Stop! It's Lotto Time!

We are in week 12 of the most dismal year ever. 

Our new superintendent (a member of the Rhee camp), wants to shake things up and has said he is quite okay with a 25% turnover rate. In a school district of 10,000 strong, that’s 2,500 teachers that would get fired, quit, or disappear (never to be heard of again).  Keep in mind that this bold statement is coming from a guy who has been unable to fill the 300 vacancies (which has currently grown to almost 400) that this school system has had since week 1. 

Every day I am looking over my shoulder. Just tape a big red and white target on my back. 

My grade level team decided to start a little lotto pool between ourselves. Yes, it has come to that. In my 16 years as a teacher, I have never had the serious desire to get out until this year. As one of my co-workers stated last week: “My joy has been stolen.” And like the Sting Soul Cages tour T-shirt that was stolen out of the laundry room of my apartment complex 20 years ago, I don’t think I’ll ever get it back. 

They just push and push and push. Threaten and threaten and threaten. They blame and blame and blame. It is my fault that my students come from poor single parent families that are on welfare, multiply like rabbits, and don’t value education enough to give it 10 minutes out of their day. 

I think we have all had it. I’m looking for a way out, and being that my degree is not exactly conducive to going into another field, I’m going to start playing some numbers. After all, you can’t win if you don’t play.

I think if I win, I just won’t show up the next day. No phone call. No email. No sub-plan. 

5 years from now, people will still wonder about me. “Whatever happened to Mr. Ed U. Cater?” they’ll say.  

It will become a story of legend. “The last time anybody saw him, he was leaving from his classroom in a daze, muttering to himself about DOL’s, Objectives, Spot Observations, and not being able to make a horse drink,” someone will respond. 

“I heard he’s living under a bridge….that he just snapped,” someone else will say. 

And, I’ll be sitting on the beach, sipping a Strawberry daiquiri, thinking sadly about the shit that my colleagues have to shovel through everyday.