BandDad

“You really think you can tell me what I can do with my body?”

REPUBLICAN PARTY has entered the chat…

As a teacher, just a letter or card saying how they impacted you is enough.

I work in a public school. The older teachers are the ones that don’t even look at the sender address. “Oh, this email that sort of looks like its from an employee says to blindly open this file that I would realize is clearly fake if I took more than two seconds to look at it? I’m on it!”

Our union negotiator didn’t understand different sheets in Excel files. Had a document he wanted to share out on sheet one. For some reason on sheet two he had every union employee’s name, birth date, social security number, address, etc. in plain text. Emailed to the entire school district. I caught it immediately and made them aware. The frantic emails to my friend the IT guy were hilarious. “I NEED YOU TO GO INTO EVERYONE’S EMAIL AND DELETE THE MESSAGE I JUST SENT.” Then when it was explained that you can’t just take it back, another frantic district email “DO NOT OPEN MY PREVIOUS EMAIL. JUST DELETE.” Again, not understanding that unless they empty their trash, its still recoverable for 30 days.

His daughter said he tried to talk the shooter down while protecting others. Chokes me up as a fellow Iowa teacher. I identify with that so much. Never met him, but I respect the hell out of him.

As a teacher who has fed kids who otherwise would have gone hungry over the summer, I’m appalled.

As an Iowan, I have no idea what more to do. Voting certainly hasn’t worked so far and reasonable arguments fall on deaf ears. Yes, I could move, but is it really any better anywhere else? I would feel like I was abandoning my family, my students, and community. It is important to show through action and compassion that there is more than just this kind of conservative nonsense in the world. Of course, she fast tracked giving our public education dollars to private schools with no change in accountability measures…

In a household of four with two full time incomes (both teachers, so take that with a grain of salt), we are at the point that the food budget is the only thing left to cut. We have canceled any subscriptions, cut all other spending, and often skip lunch/breakfast or eat Ramen noodles to save the bulk of our money for the kids and feed them better. I’m sick of beans and rice, BTW. Due to the nature of our jobs and the outside of school hours (which we are compensated for), side hustle is not an option. We would like to actually be present and part of our kids lives. I keep getting told “it gets better,” but the stress of making the bills and feeding the family is relentless, and that says a lot since we are way more fortunate than most. We need change.

I feel guilty doing that. My kids deserve better from me.

You get $300?! We get $150…

It really is amazing how people just believe whatever outlandish story they hear. Had an elderly woman tell our state legislators at a local forum that teachers where I work were literally locking children into closets and teaching them to be gay. Legislators response: “Mumble, Mumble, yeah… we need to do something about these teachers.”

Lady, if we had the power to “indoctrinate” children, we wouldn’t have any late homework again, let alone tolerance for people different from yourself.