striking gold in the salt mine

It's a deeply rainy weekend, kicking off what appears to be a solid week of the wet stuff coming up, if my phone can be trusted. I've turned a corner, though, and since Imbolc, and a luminous ritual with my Druid group, I've been fairly on the up-and-up. Even the flu, which came this past Sunday, and stayed til yesterday, hasn't really gotten me down. Oh, I took 3 days off to work, and a lot of Tamiflu and tea, but I'm feeling better. Spring, which always seems to pop up in GA in February, is working its magic.

I was struck with a thought about my work this morning. We are deep into ACCESS testing at school. ACCESS is the annual test of English language proficiency, that most of our students take. It pulls me out of my teaching job for 5 weeks, to give group written tests, online tests, and 1:1 speaking tests. Now I don't really like tests, and think we give far too many in our current educational culture. ACCESS is mostly performance-based, though, and isn't ridiculously rigorous, as tests go. I don't hate it, and it does give the examiner a good idea of what the ELL student can actually do, in English. What I realized, though, is that by being involved in testing children, I get to avoid the regular weekly meetings at school where administrators talk about testing. Because the testing schedule runs all day, and doesn't follow the rest of the staff schedule. Win-fucking-win!!!! ACCESS can go on all year, as far as I'm concerned...the entire month of February is simply going to work, testing children, working after hours on my various extra-curricular projects and afterschool club, then coming home to enjoy home life. No lesson planning, no collaborative, data-centric meetings of any kind eating up my nonexistent planning time. It's going a long way to ensure my enjoyment of my job, right now.

Thing is, I really still enjoy teaching, and like the kids, the families, and my colleagues. But our school has turned into a Georgia Milestones-CCRPI-obsessed, numbercrunching score-mill, and our planning periods have been hijacked by time with administrators and coaches pushing one or another initiative down our already choking throats. It has raised everyone's stress level, and to be honest, it's happening in every school in the district, so I can't even escape with a transfer. The one good thing (and really, finding a silver lining in this stormcloud is as a stretch) about it all is that it has caused me to move my retirement plans up a lot. I am planning 3 more years in the field. Slightly more than a Peace Corps assignment, right? I'm just about ready to start counting the days. I never thought it'd come to this. And really, if I weren't so deep into it, I'd just leave, but I do like the money, the benefits, and the dubious retirement potential.

But I am all about finding me some joy right now, and that includes ways to transcend the drudgery.

I have also just registered for 2 pleasurable escapes, thus spending all my disposable income for this month. One is my spinning guild's retreat, to be held in March, in a big rambling house not too far out of Atlanta. The other is the 2nd annual Mystic South conference, coming up in July. Both of these events are serious good times, and feed my soul. I'm hoping a friend from up DC way will come down and stay with me for Mystic South again. A couple of facebook messages, and yes, she confirms it.

And now, my dears, I am leaving this cozy chair for a bit of spinning and Olympics gawking.