Beautiful warning from Irene

We hide our feelings, our political slant and our tears better than anyone. We cannot let the children know that we are scared...

 Message de Irene

My facebook Friend Irene who is a French teacher in Maine. 

She gave permission to post her message to MaineWriter.com

I hope Michael Moore and followers will read and be inspired by this wistful warning. We must try to not be fatigued. Rather, it's our moral obligation to continue to resist Trump's tyrannical administration.  

Nevertheless, the most concerning statement Irene makes in her message is about how her colleagues are quietly speaking to one another "whisper our discontent".....this comment paints a dark conceptual image about our inability to communicate about the divisive politics of our day, caused by @realdonaldtrump.

I've titled her message "Tired..."

Tired. My colleagues are tired and so am I. 

We teach school and it's February. The time of the year should be enough to explain our fatigue. Winter vacations are not restful for anyone. You rush around trying to get ready for the holidays. You have gifts to buy, cookies to bake, packages to mail, family to pick up at the airport or flights to book and suitcases to fill. It does not stop until January 2nd and then its back to school. I have to say that only a few of us had a real restful break (including the students). Students upon their return go into a depressed stage because the holidays were not exactly what they hoped for and now it's cold and still dark at 4pm. AND it is the end of the semester with exams they are not prepared to take and a long todo list of unfinished assignments. 

This year, on top of the regular physical fatigue of back to school in January, we are dealing with back to the middle ages in politics. 

I wore black on the 21st of January and did not watch the inauguration. I marched on the 22nd with 15000 other people. I sent letters, signed postcards, made phone calls and I am getting more and more tired. I wore red for a day to show my support against the nomination for the secretary of education who looks like she came out of a 1950 book of catechism. I called again and signed again, and she was nominated. I have grit but I am no spring chicken and this shit is exhausting. I can barely wrap my head against the ban on Muslims, or whatever they want to call it today. We do live in an alternative reality. When we meet in the school hallways, we whisper our discontent, we share our survival skills, from yoga and quiet reading, to red wine and sleeping pills. Nothing really works at this point. The most demoralizing part of all this is that we have a job to do and we do it well, and no one acknowledges how difficult things are right now . We hide our feelings, our political slant and our tears better than anyone. We cannot let the children know that we are scared not just for ourselves but for their future. 

So we get up each morning and go to school, where we do not always feel appreciated and where we have to deal with more and more paperwork to prove that we are indeed doing our job. I guess as I witness the skills of our current president, someone did not do a good job of teaching him English, geography, history, not to forget kindness and empathy. I wonder if it was his teachers or his parents who let him be a bully to feed his insecurities.

There is a new disease going around and we need to find a cure. It is the great american fatigue. The american dream is gone, and there is very little to take its place. 

(Comment posted to this from another friend....Bon Courage)