snow will come. The sky will turn ashen grey. The sun will set and rise again no matter what I do. If I'm happy, the leaves still die. If I'm sad, snow still comes. And no matter my anger and frustration, the world still turns on its axis from light to shadow and back into light. Out in the field, the geese accept all this. Who am I to argue with geese? I watch them all take off into the blue sky and almost smile.

---

The Fourth Class

It's calm outside. The road construction guys are on a break. Even the leaves just hang instead of falling. The grass is in no hurry. The clouds chill in a cold sky. The geese have flown or gone into hiding. Nothing is moving. I stare and feel nothing but relief.

I've had negative people crowd my life today. Their problems weighing me down now, making me tired. I wonder what I've done to deserve all this. Clint Eastwood tells me, "deserve's got nothing to do with it."

The negative people go. They remain only if I choose to hang onto them. If I let go thinking about all that, let those thoughts go out the door with those people, then I have the chance to feel better. It's totally up to me.

A dump truck pulls down the street. Going, going, gone. It is heavy, loaded full, and moving slowly. Somewhere down the line the driver will back up and dump that heavy load. The truck, lighter, will go on to the next job. There is always another job, another day. As for now, the world outside the window is calm, quiet, and trying to teach me all I need to know.

Working Against My Interests In The Schools

Students here are required to take a test that's supposed to measure reading ability. The data is mostly used to grade my teaching. Students take the test in September, January, and May. Growth targets are set, and I'm graded on whether they have or have not achieved those targets.

As students sit to take the test I say, "do the best you can and take your time," though it would be better for me if they all bombed it. I need them to show growth. If they did terribly on the thing in September, there's nowhere to go but up.

There are a couple problems with that.

In September students are ready and willing to take such tests. My students are more docile early in the year and will try their best even on "a boring test."

I also know a teacher in another district who was fired probably for telling kids not to work hard on the September test. She didn't tell them to bomb it, but she sure as hell told them it was okay to half-ass the thing. I don't need more reasons for management to dislike me, so I say, "do the best you can and take your time." I answer their procedural questions and explain why I am not allowed to clarify what any of the words mean. Then I say, "do the best you can and take your time." Students usually work at it and score well.

Which really screws me over.

The best things I can do are to accept the situation and stop worrying about how I'm working against my own interests. Things usually work out and as the song says, I will survive. At least I have so far.

Still, it's amazing how many things we teachers choose to do, have to do, or feel we have to do that go against our best interests. Doing lots of schoolwork after school hours, giving tests that are used against us, and a hundred other things. Some of it is unavoidable if I want a paycheck and healthcare for my family. The rest, well, I'll look more carefully at these things and make decisions.

For now, I tell myself do the best you can and take your time. Then I put my head down and do what has to be done. Soon enough, it's quitting time.