I am taking a break from measuring my practice against the IRA Standards for Reading Professionals. It is one of many homework assignments for my Tuesday night class. Last week, I finished my assignments at 5:45, just before the class met at 6:30, and I had worked on them for two or three hours every day. This week, we don't have quite as much, but only because one of the students in the class is a pathological talker and, because of that, the instructor didn't get around to showing us how to do this week's major assignment.

I worked with National Board candidates this morning. Let me just say again: GWB has ruined education in this country. I really think I might need therapy to deal with my feelings toward him, because now my animosity toward him has taken a disturbing twist: I now feel animosity toward anyone who supports him. I find myself avoiding people and situations where I might have to hear someone say something favorable about him. I have some very good friends I used to see regularly whom I now avoid because they are Bush fans. I love these people, but I am now so very bitter toward them that I just don't even want to see them. Therapy. Yes.

This morning was one of those times I needed to be able to clone myself. I needed to attend two things at the same time: National Board work and writing project work. That's what my life has come to. I know I have to work the second and fourth Saturdays of each month, and yet I scheduled a writing project staff development meeting for today in the Liberal Arts building at the exact same time I was supposed to be working in the Curriculum & Instruction building. Kim did the wp thing, thankfully. I knew I'd be spread too thin for this semester, but it couldn't be helped.


I got a lead on another part-time job for next year. A friend sent me an e-mail about it Friday. This one is almost as if I were walking down the sidewalk and someone stepped into my path and said, "Here's a wonderful gift for you." But, then, they've all been that way. And, of course, that is exactly what is happening to me since I decided to jump the sinking ship that is public education. First one friend said, "Here's a gift," then another said, "Here's a gift", now another has said , "Here's a gift." There's a story behind this, but it's personal I think. I wouldn't think so except that there are quite a lot of people I know who are jobless and in a mess, and here I am walking away from a job that pays me fifty thousand a year with really good benefits and lots of vacation time. So I don't feel quite right going around saying, "Hey, guess what? I decided to walk away from a good job, but it's okay because right away a whole bunch of other great ones just popped right up out of the blue." Just about the only bad thing is that I had to go ahead and start the part-time stuff now, and my teaching contract goes through June which means I'm overwhelmed with work, in addition to working on a graduate degree.

I need to get back to the homework now.