I have a newborn grand-daughter and a 2 year old grandson, and 2 adult children.
Those little babies keep me going and give me a smile.
And I wouldn't want to leave them the burden.........
I have been depressed to the point of suicide ideation once before in my life, but did seek help and discovered quite quickly I had a severe Vitamin D deficiency and realized (mid-winter) I was getting zero sunlight, working in a place where windows were more like portholes, and the walls a dull grey cinderblock in all the rooms. Diet and a change of workplace cured it quite well.
So I know what it feels like to go there, and I don't want to ever go back. I just get very, very tired. That is why the OP struck a chord.
What had really torn me up just before I posted the previous post was that a best friend of my husband and myself had called me a night or two before and ripped into me for one hour before I said "This conversation is over," and hung up. She was yelling things at me, saying I had no right to cry, couldn't I see how that was unfair to my husband for me to cry? She said "You aren't sick and dying; he is. How do you think he feels? Don't you see how he feels, how depressed he is?" And other crazy statements were made as well. OMG. She said repeatedly that she doesn't think I see how my husband feels, while every afternoon,all evening and all weekend long I about kill myself to try to distract him, cheer him up, and help him get through the nightmare that his workplace has become. i watch him scratch at his skin all over at night (because his blood isn't being cleaned by his defective kidneys), i know what that means and I try to distract both of us rather than cry. Sooner or later, though, it catches up with you. I have read enough on the internet to know that caregivers are often treated this way by people who have no clue what actually goes on day-to-day, so I'm over it now. I just had to accept that her support will help my husband, and I must just keep quiet myself and get no support myself there.
You see, my husband is trying to grapple with monitoring his dangerous health condition, to emotionally grapple with the very real concept of his own death, and on top of that, is facing a harassment nightmare every day at work, and the horrible realization that perhaps he will also be denied the dignity of retiring with a sense of achievement, and with the ability to continue to pay for both a home and for health care... something that would have been possible with just three more years of working until retirement. He is facing loss of health, life, of the retirement he deserves, and of even a home to sit in for his final years and suffering, to just watch tv with the woman who loves him devotedly. The loss of dignity in retirement after almost 30 years of service (while also facing perhaps an imminent death) is .... well, I hope not a nail in the coffin, literally..... But it is definitely depriving him of having any daily joy in what years he has left.
My husband is a school teacher, and after almost 30 years of service, the political situation in his district has created a nightmare. It began with furloughs: between Aug 2009 and Aug 2012, about 55% of teaching jobs were cut. Most of those jobs were lost to charter schools, one large one which does worse on the state tests than the public schools. The school board refused to renew that school's charter this year, but the school is appealing, despite their bad test results AND the hideous misuse of public funds that were revealed in reviewing their charter. But, hey, they are making a nice profit, so isnt' that success ? 
We spent the first five months of 2012 not knowing if the next paycheck would be there because of funding issues (thank you Governor Corbett!) ; in the middle of this nightmare, my husband got his CKD diagnosis.
And now it seems the district is determined to make as many of the remaining teachers (almost all with 10 or more years of service) as soon as possible quit or retire, not with a sense of satisfaction, life accomplishment, and pride for all of their service, and with appreciation from the school district for that, but with a sense of defeat and disgrace and shame. The district's new policies are proving to be an effective means of forcing teachers out of their jobs, because their health is suffering (see some details below). So, if you have to kill a teacher, or leave the teacher incapacitated from a stroke for the rest of there lives, so what? At least you will save half their pay, yeah! Mission Accomplished! And, like many inner city schools, this district with a huge population of ESL, ES, MR, and other learning-disabled students, has not met AYP. So, someone needs to be fired. No one really cares who, because the 'who' won't make much difference, but bodies need to be swinging from trees, the blood-letting must occur, and then, Mission Accomplished??? NOT. While the students continue to have absolutely no accountability for their own test results. None. Sometimes they just doodle all over them; they find it entertaining to upset the teachers.
(There IS consolation in that everywhere we go in town, people run up to my husband with delight and thank him for changing their lives...no kidding, this happens all the time everywhere. And on our living room table is his Annie Sullivan Award for teacher of the year (1993). He has always taught students with learning and emotional challenges).
One of the schools new strategies is that there is no in-school suspension or holding area where violent, disruptive students can be placed. Emotional support students who aren't on meds are literally screaming and fighting and attacking teachers in classrooms all the time on a daily basis, in both regular classrooms, and in special education self-contained classes. The district will not file any charges against students, either; the teacher must do so independently and without district support. The teacher must be the one to pick up the phone and dial 911. In this manner, the violent student will then 'blame' only the teacher (and not the school) for the consequences the student might suffer through police and court actions. And I guess it saves the district money, too.
My husband has one of those students, who will threaten to kill himself, other students, other students' entire families, teachers, the principal, everyone; he curses profanely and makes lewd sexual comments very loudly...all this for like an hour an more on end, take a pause, and then start again. He assaulted my husband when my husband tried to prevent him from attacking another student (who is a very quiet, sweet loving MR kid). The violent student is still in the classroom doing this type of stuff almost every day. The other students are subjected not only to disruption of their education, but also being harassed and bullied. This is far from the only classroom where this stuff is going on. This student is not the only student in need of direct support and services who is being left in a classroom and who does this stuff almost daily.
There have been a few, rare cases where a student was removed from the classroom, but get this procedure: the teacher must stop and immediately spend about 10 minutes doing an on-line office referral for the student, or the student will not be removed...if you keep the student in class with you, you can not write the referral any later than 2:55 pm the same day...BUT...teachers MUST be teaching 100% of the time; if you check your email while students are taking a test or doing work, or if you attempt to jot down a note for tomorrow's class during this time, or do anything other than interacting with the students, you are written up and given an unsatisfactory evaluation. Yes, this has actually happened. There are ZERO breaks in a teacher's day once classes have started, except 45 minutes twice a week when the students go to Art, Music, or PE; the daily 'planning period' is before the students arrive, and the students do not leave until after the 2:55 cut off time. So unless a student acts out on one of the two days in a 6 day cycle where the students will go to a 'specials' class, and unless that student acts up BEFORE the specials (impossible in my husband's class, as specials are first period), then you will not have an opportunity to do a referral without students in your classsroom. If you are doing an office referral, then you are not "teaching 100% of the time," and you will be given an unsatisfactory evaluation. If you do NOT write the student up, then you are given an unsatisfactory evaluation for poor classroom management, because the class is 'out of control'.
If you think that policy for violent students is not quite helpful to students, teachers, learning, or public safety, well, just imagine how the district deals with blatant disrespect. A student comes to school angry because his crack-head Dad was having a fit the night before, or angry because he wanted to stay home and play the video games he had been playing every night until 2 am. He gets ticked off when given work to do, and says "FU" to the teacher. The teacher's only option is to call the parent...which must be done immediately (and I do believe that is 'immediately', before the end of class). If the parent is subsequently unable to control their child's behavior, then the teacher is written up for an unsatisfactory performance due to classroom management issues. The administration does absolutely nothing. The other students see that you can say FU to a teacher, and if the student doesn't care about his parent's response, then there is no consequence, except the 'admiration' of some of the other students, and some of the other students' will follow his lead.
Other nice policies include that teachers are forbidden to sit down at any time that students are in the classroom. If you sit down, you are written up. After reading how violent students are handled under the school (non)disciplinary policy, I will leave it to your imagination all the ways that paperwork requirements are being finagled to make life impossible. Suffice it to say that I am also a certified (though unemployed) teacher, and I have spent 10 hours a week of my time doing paperwork stuff for my husband (non-confidential type of stuff), while he has spent three hours every single evening trying to conform to their lesson plan requirements and other stuff thrown his way, plus he works at least 8-12 hours every weekend trying to keep up with all of it. As regards lesson plan requirements, one great social studies teacher decided the night before 9/11 to do a special 9/11 history class the next day. Since his orginal lesson plans were for another topic, he was written up for not following his lesson plans. Was their teaching going on, learning going on, student engagement? What, is that type of stuff supposed to matter???????????
On top of this, my husband teaches 11 students classified as MR. Eight of them MUST pass the state tests in April. They read at a 4th grade level currently. If they don't pass, you know who will get the heat.......... yet with 7 years more of schooling (not 7 months) there isn't much chance they would pass the PSSA's. (F*$# YOU CORBETT FOR NOT ASKING FOR A WAIVER!!! I hope the money you and your buddies earn from your charter school investments send you straight to where you belong one day!) And certainly how is this to be accomplished with one student screaming at the top of his lungs for hours a day? Well, you see, of course my husband is the issue there, too. His 'classroom management' is a problem. He is a 'failure' because he cannot control the student who needs medication. Really, that is the determination, in writing.
It just staggers the mind that a person who is medically determined to be MR must pass a state test for his biological age level or my husband is a failure. The stupidity is so profound....no, the malevolence in this procedure is just evil.........
The result of the new policies enacted by this district can be seen with just the most recent weeks' changes in staffing:
In one school alone, in one week, 10% of the teaching staff --5 teachers---left: 2 walked out, said here are the keys; 3 went on long-term medical disability (harassment does unkind things to blood pressure.) A sixth teacher, age 38, collapsed in the classroom and had to be carried out in an ambulance and spent a week in the hospital; the final medical determination was stress. He is THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD. He was one of those teachers all the students absolutely loved; it was very difficult to be the teacher for his kids the following year; no one could live up to the expectations he created in these students . He clearly loved his job and the students. Now, he is literally being taken out of the school in an ambulance.
In another school of similar size this week, one teacher retired quite suddenly, announcing Wednesday that Friday was his late day, earlier than he planned to retire, because his blood pressure readings have reached dangerous levels. Another teacher took Short term disability thru February.
There have been more in the 6 weeks school has been open; I can't remember them all.
The union in this district has been very well disabled between the furloughs and all the rest of the stuff going on.
How is my husband supposed to handle being attacked on all fronts at once? Even an attack that would destroy not only what remains of his future life, but would cast aspersions upon what he has done for almot 30 years? He not only taught LD and ES students during his regular day, he has worked at the County Detention Center for young kids (once removing a student from the noose in which he had hung himself), worked with Tough Love, and (with his former wife) took in 24 foster children over the years, many from the Tough Love program. Some of these students were with him through regular school in special ed classes, then with him in Tough Love, and then with him in his own home. Yep, this is a guy who never cared, who never made a difference, who should be tossed out within inches of a barely manageable retirement, who should understand that he is a terrible teacher, and that the failure of the school system rests on his shoulders. He should hang his head in shame.
It is a good thing that I am not an atheist. It is a good thing that I have always valued above all else the love of family,
and don't care so much about having nice things and toys that I would crumble.
We personally need Obama to win, the Dems to keep the Senate and the House to go Democratic....just for our own personal
need to see that there is justice and hope.
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