Touchstones

Have you ever noticed how sometimes all we really need to make it through a horrifically difficult time in our lives is something incredibly simple and easy?  A memory, a feeling, a sweet-sad something from deep inside makes all the nightmares, villains, and boogeyman go away?

I came to this conclusion recently in the face of overwhelming stress and anxiety.  I am a Texas school teacher, at the end of my career.  I fear I may also be coming to the end of public education in Texas.  Let’s face it; this State is not education friendly.  The rich elite in Texas want to send their progeny to high-performing private schools, and they demand that the funds culled from everybody’s pockets by property taxes pay for it through vouchers.  They are in favor of doing away with public education all together if they can.  To tell you the truth, if they will let poor and troubled kids into their top-flight private schools, and everyone still has a fair shot at an education, then I am in favor of vouchers and the privatization of schools too. 

But fat chance of that, huh?  So right now the political system is forcing an agenda on public schools.  The new State-mandated tests are arriving in full force.  Now, instead of passing one high-stakes test to get a high school diploma, kids have to pass as many as sixteen end-of-course STAAR exams.   Kids are up against it.  Frustrated and over-stressed, more than half of them are giving up and dropping out.  It is the main reason the prison industry is booming in the Lone Star state.  So, about the time I am ready to declare total bankruptcy and retire for the year and a half before I croak, they will be putting a huge fence around the city of Dallas and telling all the non-criminals to move to the wealthier suburbs of Austin.  I will be forced to stay with the ax murderers, drug dealers, and democrats because I can’t afford to move. 

Schools will be run for profit, and the blame will go not to the politicians who gave us these impossible accountability goals and cut our funding at the same time, but to teachers like me.  Studies show that teacher’s do have a very large effect on student success or failure.  I’ve been at it for thirty years already, so at least thirty years worth has to be my fault.  I am increasingly responsible for paperwork and documentation for everything from learning outcomes, to lesson plans, to student handicapping conditions, to Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, to… well, you get the idea.  I have to fill in all the numbers for politicians so they can prove Texas teachers are not doing a very good job and they are reducing my classroom teaching time to allow me to complete the paperwork.

So, what does that have to do with touchstones, you ask?  Ah, I’m glad you asked that!  I have been sinking deeper and deeper into despair for the last few weeks.  Money is running out even though I and my wife both make a teacher’s salary.  How could we be having a hard time while making such a boat-load of money?  Why is the boat sinking?  Food has been going up in price.  I paid more than sixty dollars today for less than twenty food items.  I had not realized I had been eating so much gold-plated food.  Gas has been going up.  Gold-plated gas too maybe.  And I only have a forty minute commute to school, one way.  Job stress and home stress and stress stress have all been conspiring to kill me.  And something had changed to make it all worse.  What had changed?  I wasn’t sure until I was on my way to work last Monday.  As I drove past the Richardson Public Library, which I do every school day, I saw the answer.

Clifford the Big Red Dog!  Yes, the children’s section of the Richardson Library has a big red stuffed toy dog that sits on one of the shelves.  Every morning as I drove past for the last three years, I have been checking to see that Clifford was still there, giving comfort to young readers with his big dopey grin.  It was important to me.  I know, I know… it’s like having to sleep with a teddy bear, but it did actually make me feel a lot worse when Clifford was gone for washing or some other unknown reason.  He disappeared from the library window early in January.  That was about the same time when the tired-old-teacher blues hit me.  I needed to see that silly stuffed toy every morning in order to feel good about my job and whatever difference I might still be making.  He was my touchstone, my reminder of what is essential, those things that the fox in St. Exupery’s The Little Prince reminds us are invisible to the eye. 

Now, I head to work in the mornings, see Clifford, and feel easier in my mind, ready to teach the world and hang on to my job for the next one hundred years… or at least the one more year it takes for this Texas governor to truly kill public education in this state.