publish

I know I've vacillated way too much: like I said to the editor in an e, I started thinking about how seeing niece Meg right before I went to the John Mellencamp concert and she was talking a little bit about her new job.

It was a departure from whipping butts. And she was going to give the test a go for the third time. And then some machinations at Alegent where they were going to have a veteran's day breakfast and Meg was coming up with ideas on how the festivities could be arranged. But these ideas, from what I could gather in the conversa that I heard coming across the table (I was sitting next to Meg's new hubbie, Caleb. I was polite but really wanted to get the latest from Meg. But from what I could gather it was Meg's ideas that were deposed.

So at any rate, I had e to the editor. For some reason, having published an op-ed in Nov., out of the clear blue, I penned a complaint about the difficulties a student faces when he/she suspended. And, I was surprised that it was run. Gotta go, the editor e'd to me, that they would run the piece in Thursday's paper. Well, to make a long story short, I was thrilled beyond belief. I'd been on something of a dry spell. Only one during the year and suddenly it was a trip to Memorial Park...and this piece was published. And then Nov. And then the e. I just basically wanted to keep the streak going. So that was part of my nervousness about bothering the editor.

And he did respond to me. I mean, I've played this brain injury song I thought too much, too long. plus, there'd already been a piece on Meg when she graduated almost two years ago. So, it's another way of saying that I've sang this song before. I was surprised that the editor, Geitner, responded saying, in effect, that he couldn't pre-approve a topic but "in general, was open to a new column on this topic."So, it was I already had made a commitment. But this was different: I'd already told him that I had something "I was thinking about." And then once he said he'd take a look, I felt obligated to write it. But then, the horrific shooting in Omaha Dec. 5 gave a postponement. I couldn't see putting anything together. Plus I felt obligated and, again, trying to pull it together, looking for those little grasps of straws those wisps of ideas I finally yest. a.m. started to throw something together. I knew I'd taken some notes and put them somewhere but was buried in my baseball project.

But I was buoyed by the seeing of my travail with OPS, how it was an anniversary, the Christmas gathering, etc.

and, oh my Good God Lord, now I'm of the urge to submit Chapter 8 of the tome:


Chapter 8

FI Continues
Well, you’re the one’s always changing it,” Rodney said waving the blue print at the carpenter. “Iron doesn’t lie.”
Rodney, Davis Erection Foreman

And, as much as I’d hoped, as much as I milked both Linda and Tom Scates and badgered Kath with all sorts of possibilities and endless scenarios, my ambition was turned aside, my hopes were summarily dashed.
Even after working all summer with Linda to set up a classroom management plan, Mitchell’s Formal Observation after the nine weeks into the new school year had as many U’s as before.
The question now turns on how much longer I can put up with all the U's. The recommendation after the first nine weeks and no improvement is to carry this formal intervention throughout the school year. I took a deep breath. Maybe, I thought, they saw so much growth and change they want to keep it certainly up to snuff and speed, all ducks in a row, etc. and so on, ad infinitum.
And, it really wasn’t a recommendation at all: it was an order they called a recommendation. Like you are recommended to drive the speed limit; you are recommended to pay your taxes, etc. It was just more OPS double-speak.
But, still remembering my once-upon-a-time as building principal, I felt instruction-wise I was getting back on my feet again. Mitchell says my choice of materials to present the math lesson was "excellent." He’d carefully examined the price list of items from Menards I had the student round-off and then estimate the final cost.
“I liked the way you ended the lesson,” Mitchell began. “You said ‘Okay, let’s go get a drink of water.’ Even better, you might even want to bring in ads for tennis shoes and sports wear. That’s what they like to buy.”
“Yeah,” I concurred with the principal, sitting on a desk and swing his long legs back and forth. “That’s a good idea.”
Still, no matter how hard I tried, I still couldn’t see Mitchell on the bridge deck—would I stay on the slippery slope? Would it be, at the end of nine weeks, another evaluation filled with U's? Just when, like the rod bustin’, I finally turned the corner. This I could tell; journeymen quit looking over my shoulder. And now was Mitchell, especially after his praise, was off my case.
This is how I thought, a few days before the Formal Observation.
“Yeah, Kath,” I said before I got the manila envelope, “the OPS A+ logo. How, after ten years when I first met you here in Omaha and now ten years later I finally made it.”
The next afternoon, envelope arriving in the mail, reviewing the contents, I was crestfallen. “Well,” I said, “I guess they want me to jump through the hoops a little more.”
“Well,” Kath said, putting down the groceries, “I’m not surprised. I don’t trust that Mitchell.”
“Yeah, but…” I then just backed off. I remembered Linda’s advice.
“Don’t let it bother you,” she’d said. “Just go out and teach.” This I did. A calmness like a serenity prayer came over me.
Meanwhile, the downstairs Dave, who'd come up to check on me, how I was doing, revealed a different tack.
“We should sue,” he said. “The union’s not doin’ us any good.”
I looked over the parking lot filled with Jap model cars. No foreign cars would be allowed on the union job site.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
“I mean,” said Dave, “Mitchell’s part of the union, too. How can they be on both our sides?”
“I don't give a flat, flying fuck,” I said. I was getting exasperated.
"Has personnel called you to set up a meeting?" Dave asked.
"Nope, I haven't heard a thing."
Part of the exasperation stemmed from my garnering lesson ideas through ERIC from the Internet. Lou was proud last year to say she didn’t even know how to turn one on.
But I thought I got some some good ones. Downstairs, part of a math assignment, the class made M&M cookies. I teamed up with the Home Ec teacher for kitchen use. Garland, the new curriculum specialist on the intervention squad, bopped—and that’s how she presents herself, she bops, kind of a jaunty, buoyant stride, gum in her mouth like she's the queen bee of this here little hive--in smack dab in kitchen filled with the smell of baking.
“We’re making cookies as part of their math assignment,” I proudly reported. “I’ve teamed up with the Home Ec teacher—you know, like they say ‘teaching across the curriculum.’”
Sue looked at me and the students making cookies. “Okay.” She sat and began to write.
“Then,” I proudly reported, “they get the eat the results.”
“Uh huh,” the Curriculum Specialist said, grabbing her long necklace and nodding.
However, Sue’s evaluation advised less teacher direction because "it was obvious that the two girls could cook."
Before, I thought I wasn't giving enough feedback! Plus, I thought it was a good idea. I wasn’t letting up.
“How did I know that ahead of time?”
“Well, it’s obvious they could cook.”
“Yeah, but here’s what we’re gonna do with it the next day. There’s gonna be several questions dealing with measurement and fractions and addition.”
I was convinced it was a good lesson. I thought it was a great hands-on way to teach fractions.
“Oh, okay,” she said, pulling on a thin necklace, pushing back her coiffeur-stiff blond hair. However, like my point by point rebuttal of Mitchell's first observation, this feedback didn’t carry much weight.
Somehow, my argument was not convincing enough.
“I’ll see you after Thanksgiving,” Sue intoned leaving the building, carrying copies of my lesson plans and grade book.
Yeah, I thought, with a garland around my neck. It turns out I wasn’t too far off. We sat down to have our post-observation conference meeting after the break.
“Well, Ron, I took these home.”
“Yeah?”
“It took me two hours to find certain things,” she said. “I had trouble making sense of certain things.”
“I don’t understand, Sue. What every student should do with every book, page numbers and assignments. Here’s a copy of this week’s lesson plans, all typed up and ready.”
“I’ll make a note of it,” she said, “and I’ll attach it to the formal observation.”
This means, I thought, I'm still on formal intervention to the end of my teaching days at OPS. I felt like someone from T.S. Eliot's poem. I was "Like a patient etherized upon a table."
A week before Christmas break, Dave caught me before I headed upstairs.
"They're going to have a big meeting," he informed me quietly before school started for the day. "But they had to postpone it because John Teese (the union president who was representing Dave) could not attend.”
“I heard them say we "couldn't manage a classroom."
Dave continued.
"We can appeal and postpone," the young strapping man said, who looks like he has less than 10% body fat. "I think it's going to go on for quite some time."
"They can't fire us midterm," Dave said. "They'd have to pay us anyway, even if they do."
Dave runs most every other day, a good distance, six miles. He'll ride his handmade 18-speed bike for miles and miles. I thought I stayed in reasonably good condition, able to work iron and go to the gym at least three times a week but Dave is closer to the zealot stage. He's in much better shape. He blazed the 10K Corporate Cup in 37 minutes. I was happy to run the 10K in 50 minutes.
Dave could've sat down and had a three-course meal before I finished.
Dave saw me at the finish line.
There he was, in his running gear, laughing and slapping me on the back. "Way to go, a good one for Omaha Public Schools," Dave said. "It looks like you got a little left in the tank."
"Yeah," was all I could manage to say, "I made it." Walking back to my car with my daughters I said to myself, "And a good one for Local 21 Ironworkers."