When the smoke clears....

This job will tear you apart. And make you love it.

It's Thanksgiving break, Sunday morning, class out yesterday night, the hours we've all been waiting for to catch our breath before diving back in.
One of my teacher corps classmates and her aunt were kind enough to offer me a place to stay for the night and a ride into memphis to catch a flight. It's funny how close I feel to all these people now; we've come to rely on each other in more ways than one, and I felt some mild regret leaving this kind of family, even to visit another.

I'm in her house now, rested from the first full night's sleep I've had in some days, and full of homemade muffins- it's great. All I can think about is my kids.

Not to be dramatic, but this is real, this is our everyday frustration, watching our smart, talented, passionate students being cheated. Fighting an avalance with a snow shovel. At least there are a lot of us.

I don't want to go home. I don't want to leave. I've been looking forward to this for months as some kind of reprieve, and now it feels like ducking out. I'll have some time to plan, at least, hopefully get my act together so I'll come back and have a bit more to offer. I'm giving it all some time to settle, the lost football game, the interrupted talent show, the everyday battle that teaching can be, and what's at stake.

Over Thanksgiving I also want to vist my old high school. Watch some of my favorite teachers and try to pick up a few things, now that I know what to look for.

Again not to be dramatic, but everything that was important before seems very small. I think we've all wanted to do something helpful all along, but it was never consuming in the same way. Of course, family, friends are still important, grades still matter. But it all looks a little more like background and the stuff that's haunting right now is what we're facing, what needs to get done and wondering if we're able to do it and what's going to happen to our kids.

Time to go...here's hoping that we'll make some kinds of a dent in this massive problem.