Picture it: Sicily, 2001

Okay, it really wasn’t Sicily.  I love the Golden Girls and if you do too, you get that. . . If not, you need to watch it.
Auburndale May 21, 1991. . . It’s a Monday. Friday was the last day of school for students, but teachers got 3 workdays after that. I know – that was the good ole’ days.  My sister Patti and I were here in Auburndale working, but the rest of our family, our parents, our sister and our nephews had left on Saturday for a week’s vacation in the Keys.  Robyn had rented a great house on Marathon and they were having a great time.   I’m at my Mom and Dad’s house with Patti and the phone rings.  Patti answers it, sort of whimpers, and drops the phone. I pick it up and hear “Your Mom’s had an accident.  Your Dad wants you there as fast as you can.  Meet Dave Norris at the Winter Haven airport as soon as you can and he’ll get you there.” 
Daddy’s friend Dave Norris had a small plane. We gathered up some stuff, passed my niece off to family, and went to the airport.  It was a long, hot flight. There was lightning he had to change direction several times to avoid it.  When we landed, he said something like "I don't usually fly in weather like that." We landed at the Marathon airport and Daddy picked us up.  He took Dave Norris back to the house and took us to Fisherman's Hospital. 
He left us at the hospital with Robyn and she told us what happened.  On Monday, they went to Bahia Honda State Park, my Mom’s favorite place maybe in the world.  When they came out of the water, our mom sort of collapsed.  My nephew and our dad pulled her out of the water and Robyn started CPR.  A guy in a kayak called 911 and helped Robyn with CPR.  To get there, you have to cross the 7 Mile Bridge and climb over a ridge on the island to get to where they were.  It took a little while. Robyn and Kayak Guy did CPR the whole time until the ambulance got there.  The ambulance took Mama and Daddy, while Robyn collected her boys and all the stuff.  All that happened without us. 
When we got there, it was late Monday night or early Tuesday morning, and she was completely unresponsive and hooked up to life support.
I think my mom knew she was going to die young. She told us for years multiple things about her funeral. She wanted our friend Mrs. Rita to sing, and she wanted the Hallelujah Chorus played at the end.  She also told us over and over again that she NEVER wanted to be kept alive by machines. We asked why she was on life support. They told us they had to for a certain amount of time.
On Tuesday, our Granny and our mama’s sisters got there. Our Aunt Cecelia stayed for a while alone. She told us later that the doctor came in while she was there and she asked why her sister was hooked up to those machines – that she didn’t want that. (See, everybody knew that!)  He told her that whoever did CPR on her did a really, really good job, so good in fact that her heart was still beating too much on its own for him to let her go. Tuesday night, some ladies from Calvary Baptist Church came in to see us. That is the church that we go to when we are in the Keys. They had heard about what happened and came to see what they could do for us.  That is why I still keep my eye on that church. Those people didn’t know us from anyone, but they came to check on us.
We were told that the doctor would come to see us on Wednesday morning and we would have to tell him to turn off her machines. We knew what we had to tell him. we knew what she wanted. We have no regrets or remorse about that. but it wasn’t easy. 
Early Wednesday morning, we looked in the hallway and saw some of our longest family friends coming down the hallway.  Mrs. Rita and Bro Frank Newberry and Bro Jim Elliot drove from Lakeland to be there with us. We told the doctor what he needed to hear and he told us what would happen.  We stood around her bed, our friends prayed for us, we cried a lot,  and we left the room. We went back to the great house Robyn rented, packed everything up, and drove home. It was a long ride. The most frustrating thing was the whole world was going on as normal, but ours would never be normal again.

Those are the facts. There are some things I know and things I don't know. I don't know if my mom went to Jesus on Monday, May 21, or on Wednesday, May 23. I know what the paperwork says, but I don’t know the real answer.  I KNOW she was stubborn ( I get that honestly!)   I think it was time for her to go and she didn’t want to. Did she argue with God a little.? Did she tell Him that we still needed her? Did she tell Him we all needed to be together before she could leave?  I don’t know.
Here’s another thing I don’t know:    the man in the kayak who helped Robyn do CPR?  No one else ever saw him.  No one else remembers him.
I know this:  the staff at Fisherman’s Hospital in Marathon were the kindest, sweetest people ever. They never said a word about how many of us were there, never gave us grief about setting us shop in the waiting room or taking up the phones.  They just walked around us. 
I also know this:  May 21 is the beginning of a sad set of days for my family.  I try really hard to think of good things.  My Mom’s last place was her favorite place.  Have you ever been to Bahia Honda State Park?  It’s one of God’s greatest gifts to us.  My parent’s first date was at the beach. Their last date was to the beach.  In August of 2001, they would have been married 40  years. There’s a butterfly garden now pretty close to the place where they brought her out of the water. She would have liked that. 

We had her funeral on Memorial Day.  Our church was FULL of people.  So, so many people gave up their holiday for us that year.  It was overwhelming.  Our friend Mrs. Rita sang.  Coach Stacy,  who sang at our Mom and Dad's wedding sang at her funeral.  And yes, we played the Hallelujah Chorus at the end.
So tomorrow May 21, I’m working at home. I might stay in my pajamas. I might eat ice cream. I might cry.  I might cry on Saturday, May 23.  I might stay in my pajamas. I won’t cry for my mama. I’ll cry for me. I'll cry because 19  years without my Mama is a long time.  I’ll cry for what she’s missed.  I’ll cry that Ken and Josh and Makiah didn’t get her long enough.  I’ll cry that we never got to celebrate that 40th anniversary or a 50th anniversary.  But even while I cry, I know that I don’t cry as those who have no hope.   
I can cry with hope. I can say goodbye with hope. Cause I know our goodbye is not the end and one day, she’ll look at me and say “there you are.  I’ve been waiting for you.”

The Digital Divide is Alive and Well

When I was working on my master’s degree, we learned the term “Digital Divide.”  I didn’t know what it was at first, but it was one of those AHA moments.  One of the pictures in an article I read that has always stayed in my mind was a high school-aged girl sitting by a parked school bus in the dark, with her textbook and her laptop on her lap. She was sitting in a circle of light from a streetlight, all alone, trying to do her work. It was gut-wrenching. According to Stanford University, the digital divide 

“ refers to the growing gap between the underprivileged members of society, especially the poor, rural, elderly, and handicapped portion of the population who do not have access to computers or the internet” and those who do. 

I instantly understood the term, because of my own upbringing.   When I was little, we did not have a tv. I’m not sure why my parents chose not to have a television in our home, but we didn’t.  In school, it was always weird when everybody talked about what they watched on TV and we didn’t see it.  Once, my parents had to go to school and talk to my sister’s teacher because she was supposed to watch something between cartoons every Saturday and she couldn’t do that.  (It may have been “In the News” you can watch it here:  https://youtu.be/Y2niAlg4WOc)

It was embarrassing. It wasn't comfortable. It was hard to say in front of your whole class “We don’t have a TV.”  My parents made sure that we had all that we needed – they always found money for Scholastic book orders, although I’m not sure how.   We listened to records, we always had books, but we were not a technology-rich house. We never had an Atari and never had cable until we moved to Clewiston in 1985. When everybody else wanted their MTV, I didn’t even hardly know what MTV was.

Now, there are students who have TV’s in every room and 187 cable channels, but still may not have an educationally technologically rich home.  I have said for years that there are children in our county who are technologically poor – and no one listens. The last time I was on a textbook selection committee, I had data that showed nearly 85% of the students at my school did not have consistent internet access and a device on which to access the internet. Some had limited internet access – until the data on the phone ran out. That was several years ago, but is it any better now? Are there still students in our schools that do not have access to computers or the internet at home? Absolutely. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to get people who work in a building with Wi-Fi, and walk to a car with Wi-Fi, (where their smartphone connects to the car) and go home to a house with Wi-Fi to understand and/or believe that everyone doesn’t live like that. 

But enter COVID-19, aka Corona Virus aka “the Rona.”  All of a sudden, we need children to have devices at home to complete work.  But hardly anyone says, “Oh wait, a device by itself doesn’t help.”  I can deploy laptops all day long – a device all alone isn’t the answer. There is a bigger issue here. 

As a single woman with one income, a significant part of my budget is internet access. That is a conscious decision and choice that I make. Unfortunately, some parents don’t see the need or maybe absolutely cannot afford that same choice I make. Yes, I understand there are programs to help, but is it enough? I don’t know. 

I was very excited (and got very emotional) to see these posts from two churches:
 

ATTENTION PARENTS AND STUDENTS: New Home has been set up as a public Wi-Fi hotspot for students. If you do not have Wi-Fi access at home, you can park in our parking lot on the LEFT side of the church and access the FREE Wi-Fi. The network is "NHBC_WiFi_OPEN_ACCESS" and will be available from 7:00 AM - 7:00 PM. According to county and state orders, you will need to remain in your vehicles while doing your schoolwork. You are in our prayers as you complete this school year. Our address is 5130 Elmore Road (Hwy 14), Wetumpka.  (That's my friend's church!)  

Churches are trying to help bridge the digital divide, which is ironic since we keep church and school very, very separate. But it seems like churches are stepping up to help more than some school districts are.

I don’t know the answer. I know every time I put books in my public library’s dropbox, there’s someone sitting there in the dark, connected to the library’s network. I know my county is working on wifi on buses to park in neighborhoods.  But I know there are kids at my school who feel like I did when I was a little girl, but instead of not having a TV, they don’t have a computer, or they don’t have internet access. And they are missing out and are getting more and more behind. Unfortunately, it took a virus to make some people realize this. 

This Stinks, but I’m Learning Stuff

So as anybody who doesn't live under a rock knows, everybody got sent home from school.  this is NOT our Spring Break in Polk County – that is next week, but because of the stupid Corona Virus, we are all home.   I”m calling this “Corona Virtus Spring Break” henceforth abbreviated "CVSB Day ___.” 
I’ve spent a LOT of time with my own self for company and we’re only on Day 3. I'm learning a LOT of things about myself.  So of course, I had to write about it.  So here, we go: the things I’ve learned.
1) I really, really detest yard work.  A few weeks ago, my landlady came to bring me aa new fire extinguisher and said I needed to pull some stuff out of the little rectangle in front of my house.  I knew I needed to work on it, but I don’t like it.  I pay someone to mow my yard but he “mows, blows and edges.”  He doesn’t pull weeds or trim trees.  So when that needs to be done, it’s on me and I don’t like it at all. I don’t like to be dirty, I don't like to be sweaty and I don’t like it when bugs fly up my nose or down my shirt. I did it, but I don’t like it.
2)  What I read, what I watch and what I listen to have a huge impact on my mental state.  If  I listen to uplifting things and read unplaiting things and watch uplifting things I feel better.  If I watch or read or listen to other things, I find it easier to be angry or irritated or frustrated.
3) I always felt like wireless earbuds were unnecessary.  Today the wires on the pair I have got caught multiple times while I was doing the dreaded yard work,  I pulled them with the hedge trimmers, pulled them with the loppers and pulled them when I threw the cut stuff by the side of the road.  Every time, they pulled out of my ears. Now, my ears hurt, from the snatching out part!  And I may have put dirt in my ears from putting them back in.
4) On an iPhone, if you’re listening to music and want to go forwards or backwards, but you’re wearing gloves, you can push the arrow with your nose.
5) I have a lot of words inside of me and staying by myself doesn't let them out.  today I started reading text messages in other people’s voices.  It didn't work  very  well. I laughed at myself a LOT.
6)  I miss people.  I have hermit-like tendencies and am generally quite happy on my own but this could turn into not good. 
7)  I miss my church.  We are streaming our church services, but it’s NOT THE SAME.  I miss seeing people and talking to people and listening to my Sunday School class laugh and talk,.  I miss my Junior Church babies and my  AWANA babies. 
8.  I have two nests in trees in my yard.  I watched a squirrel either feed babies or repair a nest for about 30 minutes today. 
9) Isolated, alone Amazon shopping can be dangerous.  I hesitate to even see what starts arriving at my house. 
10) Counting your toilet paper rolls over and over again doesn’t change how much you have. 
11.)  This too shall pass. . . I don’t know when, I don’t know how long, but it will pass.  I just hope I remember to be grateful when things are “normal” again. 

My 2 Cents, Part 2 - Unintended Consequences

So, last week was a rough week for teachers, especially those of us in Polk county. I decided to use this little blog of mine to help you understand some of the feelings that have been running through my head for the last week and to explain my perspective on some things. The opinions expressed here are absolutely positively MINE and if you don’t agree, well, that’s OK too. You are certainly entitled to be wrong! 😉 
sometimes things happen that no one intended.  In social studies, this is called “Unintended Consequences.’  According to Wikipedia,  these are “outcomes of a purposeful action that are not intended or foreseen.”  I think there were quite a few unintended consequences of some actions last week.  Will these turn out to be good or bad? We’ll have to wait and see.

Last week we got two robocalls from the Polk County School Board telling us that no matter how many teachers chose to attend the education rally in Tallahassee “school would continue as usual.”  I think the intended outcome was to reassure parents that their students would still be taught.   But, I think there were serious UNINTENDED outcomes.  First of all, the more you tell people basically, that you don’t need them, the more they may want to prove to you that you do.  We have been told that the numbers of staff members who took the personal day doubled and then tripled before Friday. Maybe if we hadn’t been told that our county really didn’t need us, so many people might not have decided “Well, prove it.”  BTW, anytime a student has a substitute teacher, it’s not a “normal school day.” 
I think another intended outcome of the robocalls was to try to get parents annoyed with teachers and to make staff who chose to take their personal day look bad.  No one will say that, but I feel like it was.  However, the unintended outcome was to make the School Board look bad for ignoring the rally, and TRYING to make staff look bad. Additionally, many, many parents kept their students home from school on Monday, which certainly made it easier for schools to continue with fewer staff.  If a school had half of its students out on Monday, it certainly explains why it was such a great day on Monday. 

The email that we got from the Department of Education, was intended to “inform teachers of the possible consequences of their actions” and “sent in the spirit of transparency. I think another intended outcome was to “scare” people into going to work, because contrary to whatever our robocalls actually said, school could NOT have continued with all of the people absent.  In this respect, it worked, Many, many people did cancel their personal leave and return to school. The unintended outcomes are ENORMOUS.  This “threatening to fire teachers” thing went viral. Forbes.com posted it.  Elizabeth Warren commented on it.  Monday in Tallahassee, EVERYONE there knew that we were threatened with being fired.  Parents, teachers, people all over the nation are angry. People in our county are angry. There is a petition asking for our superintended to be fired that has gathered over 5000 signatures. 

We got an email from the Superintendent of our county on the 15th.  You can read it here: https://www.facebook.com/polkcountypublicschools/?__tn__=%2Cd%2CP-R&eid=ARDrQqjajRw8fiWVuitbW1iA1AIxVf5-uM3eLKIGG0crLLfQbr50HBQI1SgZ9VmYuL_ddhNywaF8MtjY
The intended outcome was to smooth things over and explain how she’d like us to move on. Reading the comments, many people believe this is a genuine, heartfelt email.  Others, not so much.  One unintended outcome is more bitterness.   It says “The first thing I can do is apologize for the e-mail from the Florida Department of Education.”  Yes, yes, we all CAN apologize, but do we?  She didn’t, really. And  admitting you should apologize after the whole country has heard what you did and thinks you're mean for doing it.   Yeah, it doesn’t ring really genuine to me. For many, many people this is too little, too late.

As teachers, we know that we don’t always see fruit tomorrow from the seeds we plant today. We know how to wait.  We know that everything takes time – there ‘s very little instant gratification in teaching.  I saw a student once in high school who told me “Thank you” for wanting more from him than he was willing to give. He said he didn’t get why I fussed at him for being mediocre when he was clearly capable of so much more.  He said when he got to high school, he understood.    I don’t know if our rally in Tallahassee will make much difference. I  hope so, I certainly think that some people I know, now understand some things they didn’t before. Teachers are good at “wait and see.”  I guess when it comes to these events, we will just have to wait and see.  

My 2 Cents, Part 1

So, there’s been a little mess going on in my little corner of the world lately.  Let me catch you up and then I’ll give you my 2 cents.  Now, I understand that with ONE dollar bill and my opinion, you can get a Polar Pop at the Circle K, but this is my blog and I can say what I want, I think. 

The Florida Education Association, along with the local teacher unions in all 67 counties of Florida planned an educational rally. The purpose of the rally was to ask/plead/beg our legislators to do better for public education.   In case you live under a rock and don’t know, education funding in the state of Florida is dismal to say the very least.  I read a statistic the other day that says that Per Student spending in Florida is $1000 less than it was in 2007-2008.  I’m not sure that stat is correct, but it came from a reasonable source.  I can’t make up stuff like that. . .

We were told that the reason we didn’t get a raise this year is that the state didn’t give our district enough money.  When buildings need repair, we are sometimes told: “there’s not enough money.”  The reason my school has 23 bus routes but only 17 buses, meaning some buses do multiple runs, which makes kids wait for over an hour to even leave school is “There’s no money.”  We hear all the time that “There’s no money.” The state keeps coming up with new demands for us but doesn’t provide the funds to do those things.  All in all, our state would rather give money to private schools and charter schools than actually fund public education properly.  
 So, when the FEA says “let's get together and ask/plead/beg the legislators of Florida to do better for the children of the fastest-growing state in the nation, many of us said “Sure! Let’s do it.” Some of us agreed instantly, some took a little longer to decide.   I heard about this rally in September.  I thought about it, forgot about it, thought about it, forgot about it.  When we voted on our contract and heard from our district yet again, “There's no money” I decided to go but I flip-flopped back and forth and back and forth. 
 Our union got buses, you could sign up to ride the bus for free, but a group of my friends decided to ride together.  We were going to ride up, march around with our signs, get a good hamburger and ride home.  Those who decided to support the rally were required to take a personal day off of work.  There are rules and procedures about a personal day and we followed those rules.  (I’ll talk about THAT in Part 2!)  
After Christmas break, I realized I couldn’t flip flop any more and had to make a decision and stick with it. After much debate, I decided to go to the rally, so I did my stuff.  On Wednesday of last week, we got a robocall from the School Board telling us that there would be higher than usual teacher absences than usual on Monday but that school would continue as usual.  On Friday, we got the same call.
On Friday night, I was sitting at my house and my phone started absolutely BLOWING up.  I was getting messages from the entire world, it seemed like.  We got an email from our district, forwarding an email from the General Counsel from the Florida DOE, basically telling us that if we continued with our “Strike” we could be fired and our union could be fired up to $20,000. 
For a little while, I was absolutely terrified and felt like I was going to vomit.  My logical mind was telling me one thing, another part of my mind was telling me something different.  I had friends in various emotional states right along with me.  Most of us went from fear, stress, and eventually anger.
This led to an entire weekend of  “This, That and Whatever.”  The Blame Game, Backpedaling, Flip-Flopping, “Pin the Guilt on the ________” has been rampant. Quite frankly, it was mentally and emotionally exhausting.  These are the facts as I see them.  
Now, here’s my 2 cents.  In 25 1/2 years, I have SEEN the changes in public education – and it’s not good.  Education is changing and it’s not the fault of teachers. Teachers don’t make the rules about education – and the people who do make the rules are NOT education people.   Let's let people who don’t know anything about your job makes the rules for your job and see how well that goes. 
I went to Tallahassee, I wore my red shirt (and my red sneakers of course) and marched and held my sign.  Why did I do it?  Because I felt it was the right thing for me to do.  I have a niece who wants to be a teacher.  I want her career to be better than mine has been. She deserves better. Eventually, I hope my nephew gets to be a dad and my niece gets to be a mom.  Their children deserve better.  The 2000 children at my school deserve better. The children of my former students deserve better. 
Let me add this:  The people who stood up and marched didn’t do it lightly. We didn’t take our personal day for fun. We did it because we believed that what we were doing was the right thing to do. 
And this is where I’m going to lose some of you.  If you don’t work in a public school or have not ever worked in a public school with all due respect, you have no right to talk about the pressures of our job.  You don’t know what it’s like. I don’t care if you have been to school – that doesn’t make you an expert on my job.  I’ve sat in a dentist's chair, but that doesn’t mean I understand dentistry.  I’ve flown in airplanes, but I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to be a pilot  So unless you’ve done it, and done it for more than a day or a month or a year or 5, you don’t get it either.  Visiting a school,  delivering things to a school, even volunteering in a school doesn't make you an expert.   
I”m very grateful for my friends. I have a friend who got angry before I did – and he gave me more courage than I knew I had. While I felt like throwing up, he was already angry.  He never wavered in his conviction and I'm thankful to him for that.    I have other friends who shared their concerns with me, which made me examine my own feelings and the facts,  to be able to answer their questions and help calm their fears. 
This was an ugly situation and everybody had to make a choice. The same choice didn’t work for everybody and all of us had to do what we felt was the right thing for us.  I lost respect for some people but not for what they decided to do or not do.  I lost respect for those who attempted to bully, belittle or give people grief because “they” ( the nasty people) didn’t like the choice the other person made.  To give people grief for doing what they feel like is the right thing – shame on you.  Yes, I said it.  Shame on you!!   
I'm not nearly done, but I'm finished now.

PS - That sign at the top wasn't mine. I wish I'd thought of it.  I wish I'd put on the back of  mine "We are Polk - and we are NOT proud!"     

Mine looked like this: