Welcome Back Kotter

"So....you remember when I stopped being a walker?" a student asked me.  She was referring to something that happened last spring, as if it had just happened.  

"Yup." I responded.  

"So, I didn't know we were moving.  I had to take the bus and while it was pulling away, I saw you, I saw all of you walking away without me."

I had no idea that would make her sad.  When she said moving, she was talking about going to the women and children homeless shelter in Atlanta.  There aren't a lot of them, so I actually know where she was.  This eternally optimistic child told me last spring that even though the bus ride was long, she thought the city lights of Atlanta were beautiful.  

"Look at this."  she instructed, showing me a blingy necklace that said "TAURUS".

"It's my zodiac sign.  I got to go to the mall last weekend."

I smiled.

"Taurus are good people."

The internet has been restored to my trailer.  After seven weeks and three classroom moves, my classroom trailer is almost fully functioning.  I still can't hear the school announcements or the fire alarm, or enter the building without running all the way around to the front because the key card thing doesn't work, but my mood soared when I finally got internet.  The phone works, too, but I was good with it never working again.  I am not sure what you call this syndrome, the one where you get treated like such crap that you appreciate a dry piece of bread instead of the full dinner that they owe you.  

I actually think the lessons I design are pretty good.  Not having the internet impacted my activities.  After using up all my hotspot data, my students and I took to roaming around the school, trying to get inside because the key card doesn't work in the back of the school and to search for a wifi signal.  We joked that our next step would be just to pile in my car and sit in the McDonald's parking lot, using their wifi.  

I started hiding out in random places in the building, trying to get my planning and paperwork done with the internet access I needed.  It sucked because my files and reference materials were in the trailer and no matter where I went, I was constantly interrupted.  By my students.  By teachers.  By this awful chair by the copier that pinched my fingers really hard whenever I tried to skootch up.  My only productive day was sitting with one of the custodians in my pinchy chair while he ate some kind of Lean Cuisine and watched Netflix on his phone and I got some plans done.  

"Hey.  I've been wanting to talk to you.  You come in my classroom a lot, and get kids."

I looked at the little boy while I tried to get some work done in the library.

"My mom's Puerto Rican.  My dad's Black.  I live with my grandmother.  I don't see too much of my parents, haven't seen my dad in eight years.  This school, I don't know, I'm not sure if I like it.  A lot of yelling."

"I'm sorry to hear that.  But it is really nice to meet you.  Hopefully I'll see you again soon."

I turned back to my computer.  

Around a third of my students this year are brand new.  They have brought an array of, I don't know, issues.  Three of them have never been to school before, though they should be in first and second grade.  One has been periodically removed from school by her parents, missing both second and fifth grade.  Another clearly has a cognitive issue and steals compulsively.  She has physically attacked one of her teachers, twice.  One of my kindergartners rolls on the floor under the table the rest of us are sitting at, scratching my ankles.  Another kindergartner just randomly screams.  A third appears to not be school age, but he keeps coming anyway.  Everyone keeps complaining about my new third grader that spits at everyone in the cafeteria.  I saw one of the "never been to school before" kids pick up a Capri Sun off the floor and try to drink it.  My "never been to school" first grader crashes into walls with snot all over his face.  

"Hi...."  a little girl said while sidling up to me in the library while I tried to work.
"I think I have ADHD.  I wanted to talk to you.  I just have a lot of anxiety....."  she continued.  
"Well, if this is something that really concerns you, ask your parents to take you to the pediatrician.  They can figure it out!"  I said, patting her hand.
"So... what do you do here?"  she asked.
"I teach English to kids that speak other languages."
She looked at me blankly.  I guess she thought I did something else.  

I have about ten more students on my overall roster than I did last year. I also have a new boss.  I am not even sure how to tactfully describe this.  I'll just say, I got a bit of a dressing down for my "communication".  For not telling my new boss that I needed a schedule.  Which of the students are in the ESOL program.  For not scheduling our new part-time ESOL teacher their instructional hours.  Things that are really basic components of said person's job and honestly, things that I neither want to do or am authorized to do.  My students are also usually clustered in one classroom, by grade level.  Now, they are sprinkled throughout the school in around thirteen different classrooms.  I haven't had a planning period in weeks.  

"How was I to know that you did not have a schedule?  I have seen you with children." she informed me, leaning in to my face.

"Well, I wasn't going to just sit here for six weeks, doing nothing."  I responded. 

My bad.  Really, my bad.  It's hard to explain the problems I am having on the job but the bottom line is, I am not training an administrator.  Their job is basically the same at whatever crap-ass school they go to in the district.  I am upset that I am stretched so thin that I don't feel like I am serving my students in the best way that they need.  And they need.  They need a lot.  

Summer Days

"They just wheeled her back.  They said it would be two and a half or three hours."
I thought of my sister, alone among doctors, being wheeled into surgery.  I knew she was terrified.  I stood in my trailer and gripped my face really hard.  I thought if I could somehow smash it it would compress everything, everything inside me.   

We were staying in a house on the Long Island Sound for a few days this summer.  I liked the cottage a lot, and the atmosphere there.  It was very beautiful.  But, the reason for our visit was difficult and Alec was away for days at a time.  On the day Biden left the race I sat watching the Tour de France on the screened in front porch.  It was overcast and atmospheric.   Temple and I went inside because I wanted a little air conditioning.  I heard a clunk in the formal-sh living room and darted out there.  Temple was galloping toward me, but lifting her front paw, limping.  I sat down and hugged her.  Hard. I looked at her paw.  She licked my neck and pushed in.  I was glad that she let me hug her.  I saw an ottoman by the windows skewed to the side.  It had fur on it. We sat like that for a long time. 

I have a lot to say, but have been feeling uncomfortable about putting my life online.  I guess after all of these years it's dawning on me that an online diary is overexposure for me.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  

The Day the Music Died

The little boy was screaming his brother's name, tears gushing down his face.  Words in Swahili were coming out, too.  I had my arms around his waist, holding him back from running into various classrooms, searching for his brother.  He howled and howled as we wrestled in the middle of the hallway.  Teachers with concerned looks on their faces poked their heads out and quickly closed their doors.  I looked at his distraught, swollen face.  I rested my forehead on the top of his head while continuing to hold him back and began crying too.   

My summer ended with an extension of my family blow out.  It makes me very sad.  I returned to work.  Our school is an open construction zone.  All of my things are boxed up in my trailer.  Unfortunately, someone added boxes and boxes of some sort of storage to the trailer, blocking me from getting to the majority of my things.  There is even a piano in there.  I dug out a few necessary items and put them in a milk crate that I took from the cafeteria.  I have a student desk in the corner of the C-50 room.  I put my milk crate next to it and placed my coffee cup on an overturned chair.  C-50 is all the broken furniture and dirty rugs and basically every other gross thing that teachers want to get rid of until the county brings a truck and hauls everything away.  

We have new administrators, too.  My go to person, the one that everything I do goes through was promoted to another school.  Now, I have someone new.  The school is really in chaos.  I am in chaos.  All of my beginning of the year paperwork and testing is backing up, piling up, while I wait for my new go to to acclimate.  My schedule is a mess and I'm getting new students, daily.  Our tree was cut down last week.  I have a developer that wants to buy the lot next to my house harassing me to the point that I peek out of the blinds before going on the front porch.  Temple has developed a cough since we drove back from Connecticut.  I made a vet appointment and realized I've got major anxiety about going to the vet.  I relive them telling me that Lola was going to die. I've tried to keep my head up, keep it together but by the time Friday arrived I had huge circles under my eyes, broken out skin and a container filled with only lettuce that I brought for lunch.  

My baby died a year ago today.  It has been on my mind, building, making me cry.  Scream cry.  A year ago this minute she was still alive.  A year ago today I woke up with her for the last time.  It is just never going to be okay.  It never will.  

The Giving Tree

Summer.  Hot, hot summer.  Spring lasted ten seconds, then it went up to five hundred degrees.  Then, the water went out in Atlanta.  For, like a few funky days.  I spent the first week I had off going to concerts.  The Magnetic Fields, Pixies with Modest Mouse and Catpower, even the Rolling Stones.  Then, I went to the beach.  

I have been renting a Tybee Island beach house for a few years now.  I get a big one, right at the beginning of June and invite my mom, sister, niece and whoever they want to bring.  I got the idea from Alec's brother.  I thought it was a nice way to try to keep my family together.  This year, it turned into a family brawl.  It has bordered on it a few times before, but this time was too much.  I'm upset, we're upset, it's bad.  

I came back to Atlanta and tried to wrap my head around everything.  I painted the front room of our house.  I exercised a lot.  I watched the Tour de France with my little six dollar Peacock app.  I thought about Lola.  She and I watched it together while I painted a different room last year, when I didn't know she was dying.  

We found out that our beautiful Oak tree has to come down.  It's as old as the house, probably one hundred and twenty years old.  We get it maintenanced annually.  Every year, they say great tree.  No worries.  This year, the first guy said it was on the verge of death.  We called three more opinions.  They all agreed.  Then, we had to wait.  For a permit.  The tree really looks bad now and I was getting scared every day that went by without the permit.  

My first reaction when we found out that the tree was dying was to think of Lola.  My baby died eleven months ago, today.  It's like everything in our lives, in our house is dying.  I used to lay under the Oak trees with Lola.  I'd look at the beautiful leaves, the way they swayed.  And I would hold her.  

All I can say is Hilary loves Tree.  And she will miss her, terribly.  

*  Title, drawing, Shel Silverstein

Long Day

It's been a long day, without you my friend....
And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again...

I listened to the kids sing the same song in various award ceremonies, over and over.  Every time I heard the first lines, my eyes would well up.  I stared at the ground, trying to focus on the worst singers of the group.  The horrible high pitched, yet flat tones.  I'd look at kids I don't like.  Anything not to cry.  During one of the ceremonies I received a text from Lola's old vet, reminding me that she was due for her annual check up.  Oh Lola....it has been a long day without you.  

The ceremonies are always a little emotional, especially the fifth grade ones.  Pablo finished elementary.  I've had him since he was in kindergarten; I taught his older brother and sister too.  Other kids in his grade level would come and go, but not Pablo.  We were together during virtual learning and when he was the only ESOL kid in his grade level that came back to the school in person when we reopened.  He loved Lola and would always make me call her with him on her Pet Chatz before I took him back to his classroom.  His mom came to me before his ceremony and thanked me repeatedly.  She cried.  I thanked her too for letting me work with her family.  One of my new fifth graders finished too.  She was a difficult kid with a penchant for fighting.  

"Do you remember that day, that day when we first met and I took that test in your trailer?  she asked.

"Yes, yes I remember."

"I had that big bow that my mom put in my hair.  I asked you to fix it for me and you did."  she continued.

I laughed a little.

"Yes, I remember that.  Carlota, I know you kind of have an angel and a devil on your shoulders.  Please take care of yourself and try, well, try to listen to the angel....."

"Yeah....I'll try."  she answered, smiling.  

I lost my newcomer, Kati, too.  That was hard.  We've spent close to three hours a day together, due to her Intensive English status.  I'll miss her.  

We have a beautiful, one hundred plus year old White Oak in our backyard.  After a lot of Oaks fell in the park during one of the recent thunderstorms, our new neighbors have taken to texting me about the tree.  We have it serviced annually.  They prune any dead limbs and assess the health of the tree.  My new neighbors want to pay for someone to look at it.  I find it intrusive and let them know (nicely) that we already have an appointment set up for that.  I thought to myself about their towering chimney that leaned precariously for nearly a year, looking as though any minute it might crash down.  Did I text?  No.  I figured they'd handle it and if they didn't, homeowner's insurance would.  I've noticed mixed reactions to our tree over the last twelve years.  Some neighbors love it.  Other neighbors, generally those that moved in from condo or suburban communities seem to fear it, preferring a gas station landscaping-look for one of the leafier neighborhoods in Atlanta.  Yesterday, I was planting some stuff near the fence line in our backyard.  An older woman started talking through the fence, letting me know that she lived in the condos nearby and was watering the yard for our new neighbor.  

"I heard from her that the tree might need to come down!"  she announced merrily.

You are looking a little long in the tooth yourself you old hag, I thought, before letting her know it was being assessed and that we really hoped not.  Something about the thought of that tree having to come down fills me with sadness.  It's as though everything around me is changing and dying. 

It's been a hard year and I have been more than ready to finish it.  Our school was supposed to undergo some sort of major renovation that could last a year and a half.  Instead of waiting until school was out, the renovation began a few weeks ago.  The back area where my trailer is was transformed to an open construction site.  Some how the electricity to my intercom got cut and I stopped receiving announcements at all.  By the last days of school, the construction workers started coming inside the school.  During dismissal on the last day they were up on ladders ripping down ceiling tiles as kids tore through the halls to the waiting buses. As the teachers tried to finish our end of year duties, they began covering the hallways in plastic and plywood as they full-on ripped out the ceiling tiles.  When we came in the next morning for our mandatory post-planning day, the transformation was shocking.  Workers were all over, like bees on a hive.  All the ceiling tiles were gone and long wires hung everywhere.  A teacher slipped on the plastic trying to get in her room.  Others couldn't get in at all because of the stuff on the floors.  Workers stormed around in hard hats and n95s while we wore no protective gear.  A thick white dust hung in the air in the cafeteria.  I walked through it to get to my trailer thinking, Hilary, you are getting cancer right now.  It got so bad in there the workers put huge fans in, blowing the offending dust throughout the whole building.  Asthmatics started pulling out rescue inhalers.  The wifi went out.  The workers started taping shut people's classrooms and said they were cutting the electricity soon.  Some alarm beeped endlessly in the front office which was also covered in boxes.  Only one administrator was there and she was trying to do everything.  I ran out to my trailer, which I had to leave unlocked because they had taken our keys and key cards away the previous day.  A coworker had piled stacks of personal shit under my desk and inside the cabinets of my carefully packed trailer.  About two and a half hours into the debacle the admin texted me and said she was checking people out, approximately five hours early.  

"I know you can't get the intercom messages so I said to myself, girl you better text her."  she told me.  

I handed in my checklist and half-ran to the car, my classroom globe in hand.  I pulled away and up the hill without even looking in the rearview mirror.  

*Lyrics  - See You Again, Whiz Khalifa

See You Again

I heard a loud scream and looked down the hallway at my school.  A woman was walking a very large grey dog, on a leash.  She had a Lifeline shirt on.  Multiple people ran at her and hustled her to the gym.  It was Career Day at my school.   I walked quickly down a back hallway, trying to get another look at that dog.  That big grey dog.  

The kids in the library started singing for our guests, the people that were there to talk about their jobs. 

 
"I'll tell you all about it when I see you again...." they sang, howling at the end of the song.

I wish I could see Lola again.  I wish I could tell her all about everything that has happened.  I don't believe in god, or afterlife, or rainbow bridge.  But, I would love to see her again and tell her about everything.  But I won't and it makes me cry like crazy.  

Alec has been out of town, because his mom has been sick. Temple and I picked him up last night from the airport and it felt really good.  

I went to the gym with one of my classes, even though I wasn't supposed to.  I petted the giant dog without even asking, which is crazy.  I felt its teeth on my hand at one point, and just pulled it away.  I still have welts.

"What kind of dog is this?"  I asked.
"A Curso,"  she answered.
"Is this your personal dog?"  I asked, looking at her animal control badge.
"Yes.  We got called because they were breeding her to death.  And I said, I'll take her."

The dog pushed against my leg and left spit all over my skirt.  But I didn't care.  I didn't care at all. 

*wiz khalifa, see you again 

April Showers

"Why did you do that?"  I saw The Flave scream at Elayna.  He was holding his swollen, red cheek.  

I haven't really told you about them.  My new kids.  The newcomers.  Maybe I did, maybe I didn't.  I'm not sure.  We were in a minute of complete joy, a pep rally at school to get the kids amped up for state testing.  Yes, testing sucks, but I like it when my school has special events.  I watched the kids scream and dance with glee.  Like many times when I am surrounded with absolute happiness, I felt like I was going to cry.  I thought of Lola.  I felt like I might need to leave the room.  Then, Flave's teacher ran up and said that Elayna had smacked Flave across the face, hard.

"Wait, why?  Was she pissed off?"  I asked.
"No, that's how they play.  But he's crying, I told him to go to the bathroom."
I watched Flave sit back own and question her, his eyes puffy with tears, cheeks swollen.  Flave and I have had issues, more with his parents, but I was heartbroken.  I can't see them hurt.  I just can't.  
"You hit me!!"  I saw him howl, hand to his face.  

I walked up the hill at the end of the school day.  Eduardo's sister picked a flower and turned to blow it at me.  The fuzzy little white things went right up my nose.