An End to a Teacher’s Journey

By James William Hall

This August, for the first time in fourteen years, I did not stand at my door to greet my English students on the opening day of school. I was at home.  I did not get up at five am the morning of the first day to prepare to teach; I did not gather materials for the first week of class introductions; I did not write lesson plans; I did not attend the first week of professional development. when teachers learn new skills, meet to focus their curriculum, and discuss goals for the coming year.

Instead, when I awoke-at seven am, I felt the hollowness that comes from giving up a familiar thing, a comfortable thing, a thing that’s been a part of my life for so long. I missed it.  I felt like a spare tire on a Jeep-ready, but not being used. Yet, at the same time I felt great relief, for it was like deciding not to run again in the annual marathon after running in so many. Teaching became an exhausting journey that I can no longer take.

Why? Each year in June, for the past thirteen years, I have finished a ten-month teacher’s journey begun the previous August.  These academic years are both exhilarating and exhausting. Exhilarating to meet my seniors, a group of kids that I grow to care a lot about. I see them graduate and realize dreams of going to college and pursuing careers. I go to their graduation ceremonies, pose for pictures with them in caps and gowns, hug them and wish them well as they launch themselves out into the world.  They are so happy and so relieved, and so am I, knowing how difficult their senior-year journey was.

But to reach exhilaration requires a lot of work and stress and just plain drudgery first.  There is the tedium of daily classes, repeated period after period, and days of lessons, drilling in the habits of reading and writing which must be mastered.  There is a daily review of what will be taught tomorrow. There is longer-range planning for the week and month ahead. There is the time needed, after classes, for students’ requests for help with scholarship letters and admission essays and figuring out college applications, documents that are lengthy and varied. And there is always the grading of papers and tests that frequently takes up the weekend, for I must give at least two grades per week to each student.

This average week is busy and taxing, but add all the weeks on top of each other, week after week, 40 weeks in all, 180 days of instruction as provided by law, and exhaustion builds. My students grow tired of school and become cranky. I grow tired of their crankiness. I struggle, with the other senior teachers, to keep them on track to graduate, knowing that for them to fail now means no diploma in June. Towards the end of second semester it’s a race to see who is going to collapse first-exhausted seniors or their teacher. Recently, I am the one who loses.

Add to this busy schedule the increased and urgent emphasis on testing, and you add further joyless, debilitating activity. There’s an appalling number of required tests. FCAT (now replaced by the FSA), a state-wide reading and writing test required to advance in grades and ultimately graduate, is an insistent presence. There are annual tests of proficiency for students for whom English is a second language, called CELLA, which can take up to a week to give. Add End of Course examines, and the Benchmark Exams to measure progress in those, and the PSAT and SAT exams to measure readiness for college. Add still more practice tests to prepare for all these tests.

Studying for tests, taking tests and analyzing test results has become a permanent part of the teacher’s academic calendar.  Testing is no longer just an end-of-the-semester or end-of-the year-thing, but a several times a quarter thing, with benchmark and practice tests spaced in between.  And everything else we try to do must be dropped when the test date is due. This heavy testing schedule breaks up my larger literacy goals like teaching novels or plays or epic poems that I used to relish sharing with my students. I have been forced to try to work in bits and pieces of these works, but always keeping an eye out for the next scheduled practice test coming up quickly.

More and more time for teachers is spent training to give these tests, to handle tests, to review test scores with students and to adjust class time to reteach areas in tests where students have fallen short.  Many days walking the aisles as a test proctor takes the place of language instruction. And as our students are forced to take these tests, over and over, they become tense and sullen. Students rebel at their test load and the stress of taking these exams, which have high stakes-graduation, college admission, and grade level advancement.

The literature that doesn’t appear on the tests-poetry, novels, quality videos, and even short stories-aren’t considered to be practice for the exams.  These things aren’t banned outright-in fact, there are AP courses where they are front and center and the smartest kids get exposed to them. But the average English student needs work on her non-fiction reading, which the standardized tests do measure, so that is where we spend the most time instructing. Great literature will have to wait for college to be read, if at all.

Adding to the testing fatigue is the summer vacation schedule, which used to be the time to recuperate, travel, reflect, read books, and write. Summer is now a busy off-season for teachers, a time for staff development, preparing or revising end-of-course exams, training in incorporating new computers and new software suites for instruction, and for attending trainings to meet the new prerequisites to the teaching certificate that the state legislature adds each year.  By the time I have met all these obligations, and feel like I can begin to enjoy my off time, it’s just about time to report back to school.

So this year I have left the school door behind.  I will miss all the wonderful students and my amazing colleagues that I shared work and discussions with; I will miss this year’s academic milestones and graduations. I will miss sharing my enthusiasm for great literature and getting the aha! moment in class.  I will always be proud to have been a teacher, one of most honorable and vital professions of our nation and the world.  Thanks to the people who gave me the chance to teach. My race is run.

The Cape Verde Conveyor Belt Warms Up

Hurricanes are immense heat engines. They can’t exist except in the warm waters of late summer.  They are like canaries in a coal mine, showing us the heat signatures that exists in nature.  This summer has been the hottest summer of the hottest year on record, and these hurricanes, while not the most numerous, are the largest, most powerful storms we have yet seen.

Three days ago Hurricane Maria plunged Puerto Rico into total darkness after striking the Virgin Islands and Dominica a day earlier.  It is the most powerful storm to hit these islands in 80 years.  Meanwhile, storm Jose was off the coast of New England beating the coastline with tropical force level winds.  In Florida we are still picking up after Hurricane Irma and dealing with floods and storm damage.  What do all these storms have in common? They were all Cape Verde hurricanes that developed off the coast of Africa and made the long trip across the Atlantic to our shores.

In a typical summer, we get hurricanes from two sources in the Western Hemisphere-the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico-like this year’s Harvey-or as storms that make the long trip from Africa and pass the Cape Verde islands of its coast.  It’s not easy for a Cape Verde storm to make it all the way across the Atlantic without breaking up or going off course. In a typical season, usually only two Cape Verde storms make it across, and they are generally the largest and most powerful storms. This year we have three already and the season is just past half over.

The long trip a Cape Verde storm takes is like bowling a strike. The ball takes time to get to the pins, and there are obstacles.  If you didn’t pitch it just right, your ball might go to one side or the other, or it might hit the lane hard and slow down. It might even land in the gutters, and you get nothing.  Only if you guide it with sufficient power, speed, and accuracy will you get what you are trying for-a strike.

The cosmic bowling alley that is the eastern Atlantic pitches hurricanes our way in late summer, when the waters are sufficiently warm.  The lane starts at Cape Verde, off the western coast of Africa.  Hot Sahara winds, combine with African wet season rains to blaze across upper Africa, fed by heat and sand.  The most powerful of the storms make it off the coast of Africa where they encounter the warm moist waters of the Eastern Atlantic. The two powerful forces merge and begin to spin, forming a depression. As the storm begins to cross the Atlantic, if it is shoved by favorable winds and conditions, the tropical wave becomes a depression, which becomes a tropical storm, and then a full-fledged hurricane as it picks up energy from warmer waters.

Lots of things can derail it-contrary winds, cooler waters it might intrude into, gouts of dry air, but if it navigates these potential barriers, it grows stronger and earns a name for itself.  It’s still not out of the woods at this point.  It can impact and be shredded by the mountainous islands of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Cuba.  It can be pushed away by fronts of high pressure air over the continental US, or contrarily can be pushed into the US by the Bermuda High, a ridge of high pressure air that ebbs and flows all summer.

Why is this year such a good year for Cape Verde storms?  No weak highs near Bermuda to steer them harmlessly out to sea.  No cross winds blowing off the top of the spinning hurricane.  And no cold water to choke off a storm’s power.  This year the water in the Caribbean and the Gulf and the Gulf Stream off the coast of Florida is the warmest water ever recorded.  The unprecedented warm water in the Eastern Caribbean took a weak Tropical Storm Maria and turned her into a Category 5 storm in just 27 hours.  That’s some serious fuel.

The scientists who study climate have measured the ocean temperatures and they are warming fast, as predicted by global warming theory. So with warmer water on tap, we are likely to continue to see the Cape Verde conveyor sending the hemisphere’s most powerful, most dangerous hurricanes our way.

Sources:

“What is a Cape Verde Hurricane?” http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/A2.html

Where is the ocean getting warmer? https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=fE6rJDyj&id=A1276DD9D8BEEA0B69D07591F7A21ED6A49CE678&thid=OIP.fE6rJDyjXVHBx-gss00uOQEsC9&q=global+warming+and+warmer+ocean+temperatures&simid=608027221779939481&selectedIndex=5

Where is most of the warming going? https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=2%2bXl4jVp&id=F1C16491C5230BDCA6679E08AD78FA9F7C70F8FF&thid=OIP.2-Xl4jVpR3v0t42E7LNy-AEsDM&q=global+warming+and+warmer+ocean+temperatures&simid=608030881114623129&selectedIndex=76

Irma Day Seven                   

Hurricane Blues. I’m sure people in other places, going about their daily lives, are weary of hurricane talk, just as the people here are weary of the reality of another day of stifling heat without power, or trudging through standing water, or fighting for scarce gas, ice, and groceries.

Those who have power are still surrounded by the debris of the hurricane sitting in piles in the front yard. There’s the background sound of chainsaws trimming off hanging branches and the Mini Excavators moving logs, and there’s the commiserating one does with friends and family who still aren’t hooked to the grid, and so are powerless in several ways.

If you don’t have power, you are subject to the heat-the relentless early September heat that quickly wilts a sweating working person. Activities that could be accomplished in a few hours take half a day, with water breaks and rest breaks that you must have or you will collapse.  It’s not laziness, it’s a matter of physics and biology-too much heat to dissipate builds up in the human body. A lot of work crews now smartly travel with campers, so work crews can cool off and get rest and drinks.

Those with damaged roofs or fallen fences or cracked car windows must contact their insurance companies and file with FEMA for a partial payment and line up contractors to start the work. In many cases they must wait for materials or for people because both of these are in short supplies. Stop-gap measures-tarps and plastic wrap-will have to suffice until the real thing is available.

Restaurants-the ones that are open-are full of people who don’t yet have power and are eating out to get a hot meal. The restaurants without power, or who now have it, but don’t have unspoiled food are watching business go to others. Grocery stores have empty shelves-especially in the refrigerated or frozen sections where people who recently regain their power are replacing spoiled food. The opportunities for profit are there-if you have power.

So, lots of people anxiously await the arrival of the bucket trucks. The flashing yellow lights and the yellow hardhats are welcomed gladly. The guys in the orange vest are the heroes who make a sane life possible here, make commerce possible, make normalcy possible. For the rest, it’s the Hurricane Blues.

Post-Irma Day Two The New Normal

I’d love to say that things are getting back to normal, but they’re not and may never be “normal” again.  Lots of work left to do. Some parts of Central Florida are still without power, sewers, or water, or both. I have a bad case of survivor’s guilt because my house has its power and water and sewer, as does my mother’s house. She is elderly and has a hard time handling the heat, but she doesn’t have to for now. That’s the plus side for us and for many like us here.

On the negative side, I’m living in Mom’s house because her caregivers can’t come-they have problems with power and roof damage that require their attention.  Cleanup of branches and leaves continues here, but I don’t have to worry about standing water, which so many Floridians do, or extensive water damage. Rain amounts were underestimated-they predicted 10-12 inches, but many areas got as much as 21 inches, which is half a year’s rain occurring at the end of our normal rainy season. Water on top of water.  So many lakes and rivers are flooding, and some places which didn’t see water during the storm are all-of-sudden waking up to it coming in from somewhere.

We still have people here in Orange County living in shelters because they can’t come home. Traffic lights are out in many places and this just encourages the world’s most crazy drivers to drive more crazily, and their accidents make the local news along with news of the disaster.

We have so many helpers out there helping people. Our local fire departments and police are working long hours, and many of them haven’t had time to take care of their own homes because of their service. People are working in the shelters to help those staying there, many with special needs. Crews are clearing downed trees from roads, a guy is next door right now working to replace my neighbor’s windshield which was smashed by Irma.  Neighbors are helping neighbors. They are restoring the balance in this part of Florida.

More distantly from us, at the margins of our state-the keys, the barrier islands, the seaside towns suffered much more damage to their infrastructure and will need major reconstruction. People there will be without power for weeks. Some of the ports are blocked with sunken boats and debris that have to be removed first before other boats and ships can return. Many Floridians who evacuated are driving home to find total devastation and little resources to deal with it.

I believe that in a few weeks, we’ll have two Floridas-a restored Florida getting back to work and back to business, and a deeply damaged Florida that won’t yet be restored and may never be the same. This storm is one of the benchmarks that people around here will talk about for years-Before Irma and After Irma-the way they talk about Katrina in Louisiana.

We must not forget that a bill for all of these services-locally and nationally-will at some point be due. The overtime must be paid for, the damage must be paid for, and the rebuilding must be paid for.

We are not hurt badly here in the first Florida, we are mostly inconvenienced.  Still, people are dying here. Stepping on power lines, dying in their sleep of carbon monoxide poisoning from their generators, seniors suffering heat stroke in unairconditioned nursing homes. The aftermath of a storm like Irma, as massive and powerful as it was, lies in the breaking or bending of our social and economic structures that the storm creates in its wake. People still fall between the cracks of our community even as many others are being lifted up and supported in a time of need. For now, that’s the new normal.

Irma ex post facto

Okay, she's not quite gone. Like an uninvited guest who overstays her unwelcome visit, Irma's still sending winds and rains and dark, low-scudding clouds to us. Last night was a reminder of some of the worst hurricanes I've ridden out-howling wind, lashing sideways rains, flickering power, and the thud of large limbs and entire trees crashing down in the street.

Mom and I went downstairs after seeing pictures of upper story roofs ripped apart in small tornadoes generated by the storm. Paints quite a picture even if you don't have an active imagination.

What makes Irma unique was its duration. Hours and hours of howling winds that kept us going all afternoon, into the darkness of the evening, and continued late into the night. I fell asleep listening to them and awoke hours later still listening to them. Fortunately, this south side of the storm is mostly wind and dark clouds and the occasional sheet of rain.

We feel fortunate and grateful to be alive this morning after an awesome display of nature's great power. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers.

The Hurricane Arrives

Slept well after a night of gentle rain. It's amazing how crafty hurricanes can be-luring you to think they are safe with nice gentle rain and then slamming you with tornadoes and wind gusts and (on the coast) storm surge. Right now Irma is coming ashore at the keys with sustained 110 mph winds.

We are expected Irma to arrive here in Central Florida around 2 pm-will probably lose power then and be out of touch with you all for a while (God willing we will be back in touch later.). Hurricane force winds all night long-74 mph steady with gusts into the 90s. Then the hurricane will go marching into Georgia like General Sherman. Good luck, Georgians!

I'm worried about people on our coasts-west coast towns like Naples, Fort Myers, and Tampa haven't seen a storm like this in a century. Lots of nice homes were built in areas that can get storm surge, the most deadly effect of any hurricane, barring tornadoes of course.

The east coast may get storm surge, and will get 74 mph winds as the hurricane passes. People don't realize how wide a storm this is until you see the actual radar images. The "cone" graphics the weather people like to use are dangerously inaccurate and indicate nothing for the east side of our state, but that is wrong. Be careful, folks!

The worst part of the storm so far has been just the waiting for it. We have seen it cross the Caribbean, destroying island communities, and slowly creeping our way. Now it is here and we just have to get through it. I was encouraged so see many bucket trucks on the road yesterday-a whole contingent from Northline Power in New York state passed me, headed to Tampa. It's good to know that we are not alone.

Irma Infatuation 

Irma is on everyone’s lips here in Florida. Governor Rick Scott came out in a news conference yesterday and used the “A” word to describe Irma’s potential for destruction in the Miami area. He said that Irma could be worse than Hurricane Andrew.

Andrew is our benchmark for bad hurricanes. We celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary just a week or so ago, and he remains vividly in the minds of everyone who lived through him. He destroyed an entire South Florida town-Homestead-stripping homes down to their concrete foundations. He destroyed 64,000 of them. He killed 65 people who knew he was coming. He was the most destructive hurricane from 1992 to 2005, when Katrina finally surpassed him and took the belt.

Hurricanes are like right-handed prize fighters. Their greatest power is in their leading edge and to the right side of the storm-that’s where the highest winds blow, that’s where the rain falls hardest. We’ve had many hurricanes since Andrew-tough punchers like Charlie, and bangers like Jeanne, Dennis, and Wilma, major hurricanes all. Irma threatens to be a bigger bully and a greater danger than any of them. If Irma is going to be as stone bad as Andrew, pay attention and get out of town, especially if you’re in her wheelhouse, which Miami appears to be.

The one hope I’m holding on to just now is the spaghetti-the lines on the weather map from different models. Floridians have become expert at reading the spaghetti the way that fortune tellers read tea leaves. The spaghetti, which was all over the map for a while, is now focused mostly in the waters right off the Atlantic coast. That’s good and bad. Good that the worst of the storm will be in the gulf stream, bad that the storm itself will be in the gulf stream and won’t likely lose much punch as she heads north. Ignore those silly little path lines that seem to imply that Irma will be safely out to sea. She’s too big. Hurricane and tropical storm force winds will cross the state as she passes north. Next stop, Charleston? Watch out, Carolinas.

Anticipating Irma

Irma is now the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, one of a series of record-setting weather events this year.  Even the climate deniers are paying attention to her.  Rick Scott, the Florida governor who won’t let his staff utter the words “global warming” or write them in documents, is declaring this storm an emergency. And well he should, for Irma has the potential be a windier version of Harvey currently clocking 180 mph winds.  There are hurricane force winds 60 miles from the center, and tropical storm winds 160 miles from the center. It is a meteorological buzz saw pushed by prevailing winds toward us.

Antigua and Puerto Rico are in her sights, and next up the island of Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti) and then Cuba. Irma threatens to blow away all the Jewels of the Caribbean and then rip apart South Florida with its biggest hurricane since Andrew-that’s a name that all Floridians who know hurricanes fear. A retired name.  Andrew shattered neighborhoods and upended lives the way that Harvey has done in Houston.

And the lines on the long-term weather maps, which all experienced Floridians know to read, are nearly unanimous in pointing for Irma to move right up the peninsula of Florida-whether off-shore or right down the middle of the state won’t matter if Irma retains her power.  Forecasting has gotten too good to hope for a last-minute reprieve. This storm won’t die-the water’s too warm and the conditions are too ripe for a hell of a wind-storm. With rain.

So, the ice and water are flying off the shelves here, and the cars are gassing up.  While the rest of the country is focused on North Korea and DACA and the return of Congress, Florida has her eyes nervously on a spinning horror cruising through the Caribbean and the lines on the map aren’t good.

Labor Day 2017

This morning in pre-dawn darkness outside of the MacDonald’s on Sand Lake Road here in Orlando there were a huge group of minimum wage employees, carrying signs, chanting for action to raise the working wage there to $15 an hour and bring in a union for the employees of these franchise stores.

The labor movement goes on.  Today’s unions are less visible in manufactured plants and more visible in our service industries-nurses and hospital employees, teachers, police and firemen and a growing element in restaurants as those workers strive for living wages.

This history of unions goes back to the turn of the last century, where they fought against “company towns” or places where companies owned the buildings and stores and kept their workers in debt to them while working for tiny wages. They fought against the practice of child workers, young boys digging in coal mines or girls sewing dresses in sweatshops instead of going to school.

In the post-World War Two era, unions helped the American economy become the strongest in the world. Unions guaranteed that their workers would be middle class people who could afford to buy houses, cars, and put their kids in college.  They also helped non-union office workers and managers grow their wages and salaries and benefits. 

I’ve been fortunate to have been a member of three unions-the Teamsters in Disney Parking, the Transportation Communications Union in Disney Watercraft, and as a teacher the Orange County CTA for the past thirteen years. During that time I was blessed to be involved in union activities as a shop steward and contract negotiator at Disney, and at my high school’s union board, which worked with the principal to improve conditions for teachers there. I saw firsthand where unions defend workers and teachers being accused or discriminated against, and where they negotiate better working conditions, healthcare, and wages.

A lot of people think that unions are irrelevant today. Their membership has declined as industrial plants have been closed or automated. So-called “right to work” laws, designed to weaken unions, have lessened their impact. Laws have even been legislated by pro-business legislatures to ban or limit union activities like the right to strike.

The result of union weakness has been stagnating employee wages, record CEO salaries, and increased corporate profits. Income equality in America is now at its highest point since the late 1920s, right before the stock market crash and Great Depression. We now have a new category of American, the “working poor,” who are people who work full time but still need government benefits to support their families.

American workers are working harder than ever for less money and weaker benefits. Today’s American workers badly need their own voice in this economy, so I am heartened to see young people and older restaurant workers gathering at MacDonald’s to raise their voices and demand a piece of the American Dream that we should all have a right to work for.  Happy Labor Day, all.