No One Knows

God... I've been having a terrible time at work. On Friday I was told, now definitively, that I would be spending the rest of the school year teaching a K/1 blend - which if you know anything about Kindergarten is a nightmare scenario. Basically, I will have to do interventionist teaching to bring two different grade levels of children to benchmark by the end of the year... with each of them receiving half the time - while one group is receiving my full attention, the other will be working independently. And expecting Kindergarteners to be able to do this is crazy.

But as I was given this news, I was also chastised for not having my management down well enough, despite the fact that I was having to have the kindergarten working independently from the second week of class.

I was also accused of not following the curriculum, and not having the students doing enough writing. This despite the fact that Kindergarteners do not even learn their first word until the 2nd month of school.

Oh yeah, and the reason we're in this mess (grade sizes are in the single digits across K-8), is that obviously recruitment hadn't worked. Yet apparently no real recruitment had even happened. Glossy fliers were ordered, yet still sitting in boxes as of the 2nd week of school. The school finally decided to spend thousands on advertising... in mid September.

OK, so that's why I haven't been sleeping. My wife is worrying about me again. But I'll be OK, honest. It's just going to be a ball-busting year.

And in the background... the economy is apparently collapsing into fire and brimstone. On the Sunday news shows, Congressional insiders wouldn't even mention the nightmare scenario Secretary Paulson painted for them if they didn't act quickly on a massive, trillion dollar bailout. They literally would not say. It was as if the economic future was Voldemort.

Yet they hinted at competing ideological rifts that may impede such an act from getting passed, even as they promised that the levity of the situation assured a minimum of friction. Then Kristol comes out saying it's all a big establishment power-play. Gingrich tells NPR that Bernanke & Paulson had been wrong before, so we couldn't trust them now. A scanning of the various blogs and columns reflects a frustrated clamoring for answers, explanations, solutions... seemingly in vain. Its almost as if the fabric of space-time is rupturing, and the public is being asked to digest, and give support to political positions on theoretical physics.

OK Newt, the function of time divided by the root of variable constants can't be exponential-dependent.

No One Knows. And everything depends on it. Reading David Brooks today, wily devil though he often is, seemed to paint a perfect portrait of the nebulousity of these times. Liberal + Conservative = "..........."