The Daily News
1 A Day in the Life, Part One: Champagne tastes/beer budget: I keep trying to do a champagne job on a beer budget.
2 Ever feel that way?
3 Haha, yeesh. Who doesn’t.
4 Every Tuesday, like clockwork.
5 No one cares.
6 I know, I know. I feel overworked, underpaid, and under-appreciated, unlike everybody else in the world. Truly now. Come on. Know what you’re thinking.
7 Fits all of us like a glove. Uh, yup!
8 I just don’t git it. It is clearly a conspiracy. Why ALL of us? Why do we all feel that way these days? Are they pumping something in the water, or in the air?
9 Case in point: I spent my entire Sunday correcting papers and planning lessons.
10 I stayed at school last night until around 6:30 writing vocabulary lists, essay topics, and then going into the copy room to a 1943 washing-machine copier that chugged along spitting out around one paper every four minutes. And forget going back-to-back. More on that in a minute. If you even HAVE a minute.
11 Two other teachers waited while my stuff chugged along. One guy brought a bundle of papers to grade because he PLANNED on the thing not working. Our two best machines had broken down, a third is a huge low-income housing project for spiders, so I decided to re-wire this other old clunker so that I would have some semblance of lessons to teach today.
12 Since class sizes have increased plus-3 to an astonishing 35-to-1 for English classes, I have 25 more students per day, which causes all sorts of paper concerns and paper chases.
13 Fortunately I have wonderful students. Unfortunately but fortunately in a strange way, they ALL produce. On paper that is almost one more class per day, times assignments, times repro costs, times trees, times correcting, times parental inquiries about grades, times time spent.
14 The copier in question chugged along, but it couldn’t even copy back-to-back. It was like trying to use an automatic checker at Lucky’s. “Please remove item from bagging area. Please return item to bagging area. Please remove item from bagging area. Please return item to bagging area.” And on and on. It kept telling me to put page one on top of page two, like IT somehow knew which page number was on the bottom.
15 I felt a bit like those guys on Jeopardy playing against Watson, the computer.
16 I would have thought that I was in some sort of short story by Ray Bradbury or Kurt Vonnegut. A 1943 washing-machine clunker of a copier has no idea which page is up. Wannabe Watson. Yet it insisted that I was putting page two on top. I kid you not. I have a witness. My good friend and confidant Jesse Griffin, a former drama director AND a former activities’ director AND a fellow teacher of English 4 was my one-eyed witness. He kept laughing, and even stayed a few minutes to enjoy the Show.
17 It was closing in on 7 p.m. and I wasn’t even close to home yet, let alone able to go online and check my school email. I was unable to finish grading papers from Sunday, and unable to answer any inquiries from students or parents regarding this week’s assignments. And that didn’t include larger general emails about school, never mind my personal email.
18 Fortunately for me I had Fritos and fresh tomatoes for dinner. And a piece of deliciously cold, undercooked chicken, straight out the fridge. No time to cook. By around 8:20 I collapsed, with little done, an okay lesson plan for today, but just enough to swim to the nearest island and hope for no tsunami’s.
19 I forgot to tell my students to lug their books to class yesterday, so half of them won’t have their books today. I can’t get a class set because the book room is only available on Wednesday’s at 3 a.m. due to cutbacks.
20 Meanwhile, parents want complete, up-to-the moment feedback each time it occurs to them to check their student’s grade. They wish for highly expensive champagne.
21 So here it is 2:30 a.m. and I’ve one eye open while my fingers attempt to get the DN out to you. I don’t particularly want to check emails from students and parents in the middle of the night. Yeah, they pay me handsomely to offer these services I realize, and next week is Back-to-School night, which is one lonnnng day, but I’m still willing to March into Hell for a heavenly cause.
22 Bitch, bitch, bitch.
23 Well…yeah.
24 And I’m lucky I have a job. But the general public keeps grousing about how much state workers make, and pensions, and all the rest, and I’m like, “REALLY?” If I were a plumber, I’d be able to charge for every extra minute I put in. If I were a mechanic, and had to go deep into an engine, you could bet the guy waiting for his car would not only get slower service, but that he would get charged plenty for it.
25 But people become incensed if teachers don’t drop everything they’re doing to explain to concerned parents why we didn’t get back to them within twelve seconds of an email that we may never have even gotten to.
26 And last week, the entire email system had collapsed. Several servers were completely down. Mine worked, so I was able to stay in contact with my students and their parents. But I’m realizing that by offering myself up for that, they come to expect the extra hours it seems to tag on. And technically, I offer the service even though by contract, I have absolutely no obligation to do so. I just personally like that I could offer that out. In many ways it is easier, since I don’t have to explain to people that I don’t HAVE to do that. The past few years parents didn’t understand that I would love to be their child’s personal tutor at no added cost, but that I feared the numbers: 175 students times amount of parents times amount of time < the time I have to get it done. And I STILL offered it up this year.
27 On the good end, I’m still pretty ahead of my work this year, and have been way more rested and alert. The trouble is, I’m conking out pretty early from working from dawn until dusk six days a week,and well into the middle of the night at times.
28 I do occasionally allow myself a Saturday just to chill, or to go somewhere unrelated to school. Or just to go shopping for stuff, a lot of it school. Because of the situation with the copiers, I often go to Fed Ex to run stuff, and that is eleven cents per copy. Doesn’t sound like much until you begin multiplying it times vocabulary lists, assignments, grammar lessons, and all the rest.
29 And I’m a veteran teacher, mind you. I know to give in to the job. Battling it ended years ago.
30 Yesterday I looked into the room of a younger teacher. The guy was at his computer, head tilted, staring at the screen. I was on my way to the copy room unaware that a routine trip was going to wind up with a rusty clunker of a copy machine wasting hours and paper and other people’s time. I probably spent at least an hour in that room.
31 I got back, organized all my papers, stapled and hole-punched a couple of reams of copies, and finally said, “Enough!” As of this writing I STILL have papers lined up, a stapler next to them, and a hole-punch, which, by the way, jammed and needed me to dig out paper that had gotten stuck in the holes. It took a fork, a knife, and a bazooka to loosen the stuff.
32 As I finally left, I glanced into that teacher’s room. He was in the same exact position, hadn’t moved in two hours. Head was still tilted, staring at the screen. He looked completely shell-shocked.
33 I remember those days. It was like you are STILL there, trying to do it for the parents and kids, and for everybody else, and the reality is that you have to go another fifteen rounds tomorrow while your eyes are still bleeding from today.
34 I thought of the teacher who simply planned to spend an hour in the repro room, expected delays, brought in papers to grade while waiting in line to use a beat-up washing machine disguised as a copier.
35 On my way out to the parking lot, my good friend Francisco, our evening custodian who is pure gold, shouted from the fence, “You working hard, señor?”
36 I know he works ten time harder than I could ever imagine, but I shouted back, “I always work hard, man!” He smiled and told me that we had to put our heads together to figure out how to get rich.
37 I said, “The only way to get rich is to work hard!” He laughed, and then I added, “And to strike oil!”
38 He laughed, waved good-bye, and it truly made my day. As I said, the guy is pure gold.
39 There were around six cars left in the parking lot as the shadows slanted at odd September angles, and I pulled the T000000NDRA out of there and headed literally into the sun, which still was a ways off. I smiled, because I had done all that I could do to make it happen for everybody, and sighed that it still wasn’t enough.
40 Lucky for me I had my Fritos and tomatoes. And were it not for that cold, undercooked chicken, I would never have had a meal fit for an emperor.
42 Or for a guy pouring a can of beer into a champagne glass.
43 It’s almost 4 a.m. Phoebe just reminded me with a high-pitched bark. At least I wasn’t awakened.
44 I probably never would have gotten back to sleep.
45 I’m climbing in right now. It’s about time. Morning becomes electric, and I have to smile in the mirror really soon here and say to myself, “It’s showtime, folks!”
46 And then head back out for the Show.
47 Nighty nights, and good morning. Just thought I’d share.
48 It’s what we do. It’s what we all do.
49 Live life.
50 Love life.
51 Peace.
