Tag Archives: children

General Posts

Saturday Evening Ramblings

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My apologies for the extended hiatus, but the last couple of months have been quite the adventure. Due to circumstances, in mid-May I found myself suddenly single and without a place to live. The plan for this summer had been to renovate the old building into a living space and move to the farm permanently, but that plan got moved to the front burner instantly. For about seven weeks, I slept in my old Blazer out on the property and worked ten to twelve hours every day on the construction.

I started basically with a skeleton: a tin roof, rafters, a block wall along the back, a concrete floor, and part of a frame. I finished out the framing, fixed the outer walls, added onto the block wall, plumbed it, wired it, hung drywall, hung the ceiling, installed windows and doors, and sealed the place. Dad showed me how to do the things I had never done before, and two guys helped me hang the boards for the ceiling, but the bulk of the labor was me and me alone.

It’s not perfect and far from finished, but it’s mine. I built this place with my own two hands. The satisfaction of that is priceless. Pushing through weeks of fatigue and discomfort helped me rediscover a part of myself I thought was gone. There is still a little fight left in these old bones.

Twice now since my divorce, I’ve given up a comfortable place of my own to move in with women who begged me, literally begged, to move in with them, only to later be accused of using them. Well, the people who really know me know I’m not a user. I’m perfectly capable of fending for myself, thank you. So there will never be a third instance of me giving up my own place to live under someone else’s roof. End of that discussion.

My children love my new place. I truly don’t care what anyone else thinks. You don’t like it, there’s the door. You want to criticize it, go build something better in seven weeks or shut your mouth. As for me, I’m D.A. Adams, and I’ve just begun kicking ass.

General Posts

Tuesday Morning Ramblings

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I don’t know if I can find the proper words to describe what’s happened to education, but every single day the system gets a little worse. The bureaucrats have transposed manufacturing principles onto instruction, expecting to increase productivity by implementing lean production measures. But teaching a human being how to read, write, calculate, and think is not the same process as bolting together two components. Everyone learns a little differently, and skilled teachers adapt their methods to individuals. Today, the bureaucrats want a one-size-fits-all homogeneous model that only skims rote memory. It cannot and will not produce practical application of skills.

For most of us who teach, morale has never been lower. We are grossly overworked, grossly underpaid, and grossly frustrated by political forces that on one hand blame us for the failures of their system while on the other accuse us of causing economic turmoil with our luxurious pay and benefits. Most of us are quite literally at our breaking points, emotionally and financially. We have been placed in an impossible situation, asked to do an impossible job, stripped of nearly all authority, and then blamed for poor student performance. Meanwhile, we’re competing for the students’ attention with Twitter and YouTube. It’s nearly impossible to pry them away from their smartphones and laptops, but then, we’re blamed for not “engaging” them properly.

Our only hope for fixing this situation is for enough people to come forward and demand change. We need lower student-teacher ratios, higher pay, less standardized testing, more focus on application, less bureaucracy, and more autonomy in the classroom. We have to shift accountability back onto the students themselves. We have to halt this trend towards homogeneous curriculum and focus on personalized instruction that fosters skills application. We have to find some way to teach the next generation that not everything is supposed to be entertaining, and instead of catering to their deficits by adding flashing lights and buzzers to curriculum, teach them how to focus for more than thirty seconds. I say the next generation because I’m afraid this one is already damaged beyond repair.

Please, heed my warning: This country is about to lose an entire generation of educators. Once we are gone, whether it be from burnout, breakdown, or disgust, a wealth of knowledge will be lost from the system. Once we are gone, I fear what the system will become and what it will produce. Once thing I see for certain, we as a country are losing our ability to compete with other developed nations. We are falling woefully behind and more closely resemble a developing or third world country than the greatest nation on the planet.

General Posts

Saturday Afternoon Ramblings

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Here’s why I find myself growing angry and bitter.  By the terms of my divorce, based on Tennessee law, my child support is based on a ratio between my income and solely the mother’s, and the time we each have the boys.  Because she doesn’t work, I’m required to pay roughly 30% of my take home income, regardless of what her household income is.  Financially, that’s crippling and affects my ability to spend time with my sons.  Furthermore, I have no oversight on how that money is spent.  None.  In addition to that, I get no tax break on that money.  My taxes are based on gross income, so some years I actually owe money at the end of the year, despite living well below the poverty line.

If I don’t pay child support, I can face jail time for contempt of court.  If I don’t pay it, even though I have no way of ensuring that money is spent on my children, I’m labeled a deadbeat dad, not just by the law but also by society.  Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with supporting my children.  I would do anything for them.  What I have a problem with is the imbalance of the laws that have crippled me financially for at least twelve more years, offer me no safeguards that the money is used for its intended purpose, and in effect enslave me to that obligation, regardless of whether or not she actually needs the money.

So I work, pay the money, and scrape by on what’s left.

My profession is education.  Aside from writing, that’s what I’m best at doing.  Today, because our society so undervalues education, during the school year, I work 60-70 hours a week.  Last night, I graded until 8:00 PM, on Friday night.  I woke up this morning and spent three more hours grading, recording, and uploading files.  As soon as I finish this post, I’ll spend at least five to six more hours doing the same.  Tomorrow, I’ll spend all day grading.  From mid-August to mid-December, I get maybe three or four full days off.  Anyone who has ever taught can attest that being in the classroom teaching is exhausting work in and of itself.  I’ve worked other jobs and have often said that one hour in class equates to about two hours at another job.  During the school year, I and every other teacher I know live in a constant state of exhaustion.

Because I have to work so many long hours with so little time off, I have no time or energy left over for loved ones.  Just talking to my children for an hour four nights a week is taxing.  Forget about date nights (not that I have any money for one) or spending quality time with friends and family.  Forget about writing or doing the things I need to do for the farm.  By the time I accomplish everything I have to do for school, I’m utterly spent, and it’s Monday morning and time to start over again.  Forget about promoting my books the way I need to.  Forget about nurturing a relationship.  Forget about having any kind of a normal life.

I’ve had well-intending people tell me to find another profession, as if the answer is so simple.  I’m trained to teach and write.  I’ve yet to find an employer out there that values my skills or equates them to their needs.  Not that there are any decent jobs out there right now.  I feel trapped by circumstances with no foreseeable end to the cycle.  I’ve all but lost hope on my books ever being “successful” financially.  I’ve all but lost hope on ever getting the farm off the ground, even though I’ve proven my hydro design works.  I simply don’t have the funds to make it happen.

So each day, I feel a little more bitter, a little more angry.  I feel like our system has failed me at each and every turn.  I’m trying desperately to find something to give me a glimmer of hope, a flicker of optimism that somehow things will get better, but each day I feel more trapped, more alone, more forsaken, more disenfranchised.  That’s my reality.  That’s where I am right now.