Last time, you'll remember, I left off with my having swallowed a bottle of pills in an attempt to forget about my negative teaching evaluation. Here's more of the story.

God was with me that day, it seems. I was driving to my therapist's office after I had swallowed the pills, and the next thing I remembered was waking up in a hospital room. As it turned out, I had basically pulled my car over to the side of the road, knocking over only a wooden post in the grass. A cop came along, saw the empty bottle in the seat, and called for help. Apparently I mumbled that I just wanted the pain to stop. The cop only gave me a ticket for reckless driving, I got my stomach pumped, and I spent the night in the hospital, to be followed by a couple of days in a so-called rehab center only a couple of steps in quality above Nurse Ratched's place of work.

A few days after that, I had a phone conversation with the school district superintendent, and I asked if she could approve an administrative transfer for me to go to another school to work. She told me that no jobs were open at the time, and she subtly threatened that if I tried to transfer under these circumstances, "this will follow you wherever you go." Sensing her lack of sympathy to my situation, I took three months of unpaid medical leave.

When the three months was up, the unpaid medical leave turned into "personal leave," at which time I could be considered for a transfer. I found out that another middle school had an opening, so I had an interview with the principal. The principal told me that this was kind of a rough group, so I needed to hit the group running. I felt I could do it and told her so, and she hired me on the spot.

Happy ending, you say? I wish it were so. I started the job in mid-November and came on like gangbusters--calling parents, sending students on time-outs and referrals, and even taking a day off so that I could write and send a letter to each and every student's parent that detailed the student's classroom behavior and my expectations for the student to pass for the quarter. By the time Christmas break came, things seemed to be rolling along.

But when I returned from Christmas break, it was as though I hadn't done a thing. The students were worse than ever. I did all of the previous steps and even sent out a letter. In return, here is some of the behavior I got during that time.

* One overaged kid got bored with my lecture, curled himself up on the A/C radiator at the side of my room, threw a coat over himself, and took a nap. When I wrote a discipline referral on him, the principal swore to me that the kid would be suspended pending a parental conference. Even though the house administrator knew what the principal expected, for some strange reason she assigned the kid to 3 days of in-school suspension before he got his outright suspension. On the last day of ISSP, he skipped it and tried to attend my class. The house administrator told me he was to be arrested for trespassing, but when she *and the vice-principal* tried to grab him, he yelled, "Don't touch me!" and went on his merry way. The next day, when the kid's suspension was to begin, he hung around my hall for the first hour of school. I found out later that he hadn't wanted to leave before he said good-bye to his girlfriend. He was not arrested or disciplined for this transgression either.

* A kid who wasn't even in my class was known *by name* for routinely skipping class and frequently sticking his head in my door for a minute or so to disrupt my class. Once, when I called security to come for him, he called me a "m*****f*****" before leaving.

* One kid, who did nothing but draw pictures in class every day, left my class 10 minutes before the end of the day and blatantly stood outside my door. When I told him he would get a referral, he told me, "I don't care. I won't get punished anyway."

* Other incidents happened that did not involve my students by certainly reflected upon the school. An unidentified student set off firecrackers during an assembly one day, and another time, a teacher tried to break up a brawl in the cafeteria and got her shoulder dislocated for her trouble.

I did not cope well with these circumstances and started taking "sick days"--three days in January. Then one Monday, I came to school and happened to run into the house administrator, who was wielding the referral I had written on the kid who had stood outside of my room. She told me she wanted to meet with me about the many referrals I'd written, and also that she wanted to talk to me about writing up my classroom rules and procedures. (I guess she thought that if those things were posted in my class, it would help the discipline problem.) I got panicky and went to call the "sick line" to phone in for a substitute teacher. When the line was busy, I filled out a sick-leave form, left it on the secretary's desk, and literally skipped down, going to the home of my sister (who lives an hour-and-a-half away) for the day. (I hadn't told my wife or therapist what I was doing or where I was going, and I had selfishly left them in a panic until I called home that night. Selfish, I agree, but that's the state I was in.)

When I got back to town the next day, I called in sick for the rest of the week and the following week as well. On Friday of that week, I had to go to the school to turn in a sick-leave form from my psychiatrist, when the principal called me into her office. She seemed genuinely concerned with my well-being and asked me if I'd explain what the problem was. I told her the entire story, minus the suicide attempt (good thing I'd left that part out, as you'll soon see). She expressed her sympathy and told me to call her with a status update the next Friday.

The next week, I was resigned to returning my job. So, remembering that the house administrator had wanted to me with me, I figured I'd meet with her before I returned to work, so as to get off on the right foot. I called the house admin. on Thursday, and she told me to come in that afternoon.

When I came to the school, the house administrator ushered me into the principal's office, where the principal and the vice-principal were also waiting for me. Basically, they all said I'd written too many referrals and that I needed to straighten out the discipline situation in my class. The principal said, "We've observed too many problems in your class." (The "we" couldn't have included her, since she had not once come into my classroom.) I tried to give them some rational arguments and pointed out all of the procedures I'd followed, but they didn't listen unless they could turn it around to their advantage. They said that before I came back to school, I'd have to write up my classroom rules and procedures (the same things that the house admin. had previously said *she* would *help* me to write). I also had to submit to the "Teacher Improvement Program," which is a program that first-year teachers go through to help them learn classroom discipline. (I was far from a first-year teacher, having spent ten years in the school system.)

I went home that night, and my wife saw how miserable I was and said I shouldn't have to be this way. The outcome is that today, I am filing paperwork with at the school board office to take a year's unpaid leave of absence. I've landed a temp job through mid-June at a much lower salary than that of my teaching job.

So, do you wonder any more why teachers are quitting the system right and left? And I'm a ten-year veteran--imagine what a beginning teacher has to go through. Recently, the local teachers' union told its members to attend an upcoming school board meeting in order to air their grievances. The meeting was aired on local public TV, and there were so many attendees that they were overflowing into the lobby. General public, take note!