Meeting Apples

No apples on the menu for this afternoon's meeting of the association but other goodies will be in attendance.

Again I have put off posting to this blog for too long and am ashamed of my lax behavior. I don't have a good excuse for being away all this time, just lazy. I do feel a bit ADD these days and wonder if it is part of the grieving process for me? Oh well, I just have to plow on because the holidays are upon me and I have things to accomplish to that end.

Back to the meeting and its agenda. We are going to be talking about the finalization of our latest contract with the district. Whew! We start the process of negotiation again in February so I feel sort of like we have been slogging through thick deep mud for the last one and a half years or so.

We will also be touching, briefly, on the subject of continuing professional development for guest teachers and how it pertains to relicensure. I checked the state commission's last meeting (November 4, 2010) agenda and there is still no final word on how or even if that will be a reality sometime after the beginning of the new year. I feel very much up in the air about the prospect of having to collect PDUs to renew my teaching license and, personally, would like some particulars so that I can get on with my professional life. Again, that feeling of slogging through deep mud.

Guest teaching has been very slow for me in the last 30 days. I am too bummed out to mention here how many days I DIDN'T work in the last 30 so I won't. Suffice it to say, it has been abysmally slow for me. I hope all the other guest teachers who want to work are getting as many assignments as they can handle. But if you are getting plenty of work I am quite envious. I used to take the attitude that if I wasn't working much it didn't really matter -- my spouse makes a good living (knock wood) -- but I find, every year, that we are dependent on my meager paycheck more than the last. I will say, I anticipated a drop off in assignments, due to the suffering economy and rapidly falling school fund reserves so I am not all that surprised but it is humbling and makes me question my abilities as a professional educator when days go by without even a chance to turn a job down. On such days I wonder, silently or aloud, what I have done wrong, who did I irritate enough that I am not being called back? I am almost ashamed to hope I am not the only one who is feeling left out in the cold -- no pun intended -- by this slow season.

On the upside of the downturn in guest teacher assignments I am experiencing is that I have gotten a few messy storage places in the house straightened and some junk tossed. Just yesterday I went through two of the kitchen 'junk' drawers (I can open and close them with ease now) and the cupboard that holds all the plastic wrap, aluminum foil and wax paper products. The latter effort means that those containers don't cascade out onto the dirty floor every time one of us opens the cupboard door. Life is always better when things are clean and organized, now if I could just motivate myself enough to do the cleaning part.

Question: Do you have 'junk' drawers, closets, boxes, baskets . . . ?

Since I do not expect much in the way of work for the last two days before Winter Break I should have time to post here often. Look for more frequent entries.