On Feeling Better

It has been a while since I posted an update.  A lot has happened, but more importantly, I have not been feeling well lately.  Early in the morning on Monday, I laid in bed wondering if the pains that I was feeling in my chest were something to worry about.  When I felt numbness in my left arm and hand along with pain radiating down that arm, I began to panic.  That was when I felt the pressure on my chest.  For a while I did some deep breathing and trying to calm myself.  When that didn't work, I sat up trying to decide if I should wake Michele up.  I didn't have to.

Michele wanted to know what was going on.  After I explained what I was feeling, she immediately went down to the kitchen and got me two aspirin.  She came back with them and a glass of water.  For a while I just sat there.  She kept checking on me.  Eventually, I eased myself back to try to sleep.  I know that Michele watched me until I dozed off.  A couple of hours later, it all started up again.  This time I talked myself down and went to sleep.

When the alarm went off a couple of hours later, I really didn't feel any better, but I got myself going.  I fed the dogs, took my shower, and had some breakfast.  Nothing really seemed to improve, but I went off to school.  Whether I looked bad or the fact that I couldn't control my emotions, Ede, my office mate, and Chad, our principal convinced me to go home.

Then I went to the doctor.  My doctor, Jackie, is a former student.  She checked me out and asked me a lot of questions.  She sent me off for tests and gave me a prescription for anxiety.  So far, the tests have shown no problems with my heart or anything related to my heart.  I still have to see a cardiologist and have a couple of more tests.  Yet, I still have lingering effects that are not explainable except stress and anxiety.

Now, keep in mind, this all came after Michele and I spent a glorious week walking the beach at Emerald Isle, North Carolina.  The day that we left North Carolina, I was feeling great.  I was ready to finish the last few weeks at North before I retired in June.  I didn't recognize that the signals were all there.  Jackie did.  And so did Michele.

Most people know that I "retired" once before.  I really didn't have much trouble with that because I knew that I was just moving away from being a principal.  I loved Jefferson, the staff, the students, and the parents, but I had enough of the politics that were involved in being a principal.  So I left it, only to return to teaching a year later.

This time I am retiring for good.  I know that there are people who doubt me, but I know that I have reached the time in my life that I want to make my own schedule.  I want to go and do what Michele and I want to do.  But she and Jackie say that this very idea is stressful to me.  I really didn't buy into that until I was relaxing in the sun yesterday trying to get past this hurtful feeling.

For 42 years I have gone to a school.  First, it was Whitney Young for three years.  I loved those kids and still miss what they gave to me each day.  Their energy made me want to be a teacher.  The staff was like my family.  They mothered and sistered me, all of them.  Then I moved to North Side and stayed there for 26 years the first time.  Even though I am a South Side graduate, those years put me in touch with students and staff whom I will never forget.  It feels like home to me.  Many of my lifelong friends come from staff and students from those years

Then I went to Jefferson for five years.  I came to love that place as well.  When I entered that building, I knew that they needed me.  Even though there were ups and downs, the staff. students, and parents became an integral part of my life.  While I saw them struggle in my retirement, it hurt me deeply.

Maybe that is why I went back to North.  They needed me because they were struggling too.  So for the next eight years, I have been with my second family.  Many of the names have changed, but the spirit of the school keeps fighting its way back into the lives of the staff and students.  And after rambling about the 42 years I will come to the point, I will miss being a part of that.  I actually hurt to think that I will not be going to a school.

I know that I can volunteer.  I can sub.  I can be a consultant.  All of that misses the point.  When you are a teacher, if you are worth anything as a teacher, what happens to the children in your care matters.  Their success matters.  Their hurts and happinesses matter.  Whether they have a home to go to matters.  Why they don't want to learn matters.

What gets to me the most, I guess, is that I am leaving young people who have become numbers.  What they do are numbers.  Where they go to in life are numbers.  What they do in school is based on numbers.  Every newspaper article and television report about education bears this out.

There are people in the education community who don't understand why I connect with all of the former students that I do in Facebook.  What I don't understand is why they don't make the connection.  I wonder why they don't want to know about these young people (for me, some not so young anymore) who spent a year or more with them.  I wonder why they don't want to congratulate these former students about a birth, a marriage, a promotion.  Why wouldn't they want to send condolences when someone in their family is sick or dying.

I want to stay and fix it.  I have fixed things in education before.  Just writing that, hurts me to the core.  I know that it isn't my time.  I realize that I am that support person outside of the walls of education now.  The challenge is to the educators that I leave in the schools.  And it isn't just North Side, Jefferson, and Whitney Young.  I do want them to care about the kids.  My message is to all educators - forget the numbers every once in a while and remember that each of these children has a story that needs to be heard.  And once the story is heard, never stop listening.