Nightmare

I'm at work, trying diligently to juggle the aspects of my job description: assessment and evaluation, report writing, meetings, writing Individual Education Plans, returning phone calls from desperate parents, meeting with 80 students a week and trying to address their individual needs, consulting with parents and teachers, collecting behavioral data and graphing it, and bucket loads of paper work. All this while preparing for an audit and trying to renew my license. I become aware that I have no office and my principal gives me a student desk and says I can have a space in a third grade classroom. I choose a place in the back and try to get to work in spite of teacher instruction and 30 students talking to me. One of the legs on the desk collapses and so does my patience. I run out of the classroom and find the principal in the hall. I demand to have an office and he lets me scream at him while he walks down the hall but he gives me the stink eye. He then sees two plants and he asks me what is wrong with them, they don't look so good. I cease my diatribe and focus on the plants. He walks away. I continue my angry quest. I am more important than this! (Or not?) I go up to the room that was initially designated as my office, a spacious room with a view. There is another school psychologist that I know working there. There is no furniture. and she is shuffling some papers. She, unlike myself, is happy. I start my rant, using my "I Statements." The principal and the head of the District Appeals Committee show up and say I can have half of her office. (my office)

Interpretation: I have felt overwhelmed at work to the point of freaking out. Demands are becoming impossible because of an ever increasing focus on data driven intervention and law suit prevention. The necessary paper trails, and their required perfection, even though I understand the importance of them, are humanly impossible to create. Audits and evaluations loom over our heads. My other responsibilities have also become more demanding. More children are coming to school with more serious problems. They arrive at school with heartbreakingly impossible situations in their lives. Meanwhile the resources of the District to adequately address these additional needs, remain the same.

Some school districts have school psychologists to do assessments and evaluation, and counselors to do the counseling. This is sounding more attractive to me. Jordan District uses School Psychologists to fulfill both these roles.

In reality, I have the best, most supportive principal I have ever had, a brand new school with a lovely large office and a dream of a team with which to work. The rest of the dream, the nightmare part, is accurate. The day before Christmas break, my principal came to my office and asked how I was holding up. He told me that there was no wonder we were all overwhelmed. He had just made a list off the top of his head, of the students with severe disciplinary and psychological needs. There were twenty-nine and some of my caseload was not on his list. Before the day was done, we added two more. I hope that my nightmare pushed the reset button of my psyche and I am ready to go back and face my challenges with renewed energy and optimism.

I'll bet the plants died.

1980

When Michael and Noelle were teeny, the Equal Rights Amendment was an issue in the forefront. Its existence caused great alarm in the Mormon community and I was a victim of the scare tactics. Stories of women in foxholes were almarming, tand he feminists seemed like crazed demon-women, bra burnings were humiliating. To my way of thinking the feminists were not very feminine. Were these women really female? They were a different brand, that's for sure. It was a very polarizing, emotional issue. Not one woman I knew, including myself, supported the ERA and we were quite emotional about it, yes even crazed. There was a woman from Nampa named Helen Roelofs who wrote shocking, pro-ERA articles in the Idaho Statesman. I couldn't stand it. I wrote a Letter-to-the Editor in regards to one of her articles. It took me forever to compose and I thought it was a masterpiece. It was very emotional. You could hear the sobbing in the background by reading the letter. I was so proud when my opinion that a woman's place was at home raising children and supporting a husband was printed in the newspaper. A few days later to my surprise, Helen Roelofs called me. What a gracious, articulate woman she was. She thanked me for my response to her article and we chatted for awhile. I was confused. Helen Roelofs wasn't a crazed demon-woman. She was intelligent, mature and gentle. I went to the library and checked out a book, Having it All, by Helen Gourley Brown, a prominent businesswoman and feminist. I loved it, but now that I am older and wiser, I realize that women shouldn't have to have the impossible burden of thinking they can have it all. Why can't we just have what we want?