Newbie (35 page)

The students and adults are tired on the ride back to school. We have about forty-five minutes until the end of the day, so I turn on a video and let the kids lay around on the floor to watch it. I have to wake a couple of them up when the bell rings.

On Friday after school, I go to Mr. Chavez’s office. “Is he in?” I ask Mrs. Johnson.

“He’s ready for you. Go right in.”

We exchange greetings, and Mr. Chavez motions for me to sit in a chair in front of his desk. As soon as he sits, I begin, “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately. And by lately, I mean, since before Halloween. Teaching is hard work—almost too hard. There were many times when I thought I should just quit. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you that. I wouldn’t have left you without a teacher, but I didn’t think I could do this. I was sure I was ruining the students in my class …Oh, not your daughter …well, not the others either, but at one point it seemed like maybe I should step aside and let someone with more experience take over. Then Beth helped me figure things out. Teaching is hard, but it also has a big payoff. Every day has joy. I love watching a child’s face as they struggle to learn something hard, then the flash of ‘I get it’ transforming their eyes. I love teaching. I think I’ve done a good job, and you’ve said you think I’ve done well in my observations, so I just wanted you to know that I’d like to stay in first grade again next year.”

Mr. Chavez begins shaking his head, and his eyes look at me like he is going to start by saying “I’m sorry,” so I quickly add, “Oh, right. Of course it has to work for both of us. And it doesn’t. That’s that.”

I move my chair to stand, and Mr. Chavez says, “Even when you were feeling overwhelmed, you were doing a good job, Sophie.”

“But I should have done better?”

“That’s not it. Probably the hardest part of my job is letting good teachers go.”

“Letting go” is a euphemism for “You’re fired!”
It’s the hardest part of your job for me, too
.

“You have done a great job in a difficult grade level with a lot of responsibility. To top that off, you started with very little lead time and pulled your class together well. I am grateful for the service you’ve provided.”

It sounds like he is giving me a compliment. “But?”

“But I don’t have any open positions for next year. You were hired on a one-year contract ending on May 28, 2008. Shelli and her husband are moving back, and she is coming back to teach in the first-grade position.”

“Oh, I hadn’t heard. That’s good news for her—that.”

“I’m sorry, Sophie.”

And there’s the “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks for meeting with me.” I stand and move to the door.

“If we have openings, I hope you will want to apply for them.”

I nod and leave his office and the school.

“Y
ou okay?” Mina asks as I push carrots and peas around my plate.

“I got fired today.”

Mina abandons her dinner and scoots her chair closer to me. “You …what happened?”

“I asked Mr. Chavez to let me teach first grade again next year, and he fired me.”

“Sophie, I don’t get it. Why would he fire you for wanting to teach?”

“I signed a one-year contract. There are no jobs available. I’m not teaching any more. He fired me for next year.”

Mina puts her arm around my shoulder and squeezes. “You really love this job and you’re a great teacher.” Her arm remains hanging around my shoulder and she looks into my face. “You can apply for other jobs, maybe teach somewhere else. It will work out.”

“It just hurts.” I lean in, and she hugs my shoulder again. “I can move and start over, but it won’t be the same, you know?”

“I know.” Than she pauses and says, “You could do real estate. It’s going well for you.”

I grimace, thinking about the breakup of my last partnership.

“Except with a new partner, or maybe go on your own again,” Mina amends.

April 5, 2008

Newbie Blog:

I was Fired Yesterday…In Two Months

That’s it. Not much more to say. So all my stress wondering if I wanted this teaching thing as a career (no, yes, maybe, yes) was really wasted time. There are no positions available at our school for next year. End of story.

On Sunday night, Liam comes over to console me, which I think he might be gifted and talented in. I know kissing can’t cure everything, but we gave it a good try.

Really—who gets fired on Friday and goes back to work on Monday? Oh, yeah, I do. I console myself by thinking that I still have a couple of months to be with my class, so it’s not like I’m being chucked without any warning. And since it just happened at the end of the day on Friday, no one knows what happened except for Mr. Chavez and me.

I round the corner and head toward my classroom to see Beth and Liam chatting by my door. “Come talk to me at recess,” Beth says and turns to her classroom.

“Good morning,” Liam says as we go in. “Are you okay?” It doesn’t sound like a casual “how are you doing” sort of question, but like it should refer to something specific. “Are you going to be all right at work today?”

“Yeah, I’m okay I guess. I’m coming to terms with it. I have a one-year contract. It’s what I signed up for. I was hoping to stay, but I guess not.”

Liam gives me a hug. “Do you want to go out to dinner tonight?”

“Sure, after Beth’s baby shower.”

“I’ll pick you up at six.”

Lunch in the faculty room was a bad idea today. Apparently Shelley emailed Beth, Mel, Kristen, and Jan to let them know she was returning. By the time I sit down to eat, I’m pretty sure I’ve been asked what I’m going to do next year by half the staff.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well, I’m not sure.”

“Nothing for sure yet.”

After school, the other half asks or listens in for my answer as we wait in the library for Beth’s baby shower to start. Good question—what am I going to do? No clue.

I heard it before I actually saw it. I expected one of my students to be sobbing beside the door waiting for me, but as I approach the computer lab, I notice that the overhead lights are off and it’s deadly silent except the occasional sniff and hiccup. As I reach the doorway, I realize that my students are sitting in front of their glowing computer screens with their heads down. The computer teacher’s sub is sitting at her station with her head resting in her palms, leaning over her keyboard, crying.

I place my hand on her shoulder and ask, “Can I help you?”

She startles and looks up. “Are they yours? Can you take them away?”

“Yes, they’re my students. Could you tell me what happened?” I reply, motioning toward the hallway. We both move toward the door, and a few students begin to scoot their chairs. “Stay in your seats until I come back, please.”

We stand in the doorway. “Every half hour, a new class comes in. Then I tell them what to do and they can’t do it and they all need help at once. I don’t know how to do this. These are the youngest ones I’ve had yet. I help one student and two more hands go up. So I go to help them and the rest started lining up behind me and following me around as I moved to the next student.”

“They all have their heads down. Did they do something?” Her gaze toward me is vacant. “Something they got in trouble for?”

Her eyes stare more intently into mine. “I needed it to stop,” she says with a shiver.

So that answer would be no. “Okay. I’ll take my students now. Will you be all right?”

“Thanks. Sure. I have some time for lunch now.”

The sub mumbles to herself as my students line up at the door. “Last month, I managed a web-design firm—trained employees, ran the office, contacted clients, tracked accounting … and I can’t do this. There has to be something else.”

My students are very quiet when we return to our classroom. We sit together on the large rug at the front of the room. Marcus raises his hand. “Are we in trouble?”

“No,” I answer as I sit down beside the easel.

“We had to put our heads down for a long time,” Ellie says.

“The computer teacher just needed it to be quiet for a bit. She wasn’t feeling very well. You’re not in trouble, but thank you for helping her. I’m so proud of all of you.”

After school, I sit at my desk, thinking about the computer sub. I could sub. Well, probably not for the computer teachers, and maybe not for the older grades. But I could be a sub for teachers in the primary grades. I would still get to be with children and work in a school. If I don’t get a job at another school next year, then this could be plan B, to sub.

I open a web browser and find our district’s home page. I select personnel, hiring, pay scales. There are four scales for different kinds of subs—substitute teacher, non-certified long-term sub, certified long-term sub, and permanent sub. I scan through the scales and pull out a calculator.

So a regular sub gets seventy dollars a day—yikes! That’s half of what I get now,
if
I could get work every day. Certified long-term subs get a hundred dollars per day, so two thousand a month before taxes, if there are no holidays—might work if I’m desperate and don’t need insurance. A permanent sub, like what Liam does, has the same pay scale as teachers, and they have benefits, too.

Being a permanent sub would work if I can find an opening. That’s plan B. Plan C might still be real estate. Then plan D is long-term sub, cutting my budget again and probably selling plasma.