Homecoming

Coming home.

I wonder where the word homecoming comes from.  Is it because a new school year has begun and students re-gather at their most common place and celebrate the new year?  Because school isn’t “home.”  So why “homecoming”? 

Last night was homecoming at my job, plus it was an alumni celebration, so the homecoming was, perhaps, a coming home for students who went away to college or moved somewhere else.  But again, it’s not “home” they’re coming to – it’s school, a place they all actively tried to escape for four years.  And those who are still currently students complain about being in school all week, but they will actively dress up and spend money for clothes and flowers and dinner in order to come “home” to their school on the weekend. 

It makes me wonder about the import of a high school.  The ambivalence teenagers have about their schools is as interesting a question as any philosophical conundrum.  They hate it.  They love it.  They want to get away.  They want to come back.  They hate school work.  They love having learned something. 

Perhaps it’s true that you can only hate something or someone you love, otherwise you’re apathetic towards it.  Not caring is very different than hating.  Students say they don’t care, but they care very much.  They care when their time is wasted.   They care when they get the high score.  They care when people make fun of them.  They care when no one listens.  They care when they say something apropos and it’s noticed.  They care about the minutiae.

They pretend not to care … but they actually care very much.

Everyone wants a place to call home, even if that place has some painful memories.  The truth is that high school is a drag.  It’s boring and long and time-consuming and redundant.  But.  High school is also the nucleus of four years of life.  It is the alpha and omega, whether you want it to be or not.  You have to go (the state mandates it) and you have to pass (you will not get a job).  You have to try to fit in (you will have no friends) and you have to pander to the opposite sex (you will not get laid). 

I understand why I have never gone to a high school reunion.  It’s not because I hate those people I went to high school with or because I was an outcast in high school.  I always thought I blew off reunions because I didn’t care about those people.  To a large extent, I don’t care about those people, but for me it’s more like a statement about coming home.  I found a different home.  And sometimes, it’s not necessary to revisit the past.  Some people are very happy in the past – I am not one of them.  I am happier in the future.  I would LIKE to be happy in the present tense, but I haven’t figured that one out yet. 

One of these days, I will find the spot that is ground zero of home.  Until then, I will continue to try to become.  Home.  

Pariah

Heartbreak opens onto the sunrise for even breaking is opening and I am broken, I am open. Broken into the new life without pushing in, open to the possibilities within, pushing out. See the love shine in through my cracks? See the light shine out through me? I am broken, I am open, I am broken open. See the love light shining through me, shining through my cracks, through the gaps. My spirit takes journey, my spirit takes flight, could not have risen otherwise and I am not running, I am choosing. Running is not a choice from the breaking. Breaking is freeing, broken is freedom. I am not broken, I am free. 

Fill in the Bubble

                I am a teacher, and I would like to be fired by my school district.  Please.  Fire me.  Let all of the teachers reapply, and then hire me if I am the best choice.  And then my school district can pay me on a merit-based system, just like every other job that has legitimacy in society.  Teaching may be a government job, but I don’t want any special favors.  I want my profession to be respected by society – not pitied or congratulated, but valued.  Doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, teachers.  The word “teaching” does not follow, does it?  Teachers are basically low-level government employees.  No clearance, no pay. 

                Should we take a step back and acknowledge that teachers are responsible for roughly 8 hours of a child’s life every day?  Do we really want to hand over our children to teachers who are half-assing their job?  I have three children in school:  one in college, one in high school, and one in elementary school.  I work in a school.  I went to school.  I have seen hundreds of teachers in my life.  Just like in any profession, there are effective teachers and shitty teachers.  I don’t see why it’s so hard to pay the effective teachers what they’re worth and fire the shitty teachers.  Yes, it might take a few years to weed out an ineffective teacher, but that is true in any profession.  And please tell me what other profession has tenure so that employees can’t be fired because of the backing of some big, bad union?!  Being a teacher should not make a person immune to the workforce rules.  People need to earn their job not just once, but over and over.  A trial lawyer would not have a job if he or she kept losing cases, just like a teacher should not have a job if his or her students are not learning.

                Having said that … how do we tell if a teacher is doing his or her job well?  Test scores?  Yes and no.  The test scores WOULD be an excellent indicator IF people didn’t suck.  But they do, so … teachers (SOME teachers) will cheat.  They will do whatever it takes to get the good test scores.  If their pay is based on those scores, there is even more incentive to cheat.  Just last year, we had teachers giving students the state writing prompt beforehand so their students would do well when the actual test happened.  Teachers should know that cheating is totally fucked up and doesn’t represent learning, yet if pay is tied to scores, the shiftiest “teachers” will get paid the most money.  Maybe they ought to correlate the in-class and state test scores to the ACT and SAT to see if these kids really know what the hell they’re talking about.  (How you do that, I don’t know.)

                I know that I am supposed to get “observed” a couple of times a year, but it’s a miracle if that happens.  I think that teachers should be observed all the time.  I know that’s inconvenient for administrators, but teachers act differently when an evaluator is in the room.  Is it really so ridiculous to acknowledge this?!  I try not to change how I act, but the presence of an “outsider” affects every teacher.  I don’t think my students would say I’m terribly different, but there is still a subtle change in behavior on my part.  (And theirs…)  If teachers didn’t know when they were being evaluated, that would be ideal.  I know it sounds a little Big Brother-ish, but surprise attack these teachers and see how they teach on a day-to-day basis!  Video tape them.  Keep them honest.  Don’t schedule a date to observe them so they can pander to the person watching.  Let them know that the community is not fucking around!  As a parent, I want to know what my child is learning during the day, and I want to know how he or she is being treated.  Is the teacher an asshole?  Is there a lot of wasted time?  Are the students being taught to a test or being taught something valuable? 

The biggest problem here is that some parents are going to (potentially) react badly to certain concepts from the class (especially in high school) that they don’t agree with.  I think this where parents need to let go for a minute.  I may not agree with all the things my children’s teachers teach them, but I am also a parent, so my JOB as a parent is to talk to my children about these things and give them an alternative perspective.  I cannot shield my children from ideas with which I don’t agree.  I don’t WANT to shield them from those ideas.  It’s the acceptance of a conflict of ideas that makes America a great place!  When we shut down opposing viewpoints, we insulate ourselves to the point that the children are unprepared to properly participate in society when they come of age.  A strong and confident child (read:  parent) is not afraid of people who don’t agree with them. 

Americans need to think about what they want from the teachers in their country and then fall in line behind it - NOT based on personal or religious ideology, but based on the value of knowledge in and of itself.  Socrates drank hemlock and killed himself rather than rebut his teachings publicly; that’s how it should be.  Teaching is a mission, not just a job; and those people who are doing it as just a job because they couldn’t decide on anything else need to get the fuck out of Dodge.  Work at Starbucks or Whole Foods or something, but get out of the way of those of us who want to change the world by making people more informed and more intelligent.  I’m not talking about making students believe one thing or another; I’m talking about teaching people how to think, something which is largely absent from most teachers’ curricula. 

Think about who you want your children to be – what you want your children to know – and make these people who teach your children (and the administrators who dictate their bullshit curriculum) RESPONSIBLE for what they get paid for every day.  Pay attention, get the qualified people in the classroom, keep them accountable, and then let the magic happen.  Learning doesn’t have to be an antiquated thing; it’s actually quite valuable in the 21^st Century.   

PTSD

                Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder:  Virtually any trauma, defined as an event that is life-threatening or that severely compromises the emotional well-being of an individual or causes intense fear or anxiety.

                For some people, life itself is the traumatic event, but there’s a really good case to be made that marriage can be as damaging as any other situation where the emotional well-being of individuals hangs in the balance.  People commit to living a life together through good and bad, but sometimes the bad bits are so damaging and overwhelming that recovery is nearly impossible.  Every day brings a new opportunity for the full frontal assault, or the unseen ambush, or the subtle psychological torture that husbands and wives unleash on each other.  Only people who know each other so well can know how to devastate each other to the very core.

                Some of the symptoms of PTSD are:  insomnia, nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, and depression.  One of the most common ways people cope with PTSD is substance abuse (self-medicating), because they don’t know what else to do.  And of course, when that one glass of wine turns into four glasses and an Ambien, shit gets ugly.  A torrent of repressed animosity comes pouring out, and all the hurtful things get piled on. 

                I suppose the partners in any marriage take turns being the “right” or “wrong” one, but in a marriage gone sour, the wounds are so deep that all reactions tend to be defense mechanisms.  Rather to hurt than be hurt again, I suppose.  Or maybe our apathy and/or ambivalence just become a conditioned response to the ongoing battle.  Nothing gets left in the past – we subconsciously drag all our shitty feelings into the present, even though they should have been buried long ago. 

In a way, I wish I just had a terrible headache, but I don’t; I just have a soul ache, and I want it taken away, whatever the cost.  I have given up.  I have not been able to beat the forces opposing me, so I guess I should consider joining them.  I suppose if that means I will never again utter a cogent sentence, or think a sardonic thought, or trade banter with colleagues or friends, then so be it.  I guess it’s necessary to sacrifice everything that I have come to think of as me for the sake of my marriage and family unity.  Maybe that’s what marriage is:  the death of the personality.  I should have killed myself, as it were, years ago.  It’s like experiencing my own personal Jonestown. 

Sometimes being married feels like having a knife plunged into your back.  Slowly.  So slowly, in fact, that you only notice it one day when you feel a nagging, persistent pain in your back, or side, or head; and when you explore the source of the throbbing discomfort, you feel the hilt.  And then all the symptoms seem to fall in place, and you recognize that the actual stabbing happened a long time ago – it’s just the alarming amount of leaking blood that’s a recent discovery.  While that analogy might seem melodramatic, the pain that accompanies a failed relationship is just as real as any professional hit.  (Actually, that last part doesn’t work, because a professional would kill his or her mark fast and efficiently – it’s all of us amateurs making the death so painful.) Either way, it’s disconcerting and it sucks. 

Julianne Moore said it pretty well in the movie The Kids Are Alright:

“… the bottom line is marriage is hard. It’s really fuckin’ hard. It’s just two people slogging through the shit, year after year, getting older, changing — it’s a fucking marathon, okay? So sometimes, you know, you’re together so long you stop seeing the other person; you just see weird projections of your own junk. Instead of talking to each other, you go off the rails, and act grubby, and make stupid choices … And sometimes you hurt the ones you love the most, and I don’t know why.” 

Whoever wrote that movie gets it.   I don’t feel like there is any moral to this story or insight to be taken from it.  I don’t live in a slum in India.  My husband doesn’t beat me.  I am allowed to drive a car and wear what I want.  I am not a refugee in a civil war.  My house has not been razed by a tropical storm.  What do I have to complain about?  An unsatisfactory interpersonal relationship?  Fuck it, oh well.