The one good thing about stress...

The one good thing about being stressed over my day job situation is that is cured me of my e-mail obsession. Before, the first thing that I would do when I got home was to check my e-mail for any word from editors. Last night, a few hours past before I realized that I hadn't checked it to see if I have received any word yet. Of course, there was nothing. The thing is that now I am not expecting any word. Tomorrow, I will be at the eight week mark for my original submission to some publishers and six weeks past my revised submission to another. With how long it takes for them to get back to you, is it realistic for them to ask that you not simultaneously submit your manuscript to other companies? This is one reason that I can appreciate the automatic rejection letter. One company read my partial and decided within hours that it wasn't for them. While stinging, they didn't linger over it making me wonder about what if...

On another note, my school is not a school that is closing in my district. Unfortunately, the first school that hired me is one of them. It is a school that has become surrounded by the hospital. My prediction is that the city will be able to sell the property for a pretty penny and that was the criteria for this school closing. It upsets me that all of the decisions are based on money. Public education is not about dollars and cents. It is about kids, education, and the teachers. Yes, I said it. Teachers are an important factor is this equation. Except we are not thought of as such, we are vilified in the press. When a teacher from a closing of a school talked about how it actually had an opera program to enrich the education, people commented in the newspaper making fun of this teacher. When in the same article, they disclosed what town the teacher lived in and the university that she originally went to, commenters talked about "her slumming in urban education". I read an article in the New York Times last night about how teacher pay is no longer attracting the "top" woman in a graduating college class. They are now going on and becoming doctors and lawyers. There was at one point in the seventies when teachers made only two thousand less than new lawyers.

What are you willing to do to attract the "cream of the crop"? What is your child's education worth?

Peace out,
MRD