Roller Coaster Friday

To quote the estimable Shel Silverstein:

Oh what a day, oh what a day,
My baby brother ran away,
And now my tuba will not play.
I'm eight years old, and turning gray,
Oh what a day, oh what a day.

In the illustration that accompanies the poem, the baby brother is hiding in the tuba. You may or may not need that information to appreciate the world-weariness expressed in the verse.

Anyway, yesterday. First, I had a vivid dream that I had discovered that Atara, one of the worst of the difficult kids, was actually my little sister by a previously undiscovered affair of Mr. Bluejeans Sr. In the dream, Atara, my parents and I were all at Denny's, having lunch together. Atara kept stealing my French fries, and poking me, and whispering mean things. My parents kept telling me that I had to be nice to her, and understanding, because she was littler than I, and new to the family. (I am thirty-four. Atara is fifteen. She looks nothing like me or my father. I think that I am getting too emotionally invested in this job.)

Then I arrived at school, and discovered that one of the teachers (we have four full-time) is leaving to spend more time with her family. This was her last day. Whammo.

Then we had a knock-down, drag-out emotional trainwreck in the staff lounge about the field trip, which ended with my leaving school with twenty-seven kids, plus parent drivers, plus Yehuda the Special Ed Teacher who, thank God, decided he'd come along for the ride and run interference for me.

Then we had a field trip, which went great, more or less. We were going to see another charter school, in business for the past decade, and on which we are slightly modeled. It was cool. My kids thought their kids were very white (they are), and also didn't have very nice manners, but they liked the cool equipment and technology they had, and some of my boys now want to start a grantwriting club to see if we can also have an electronic music lab and a greenroom. I managed to borrow some books from the English department. All cool.

Anyway, we are down to three full-time staff, and will probably not be hiring a full-time replacement for the departing co-worker. This job is about to get very, very intense. Our ed director is looking very tired.

There's a lot I'm leaving out of these posts about the school, in the interest of not creating a situation if anyone connected to the situation should read them. On the one hand, that seems totally unlikely. No one connected to the school is involved in the Jewish commmunity in any way that I know of. The odds of them reading this and recognizing the situation seem astronomically small. So I could probably say everything I'm not saying.

At the same time, I worry. Eh. Maybe I say too much.