Day 27: Saturday, 6 January 2007

Nearly a month now. I know you know that because I count the days and you can read, but I was thinking this morning and yesterday as well, this has been a bit like a reintegration exercise. It has taken this long for me to get everything done and although part of that is because of the holidays taking a 10 day chunk out of schedule, another part of this is adapting to the shock of the very sudden change in my life situation. Getting fired was not in my plans to celebrating the holidays and ending 2006! And the total change in my life is not a "sleep on it" event and hope that I'll have a whole new perspective in the morning!

Parents: I have heard that a few of the students are being called in to the office and esentially berrated for being supportive of me as a teacher and a member of the Vilseck community.  If the student doesn't cower and agree with the administrator, the meeting escalates to taunting the student over my absence and the loss of a mentor or support person the student has trusted. I hope you will talk with your children and if they have been subjected to the type of grilling I have gotten first-hand descriptions of, you will be able to reassure them about the value of their own experiences and opinions. The behavior that was related to me is psychological abuse. The US sends service members to special training programs to teach methods of resisting that kind of rhetoric. Certainly it is inappropriate for anyone in the administration to apply that kind of pressure to an adolescent.

I received a call from the District office yesterday informing me that I had not supplied "sufficient evidence" to extend my TQSA benefits past the end of the day. So, although there were no flights out of Nurnberg according to SATO when I went in before Christmas to check, somehow I should have already left the country. I'm not entirely certain how I am suppose prove that in the time interval I was there and working with one particular booking agent no flights were available. Indeed, seats might have become available moments after I walked out the door. Perhaps I should have visited daily or even thrice daily in order to assure the District office that I was as serious about leaving Germany as they are about kicking me out.  The solution to the TQSA problem is that I was to get SATO to write an email saying there were no flights.  So, I trotted back to SATO yesterday to ask for the "email evidence."

Turns out SATO won't send that kind of an email because, as I said, it is possible that only moments later, after I left, seats could have opened up..... And, there are always seat available out of Frankfurt and Munich.

Frankfurt -- hmmm. 200 miles up the road. No van options from ODR to get myself, my son, and our dog and four suitcases there, the train would be fun with that load, no busses.  But all of this is, of course, my problem, not the District's. They just want me out of the country and as far away from the students and as soon as they can possibly get me.

Munich might have been an option. I'd just have to find the money to pay for that van ride.

As it turns out, we are leaving from Munich because when I went in to pick up the tickets, the prices had changed and the flights out of Nurnberg were more expensive than the flights from Munich.  I reckon if I check today, the flights and prices will have changed again. It is quite a conundrum to meet the government expectations in a timely fashion without flinging what little money I have left at some desperate solution to please my trio of adversaries.  Ha! Just thought of this! I should have called Mr. Thompson, Mr. Sennett, or Mr. Werner and asked them for a ride to the airport!

I sent a 10 page letter to my Congressional Representative yesterday. Her name is Heather Wilson (R) from New Mexico.  I hope those of you who can, will send an email off to your Congressional Representatives and ask them to support her as she investigates the back-scratching cronyism infecting DODDS right now.