Defining moment

I remember the day clearly. I think it was raining and I was a junior or senior still riding the bus to get to my high school. Life for me at that time was all about the dramas surrounding fragile relationships, built around sex and possibly alcohol if we could get our hands on it and looking "cool" when smoking.
I waited in the hallways of an apartment complex with other kids in the neighborhood when weather was inclement, as it usually was in fall and winter in Ohio. Eventually Mr. Brown would stop in front of the drive and we would pile on, eager for the day. (Yeah, right.)
I must have had a "tiff" with the current love of my life as I boarded the bus sullen and sighing and hadn't participated in the pre-bus banter and shenanigans in the hallway. Why hadn't anyone asked me what was bothering me? Didn't I look sad enough? Maybe crocodile tears would help.
Linda wouldn't take the bait. She had known me since fifth grade and we had grown up together, sharing Beatles records, boyfriend stories and Girl Scout outings. Looking back she was one of the level-headed kids. Good grades were her forte, as was participation in whatever high school had to offer. She embraced learning and friendship and new things. (She still does.)
Me, not so much.
I went to school to socialize. To try and be in with the cool guys and girls. Would an older guy ever ask me out? Did my latest love interest like me for me, or was he only interested in getting around the bases? (Duh!)
I asked myself a lot of questions as any teen does, but I also did a lot of wishing. Out loud wishing, and never acting on them.
I wished I was funny and easy-going. I wished I was naturally talented and not shy. I wished I was athletic and graceful. I wished to be academically smart and witty. Did I do anything to get there? Hardly.
Not until after that morning on the bus.
Sighing dramatically, I told Linda that my current boyfriend was being a jerk by seeing other girls behind my back. Again.
Seeing I wasn't going to get any response, at least not the one I wanted or needed, I launched into a dialogue about some ballet dancers I had watched on T.V. the previous night and commented how I "wanted to be like them, all strong and graceful".

She looked at me, non-smiling, a bit peeved and exasperatingly quipped; "Cheryl, just do it then!"

I don't remember if any conversation followed. I think I was shocked into silence. But she sure planted a seed for me that day.

I began studying. I quit hanging around the loser friends that were coming drunk to school. I joined the choral group. I started taking gymnastics and started running.
I started doing things that I had always wanted to do but was too afraid that others would think I wasn't cool for doing them.

That was thirty-eight or thirty-nine years ago. Linda and I are still friends. She reads this blog sometimes (I hope).
She didn't know it but was a woman ahead of the times with her mantra of "Just Do It". She knows now when she reads this that she was instrumental in me changing my outlook and my life to what it has become today.

I am still running, still doing backbends, still taking classes to learn about new things and still pushing myself in many aspects to become the best woman, mom, wife, teacher, and aging athlete I can be.
And it all started with Linda telling me I could, that rainy and chilly morning in Ohio as we rode the bus to school.

Thanks Linda!

I run to run away sometimes.

Sometimes I just have to sort things out in my head and I do this best while moving...running and swimming are the best. Cycling takes too much outside concentration, so I don't solve the world's problems on the bike.
Come to think of it I don't on my runs or swims either, but at least I feel a little calmer afterwards.

I was in a meeting yesterday until 3:30 and then I excused myself. After all, I am retired, and get paid for only a certain number of hours so I decided it was time for me to leave. Plus had I stayed (it went on until 5:30!) I probably would have said something I would have regretted.

The meeting was your "normal" IEP meeting for a student with special needs. (IEP standing form "Individual Educational Program").
The paperwork for one of these meetings consists of a 15 page document stating what we as educators (I add PARENTS to this!) are going to do to advance a student as far along in the educational process as possible.

This particular student has been in our program going on two years. The said student is a one with autism, retardation, virtually non-verbal and has aggressive behaviors (kicking, hitting, biting, head-butting and taking off all clothes in public places). The student was adopted from a foreign country when s/he was five and was recently placed in a group home situation by her parents as the family's biological children were being threatened by her behavior. The student was home-schooled up until s/he became too difficult to handle and was then placed in the public schools.

The student's first school district "wasn't able to give him/her the program s/he needed" so s/he missed quite a bit of that academic year.

The student has been suspended this year already for harming students and staff. The student was allowed to return to school as his/her behaviors are not malicious in nature, but a result of her disability.

I have never formally met "mom"-and I hear she has been in the classroom once for a total of about 30 seconds.
Mom ( and I use the term loosely) has bad-mouthed the classroom setting and our teaching procedures to others, but has never voiced her opinion directly to the classroom teacher, school administrators, or myself. Only to her lawyer.

Dad brought a lawyer yesterday with outlandish demands (daily swimming for sensory integration??? Daily speech therapy???)
written badly by some whore who had never even met the student.

I vented to hubby for about two hours when I got home yesterday about what public education has become. There were 12 people at the meeting yesterday for this one student, most of them breaking their backs and brains for this kid, only to be accused by the father and his whore lawyer that we are not doing "enough" and we are possibly the cause of his child's behaviors.

Wait a frigging minute here. Did you do any better? You dad, had her removed from your home because you could not control the behaviors being exhibited. And pray tell WHY did we have to start from square one with augmentative communication (consisting of picture representation, a full speech and language evaluation for the purchase of a communication device, and teaching of sign language/gestures and what verbal we can get from her) when the student was TWELVE? What in blazes had been going on for seven years that when the student came to us NONE of this had been done, and nothing was in place? Why is it US that always has to re-invent the wheel, write up pages and pages of behavior plans and recommendations for equipment to be purchased thorough DDD as the child enters middle school? And then get no thanks for it?

Parents are balking at my recommendation of the student learning to speak using an augmentative communication device because in order for the student to be successful and make progress I am demanding that they attend sessions and learn about the device also. They really don't want to.

The classroom teacher is ready to quit as am I, except that we care for this student and have eight others to devote our time to this year.

I wrote the classroom teacher this morning hoping that he will hang in there for at least another year. The student will move on to high school after next year and then the parents can take their lawyer and make unreasonable demands to a brand new team. The student will be "allowed" to stay in the public schools until the age of 23 (your tax dollars at work!) and then the parents can fight a whole new system consisting of day programs and poorly staffed group homes.

Just thought you may like to know what goes on in the public school arena on any given day.

Now, I am going for a swim and forget all about this until next week.