Five Year Anniversary

Well, as it turns out, I would have had to resort to something much stronger than aspirin to keep writing about test scores, and it wasn't worth it.  I think I made my point in two or three posts, anyway. 

Why do I keep writing here?  Old time's sake?  No.  I stated the purpose very clearly in my first post.
That was on March 21, 2007, and I just realized that it's been almost exactly five years to the day.

"...I am going to make this a very public shaming, shunning, or what-ever-you-want-to-call-it. This isn't going to happen in some little dark corner of Bloomberg-land. So, if you want to see the step by step destruction of a very long, and, I think, very proud teaching career, then come for a visit.

Why have I chosen to display what could be a very painful process? Well, as a science teacher I have noticed that germs don't grow as well in the light as in the dark. Lies are germs. And truth is light.

This blog is my truth."

 I don't know what my expectations were.  I actually don't remember, so I'll just have to take my own words for it.

 " I am going to make this a very public shaming...." 

It didn't turn out that way.  Not many teachers found their way to my blog.  A few people read what I wrote--I'm sure Principal S.T. did--but despite the fact that Bloomberg stepped up his assault on teachers exponentially with each year that passed,  not many people searched the internet for answers to what was happening to them, their friends, or their loved ones.

They would have found me if they had--and if they hadn't found me, they would have found Education Notes, Chaz's School Daze,  Pissed Off Teacher, and many more.  There should have been thousands of hits on these blogs every day, and I know for a fact that there weren't.  Teachers were suffering in silence, and alone, and they were not using Google to search for answers. 

"This blog is my truth."

"Nobody cares", was the reaction I got from P.B., my chapter leader when I told him about the blog (which is how I know that Principal S.T. also knew about the blog).  He was right, of course.  But I am very glad that I wrote as much as I did.  I wish I had written more.  The reaction that my mind has had to all those years of suffering has been to blur it over.  I really don't want to think about it.  The book I threatened to write has not been written.  I've had over a year, and I should have gone through the mountains of paper they used to bury my career, but I can't bring myself to touch them.  All I  have is what I wrote in this blog and my responses to the disciplinary letters they wrote.

So I was thinking of closing this blog down.  I've moved on.  I'm Occupying.  :)

However,  the story's not over.  I'm different because of what I went through.  There's a lot of my so-called "truth" that I wish were not true, but it is.  The rage, the hurt, the anger... the hatred.  I wish I could say that I have moved on and don't care, but that is not "my truth".

I have been working through it on my own, and I don't really need to write about the process in this blog.  I mean, why give S.T. the satisfaction of knowing that she still has power over me?  When you hate a person, that is what happens--you give them power over you.  I hate that I hate her, but I do.

If I don't write about it here, I won't write about it at all.  Someday I won't hate her.  No feeling will connect us, and I will be free.