When It Rains, It Pours...

You may have noticed that my posts have been coming less and less frequently lately. I've mentioned before that blogging is just a hobby for me and not something I consider even a part-time job, so when my life gets ridiculously crazy, sadly my blog posts are the first thing to go by the wayside.

And speaking of my life outside of blogging, I've quickly discovered over the last few weeks that when it rains, it pours. In fact, life has my brain so fried that I actually had to go look up the correct spelling of "pours" as used in the previous sentence... I debated between poors and pours for about five minutes.... Geesh, I used to be an adequate speller!

To make a very long story short, I've been fed up and absolutely miserable at my job as a special educator. I work in a district where we have gone full inclusion at the high school level without any regard for the needs of the students. As a result of this movement, pushed along by administration, many of my special education students have dropped out of high school in the past two years. There is little to no room in these "inclusion classrooms" for special education any longer as we're required to abide by the ridiculously rigorous and stringent Common Core State Standards (CCSS) all the while ensuring we're hitting every criteria of a ridiculously biased, inequitable and unfair evaluation rubric every moment of our day, god-forbid one of our two 20-minute unannounced walk-in observations occurs.

There is no time for case management of my special education students. There is no time to discuss their post-high school goals. There is no time to build rapport with them, ask how their baby sister is doing or console them when grandpa dies unexpectedly. There is no time for re-teaching or breaking down concepts - they'll miss the next 10 concepts coming up the pike.

There is no time.

 

 

And there is no money either. But I won't get too far into this issue beyond the somewhat catastrophic event that resulted last week...

 

 

Many moons ago, before the high school jumped into the realm of full inclusion, there used to be what I consider real special education - self-contained classes - for students who truly needed it. I used to be a self-contained teacher... I had my very own classroom where I could keep my belongings. A home away from home. Young adult books lined every book case, posters plastered the walls, WOW Work was featured each week on the bulletin boards.

 

 

The only good to come of the full-inclusion sweep is that my classroom was taken away from me and I was left to find a new place for all my "stuff." (i.e. shoved in the "Narnia closet" in another classroom in a different part of the building and much of it dragged home to my husband's chagrin). Why is this a good thing?

 

Last weekend, the pipe in my former classroom - a room I still use for my advisory and thus still have belongings there - burst. Being a weekend, no one was around and the pipe spewed water, hot boiling water, all over my classroom. Ceiling tiles fell, floor tiles peeled up, most of my stuff was water logged and ruined. The classroom below mine was also pretty badly damaged.

 

There were men cleaner the room all week and it was so hot and humid in the room that I really couldn't go in to assess the damage except to grab a few folders for my advisory students during a quick 20 second run through.

 

I'm kicking myself now for not simply vomiting my way through a sauna-like walk-through of the classroom. What wasn't damaged or destroyed certainly became so after Thursday morning's incident.

 

The pipe in my room was repaired after last weekend, but apparently not well enough because it burst again between Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Inches of water filled the entire hallway and then seeped through the floor, filling the classrooms of the floor beneath it. Nearly 20 classrooms are destroyed. Absolutely destroyed.

 

95% of the footage of classrooms in this video is MY former/current classroom. Anything that wasn't destroyed during the first burst, was destroyed come the second time around.

Then to add to the gloriousness of it all, my husband announced that our washing machine broke mid-cycle. My father giggled when we asked about repairing it - apparently the model is so old that it's difficult to find parts for it to begin with.

So now $900+ later, luckily on an 18-month no interest financing plan, we'll be receiving a new washing machine. NEXT WEEKEND. Thus, I'm out clean clothes 'til then, as well as a husband since he's leaving for a business trip tomorrow.

So when it rains, it certainly poors pours.


Happy Couponing!
-Coupon Mama Massachusetts