It's a Surreal Day in the Neighborhood

I think we're going to be having some mostly surreal days at school from here on in. On the one hand, it is good to know that it is very, very not just me. One thing this is doing, I guess, is that it's bringing a lot of us old hands together, because we're seeking each other out and asking What do you know, What are you going to do? I'm also finding that if I let myself go, I can get very emotional about what I won't be doing or seeing anymore, and I know that the same thing is happening to the others.

By the way, our school budget passed yesterday, so WOO HOO. What does that mean for me? Not a damn thing, since all my issues come from the governor's office. It means that we will lose 30 teachers district-wide next year, and no more. I don't know what the contingency plan was going to be if the budget failed. I suppose it does mean something for me, though, since they're hoping to take as many of those 30 lost jobs as they can from retirements, so theoretically, if I retire, it could save one of the new English teachers, or maybe the new math teacher who actually used to be in my Scout troop years ago. See, I would like that.

Okay, almost getting misty. Deep breath.

So that's been going on all day. Then, about 10:30, I looked up and saw an elderly man coming into the library, and you know, elderly is not so common in the land of teenagers. He had come to see if I wanted his complete, pristine set of National Geographic, and the sad truth, which I've had to tell people for years, is that no one does. That aside, it turned out that he is something of a local historian, as am I, and was a student at the high school when it opened, so he shared some great stories with me and he was delightful and charming. But surreal.

When he left, I started working on a proposal to change the procedures for a task I do every end-of-school-year, just in case I'm not here next year to do it, and while I was typing that up, the most senior member of our staff came by to ask me how one would actually go about retiring. If I didn't cry then, well, I guess I'll be okay. He never wanted to retire, and he still doesn't, but he sees that he has to. This guy is just a lovely gentleman, one of the last industrial arts teachers in the world, I think, and he has THE BEST reputation in school as the teacher kids never mess with, because everyone knows he was a Green Beret in Vietnam, which is not a lie, and students have seen his many feats of amazing strength from the time he came back to school after his service and up until this very day.  I believe this is his ... 46th year here, which includes his two years in service, because when a teacher takes time off to serve in the military, it counts as two years of teaching towards seniority and pension, as it should. I wonder why the governor hasn't closed that little loophole yet.

Anyway. Everywhere I look, I see a task that must be finished by June 30, or a procedure that must be written down so someone else can do it.

Lunch.