In Which I Feel Vindicated. Sad, But Vindicated.

So here's the thing. Last may in my position at RRPS, they sent around a proposal for some of their ideas for the coming year. I read through it, which I actually rarely do (I just sort of sail through life and do things impulsively, without giving much thought, except for work.)

Something didn't seem quite right. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but their problems-suggestions-expected outcomes didn't seem quite right. I spoke with the head of the union about it, who agreed with me, and then she mentioned that she was moving to a different school and asked if I wanted to be the union rep.

"No," I replied. "I'm not coming back next year."

Since that time, especially with not receiving much of an income during September and October while my work situation shook out, I'm gnawed at the skin on the side of my thumb as I worried that I had brought us to financial ruin by doing this. Even though Baboo makes a good living, I have years of struggling before I met him that gave me a permanant anxiety about such things.

Then, in October, when I started my new job, I sent emails to some of my old teacher friends giving them my new email address. They responded with congratulations, "howareyou"s and then proceded to tell me how awful things are. How many teachers had already quit, and then there was a hiring freeze, leaving the remaining teachers over their legal limit on classroom size. In addition to that, I already knew that they had reworked the schedule so that I would be teaching nearly twice as many students the same curriculum in half as much time.

Then, today, Baboo heard about this: http://kob.com/article/stories/S691678.shtml?cat=504

This is one of those times that I'm not happy to have been right. But I'm relieved that I apparently saw the writing on the wall and got out in time. This, in my opinion, is at least one of the end-products of NCLB.

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