he’s a murderer.

Be warned that I am airing my very frustrated thoughts and am not in the mood to argue with any Trumpians right now. I’m turning comments off. Keep on scrollin’ if he’s your jam.

P.S. your jam is super nasty, yo. [c. Elena Loginova]

July 3rd: At a patriotic gathering beneath a monument carved on Native American tribe’s sacred space that we stole because gold was found there, Trump complains that teachers “indoctrinate” today’s youth and that schools teach “absolute allegiance” to “a new far-left fascism.”

(He has a very low reading comprehension level, paid people to do his homework and, I guarantee, has never helped his own children with homework so is overall unlikely to know what is ACTUALLY taught in schools. Also look at his gross gaudy golden house [images & hilarious captions from https://www.curbly.com/trump-is-a-living-mcmansion].)

As a teacher–one who teaches 11th grade American Literature, no less!–I am directly offended by his accusations. Schools are not for brainwashing. We teach critical thinking, literary analysis, close reading, expanded vocabulary skills, argumentative strategies, problem-solving, technological competency, clear and concise writing, judgment of reliable sources, narrative expression, public speaking readiness, appreciation of poetry, and MORE. We even study the Declaration of Independence (noting significant diction choices and edits from the rough to final draft, like how many of the founding fathers forced the deletion of any mention of slavery… because that “all men are created equal” thing meant, in their minds, land-owning white males) and the Constitution. We look chronologically at the writings of Americans and see how this country has never been perfect, and that those who speak up to point out (and protest) the flaws have assisted in its improvement, as we must continue to do now and forever. Thanks to school, students grow more empowered each year to add to that constructive criticism and change.

July 6th: Trump tweets that “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!”

He and his government have done very little to curb the pandemic here, which is why our citizens are currently not welcome to travel to a (rapidly growing) list of other countries. Therefore schools are not ready to open in a manner that will be safe for students, faculty, staff, subs, or any of the family/people/etc. who interact with them. Is it bad for student mental health, those who need meals or to escape abuse, etc.? Yes. That breaks my heart. (I have a lot of empathy. I doubt 45 could even spell empathy.)

But death, or even the chronic illnesses* that COVID-19 has been developing in many of the “survivors,” is worse. (Also, hold up: the goal of schools is education. That we have had to provide safety, food, social welfare… kinda sounds like something the government should be on top of? But what do I know, we just have a government that is supposed to “establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” filled with unqualified Trump children and a swamp of businessmen with conflicting interests, plus an education system led by Betsy DeVos who owns 10 yachts, is the daughter of a billionaire, went to private school, and thinks we need guns in school in case of grizzly bears. Don’t worry guys, grizzlies are scarier than COVID-19 or school shooters!)

*just a smattering of info from “survivors”… this disease is NOT just a flu

hey look, something Trump can finally get an A+ in on his own. Why are we letting THIS GUY lead the entire freaking country?!?

 

July 8th: Trump tweets that “In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but it is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!”

Brian Klaas (Twitter @ brian klaas) notes that the new cases of COVID-19 yesterday (July 7th) in the US were 55,442. Scaling up the numbers to account for their smaller populations, the new cases in the other countries were equivalent to:
Germany 1,183; Denmark 570; Norway 676; and Sweden 1,835.

Other countries got to open schools because they listened to scientists instead of politicians. Trump is making this a narcissistic political battle when the facts are: IT IS NOT SAFE. It is not safe because of his choices and the selfish “individualism” of those [shamefully majority white Christian people] who think common sense/respect like mask-wearing is tyranny and oppression.

Tangent: note that Trump is desperate for reelection not because he wants to lead the country but because it buys him time to avoid prosecution for his various crimes… plus the NARCISSIST THING. Tangential tangent 2: Jeff and I just watched the entire John Adams miniseries. The burden of responsibility the first presidents took on, their wisdom and humility and skills… what a depressing contrast today makes!!!

 

these are just some of the questions that Trump, and many current school admin, have no answers for……..

So.
A reasonable conclusion from all this?

Trump is HOPING TEACHERS DIE.

The more educated someone is, the less likely they are to vote for him. He counts teachers as his enemy.

Another goal of his current attack on health insurance could be awareness of the cost upcoming chronic illnesses will have in healthcare. “America first” to him has always, always meant money (business and economy) first. Not people. Not lives.

be best, biotch

Remember “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Then go read Psalm 109 for some more fun.

seriously guys, when I opened this for my devotional I burst out laughing. It’s so painfully apropos.

 

There.
Of course I want to teach. (I’m sure not in it for the money, teenage sass, and stress!) I flippin’ read & annotated this book for “fun” last month. I want to impact students, teach them to wield words with clarity and power, help them love literature, be a positive energy in their lives, and diminish the stupidity in the world.

But I don’t think any of us have to teach them in person during a global pandemic to achieve that.

I do not think it wise to risk my life and others’ when there is little to no guarantee that we will be supplied with what we need to decrease the risk. Consider how insane this all is: if one student develops COVID-19, then all the students and teachers they interact with in a day will have to quarantine (about 180 people), plus any subs or admin they interacted with (like if they have a younger sibling at another school–there’s another group of 30+ people!). We’ll be doing online school anyway! But now there will be germs festering in teachers and grandparents and everyone thanks to poor ventilation and imperfect hygiene. And we won’t have had time to adequately prepare for the best online education possible.

I volunteered to educate students, not regularly face the possibility of active shooters (remember that Trump is a draft dodger and hid in a bunker even though he claimed he’d “run in” to a school shooting event “even if [he] didn’t have a weapon”) or sacrifice myself on the front lines of a killer coronavirus (funny how 45 requires those who interact with him to take tests regularly and is dumb enough to think that slowing testing would slow the virus itself…).

We can all handle one more year of online schooling. If we all do better and acquire some true leadership, we can even bring that down to one semester of online schooling! Is it perfect? No. But it’s what we need while a pandemic is out of control here. 

I can already predict the people who might have read this who will be angry with me: the same white, Christian relatives who post videos from Ben Shapiro, Prager U, Candace Owens, and InfoWars. (disclosure, I’m white and Christian too, and I even used to be Republican until they went off the g.d. rails.) I invite those people to come back and take my 11th grade English class. And if you want a conspiracy theory… how about Trump being Revelation’s beast? 🙃

1, 2, 3, (4, tell me that I should blog more)

I haven’t been on the blog since June. What’s the appropriate amount of flogging for penance? 39 lashes?

I’ve made myself scarce for a few reasons; let’s go through them, shall we?

1. I have made no progress as a writer. I’ve opened up my rough drafts and skimmed back through them, revisiting so many worlds created, characters grown, adventures lived: Copper and her ocean, Amani and her dragons, Phoebe and her hellhounds, Molly and her Dust Bowl, Clara Jean and her spaceship.

Though I love my leading ladies… my writing sucks. The plot takes a long time to reach its hook. The character growth is sporadic and unbelievable. There are holes and typos. The men the ladies (and the readers) should adore–Shiloh, Tristan, Roger, Angus, Griff–don’t move and breathe the way “Team ____” characters inspire the fangirl masses.

I don’t know how to kindle the energy to revise. I’ll focus on Copper for a few weeks before realizing that nothing I’ve fixed is any better than what existed before, so then I’ll tuck it away and re-open Clara Jean’s story. But then I’ll only make it through two chapters before getting called back to Copper, which is a lost cause, which sends me on to Phoebe, whose episodic story still feels more like a bad video game than a novel, and on and on and on.

What’s the point?

Of course I know the answer. “Writing is its own reward.” These characters’ lives will never, ever be unless I am the one to tell them.

I’m just so easily depressed and drawn away from the messy chaos of revision… which draws me to my next point.

2. Somehow I got scheduled to teach THREE DIFFERENT GRADES. That’s right, I plan and teach and grade for seniors, and juniors, AND sophomore honors students. The “glass-half-full” people say it’s a compliment that my bosses think I’m capable of handling such a workload, while the “glass-half-empty” people say it’s because I don’t have tenure and can’t complain about anything without repercussions.

I cried almost daily for a while, because I already felt like I was treading water with my nose one inch above the surface–the junior burden on one shoulder, the senior burden on the other–and then got sophomore honors plopped onto my head, pushing me all the way below. Then the crying lessened, gradually, to once a week, and now I’ve made it over a month without shedding a work-related tear.

I can do this. I know I can. The end of the first semester is within sight, just two weeks away. The next semester can’t be any worse than what I survived in September. But still… the energy drain of planning AND teaching AND grading for three completely different groups… well, it has not been healthy for me as a writer or wife or friend (or healthy-ish person).

Oh, plus I have to do buttloads of pointless paperwork and meetings to clear my credential, and I advise a student group that requires volunteering hours all over the place, and all of my students have needy parents who insist on scheduling identical, useless meetings all the time (“Why is my student failing?” “See all these 0’s? They don’t do any work in class or at home or read anything ever.” “Oh, that makes sense.”).

*long siiiiiiiigh*

Finally, 3: I needed to recapture my love of reading. How can I be a good writer if I’m not a voracious reader? Last year’s school duties kept me from reading much–NOW I understand how people can start to read in bed and then fall asleep immediately–so I spent an enormous chunk of my summer “catching up” on a lot of lost reading. I devoured every recommendation in my path, things like “The Pillars of the Earth,” “Throne of Glass,” “Fangirl,” “Ready Player One,” “The Silkworm,” “Outlander,” “Sweet Tooth,” “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?”, “The Alchemist.” It was magnificent.

The good: remembering the beauty of prose, the joy of risks and justice and swooning, and the pleasure of being drawn into magical worlds–fantasy or not–helps inspire me to “pick up the pen” again… sort of. If I ever get the energy to split my hours between teaching and writing again.

The bad: EVERYONE IS BETTER THAN ME. haha… dramatic but true. The “Throne of Glass” trilogy (so far–I think there are supposed to be 6 books when all is done?) was spectacularly done. The creativity, world-building, plot twists, and adventure made me like it almost better than “Graceling,” my last whoa-hey-I’m-in-love-with-this-book find. At the same time, however, it makes me hesitate to even try anymore, because I don’t think I’ll ever be that talented or produce something that brilliant even after thousands upon thousands of additional words written.

The knife in my heart twisted further this week when I finished reading the Grisha trilogy, “Shadow and Bone.” Leigh Bardugo was in my head, you guys. Her magic system and many of the character traits/plot twists are parallel to those in my Copper and Amani books. So, cool, I’m creative like other writers! Aaaand… now I can’t use any of that creativity because it will look like plagiarism.

Awesome.

So there’s a much-needed update on me. I’m alive. I’m swamped. I don’t really count as a writer right now. I’m a half-assed, very tired teacher instead.

I miss the blog world.

I’ll try to stop by more often.

And if someone can find a way to convince me to/help me to revise Copper, I am all for hearing your suggestions.

I don’t like endings–

–which is why transitioning to a new age on my birthday was so rough.

And now I have to send off my first set of seniors, many of whom I taught as juniors last year; we’ve built up relationships and now they are graduating and heading out into the real world.

It’s times like these that I kick myself for being so shy and introverted. Every day, getting up in front of that classroom and public speaking, is difficult enough. But then to bare my soul, too? To let them know how much I care for them and pray for their future successes (aside from what society defines as successful)? It’s so hard! As time passes, I think I will get better at it–at breaking down those barriers and letting the students understand the depth of my love for them (and that, therefore, our reading assignments and essays are NOT PUNISHMENT)–but not yet.

So for now, the speech I should give them as we end classes this week will stay here, in internet-blog-land. And a handful will find it (like I found their Twitters, HA!), and appreciate it. That will have to be enough for now, while I still seek my courage.

Without further ado:

 

My dear students. You have made it through high school, you have conquered some of the worst periods of life, and you now have an education that nobody can ever take away from you. Your cars can be repossessed and your clothes can shrink (when you don’t wash them correctly next year at college despite all of my warnings to make your mom show you how to do laundry now, before it’s too late) but nobody can steal the knowledge you’ve filled your head with. I think it’s cute how much you all complain about your workloads, because college and adult working life is all going to be so much worse — however, you really have achieved a milestone. Don’t let others downplay it. You have done something worth celebrating even though there is still more work to come. “Stop and smell the roses,” as they say, or stop and look back at the 12 years of school you’ve made it through. Yes, education has some pitfalls and issues, and I am honored that we have had deep discussions about some of those things in class; maybe one of you will be able to make a difference in education in the future, as I am trying to. You are all setting out to make a difference, somewhere, somehow, no matter how big or how small. As Neil Gaiman says, so much more brilliantly than I could ever say,

“I hope you’ll make mistakes. If you’re making mistakes, it means you’re out there doing something. And the mistakes in themselves can be useful… Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art… write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.”

When you are frustrated with your classes and wonder why we make you learn things, I hope you remember the fight that Stanton, Anthony, Woolf, and many others fought to let you even have the opportunity. When you realize you have wings that you can’t spread, like Edna Pontellier, I hope you are able to take careful, wise steps to break free. When you are faced with the confusion of young love, like Elizabeth Bennett, I hope you see through the Wickhams and embrace the Darcys. When you are tempted to cheat and take shortcuts, I hope you remember how well that worked out for Lady Macbeth or Tita de la Garza. And when you feel alone and defeated, remember that there is always someone out there who cares about you and is rooting for you through thick and thin: me!

I am so excited for you and your futures. I am so honored to have been part of your past. Remember where your roots were fastened even as you grow in exciting new ways.

Just do me a favor and remember to always spell “a lot” as two words.
: )

encouragement

Teaching is difficult. The hours are long and often thankless, and the payoffs are not always noticeable.

But I am proud to say that, as of today, I’ve finished my first full semester as an official full-time teacher AND received the following e-mail today from one of my students:

“On behalf of the students, I would like to thank you for the great semester. I had a lot of fun and surprisingly learned a lot, (regardless of my slacking towards the end). When I announced my classes on Facebook in the beginning of the year, a lot of people claimed I was lucky to have you as a teacher —  and you didn’t disappoint. You lived up to my expectations and your reputation by teaching us a lot about relationships, decision making, and life skills.

A teacher who genuinely cares about her students is rare to come across, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to attend your class.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the year, and once again, thank you!

Sincerely,

[student’s name]

ps I enjoy your corny jokes.”

How great is that???

I’m going to start a bad-day folder. Every time I get a thank you note or something similar, I’ll put it in the folder and save it close by. Then when I have a horrid teaching day and feel like a failure, I’ll have tangible evidence that I’ve done good work and can do it again. That should buoy my spirits in a much-needed way.