A Better Place

Last night, I spent an hour and a half on the phone with a friend and former coworker from the building I worked in last year. Though she was also slightly unhappy with her position (not to the same degree as I was), the hassle and stress of packing up her classroom and moving on to another position (and hence the dreaded job search and interview process) seemed too overwhelming at a time when she had also just bought a house and was getting married within a month. So I left, and she stayed. Her hope was that, with a new administration coming in for this year, things would be better.

Wrong.

Not only is the same sort of administrative failure that drove me out STILL occurring, but other new challenges have arisen. Namely, racial divisions on the fifth grade team (of which she is a part) have become a factor this year. Now, teaching is hard enough. Coping with the budding of teen hormones in fifth graders is hard enough. Dealing with street attitude of the fifth graders who attend this school is hard enough. But when members of your team refuse to work with each other, purely for race reasons, life becomes impossible. The oft-used and sadly unattainable "can't we all just get along?" applies here.

Oh.

And her husband of 4 months is on the west coast on business for 7 weeks.

What started as a "do you want to go out tonight?" call evolved into a much needed emotional release. The result was that she, I hope, felt a little better. For myself, it made me feel grateful that I removed myself from that professional situation before it was too late. And relieved that, with the exception of some minor bumps in the road, my life has settled into place for the time being.

We're scrapbooking this afternoon. Sometimes personal frustration breeds extreme creativity.