Coming Out of the Closet

As a public school teacher in a blue state, it is assumed that one's politcal leanings are left of center.

This blog will chronicle frequent if not daily stories of the reality that is being a conservative in a liberal world: the microcosm of a public school.

In my college days, I leaned WAY left. I even have a picture of myself with my arm around Al Gore. My husband always threatens to use it on a 40th birthday cake someday. Things turned around for me once I began to work in the public school setting. I saw that as long as no one in charge of you was inconvenienced by you, you were left to your own devices.

My phrase for many years to quantify the lack of supervision and oversight into my daily job by my superiors: "I could be on my fourth week of my 'Devil Worship' unit, and not one person would know." It's almost scary how much power we can wield from our positions, so I take it very seriously, and make a concerted effort to do a good job educating kids, always.

Part of the motivation behind this blog came yesterday. I bumped into a student whom I taught 15 years ago this week. He was the eldest, a nice enough kid. . . from a really crummy dad. The poor mom was doing her best to hold it all together. In subsequent years, I taught another younger sibling of which there were four.

I saw this young man yesterday, working! He was smiling, productive, seemed happy enough. He knew me, I knew him. We caught up a bit. I expressed to him how truly happy I was to see him looking good, doing well.

These small, infrequent success stories are what keep me going. It most certainly isn't the majority of uninformed, liberally indoctrinated grown-ups who either work alongside or work as my superiors. I am "out of the closet" on my political ideologies with most of them. This makes those with opposite views treat me as a sort of joke. They kind of laugh me off. That's fine.

Now don't get me wrong, because there are others like me. They just haven't come fully out of the closet yet. They prefer to not get involved in partisan bickering, in debate. I understand. On top of the day-to-day work of education, such debate would further drain an already nearly empty gas tank.

My husband is to blame for me "coming out". It is he who was patient with me during the lefty years, but he must have seen promise. He knew that I would eventually come around.

After we lost our first baby, I came to some conclusions: 1) This is a sad time. Everyone is expressing their sympathies to us. 2) If this is sad, why is it not sad, bad, and wrong when women do it on purpose ?(abortion) The emotion of this pivotal event in our lives stirred up some deep-seeded right wing convictions that my upbringing instilled in me, but I had ignored during those college years.

Shortly after this event, lots of other work-related, social, and other personal experiences helped convince me that at-heart I was a true conservative. I believe in helping hands, not hand-outs. I believe that hard work and determination can carry you through tough times, but that excuse-making and indifference will not. It is these principles that I carry to the classroom.

At this blog, you will read about how that goes for me.