…and some men, too.

Working at the high school has made me remember why I liked being around academics so much. I’m not saying that my life has been devoid of contact with intellectual people these last several years, but the contact has indeed been scant. Even when I was working at the publishing house and then running the art division for a manufacturing company back before I decided to quit working out side the home to be with my family, I still found myself surrounded by people who were not as enthralled with the concept of ongoing education as me.

Those of you out there that teach at the university level may turn up your noses at the idea that a high school is filled with the intellectual and the very highly educated, and that’s really a shame. While I expected to meet a lot of people who were certainly at least qualified to teach when I started at the high school, I had no idea how many of them would have advanced degrees and be so self motivated when it comes to ongoing education. There is a TRUE love for learning happening at my place of employment, folks.

My headline referenced woman, brainy women to be exact. It is not as though this is a high school comprised only of female educators, but as is the case with most any public school – most of the teachers are women. I work with many of the men, too. One has more advanced degrees than I can count on my fingers. However, it is still the women I witness striving harder to obtain new information every step of the way.

I love being surrounded by brainy women. I used to think that I worked better with men in the workplace. Now I am just looking back at my former jobs and realizing I got along better with the more intellectual people in my offices, and they were generally men. What I see now is that when it comes to those who are learned, academia is the field that appreciated and rewards smart women more than possibly any other field. This is the field where you rarely have to wonder if you lost out on a job you were more qualified for just because the other candidate was a man.

Today was the first day of finals exams for the first semester at the high school. What a crazy day. I am not sure how I feel about the District allowing students in all grades exempt exams. I understand seniors with good grades and attendance being able to do so, but I think it is a reward you need to earn and giving it to just seniors would make it so much more special. Of course, it’s not my call.

We had a staff meeting and they served pizza and brownies. Pizza and Brownies! Are you kidding me? *sigh* I love pizza and brownies, very much so. But, you will all be happy to hear that I was VERY good. I sat and socialized and did not touch a single bite. I snacked on pumpkin seeds throughout the day, so my hunger was in check. I just had to hold back on the sheer desire to eat such yummy food. It’s getting easier as time goes by, and I have to remind myself that in the first month of my diet I lost 17 pounds. Not bad, huh?

My daughter is a Daisy Girl Scout this year. Back when I was her age, we did have Daisy scouts. I had to wait and start scouting when I was a Brownie. These little girls are pretty lucky to have an early start at such an amazing organization.

Anyway, this is the first year Daisy Girl Scouts are allowed to sell Girl Scout Cookies and my daughter and I could not be more thrilled! I think seeing one of my daughter’s friends selling cookies with her troops mate in front of a Blockbuster last year is what got Gigi hooked on the idea of scouting.

When I was selling cookies, I think they were $1.25 a box. Now they are $3.50 a box, but we all have to remember this is a non-profit organization and the cookies raise funds for this very noble institution. I can hardly think of a single person who would pass up a box of Girl Scout Cookies.

Anyway, if any of my local friends who read this blog are up for some cookies, give us a call. We’ll hook you up

Teaching jobs are being cut in my home district every year. It is getting harder and harder to get your foot in the door if you want to teach here. After I got certified to teach, I found that the jobs available were like little Grails. They were close to impossible to attain.

Everyone told me I should sub. That is a great theory. You are supposedly getting classroom time and you can often meet teachers and administrators. You definitely get a taste of whether or not you like any given school. However, I have seen with my own eyes that substitute teaching is glorified babysitting. And, on top of that the students are abusive in their treatment of the subs. Maybe it is different in elementary school, but in the middle and high schools it is one tough gig. In every class I am in, if a sub comes in for the day the students are rude, manipulative, and relentless in their quest to obtain the upper hand.

I have never regretted not subbing. My job might be one step down from full instructional right now, but at least I am a fulltime employee of the district, with the benefits and a pension plan to boot. Plus, I can count on my paycheck. It’s almost like a paid internship. I’m getting more insight into classroom management than I could have ever hoped for. I am getting the opportunity to develop relationships with the student and the students I have not met are at least used to seeing me on campus.

Ideally, a position will open up at my school. If not, I can still say that working in my current capacity has given me more hands-on experience that subbing ever could.

Last summer there was a scramble as teachers who were displaced after school closings in the district looked for new jobs. Many were accommodated by neighboring districts. Many went into lower-paying positions. It was hard times for all.

And now Pinellas County, in the Tampa Bay Area, has announced they are considering more school closing for next school year.

They cite declining enrollment and an even tighter budget as the cause.

Last year, the district considered 10 schools closure, but only three got the axe: Riviera Middle School, South Ward Elementary in Clearwater and Largo Elementary.

As I teach my own daughter to write, I am focusing on helping her develop clear, tidy script. And, it is making me think about how many people I know who have handwriting that is so bad I cannot generally puzzle out what they are writing.

At school, there are kids who hate to write longhand so much that they will do just about anything to gain access to a computer to do their work. Of course, there are those students who are permitted to use a computer as an accommodation, but more often that not the student in question simply hates to write and had atrocious writing.

I had five pages of names I needed to transcribe this afternoon and when I was halfway through the first page I had a shocking realization. These names were not written by students; they were written by teachers. It was shocking how few names I could decipher. It was like trying to get through pages and pages of the worst physician handwriting you can imagine.

Where has the art of penmanship gone? Does it matter to anyone anymore? — aside from the fact that it matters to me?

I had head from a few friends that it was considered one of the better public elementary schools in the north end of the county. It’s not in a particularly bad neighborhood, and the stats show a lot of two-family homes feed the school. Even so, Friday was still a pretty frightening day for everyone at Leila G. Davis Elementary School in Clearwater, Florida.

A LOADED handgun was found in the backpack of a KINDERGARTEN student by a teacher’s assistant.

A loaded handgun in a kindergartner’s backpack.

Wow.

It turns out that the six-year-old found the loaded gun in his grandparents’ bedroom and brought the gun to school to show his friends.

So far, the word is that criminal charges will not be filed. Even so, the school district does have a policy that any child who possesses or exhibits a gun at school will be suspended and recommended for expulsion.

I know a lot of people might keep a loaded handgun in their bedside table, but that is one of those things you need to change once you have a child living in your home. I know when my daughter was born; guns in my hone were moved and stored differently. It seemed a like a no-brainer.

Isn’t there some sort of penalty for the grandparents who have the child living with htem? This seems like the logical thing to me.

I regret that I do not have more time to seek out the wisdom of those around me who have the benefit of having lived many years. I lived in Florida where we are surrounded by the aged. However, my life generally feels too busy to stop and listen.

Last night I was at the library with my daughter. I lost track of her and finally found her having a grand old time with an older man in the DVD section. They were laughing and trading stories and making movie recommendations for one another. When I walked over, he introduced himself and I was gladly invited into the conversation. Mr. Stein is 82, it turns out, and as we stood chatting I heartily appreciated his stories. As we talked about today’s economic crisis, he relayed his own memories of being a child during the Great Depression. He remembered the men on his street who hung themselves after losing jobs, he remembered the people who took jobs digging ditches, only to keel over dead from heat and exhaustion. He remembered the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) and people putting in vegetable gardens. He learned a way of life that lasted all his years, and that he passed to his own children.

We talked also about life up North, day trips to enjoy the Civil War Battlefields, the museums in Washington, DC and cool fall weather.

My daughter has a particular affinity for the elderly. A friend of mine says that it’s a gift. I hope she will glean more wisdom from her interactions with the aged than I have so far.

My daughter is really taking off academically. I have had her in preschools for two years where they had an advanced curriculum and lots of structure, but until now she was just not ready to focus on reading, writing, and such.

Two weeks ago I noticed she was showing an extraordinary interest in math. I bought some workbooks so we can work past the stuff they are doing in Kindergarten and she is positively excelling. Math might just be her gig, which makes me pretty happy. Her fther and I were both more geared toward reading and writing. For us, math was something we were good at, but it took some extra work.

This past weekend, though, Gigi broke down and started writing out her full first name. Until now she would just write Gigi, because her real name intimidated here – it has 9 letters. She just suddenly broke through a barrier, though, and announced she is ready to use that name all of the time. She is also spending hours upon hours with a pencil and paper just sitting and sounding out words. Of course, she is using invented spelling, but you can totally tell what she is trying to write. It shows her phonemic awareness in blossoming.

Finally. I got an offer for a job I actually want. I got the call from the high school, but it’s an informal offer since the county has to receive the recommendation and extend the formal offer.

Although I am fully certified to teach, this position is on a paraprofessional level. I applied for these jobs on purpose, because I want more experience in the classroom with other, more experienced teacher before I take on my own classroom. Plus, the teaching jobs in the Tampa Bay area are very scarce this year and all of my local teacher friends agree that the important thing right now is to get my foot in the door with the district.

I’m excited. The job will keep me moving all day long, working with multiple teachers and lots of students. I will get a lot of variety and have little to no downtime. I need that kind of activity level to move me back into the healthier way of living I used to observe.

So, yay for me! Things are working out.

Added an hour later: ironically, I got a call from two otehr schools this afternoon looking to schedule interviews with me. *sigh*

When I was in elementary school back in the 1970s, my picture would be taken on picture day and then proofs would be sent home to my parents. They were able to see the picture before choosing how large of a package to order from the portrait company.

When did schools stop doing this? For pre-school last year and for kindergarten this year I had to choose my portrait package and pre-pay before the pictures were even taken. I have to hope the pictures turn out OK and that all these portraits I ordered are actually good enough to send out as Christmas gift, which is what I am currently planning?

Do any of you have kids in school and actually get proofs to look at before you have to pay?

Since there is actually a shortage of teaching positions in the district this school year, I started thinking about applying for non-instructional jobs simply to get my foot in the door with the school district and to add to my experience in the classrooms. My first choice was to work as an assistant in an ESE (Exceptional Student Education) classroom. I knew I would not find anything full-time, with benefits, or even high pay. However, I was attracted to the idea of taking one year to glean as much knowledge from highly qualified, working ESE teachers as possible.

Anyway, I have an interview to work 7-hours a day at one of the local high schools as an ESE Associate. Wish me luck. I really feel like if I am indeed offered the position, I will take it. It will mean that I will be an employee of the district, get to know some of the teachers, gain some experience, gain confidence, and the hours at the high school are OK as long as I take my daughter to before-care at her school as soon as it opens. It even looks like by the time I get off work, I will be able to make it to pick up Gigi right as she gets out of school.

Can I just tell you how much it saddens me to know that morally decent people like me and most of the people I took my education classes with are looking hard for work as teachers here in the Bay Area only to hit closed doors over and over? We are all completely certified, come to the field with years and years of real-life professional experience, and solid ethics. However, there are not as many teaching jobs available now as there were only a few short years ago.

We can all accept the job shortage as a reason. But, it is harder to accept schools like Trinity Oaks Elementary in Pasco County (close enough to suit me and all of my friends if we could get jobs there) are hiring people like Joel Cupp.

Who is Joel Cupp? He is a 29-year-old elementary school teacher who used the screen name JCUPP01 to extend invitations for sex to two girls, ages 13 and 14. He also exposed himself on his webcam. It turns out the “teens” he asked to perform sex acts were actually investigators from the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office and state Attorney General’s Office.

He was arrested on felony charges and he subsequently resigned Thursday from Trinity Oaks. He was released today from the Pasco County jail after posting $30,000 bail. He faces three charges of luring or soliciting children to engage in a sex act and one count of lewd or lascivious exhibition.

Here is the kicker. Cupp asked the “teens” their ages and even after they told him, he went on to ask them to get together for sex. He acknowledged their ages, commented on how young they were, and went on to ask about their sexual experience and to even reveal to them that he was an “elementary school teacher.”

Sick. Sick. Sick.

I know we are all worried that our children might be in classrooms with people like Cupp. That is one more reason I want to be a working teacher. At least I can be sure the kids in the classroom with me are safe.

We’re excited about school starting this week. Tomorrow is orientation and on Tuesday morning, my daughter will have her first day as a kindergarten student.

Ironically, Tuesday morning is when Tropical Storm Fay might barrel through the Tampa Bay area. Forecasters are saying that tropical storm and hurricane-force winds of 75 mph or higher will probably gust through here Tuesday.

In fact, the Tampa Bay area will probably be put under a hurricane watch sometime today. That means hurricane force winds are possible in the next 36 hours. There is also a chance that the storm will bring with it tornadoes.

As of now, there have not been any school-closings issued for the nearby counties. In any event, I am getting more water run though the reverse osmosis system and into bottles than usual, moving plants and pots off the back patio, charging my cell phone, and making sure there are batteries in my flashlights.

For me, summer vacation is over. My ex husband and I each have two -2-week blocks of time during the summer with our daughter. I took my first block in West Virginia and Washington, DC to visit my dad. My second block comes to an end this after this weekend and we stayed near home.

Ideally, I would have planned a trip to Atlanta to see my daughter’s godparents, but the cost of gas and airlines tickets kept me away. I can always try and plan it around the next school break.

Kindergarten looms near. My daughter’s time in Pre-K was not as difficult for me, because I only had her in three hours a day, even though for part of the year I opted to leave her an additional three hours. Nonetheless, now she is starting in the public school system and I got her into one of the Fundamental schools here in the county. She is fortunate to have been accepted into the program. The Fundamental schools here historically perform higher on all standardized tests; they have 100% parent participation, a stricter dress/attendance/behavior policy; and automatic filtering into the Fundamental middle schools. This should be very good for my daughter.

In these next two weeks, I am going to do my best to try and obtain a teaching position. Unfortunately, all of the districts around here are cutting back on teachers. They have tighter budgets and fewer students. People are moving away from this area, due to the cost of living.

It’s over. My time with my little girl will forever be different now that she is in school and I will hopefully be working. No more stay at home mommy.