Shuttin' Detroit Down

While the boss man takes his bonus pay and jets on out of town
DC's bailing out them bankers as the farmers auction ground
Yeah, while they're living up on Wall Street in that New York City town
Here in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down

--John Rich

Today I had a long talk with my teaching staff. It's been a long hard haul these last two years getting our school up and running. Each and every one of them has worked hard and they deserve a lot of credit. Like everyone, they would like better hours and more pay. I had to tell them the hours are what they are. I'll work with our board to do what I can for a pay scale and employee compensation plan, however. Where they fell on the continuum of their requests, I think, depends a whole lot on their life experience and job experience. The more experience the teacher has with other schools or employers, the more they likely they are to acknowledge our work environment is pretty good. Those with less experience are being more demanding. They'd have a rude awaking if they went somewhere else.

I think my first job experience would have been my babysitting--and I did a lot of it. It's how I paid for my trip to Germany. Fifty cents an hour for years til I earned the hundreds of dollars the trip cost.

My first employment was at the Baskin Robbins ice cream store at the IDS Crystal Court. We were told it was the second busiest of their stores, second only to the one at Grand Central Station. I took the bus downtown for every shift, evenings after school and on weekends. Pay was about $2.30/hour. I learned a whole lot about other walks of life working there. We had everyone from business people who stopped in on their lunch hour to transvestites who trolled the streets to homeless people who begged. I also learned how to deal with - and stand up to - workplace harassment on that job.

Then I got a job at Dayton's Department Store in downtown Minneapolis. The interview took so long I had to forgo my Senior Snow Party trip. Priorities. My parents had and expectation that I go to college but weren't going to be able to pay for a whole lot of it. Having the job mattered. Dayton's placed me at their switchboard. No matter what store you called, you got our switchboard and we answered according to which light lit up. We were expected to answer 220 calls per hour during peak calling times. I got an employee discount working there though and learned the value of job benefits working there.

I spent one summer working as a live-in nanny for a family with 3 kids. Mom was an attorney and dad was a children's surgeon. Their work life and social life was such that it was easier for them to have a live-in nanny to depend on. It was also a way for me to move out of my parent's house, something I really wanted to be able to do. My mother was upset. To her, my desire to move out implied I was unhappy at home. I wasn't. I just desperately wanted to be independent. On that job I started to learn what that really meant and just how hard it was.

I had two summers I spent at Camp Tamarac. That was, by far, the funnest job I ever had. I got paid to be with kids and be out in the woods all summer. I made some friends I still keep in touch with 30 years later, and some of the best memories of my life. It's also where I met my husband, even though he didn't work there. He was a friend of someone who did.

I spent about a year or two working for a chain of group homes for mentally retarded teens. These were individuals who had such severe behavior problems it was the last stop before permanent committal to a state hospital. I learned a lot about behavior modification that served me well in my teaching career. It also helped me learn I didn't want to go into Special Ed like I thought I did. That laid the groundwork for a very important aspect of my parenting....give my kids a taste of what they were interested in so they could try it out before they invested 4 years of college only to decide it wasn't really what they wanted to do. It's why we paid for my oldest to go to archeology camp, paid for years of art lessons for another, and are sending my youngest off to an Arabic-speaking country this month in pursuit of her career goals.

Once I got my teaching degree, I worked with mentally retarded adults teaching them job skills. I left there after it became apparent it was more of a day care than a facility that helped them become self-sufficient. I learned the importance of following through on the mission of a program or company and one's ideals. If you're only paying lip-service to a goal, it wasn't for me.

Once my kids were born, I quit work to be home with them. It was extremely hard for me. I felt suffocated at the smallness of my world and the lack of adult contact. I felt I was doing the right thing for my children but that it was at the expense of my self. It was during this time I found La Leche League. Volunteering for them allowed me adult contact and also provided me with a set of ideals that people followed through on. In one capacity or another, I volunteered for them for ten years, eventually moving into management within the organization. They were, and are, an amazing group of women who promote a phenomenal form of mothering that makes this world a better place for our children. And they shaped my views on management more than anything else.

But I really missed the world of education, which is what I set out to do early on. So I finally made the decision to go back to teaching. I taught for many years...3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade. I loved every minute of it. And I missed the work of non-profit management. So after several years of teaching I decided to go back to school to get my principal's license. I saw that as the best way to combine my love of non-profit management with my love of teaching. It took me two years of night school to get my Masters of Arts in Education and another two years of night school to get my administrative degree. Then three years of pounding the pavement to get a job as a principal.

It's been hard work. I started a school from the ground up. I hired an entire staff. I'm tired every single night. Some people make me crazy. I need to shut down when I get home after a week of 12-14 hour days. But I love every minute of it and I love the difference I am making. I hope I am creating something good for our students. And I hope my young teachers will see what we have here and will stick with it. They are good and they are worth it.