Best posts made by silverfox

Hansel (black) and Gretel (tortie) are four weeks old and healing from being super sick really nicely, even if I do have to force feed them at times because their anti-biotic can cause icky tummies and loss of appetite.

@ganymede

ALL the kitten pics! I can do that.

My favorite foster TikToker never has kids in her videos, and I have always respected her EXTRA because of that.

EDIT:

ALSO, my husband just got a new job after a 3 month hiring process. It's for a local county sheriff's office, so he had to go through the same background screenings they gave the officers, multiple psyche evaluations, lie detector, drug test, etc. It was a lot!

But now he has a start date and we're really excited for this opportunity for him to make a Colorado wage.

@Ganymede
Got it, tag you with a bunch of work so you know we missed you like crazy.

Anyone who doesn't pounce @L-B-Heuschkel when there's a chance to scene with them are crazy as futz.

For me it's a mater of escapism, adult interaction, and creative outlet. I'm not a crafter, and I'm too high strung for video games. (Literally, I scream when the music turns bad and the monsters jump out. Just not for me.)

Escapism: Role play is not my real life. Ansible was where I could pretend to be smart and no one batted an eye. (PRETEND, okay?!) HT brought me into a world with //dragons//, and flight, and everything else. Arx just has everything else that I love about fantasy. When I'm RPing I lose track of the rest of the world. (This is why I hate ooc getting in the way so much, and why it upsets me so badly. It is taking away from my escape.)

Adult Interaction: I worked as an elementary school teacher for 2 years before I went back to role play. I LOVE my students and I ADORE my job, but I really don't talk to people above the age of 10 very much. Especially those first few years because I worked at an outside school with zero windows so I literally didn't have to interact with another adult for almost whole days at a time if I spun it right. At home I had my husband, but he worked the graveyard shift so only saw one another in passing. Getting back into RP gave me the chance to interact with adults regularly. I noticed an abrupt upshift in my energy level and I was finding that I could obsess about my students a little less. (Let's be real, I still wake up in the middle of the night going "BUT I COULD DO X" or "I KNOW HOW TO HELP Y" or "I seriously hope Z has heat tonight..." It's just less now.)

Creative Outlet: I'm not really a creative person with crafts and such, but I do enjoy a good story. RP lets me pretend I am building a story without having the whole load of actually writing it for myself.

Something else to keep in mind:

Most schools cannot, legally, nor medically, "diagnose" anything. "Specific Learning Disability" is what typically gets used by schools so that they aren't giving a medical diagnosis. A diagnosis has to come from a licensed medical practitioner. Most schools have person with a degree in social work, or special education, or counseling, but they are NOT a doctor.

I feel like it comes down to respect.

I'm not quite sure how to quantify 'respect' though. If anyone has words here I would love to take them.

I know what respect ISN'T when I see it better. Like if someone uses their character's disability or mental illness as an excuse to do shitty things, that isn't respect. Another is if they use it as the only defining characteristic for their character, and there isn't anything deeper going on.

Also if they joke about the disability or mental illness in ooc - "omg my character is soooo <insert thing here> hahahaha," then they aren't being respectful either.

Good lord please someone make a sky pirate game.

The vocal group is what sets the tone though. I can't count the number of times I've heard about someone's poor behavior either second hand or because someone decided to 'warn' me for one reason or another. I do go in with my hackles raised to defend myself in those cases, even if I'm aware it is happening and try to avoid the bias.

Someone of whom a vocal group has spoken out about are more likely to not be able to get into something.

As in all things, this is not a zero-sum game. There are so many shades of gray from the person being a super disgusting creeper who is terrible to the person who legit didn't know but tried to fix when told in this it isn't possible to capture all.

Just a recognition that the voices that speak the loudest get heard and thus listened to the most.

Edit: typos, commas.

My kids all passed their test today.

That never happens.

So, I didn't read the last four pages, and while I adore you all, I don't think it'd be a good use of my time.

ANYWAY, I wasn't trying to equate authors = RPing, though I get totally why it was read that way and feel it's a valid conversation (again?) for other to take on.

I was focusing on how it's fun to do terrible things to characters.

Excuse me as I go over here thanks.

This was literally last night.

I googled bear fur underwear.

For reasons.

I struggle so hard in a text based environment to understand cues. It's why I am DYING in this extended learning environment. I can look at a kid and know with about 90% accuracy what feeling they have. Give me an email from that kid and I have no clue.

Online I can't understand how anyone is thinking or feeling. I assume that is the same for everyone else. I try to be transparent about my emotions if they are going to be an issue.

That said? Everyone is going to read things through their own filter. I'll be upset but I can't really blame someone for interpreting my actions as unacceptable. Each game decides what is appropriate or acceptable or not. If I'm not, then I just need to go away. There is nothing I can do to not wear out my welcome on a place where there isn't a place for me. There doesn't HAVE to be a place for me. It is okay.

Excuse me, I am going to rant for just a moment about a fad in the United States education system for a bit.  It is a concept called "self-care".

(I tried to hide this behind a spoiler tag, but I can't seem to figure it out. If someone wants to PM me how to do that I'll fix it. Highlighting and hitting the little eye-crossed-out icon doesn't seem to work.)

Background:
My school is going through a process called "High Reliability Schools" (HRS).  We want the label for advertising purposes, and honestly, the process requires a really deep look at systems and compares them to some of the best research about what makes an effective school. All good stuff.  A good chunk of it relies upon survey data from students and staff around various topics.

One such topic was teacher overall satisfaction and stress levels.  As a school we rated ourselves moderately to well satisfied in our jobs and roles.  However, on the question of stress every single staff member indicated a high to extreme level. Pretty alarming data tbh. Honesty, it is to he expected. We hire passionate people who are generally perfectionists. We place a high level of rigor and demand on our students and we put in the work to make sure they are successful. There isn't a single person on staff who doesn't stat 2-3 hours late at least once a week, and most of us are here an hour to 45 minutes before our contractual start time. We regularly give up our plan time for students in crisis and to support one another however we can.

That said, our stress does not come from that extra time at work. We give that time because we LOVE our students. We do it because we're excited and passionate about what we do. I don't MIND the extra time I spend planning if I know it'll help a kid in their life. Moreover, I have an AMAZING principal. She puts family first every single time. When a teacher won tickets to Disneyland that also happened to fall on a Parent Teacher Conference night, she worked to reschedule all of that time for another night so he could go. The calendar committee this year chose to not give our school the Rocky's home opener as a day off, but she is STILL letting whomever wants to take the day off to take it, and organizing an alternative schedule so the kids who DO come to school that day are supervised and have fun. I work in an AMAZING PLACE.

However it pisses me off to no end when people start saying, "Well what are you doing for yourself? How are you managing your stress? What else can you be doing for "self care?" Because it's a bullshit question. My stress doesn't come from the basics of my job, the hours, the pay, etc. It comes from everything I have to do that IS NOT GOOD FOR KIDS and shows that society doesn't TRUST that I will do my job.

I have to get 23/26 students ready for a test in April that is:

1. Not developmentally appropriate.
2. Includes texts that time after time have been shown to be above grade level.
3. Lasts for HOURS. Within two weeks in April my 3rd graders will have to sit though 435 minutes of testing in COMPLETE SILENCE. (I can't fucking do that!)
4. They have to be able to read texts (see above level) and answer multiple choice questions that are often ambiguous to educators (aka, us, because we pour over the stupid practice tests exhaustively every year to tease out 'what else we can be doing'.) as well as write multi-paragraph literary analysis essays on those texts.

Let me be clear, my students will be 9 and 10 years old when they sit for these tests. 9 and 10. They're not high school or college students. They are still BABIES.

I have to force these assessments down my student's throats because no one trusts me to evaluate if my kids have learned the material that I've been asked to teach.

I am stressed because I am not trusted by the wider educational field. I am stressed because I honestly think these demands are hurting kids, and so much of that "extra" time I'm spending is to try to mitigate the harm.

I am stressed because the backstories of some of my students are heartbreaking. Homelessness, food insecurity, family health issues, divorce, not feeling safe at school (the most recent Colorado school shooting is the school mine branched off of about 6 years ago - not feeling safe is fucking real and there is NOTHING that can be done to ever make me feel completely safe in my classroom again) - it goes on an on and on. There are days my kids aren't here to learn but to be loved, and if they pick up and throw a fucking chair, there is usually a damned good reason why they did it.

I'm stressed because in many ways I'm acting as a social worker and psychologist. The fucking district (which, tbh, I generally love, but there are policies that drive me insane) pulls our mental health provider for at least two hours weekly for "district meetings" and this next week she'll be gone FOR A WEEK. I'm not trained for this, nor am I given anything extra to deal with the second hand trauma.

I'm a teacher of the year, master degree educated, ten year veteran professional. I love my students, I love my career. I take anxiety medications and it's probably time for me to up them again because damn.

Last weekend I spent hours looking at alternate careers for teachers because I'm burning out badly right now. (I don't think I'll ever really leave - I'm terrified of losing the stability that comes with teaching. It would take a lot for me to lose this job, but my husband has gone through the private sector fire-hire roller coaster enough for me to want to engage in it.)

Don't fucking tell me that the "answer" to my stress is to take a bath at night, or read a book I enjoy, or do something "fun".

My stress comes because of the system and telling me that "self-care" is going to somehow fix it is insulting as fuck. The only thing that can lower my stress levels at this point is, "Here is x time, go work to figure out how to make it all fit."

That's never going to happen though.

If I don't feel strongly about it either way, then why not do it in a way that makes at least one person more happy? It doesn't hurt me, so I might as well go with it. Also, my descriptions suck, so having even more guidance is pretty nice.

We have been told all summer that we would not have to teach in person and online.

All. Summer.

With a single week till teachers report back though we are facing a deficit of 100+ students from our building who have enrolled but are scared to come in person and ALSO do not want to enroll in our district virtual academy.

So in a last ditch attempt to keep our students we are now going to have to teach online and in person at the same time. Not a hybrid where the kids come every day, but either they are online all day or in front of me all day.

The other option is firing 5 teachers from our building. (We are a teacher staff of 15. 5 is 1/3 of our staff.) Even doing this there is no guarantee that those jobs won't be lost.

I'm devastated. I think my job is secure because I've worked pretty damn hard to be indispensable. That said this is going to be SO HARD on kids and I'm already beating myself up for how poor the education my online kids are going to get.

I couldn't force myself out of bed till 2 pm today and I snapped at my husband 3enough without cause that I am just going to go back.

I'd love a pern game on Ares.

@Sunny said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

You are enough. You are enough. You are enough.

I swear I need to break my religious taboo about tatoos on my body and get that printed somewhere, because all of us are honestly so freaking deflated.

The only thing I've got going for me is that my baby who has <insert things that are private here> has decided that he loves school and loves me, and has decided that everything is okay as long as he's right by my side. I can DO THAT. Teach him to READ? .... yeah, we'll see. But he knows I love him.

His Dark Materials

I want a daemon.

@Ganymede

I am so sorry.