Way Out

 Please show me the way out of 2025. 

While I can say that personally I have enjoyed a great many moments throughout this past trip around the sun, I can honestly say that my experience as an American citizen has been far less than fulfilling. 

My career as an elementary teacher has brought me great satisfaction as I have been navigating ever closer to its somewhat tumultuous end. I have been heartened to feel the warmth and camaraderie brought on by spending all those years at the same location. Unfortunately, I find myself at the same time confronted by the real value impressed on education in this great land of ours by once again struggling against budget shortfalls and a salary that pretends to acknowledge the depth of my commitment. I feel somewhat foolish turning once again to the community that I serve to ask them to rally behind us once again as teachers go begging for conditions and compensation that correspond to the service we render. 

This year has been a nearly constant reminder of the value set by those in power for education. Rather than feeling rewarded for a job conscientiously and well done, we have seen budgets for those departments meant to oppress get fed while teachers are left to fight for scraps. 

I know. Sounds a little bit like I am unsatisfied with the basic tennents of my employment. In a country that continues to attempt to alleviate public funding for public schools? Yes, I suppose you could say that I am at odds with that reality. 

And yet, each morning I rise to tilt with those same windmills. 

Happily, I do this quixotic task with a group of like-minded individuals who either never noticed that they are not being paid for all the extra jobs they take on over the course of any and every day or cheerfully take them on (ready for the cliche?) for the kids. 

That cliche is precisely what keeps me tumbling out of bed to face another day in a job that can be one of the most satisfying I can imagine. The edge is taken off just a touch by marching headlong into the fray with a band of like-minded individuals who show up ready to help me roll that boulder up to the top of the hill, if only to pause for a moment before realizing that the same task awaits us the next day. The next week. 

The next semester. 

It's coming. And I am planning on being there to meet that challenge. Forgive me if I sometimes notice the struggle.