The Irony is I Am Going Into Tuesday Dead Serious: Exhausted, Hopeful, Performative, Stressed, At Wit's End, and With My Sense of Humor. Can't Make Any of This Up

We had a team of 20+ presenting in Columbus, Ohio this week. The CWP-Fairfield team is down to 3. K-12 schools simply are incapable of supporting professional educators to work on a national level at this time. Meanwhile. a major grant I've been working on with STEM people just got diverted, because the funders are willing to work with community-engaged initiatives, but K-12 classroom educators are not part of how they define community-engagement. Monday was spent in 6 hours of meetings, the majority of them too comical to represent here (because no one would believe me if I told them the truth, unless they were there). The presentations I have (four) are started, but not one of them has been completed. Meanwhile, I teach until late tonight and all day Wednesday. Our flights were traded for a long-distance drive with the two who can present with me. 

I typed into Google "Walk of the Dead," because that is what I'm feeling, and lo and behold I found this .gif of a skeleton with a shovel (ironic, because Dr. Alice Hays and I are presenting on our second year of WGI data, and the after school literacies of visual performance through the Sport of the Arts. The twirling skeleton seems appropriate, if only I can finish the presentation - a couple weeks after Halloween and I still haven't had a second. 

If you know a teacher...hug them...if you know an academic who works with teachers, hug them even more. Our systems are failing all of us in every direction we turn. There's big money and funding all over this nation, but it seems K-12 educators are a forgotten class, and those of us who invest in the excellence of stellar teachers are sideswiped for initiatives that will make investors (and administrations money) rather than the very people who do the work. When institutions of higher education give up on their own Schools of Education, we know something needs to change.

The Gods Must Be Crazy. We already knew that. 

So, I'm going into this Tuesday with a sense of humor...creativity...and dreams of what I know is possible because I've lived it. 

As for what comes next....I haven't a clue. I'm too busy doing what I believe to be best for young people and their brilliant educators.....all while systems fail us all...mostly them. There has to be a better way - I wish I was smart enough to make the billions that could truly change the educational course of this nation. Alas, in the meantime I'll continue with bake sales (grants) as best as I can.