school zone ahead
wednesday, august 7, 2002


three of the four kids are in school already this year, but the real school zone is coming and coming soon. saxy is starting junior college this fall, assuming we can get all the bits worked out in time. and i will, hopefully, start subbing.

and neither of us feels ready.

see, saxy has had trouble with school for ages. he can get through most the remedial classes just fine, but any higher than that he has always just lost it. his last effort was a complete disaster. but now we know why. we know why and we can start working around it. however, this will be initially frustrating (not good for a man who frustrates easy anyway) because he has to retrain his thinking on how he learns and work with completely different ways of getting through the usual class stuff.

this is assuming we get through the paperwork trail. he's had his classes canceled because of delayed paperwork and now has to go back, get the classes reinstated, and try to finish up the paperwork that he could not finish the last time he was on campus because the computers were down. now, the first time he turned in paperwork and the computers were down, his paperwork went missing. any wonder he didn't turn it in this time? the whole things has also turned into run around city and has him less inclined to work through the frustration to just get the stuff done. out financial situation doesn't help matters any for him. the college is in the next city over and bus fair is more expensive than you'd think.

so lately, he's been somewhat depressed. it comes and goes, but i can see that the frustration gets to him. he's trying, he really is, and i can see he doesn't want to give up, but it's very hard for him to remain motivated enough to stay on top of things.

my school nightmares are of the teaching kind. right now i am waiting for my scores from the cbest to come in. once i get those, i take them to the nearby district office and tell them i want to substitute. once they hire me, if they hire me, and once i get into the "system" (now, that's a scary word!), i have to hope people will need a sub and call me. this is for the next 2 years, maybe more, because i need to be with my family. my son needs me, my husband needs me. my girls need me too, but not nearly as much as my boys.

will i get called? will i do ok? i have no idea. i know in general subs don't do a whole lot of lesson planning, which may be difficult for me since i find most teachers ideas of how to teach tedious and boring and a complete waste of time. kids have to do more than look up specific definitions (not just any dictionary will do, but a specific book has the "right" definitions) of suffixes and prefixes. that's just busy work and i hate busy work. students hate busy work. busy work teaches nothing.

yep, this subbing thing is going to be trouble.