Where exactly is the "found?"

Two months ago tonight, Andrew and I settled on a name for a boy after two days of allowing that question to fill nearly every waking moment: Gabriel John. We'd already picked Lydia Helen Jane for a girl. The next morning, little Lydia or Gabriel (we'll never know) was gone.

Today has been an emotional day.

I've decided that - regardless of whether or not Andrew gets the job he's applied for at Kansas State University and whether or not we are parents-to-be, I will not be going back to Gilmer High School or any place else to teach next year. I'm just too young.

Too young for what, you ask? Too young to stand idly by while a kid who muttered under his breath at me that I was a "stupid b*tch" gets a week of in-school suspension and no other kind of punishment. Too young to try and raise five classrooms-full of teenagers because many don't have parents at home who are doing that job. Too young to watch all my ideals get flushed down the toilet in favor of "letting kids off the hook" and giving them chance after chance ad nauseam and, in doing so, kill our country's future because my classroom is not producing future functional citizens. Too young to put up with all the stresses and the frustrations that go along with teaching without bringing it home to my husband, my children (one day), and generally letting it penetrate all aspects of my life. Too young to be so bitter at "The Man." Too young to know so much and yet so little about why so much of the education "system" has so little to do with educating kids the best way we know how. Too young to feel so old.

I confess that seeds of dissension began burrowing into the fertile soil of my mind when I found out I was pregnant. As soon as I looked at the plus sign on that life-changing stick, my mind began working ninety to nothing trying to figure out how I could stay home with our child. Once the idea of something better than treading-water-mediocrity entered my mind, there was no pushing it out. I was done teaching before I went back to school that Monday.

I suppose that the name of my blog will be changing again soon, perhaps to "Diary of a Tired Teacher on Sabbatical." Or better yet, "Diary of a Mad Black Woman."Only time will tell.