Tomorrow I need to bottle apricots. That was my plan today but I couldn't move. THANK YOU to Doug and Kay Baker who called me today because they knew it was going to be tricky to step back into the house as Andy drove off to work. I cried all day and wrote a clunky blog about it. The Bakers are both retired teachers who changed my life. I can never say how much - but I see their influence on me almost daily. They are family. They are my people. I rarely see them - they live in Las Vegas and now work on cruise ships all over the world but they remembered to check in on me today, perhaps the greatest moment of the decade. I love you.
A 30-year education career is scary now. I'm tired of the drills, spooky dreams about hiding from shooters with 60 kids in one dressing room, the ever-moving standards, the endless theories of best practices, kids drawing penises on my Prius. For real. My dad retired after his career of 34 years; teaching junior high. I want him to know how astonishing it is to me now that I have done it too. I KNOW how hard you worked! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! So few people last even 3 years. He and my mom brought up 7 kids on that salary, none of us are in jail and they are still married. My parents are a miracle.
(Alas, he's on a bowl full of meds just like me.)
I knew this day was coming. After leaving Tuacahn High School 12 years ago, I felt the birdcage door bang shut, and reverberate inside me. I needed to finish the 30-year sentence so I could collect 60% of my salary while I still live. It's called a pension. I felt trapped trying to earn this pension, but I knew it would be a blessing if I could do it. To know Andy and I can still pay our medical bills despite our limited skills and our bodies, minds, and hearts breaking down because of our jobs... a blessing. LOL. The irony.
When Andy (my husband, whom I also call and will call The Goat) and I left the overfilled Tuacahn High for the Performing Arts (which no longer exists), I ugly cried. Tuacahn had failed to support the families I begged to enroll. I was embarrassed and heartbroken to leave that student body, but we knew too much. The abuse was real behind the Padre Canyon curtain. I had to go. I had to take The Goat with me. We were also reeling from working 60+ hours a week through many miscarriages and the death of a child. Depression they said. Zoloft they said, in fact, Zoloft with a Lexapro chaser just for kicks and giggles. I waited for the giggles.
It became impossible to maintain our mission statement at Tuacahn but I might have been the only one who cared. I was the one assigned to build accreditation requirements after all. I knew the lies we were living. But I adored the kids (Trent! Tanner! Too many to name!) They were my people. One day, after ugly crying to a board member, I pressed print on a letter of resignation that I had typed three years earlier. I pinned it to my cork board - but no one ever came into my office, so no one ever saw it. It took me a full year to have the guts to turn it in. After a particularly difficult meeting, The Goat said (like the good pioneer he is) "we will find our people somewhere else."
Our beloved Sheldon Worthington gave us both jobs at his charter school "Salt Lake School for the Performing Arts." We headed north. If misery had company it was that school. Had we not learned our lesson? Within 2 years the school had been named "Utah's Best Charter School" but the entire faculty, including Sheldon, left.
Charter schools are fickle as hell. Being an administrator at a charter school = hell on steroids.
Without a job to speak of, we parked our UHaul in Spanish Fork for The Goat's interview at Spanish Fork High School. A miracle of hiring occurred - my brother from another mother, Everett Kelepolo, happened to work in that district office. So within ten minutes of walking into the Nebo District offices to sign The Goat's paperwork, I had a job as a Debate and English teacher. I was thrilled to go back to the classroom. That would fix me. Theatre be damned. I was a good debate coach - not great, but I could come home at a decent hour and my paycheck would actually go up. (Ah, charter schools...)
The only job ALMOST as tough as being a drama teacher, is debate coach who also teaches English. That fire to "bring home the hardware (trophies) and instill in my students the PASSION I had for writing cases and developing argument papers... could do it for 12 more years? After year two, the debate program was exploding and I was imploding. To keep the program competitive, we had to go to tournaments every single weekend. I would grade essays while listening to the pros and cons of how we were on the verge of nuclear war with China and what we should do about it. I started crying out in my head, "Please, God, find me a drama job. I'm suffocating in here! I need to open my wings! Please, if You could make the cage just a little bigger..."
So I finally fasted and prayed.
See the thing about me fasting is interesting. I haven't written in a long time and you will see that I am a devout Latter-day Saint despite the grand exodus of my friends. I judge no one. Agency. Use it. I can't leave religion because too many things have revealed themselves to me through fasting. It's a gift. I'm humbled by its power. Latter-day Saints believe (and I swear by it) that if I deny myself food and water for 24 hours it will clear my mind and help me focus on a specific need. Answers will be quick. That is my official signal to my Heavenly Father that I am at my rope's end and need BIG help. Well, that fast went past the 24 hours. I hit the carpet in prayer for hours.
I digress. But fasting, try it. You'll see.
The next day, an unexpected part-time drama job became available at the high school, just two miles down the road.
Their principal had called to ask me for advice about how to get a drama program to grow. So I went over to Mr. Peery's school, nonchalantly thinking he would pick my brain for a minute. I often consult administrators and fine arts departments now (that I'm old). I was so sad that this job was only part-time. We had just built a new house in Spanish Fork! So, without a hope in the world, I came straight from my school, wearing jeans and a t-shirt that said "I'm secretly judging your grammar right now." He laughed, but the joke was on him because he didn't know I was still fasting.
When I walked through Mr. Peery's door, an ARMY of sustaining angels walked in behind me. That office was FULL. I almost laughed out loud. After an hour of spilling my secrets, I agreed to teach three English classes while I built the drama program to be full-time and he allowed me to open a class called "Musical Theatre." (Also the Nebo District has been a great place to work! There are a lot of water fountains at SHHS. Stopped by two on my way out.)
Salem Hills High School sits in the middle of some affluent neighborhoods. As I drove around, I knew there would be families with college degrees and kids in private lessons. That is the recipe for building arts programs. Lesson one: market to the families who live on the side of a mountain. There it is folks. You're welcome. It will cost you a consultant fee to hear the rest of the lessons and I am not cheap anymore.
After a year at SHHS, I was delivering my English textbooks back to the SHHS library from whence they came. (I fasted a lot that year - ha!)
I had the best group of students and Drama Mamas and Papas at Salem!! GAH! Building the program was fast and fun. Opening doors and gifting kids your time is such a high for me! It was a Mutual Admiration Society almost immediately.
Almost.
As I've written before, 90% of the parent population at any given school is wonderful! The other 10% will skin you alive and eat your bleeding heart. The problem with all those BYU folks heading up those fancy families on the hill, is that they want to impose on you what they think is appropriate for their children to perform in. (Yes, I did just end a sentence with a preposition.) And I KNEW what was going to be best - but they didn't know me so I can't blame them.
My first musical was changed from "Children of Eden," the world's most moral musical, to the Pagan "Once on This Island" with a measly 18 white kids. Three of the leads were sophomores. Even the stage manager was a sophomore. Everyone else dropped out of Children of Eden "for religious reasons." You can read that blog another time. I had caught my foot in an ant hill immediately.
I would have to work my butt off to earn the trust of the ants.
It took those four sophomores (and the great juniors and seniors that gave me the benefit of the doubt) just three years to rally their friends to a STATE CHAMPIONSHIP. Gosh, I love you Grace, Hyrum, Emma, Katie, the entire cast of The Curious Savage...David!!!! You know who you are. I love that your parents let you stay in my controversial program. I love your perfect parents too. Lesson 2: don't do anything controversial. Oh, wait, I was going to make you pay for that. (Make sure that the only controversy is over you stealing kids from the choir program. BTW - I love Justin Bills more than my luggage.)
I'm not going to lie...I was in seventh heaven over that 30 lb. State trophy and the fire engines escorting us into town as we yelled and screamed with joy in our yellow-striped chariot. But instead of feeling the passion come back after so many years of crawling out of the Padre Canyons of the charter world, I had learned another truth too: once you find yourself competing against The Goat and you beat him and then he beats you and then you beat him...you see the problem? Also, you stay at school longer, your dogs become feral and your medications do not go away, they just change from depression to anxiety. Hello, Propranolol with Cymbalta chaser! Oh, and don't forget the Ambien. SO MUCH AMBIEN.
Four years into building that awesome program with those awesome parents, a strange death occurred of someone from my past. I got a text from my brother that the inevitable had happened. I ran across the hall to Justin's office. He just closed the door and went back to class making the kids sing something louder than my sobs for the sake of my hard-as-ice reputation. I truly thought I was having a heart attack. Urgent care. Nope. "Trauma-induced anxiety attack" they called it. The attacks were getting so hard to control but my meds could not be increased, legally. "You need a therapist." Teacher, teach thyself. I was an empty vessel. Dry as a desert canyon. No passion, no joy, just pumping out shows, one after another to avoid going back to English, no reason to go home because The Goat was also pumping out plays to build the Spanish Fork program.
The Goat was in therapy. It was awesome for him. I was hesitant. SO MUCH to say to a stranger. Could the knots be undone? The Goat convinced me to go to a therapist! And in my second session, he fell asleep. For real.
I had hold of a rope but I didn't have the strength to tie a knot in it and hang on. At that point, in cage living, I was just three years away from a pension earned by teaching kids to love themselves through and on the stage and I had to walk away. I knew the signs. I stayed long enough to let a few of my blessed and dear students graduate with me, and then I headed back to English at the junior high level, for an excruciating last three years in the cage. I could teach those tiny tots how to love "The Outsiders." And I did. (S.E. Hinton, who wrote The Outsiders was famous for beginning a sentence with "and" so I dedicate that last sentence to her.) This time I learned how to teach English from the other English teachers at the school. They nurtured me. It was a gift. Thank you ladies. Thank you, Merissa.
To make a 12-year-long story short, (me?) after three blessed years of working with two of the greatest administrations on the planet, On May 23th, 2024, I shut the door to room #103 at Springville Junior High. I pulled out my daily Honeycrisp apple for the drive home. But I couldn't move. I ate the entire thing sitting in the parking lot, in my old Prius, afraid to start the next chapter of my life. I ugly cried all the way home and my little dogs greeted me like they always do, like I had been gone for 34 years, only this time, it was true.
...
The restorative summer weeks are over. When The Goat walked out the door to go back to school this morning, I waved from the door. I wanted to yell "Come back! Don't do this to yourself! I'm sorry I got you into this mess! I know what's ahead!" He has 12 years left in the cage from today. I ugly cried, but not for me this time...for him.
Epilogue:
Teaching school is a trip. A very long, very dry, thankless sacrifice to humanity. I denigrate all teachers to lie and say "It isn't a sacrifice. I just loved kids and it was a dreamy ride!" HA! Well, opening nights were pretty dreamy sometimes. Taking kids to the Shakespeare Festival was always dreamy - but I never thought "travel agent" was going to be part of my job. That part sucked so much. (I just heard my mom, from the other end of the county, say "I wish she wouldn't say suck.") Seeing my kids in casts on Broadway - dreamy. Being sued by a certifiably crazy parent SUUUUUUUCKS. Having a superstar parent sit for hours and sew costumes - DREAMY! Well-earned standing ovations - dreamy. Ah-ha moments are dreamy, someone begging you to help them "come out" to their parents - positively holy. Seeing a kid in a wheelchair get the spotlight in a musical, also holy times. But the backbreaking overtime, hearing someone say "you knew what you were getting into," or "You make more than our police do..." makes me ugly cry.
Now that I've retired, I think I'll open this blog back up and blow your mind. You might be a born teacher (like I always thought I was), but there will be things you can never control...without meds and a therapist that is.
Stay tuned. I have wings now and I'm going to use them.
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