Success

So, it’s been a long while, more than half a year since I’ve posted.  Not a whole lot has changed in terms of how I’m handling Crazed Addict Fatgirl these days.  After feeling like I’d vanquished her pretty well for about a year – and after maintaining my weight the mid-150s for a couple of years – Fatgirl’s voice gradually came back to reside almost permanently in my thoughts.  And the pounds have gradually crept right back on.

I’m not all the way back to 189.5 by any means, but if Fatgirl keeps up her bad work, it’s not hard to imagine hitting that awful number (and those awful feelings and awful clothes) again someday.  And it’d be a “someday” in the not-too-terribly-distant future.

Sigh.

On the positive side, I did somehow manage to make a concerted 2-month effort this spring, where I “just did it” (old Nike slogan) and immediately got out of bed and worked out for 30 minutes almost every morning before school.  I had to get up at 4:30 or 4:45 to make it happen, but oddly enough, that wasn’t too hard.  I also stuck pretty well with my old eating plan, being very careful to bring vegetables, fruits, and a protein shake with me for lunch.  Dinner would be more vegetables and a Lean Cuisine.  I did actually allow myself a piece of cake or something for dessert on most nights, but I managed to get “down” (in quotes because it’s sad to think of this number as “down” when it used to be horrifyingly “up”) to 166.

Then, I don’t know, I hit an odd place.  The school where I was teaching almost full-time underwent major staffing cuts.  My job was one of those eliminated.  And I’ve discovered this about myself over the past few years:  I don’t process negative experiences very efficiently.  It seems to take me a long while even to figure out that something negative happened – that I was, say, treated badly – and even when I talk a lot about my feelings and try to process my thoughts, I often don’t understand the full scope of the negative experience until much later.

That’s how it was with the way my job was eliminated.  When I first received the news, I reacted to it based upon my assumption that the decision was purely one of economics.  The school is having major money woes.  I’d known that for a long while.  But I was so completely confident in the work I’d done – I’d absolutely known, without a doubt, that the school would have been hard-pressed to find anyone else who would have done a better job in my position – that it never even entered my mind that maybe they were showing me the door because they didn’t like me or had thought poorly of my work.  (For anyone wondering, no, I did not receive a poor evaluation.  I was never even evaluated at all, beyond the strange self-evaluation form we were all asked to complete shortly before the job cuts were announced.  Our school has had other upheavals this year, one of which was a change in administrators.  The new administrator at our campus always seemed overwhelmed, so I wasn’t totally surprised that watching me teach didn’t appear to be a priority for him.   Also, his son happened to be one of my students.  Although I felt like the lack of evaluations/observations was unprofessional, a part of me just figured the administrator neglected to do a formal observation of my work because he felt like he had such a good handle on what I was doing just from watching his son’s progress.  But – nobody in any position of authority ever actually watched me teach.  I never received any feedback other than positive responses from parents.)

Then, a couple of days before spring break, the administration announced a special meeting for staff and faculty from all our campuses.  My colleagues began speaking of contracts (or lack thereof) in hushed, frightened tones.  I wasn’t very concerned.  In fact, I didn’t even bother to attend the special meeting.  As I said, I was confident that I was doing a very good job and couldn’t possibly be cut for performance-related reasons.  Plus, I just didn’t see the point in worrying. The reality is that my family and I don’t need my income.  It’s been great for us as extra money that helped to cover our own children’s tuition costs, and I liked the small employee tuition discount, but we won’t be suffering a whole lot if I’m not working.  My philosophy has always been that I’d work for as long as the opportunity was there.  It was an opportunity that fell into my lap to begin with, a door that opened so easily that it would have been crazy to choose not to walk through it, but it wasn’t anything I’d grown irrevocably attached to.

Anyway, I skipped the special meeting.  The next morning, we had an additional staff meeting which I did attend, and our rookie administrator rambled for quite awhile about all the angst he and his fellow administrators (from our school’s other campuses) had been suffering as they’d discussed the upcoming cuts whenever they’d “hold meetings at Chili’s” (a euphemism for when they’d get together for beers, I think) over the past couple of months.

At the end of that before-school faculty meeting, our now-emotional administrator told us to find him sometime in the next day or so to privately discuss our contracts.  I still didn’t think my job would be one of the jobs on the block.  Hadn’t I been assigned, a mere couple of weeks before, the task of writing out my goals for next year and filling out quite an extensive questionnaire about the future?  I’d dutifully spent an hour or so doing that.  If these job cuts had been in the works for at least a couple of months (as the weepy administrator had let slip with his dumb remarks about his Chili’s angst), they certainly wouldn’t have me go to all that trouble for nothing.  Right?

Wrong.

I hate letting things drag on, so immediately after our faculty meeting adjourned, I basically followed the administrator to his office.  He shut the door, took a seat at the conference table, and motioned for me to sit down across from him.  Bad signs.

For some reason, I decided to remain standing, which made what happened next feel even more surreal.  While still seated, the administrator dramatically flung the top half of his body on the conference table as he pretended to slump with sadness.  He uttered the words, “I don’t have a contract for you.”  And sighed deeply, a huge, utterly gigantic expulsion of air.  Ugh.

I stared at him, at what seemed like his not-very-authentic display of pseudo-emotion, and felt, suddenly, oddly detached.  When he stared back at me with dry eyes but uttered the words, “I am so, so so so sorry!” in a weepy sort of voice, I instantly smiled and assured him that it was OK.  Really.

And in that moment, before I’d had time to think about anything, it was OK.  Like I said, it wasn’t like I was thrown into a panic over our finances or anything, although I would have liked to have kept our money situation the way it had been.  I also have never been one of those women who MUST work outside the home.  I’d loved being a homemaker and wasn’t always thrilled about having to be away from home all day every day the way things had been over the past school year.

So it was OK.  Really.

At least at first.

Then I did something that was, in retrospect, pretty stupid.  I offered to teach, in essence, for free.  I said I’d be willing to do my job for a mere tuition discount.

The administrator (I’m sick of using that word, so let’s just call him Mr. Angst) sucked in his breath dramatically once again and then let it out.  “That’s not my decision to make,” he responded.  But then he assured me he’d mention it to his two higher-ups.

I spent the rest of that day feeling numb.  I taught my classes in a fog, looking around in disbelief at the classroom I’d so lovingly and perfectly decorated.  I’d bought so many supplies with my own personal funds, simply because I knew the school was struggling and I hadn’t wanted to add to the burden in any way.  I’d even purchased an entire class set of novels in order to teach a book that wasn’t already part of the school’s collection.  I’d created a year’s worth of lessons for two subjects. And now – it was all for nothing.

I also obsessively checked my email that day, looking for a response from Mr. Angst.  I checked it all that day, and then late into the evening.  I checked it first thing in the morning.  By the middle of the next day, reality started to set in.

Despite the fact that Mr. Angst had told me emphatically that I was not being let go for anything performance-related (that was one question I do recall asking him in the midst of assuring him I was OK), I was now starting to think that my dismissal wasn’t just about saving the school money.  How could it be, when I’d essentially offered to teach for free – and if they’d accommodated me, they could have been assured, during a crisis of declining enrollment, of my own children’s continued attendance there?  How was my offer anything but beneficial for the school?

The more I thought about all of this, the more off-kilter it all started to seem.  I know this will sound arrogant to some people, but seriously, I know I am very, very good at what I do.  I was by no means perfect (who is?), and of course if I could have taught those classes again, I would have done some things differently, would have found ways to improve.  But…I’m a good teacher.  That’s how I got the position in the first place – I had worked as a long-term sub at the school, and the previous administrator had actually fielded calls and emails from parents requesting that I be hired on permanently (some even suggested that I ought to replace the teacher who had been out on maternity leave), that when a different position opened up, the administrator had called me and offered me the job without ever even posting it publicly.  (It’s a private school – they can do that.)

What cash-strapped school with declining enrollment would not want to accept free staff and in the process ensure that they’d be able to hang on to the staff member’s children as paying students?

Meanwhile, in addition to being pretty blown away by the knowledge that my job was gone, I was also wondering about some larger decisions that the administration had just announced.  Due to a number of factors, the biggest of which was declining enrollment, they could no longer sustain multiple campuses.  Rather than consolidate and relocate to the largest and most desirable property, they were planning on selling everything, finding a totally “neutral” location, and building a new campus from scratch.  Considering that money was tight and nobody seemed to know how to go about fundraising, and considering that even the sale of multiple campuses would run about $15 million short of what would be needed for the new property and new construction, I was having a really difficult time having faith in the administration’s judgment.  Everything – what they were going to do, how it was announced, the supposed timetable for this process, and the accompanying lack of concern about maintaining enrollment in the interim – seemed terribly short-sighted.

And one of our children was set to start high school there.  Why would anyone want to go to a high school that was cutting staff and classes while raising tuition…a school located in a very difficult-to-get-to, junky part of town…with a freshman class probably numbering around 30 students…when they had no idea where they might be located 2 or 3 years from now?

I’d had such a deep loyalty to this school, such a deep belief in its mission, such a confidence in its long history, that facing all this upheaval was almost like watching something die.  Losing my job and not having anyone respond to my offer to teach for a tuition discount had caused me to lose all faith in the administration’s ability to think clearly and do the things that would benefit the school.  Overnight, my husband and I were compelled to rethink all our assumptions about what would be best for our children’s education.

In the days in which I was processing all this, my exercise routine just went out the window.  First of all, I had this thought in the back of my mind that spring break was coming up soon, and I would have all the free time to exercise whenever I felt like it, without having to get up at 4:30 a.m.  And then, as my future status as an unemployed person began to sink in, it quit feeling necessary at all to cling to such a rigid schedule.  I quit getting up at 4:30 a.m.  I also quit sticking with my healthy eating habits.  Over spring break I willfully over-indulged in my favorite foods and even had some wine.  It was a way to escape my growing dismay and even anger over what the administration was doing to the school I loved…and also, what they had done to me.

It was hurtful to realize that nobody in the administration had cared enough to observe me in the classroom or provide me with any feedback at all before showing me the door.  And when I did not receive any sort of response from Mr. Angst or his higher-ups even after we’d returned from spring break, I finally realized how little he and the rest of the people in charge cared about maintaining any sort of positive relationship with me.

I don’t usually have an easy time with face-to-face confrontation, but after two weeks of growing awareness of how wrongly my layoff had been handled, I finally went into Mr. Angst’s office one morning, shut the door, and told him my offer was off the table.  I also did express my amazement that nobody had bothered to at least thank me for making such a generous offer…and that nobody seemed to be at all concerned about keeping my kids (who are well-behaved good students) (they have to be, their mom is right there watching) at the school.

I’d always thought Mr. Angst was a nice enough guy, one of those people who will say whatever it takes to keep a conversation pleasant.  His response to me on that day was just more of his typical “make-nice” positivity, which ended up feeling totally meaningless and insincere.  He fumbled and faltered a little as he made excuses for the administration above him.  His remarks actually revealed he’d never even relayed my offer to his bosses.  He then said he had a meeting with them that day and would mention it.  I said, “Oh, it’s OK – don’t bother.  I have changed my mind now.”  And then I left.

I felt somewhat better after having confronted Mr. Angst a bit.  I even asked him, in that impromptu meeting, why he’d asked me to complete all that garbage about goals for next year, if he and his fellow administrators had been “meeting at Chili’s” for two months and wringing their hands over upcoming staff cuts.  He responded by insisting that he hadn’t known anything about the job cuts until just before he told us.  I’m pretty sure he lied right to my face when he said that.  Even if he hadn’t settled on me specifically as one of the teachers to let go*, he had to have known the cuts were coming.  He himself had slipped at our faculty meeting and said as much!  Despite his pleasant demeanor and seeming niceness, I was getting the sick feeling that the guy was a liar.

At that point, we had two more months of school left to endure.  I had to muster up the energy and enthusiasm to do my job just as I’d always done it, even as I was mentally dismantling my lovely classroom every time I stood up in front of the class.  I had to soldier on and make lessons, create assignments, and get excited about my lessons each day, even as I had lost all confidence in the school’s decision-makers and knew that I’d never be needing all my newly created materials again.  It was very difficult.

God was very faithful to me during this time.  Because of His constant help, I managed to do such a good job of remaining steadfast and doing my job with the usual excellence that almost no one knew I wasn’t coming back the next year.  The students were shocked when someone asked me a question toward the end of May about whether or not I was returning.  When I gave them an honest answer – “No, I did not get asked back due to job cuts” – they couldn’t believe it.  Somehow, despite my dismay over the school’s leadership and what I perceived as the dishonesty and insincerity of Mr. Angst, I was able to finish the year well.

But throughout that time, I lost my zeal for getting up in the morning and exercising.  I also sort of gave up any vigilance with food.  These weren’t conscious choices.  It was more like I had so much going on in my thoughts that I just didn’t care about fitness, even though that was a very dumb thing to neglect.

Then we went on a family vacation after school was out.  More good food, ever-increasing resistance to limits on my portions and my pleasures, more times when I’d have a glass of wine with dinner.

I’m now in the 170s.  Again.  Only, it’s the mid-170s.  Crazed Addict Fatgirl has been an almost permanent resident in my thoughts whenever I’m thinking of resisting a temptation.

But…

That’s got to change.

So here I am, thinking of success, ready to embrace that old mindset where I don’t give myself a whole lot of choices or options during the first couple of weeks.  I’m ready to fight through the third and fourth and fifth days of a diet, those days when Fatgirl tries to convince me that I no longer care about anything but food and “still look good” and “am not that fat anyway.”

I’m ready.

——————————-

* For the curious, I have developed a theory about why I (and at least one of the other downsized teachers) were the teachers Mr. Angst chose to let go.  And why Mr. Angst never did anything about my offer to work for free.  In addition to taking on the administrator’s duties during the previous year’s upheaval, Mr. Angst continued working part-time as a teacher.  He taught one of my kids, in fact, which is why I know that he absolutely and utterly shirked his duties.  Oh, I realize that Mr. Angst had taken on way more than he could handle.  I did feel sorry for him…but only to a point.  He may have had way too many responsibilities, but he’d had designs on getting into administration for years and volunteered to attempt both positions.  Besides, the fact was, his principal duties merely gave him an excuse to take his usual teaching style to a whole new level.  He’d always embraced a totally loose, unstructured approach in the classroom (crazy, considering he was teaching math) anyway, where he’d pluck various lessons from different places in the textbook with little order or method to his instruction.  He never assigned homework and rarely posted grades or gave graded tests.  Most of the time, a typical math class would consist of Mr. Angst’s merely telling the kids to go through a unit of the textbook on their own.  Then he’d let them “work” anywhere in the building while he sat at his desk and played computer games and responded to email.  Once my child came home from school with a math test which Mr. Angst had handed back – ungraded – and told the kids to grade it themselves and figure out for themselves what they may or may not have done wrong.  Talk about frustrating!

Mr. Angst knew about my kid’s unhappiness because my kid took him aside one day and begged to be taught with more direct instruction.  My kid actually spelled out to Mr. Angst that they were super-worried about not being prepared for the next year’s work…that they were totally confused…and that Mr. Angst’s teaching methods were not working for a large segment of the class.

Additionally, Mr. Angst frequently did not show up for class or, if he did show up, arrived very late, 15 or 20 minutes into the period.  One of the other teachers who also was not asked back happened to be the person who coordinated support services for some of Mr. Angst’s students…and happened to be the person Mr. Angst had unfairly relied upon to just step in and pick up the slack when Mr. Angst was too busy to be bothered to show up and teach his students.

It’s my theory, now, that Mr. Angst eliminated both of us at least partly because we made him uncomfortable.  Each of us in our own way reminded him of all the terrible slacking he’d done that year as a teacher.  He likely suspected that we had lost at least some respect for him as a fellow educator – and that knowledge must have made him believe that we wouldn’t be totally “on board” with whatever he would do as an administrator.  He no doubt believed that neither of us shared his teaching philosophy.  He was certainly aware that my own approach was radically different than his. I assigned (and graded!) his own son’s homework.  Grades in my classes, even for lengthier essays which required way more of my time to assess, were always posted as soon as possible.  I had definite structure to my classes.  The kids actually enjoyed my routines and seemed almost relieved to get a break from too much “creativity” of the sort embraced by Mr. Angst.

I think when Mr. Angst cast about for the person he’d most like to not have to deal with any longer, I was probably at the top of his list.  So my position was one of the ones eliminated.  And Mr. Angst did not want me around, even if I were working for free.

That’s my theory now, after having had three months to think about all this.