not irreplaceable

12 June 2009

Yesterday was my last day of work at my school, after 13 years, which was more odd than sad. I will miss sitting in my rocking chair reading Bark, George; How Squirrel Got his Stripes; Pete, Smartypants at School; The Lorax; The Viper; The Greatest Power; Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears.

My hardest moment came when Robbie came to say goodbye. See you next year! he said and I lied. See you! I’ve had him since Head Start. Mother gone and father in jail. He learned to read sitting on the floor with me, sounding out words. Hi, Fly Guy; A Friend for Dragon; Nate the Great. The thing is: we are not irreplaceable. Someone else will have these feelings and do these things. That is both the good part and the sad part of it.

the day I fell in love and lost all hope of earning a living wage

I hardly knew Chuck when he came to the bar where I worked years ago and gave me a copy of Ivan Illich’s book, Deschooling Society. I read it and dropped out of college. Illich, in case you don’t know, argues that education isn’t really about learning but about maintaining class structure. More broadly, he argues against experts mediating and defining our experience.
Chuck says that if he had his way no employer would be able to discriminate based on educational background.

end of the school year librarian question

How can the kids figure out how to take care of the world we’re leaving them if they can’t take care of their dang library books? This is one of the philosophical questions I wrestle with.

true for me, too

>Yolanda forgot to return her library books, so she couldn’t check out the one on polar bears. “I’m sorry,” I called after her.  Her friend, turned to me. “Don’t worry. In a minute she’ll start thinking of something else and then she’ll be happy again.”

Pabla and the agate

Someone objected to my statement that I have been fired, when really I’m only being moved out of my school and into a different one. Okay, fine. I am overly dramatic.

I am sad about leaving the school where I’ve worked for 13 years. Today ten year old Pabla gave me an agate and a note that said, Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and then she skipped away with her long black braid flying out behind her. I remember when her big sister was a baby. I knew her family before she was born. Her big brother loved my dinosaur books.

>schools

>Chuck says I can’t blog about sex or drugs, even if it’s from thirty year old material, because I work at a school and they’ll fire me. I’m not sure that’s true.

>bourgeois rule about money

You’re not supposed to say how much money you make, but why not? The bosses don’t want us to know. The people with the big paychecks don’t want us to know. It is some kind of bourgeois rule. My new insurance premiums kicked in and my last paycheck was $527. For one month, 30 hours a week. Less than $5 an hour. I work in a school library, as an “assistant,” although, functionally, I’m the librarian. Yikes!

>Bill gives a speech at our school

Clinton was late. We stood waiting for him in the school gym for over two hours, and then he showed up and decided to give his speech outside instead. We had been in the front, adults and kids, hot and crowded, waiting all that time. The custodian had spent the day scrubbing the gym. It was decorated with signs the kids made and, of course, set up with a podium and flag draped curtains and the whole nine yards. Clinton decided to be spontaneous and ditched it. Meanwhile the disabled people who had been seated carefully, close to the stage, were thrown in with the rest of the crowd, hobbling, some of them confused and frightened. It was very chaotic. It was just like everything that happens at my school, which seriously calls into question the feng shui of the place, if you ask me. I was too annoyed to be charmed by Bill. When I found myself joining the teenage heckler shouting OBAMA, I knew it was time for me to leave.

>buried treasure part worked

One of my library volunteers told me today that she read my blog about the library walls. Did I really write about such a stupid thing? I thought. I do have a rule, which I follow carefully: never blog when drinking. Should I also have a rule about blogging when I’m mad at my boss? I do like the part about buried treasure though.

>x marks the spot

My boss is building walls in the library. I will only say this: many things need doing right now at our school and building a windowless room in our beautiful, open library is not one of them. We’re having a fight. A fight that I, because of my subordinate position, am doomed to lose.
The builders have come and put xs on the floor to show where the walls will be built. Look, a 6 year old named Carlos said to his friend, touching an x with the tip of his shoe, this is where the treasure is.