The day job

While I would love to be one of those precious few authors who are constantly contracted for their next book, I am not…yet, anyway. To make ends meet, I have a day job. I wish I could say that I have a mindless day job where I can while away the hours thinking of characters and plots, but I can’t say that either. I work with special needs students in an elementary school. My job requires me to be “on” the entire day.

Today was not a good day. In fact, the beginning of this school year has been particularly difficult for no good reason. The kids are wonderful…It’s certain adults that have issues. Being micro-managed throughout the day just doesn’t work with special needs students. As an educator, flexibility is a must. Yet, for some reason there are those who have never done my job, and yet feel qualified to tell me how I should do it. I have many years of experience, but that doesn’t seem to matter. I’m told that I must ruin the day (s) of my students simply because the powers that be have decided that they’d like to “try something different.” Yet, no matter how much I try to remind them of the last failed attempts of doing the same things, it doesn’t matter. Evidently, you have to have a certain number of zeroes on your paycheck in order to be listened to.

Let me tell ya…being pushed around and micro managed gets old REAL quick.

I’m struggling with the idea of leaving. I’ve been there for years. I love…no, I ADORE the students I work with. But it will be so hard to stand by and watch them turn into another statistic, to watch them fall through the cracks of our school system, simply because someone wanted to “try something” for the sake of saving money so the superintendent can take another pay raise this year. I can’t stand by and watch these kids get left behind anymore than I want to be a part of the system that allows it to happen.

I hate being this torn. And to tell the truth, I really don’t need to add any more stress to my already overloaded life.