Not this week, but last ... a rant

Not this past Thursday (two days ago), but a week and two days ago, I was driving home from work and I was pretty bummed.  It was one of those days where the dreary weather and all the stresses of our lives were wearing me down, and I was just ... I won't even say glum, just sad.  Just plain, old fashioned, lonely and sad.  We're here in Maine, but we're not really unpacked yet, things are still in storage and/or MIA, the kids don't really have a playroom yet, and I was really incredibly sad about how I have no girlfriends.  I felt like I had (have, really) no one to grab a quick lunch with or meet for a playdate (for the kids and Mommies!) or walk the mall with, or ... heck, even just sit around with a glass of wine and talk to. 

As you can imagine, once I was thinking too hard and feeling so sad, the list kept coming.

• CAM (at the time) hadn't been invited to a single birthday party -- and I know the kids in her class must have had birthdays, right?  So is she cursed with my gene?  Or is it just that they don't "do" parties up here? 

• Neither kid has been able to go to Kindermusik, because it simply doesn't exist in Maine.
  
• CAM's birthday is coming up, and we'll have a party, but WHM's is close behind and there are only four kids, including him, in his preschool class.  Who will we invite to his party? 
  
• I don't have a place to craft, and Mick's "office" is the kitchen table...

You get the idea.  I was sad about not having friends and I was feeling lonely, and the whole thing snowballed on me.   

(Point of fact: I teach as part of a team, and my teammates are nothing short of awesome.  I love them, and I am thankful every day that I had the good luck and God's grace to end up with them.  They make my job great on the good days, good on the bad days, and bearable on the unbearable days!  So I do have friends, I just don't have the kinds of non-work friends here that I had there. And yes, I realize that's vague.  That's because I have friends in NH and Mass and Alabama and Georgia and my sister is in Florida, but there's no one here.  In Maine.  Where I am.  Remember the movie "Kids," where the guy sings "I have no legs"?  Think of that, only "I have no friends."  That was me.)

Here's the link if you want to get the song in your head.  heh heh heh!  (You're very welcome, by the way!)

Okay, okay, so it wasn't quite a pity party, but it kind-of was. You get it.  I was sad.  Rough week. 

Then I came home, and a friend who's never been a teacher posted on Facebook a link talking about how wrong tracking is in high school classrooms. 

And THAT's when I about lost my mind.  You see, this person is in a position of authority -- a position to enact such policy -- in a school system.

I don't want to get too much into the tracking issue here -- trust me, I'll get ramped up again and post about it some day, I'm sure.  For now, let's just say that there's enough garbage that teachers have to deal with these days, that having someone who's never been a teacher tell me (or an entire school system) that that all kids should be together is someone who deserves to teach a in "heterogeneous" classroom!  They should get all the the warm fuzzy "everyone can achieve at the same level," "the smart kids can and should help the lower achievers," socialist nonsense love they can muster for a year.  Heck, I'll even sing kum-ba-yah for them.  Then, come back and let's chat.

Until then, I have two words.

One starts with F and the other rhymes with "cough."

Rant over.  Thank you for reading.

--Jen

p.s.  this is not meant as a personal attack on my friend.  In fact, she's the kind of friend where we could sit for a long time and have an intelligent discussion on this topic and I know she'd be open-minded in terms of listening to the opinions and experience of a teacher (or teachers).  In fact, I'm sure she'd welcome such a discussion with me or anyone else.  I suppose my dander was up more because if that's how she feels, what about all the other people in positions of authority who are NOT reasonable, and who just act based on nothing but theory?  Well, we end up with the nonsense we have now, and it's incredibly frustrating and infuriating.  That's what.

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