I don't think that I have ever talked about the fact that I am the conservator in charge of the care of an elderly neighbor and friend. And if it weren't for the fact that I am currently totally stressed over a member of her family and her current health, I wouldn't say anything; however, I really need to vent in a big way.

The Amazing Egyptian Dude and I bought our home from my dad, so except for a few years when the AED and I lived in a neighboring city after we got married, this place has been my home for close to 30 years.

My whole family befriended a delightful retired couple who lived across the street. For the sake of their privacy, I'll call them Bob and Betty. The AED always started his day by having a morning cup of coffee and visit with Bob. Our daughter headed straight across the street as soon as she got home from school for an afterschool snack and lots of fun before starting her homework. Two or three times a week, she watched The Wheel of Fortune with them, competing against Bob to see who could solve the puzzles first. Betty took a daily walk down the street and stopped at my house for a cup of coffee before returning home; she loved to share the neighborhood gossip with me. At sunset, Betty and I chatted from across the street as we watered our lawns. Not a day went by that they weren't an integral part of our lives the way that grandparents who live close by would be.

When Betty developed diabetes and a few years later, dementia, Bob resolved to care for her himself, with a little help from friends. The AED did their grocery shopping, played Mr. Fix-It when needed, and drove them to doctor's appointments; I bathed Betty, cleaned up after her when she had difficulty controlling her bowels, and assisted Bob with her care; our daughter helped to clean up when Betty had accidents, washed and brushed her hair, and continued to make the weekly visits to Bob for Wheel of Fortune. Through all of this, we saw very little of their children.

Bob and Betty had both been married previously and had children from those marriages. Bob had two daughters, and Betty adopted her first husband's son. One of Bob's daughters lives in another state and visited once every 2 or 3 years for a week or so; the other one lives locally but because she didn't grow up with him, they didn't really have much of a relationship. Betty's son wasn't around much, unless, as she said, he was in trouble or needed something. He has lived in another state for as long as I can remember.

As Bob and Betty grew older, sicker, and more frail, they came to rely on us for assistance. We did for them the things their children should have been doing. Bob asked me to be the conservator of a living will and trust because he was concerned that if something happened to him, Betty would not be cared for properly. I agreed. I knew that it was a big responsibility, but I also knew that they couldn't depend on anyone else to take care of them.

Betty's dementia worsened to the point that she repeated the same two conversations over and over again. One was the story of how she and Bob met and eloped to Vegas, the other was what a great life they had. Blissfully, her mind had frozen in her happiest memories. When she became combative about taking a bath and keeping herself clean, Bob knew that he could no longer care for her adequately, even with our help. Although her pension would cover the cost of a nursing home with no out-of-pocket expense involved, Bob refused to place Betty in one. After speaking with their social worker about other options, I found a fantastic assisted living facility close enough to our homes that we could drive him to see her every day. Bob was absolutely dedicated to making sure that Betty got the best of care and was willing to pay for it; the assisted living facility is not covered by her pension or insurance and costs approximately $3000 per month. She has received excellent care there for the past 7.5 years.

Six years ago last month, Bob took a fall that required an ER visit. He hadn't broken any bones but was bruised and in pain. Two days later, when the AED made the morning trek across the street for coffee and a visit, he found Bob on the floor in the den. He called me to come help him because, as he said, Bob wouldn't wake up. I knew what I would find before I ever left my house. Bob had died in the night. And with his death, my responsibilities and nightmare began.

Almost immediately, the vultures began circling overhead. I notified the daughters that their father had died and that as soon as funeral arrangements had been made in accordance with his wishes, I would let them know. The one who lives out of state said she couldn't afford to come, so after checking with the estate lawyer, I arranged for the trust to buy her a plane ticket so that she could attend her father's funeral. The one who lives here expressed upset at the cost associated with giving Bob the Catholic funeral he wanted. "Nobody will be there except us," she said, "so why spend so much money?" I made sure that our friends and neighbors knew about the funeral and attended. Betty's son didn't have the money to afford a plane ticket to attend, but he was sure quick to ask about property and finances and who was in charge of them. He was quite vocal about his objections to me being the executor of the will and conservator of the trust.

I haven't heard anything from the daughters since their father's funeral. Betty's son, on the other hand, has been a thorn in my side more than once. He had a fit because I decided to rent Betty's house instead of selling it right away. I figured that by renting it, the property would generate the additional income needed to pay for her care because her pension and social security don't cover it completely. He wanted to know exactly how much money Betty had and how much her care cost. For the past six years, he has been waiting for his mother to die and hoping that her money isn't all gone by the time that she does. After not hearing from him for more than a year, he called on Monday. His financial circumstances are dire, he's had hip replacement surgery, and he demanded that I send him copies of his mother's bank statements. The AED, who spoke to him, told him that those requests had to go through the attorney. He became enraged and said that he would overturn everything that Bob had set up. We wished him luck. What we know that he doesn't is that anyone who contests the will or the trust inherits only one dollar. Good luck to him.

Still recovering from the son's latest tirade on Monday, I got a call yesterday from Betty's caregivers to tell me that she was at the ER. Her blood pressure was high and was she mostly unresponsive. I zipped over to the hospital, which is just a couple of blocks from my home, and talked to the treating physician. Betty has pneumonia in one lung, so they will be keeping her for treatment. But when he asked me to verify that she has a DNR (do not resuscitate) order, also known as an advance directive order, I lost it. Why would he ask me that if she weren't in really bad shape?

As I drove home, all I could think of was something that the AED calls "the evil eye." Basically, it's a belief that people can wish bad things on others that actually come true. The Bible mentions it a few times, and it's talked about in the Qur'an, too. I don't like to dwell on superstitions, but it seems so ironic that the son, who needs money and is anxiously awaiting his mother's death so that he can cash in on his inheritance, called me on Monday with a demand for her bank statements and Betty falls ill enough on Thursday that she needs hospitalization. And worst of all, the doctor asked me to verify that she has a do not resuscitate order.

Am I being paranoid? I don't know. I'm worried about Betty, angry at her son, and praying that she lives long enough to spend all the money she has even though I will inherit 1/3 of it. I don't want her money, unlike the ingrates who can't be bothered to take care of her!

I studied Spanish all four years of high school. Senor Munoz (sorry, but I have no clue how to get the proper tilde above the "n"!), who made learning the language fun most of the time, made it a point to teach us songs and phrases that we could begin to use right away no matter how little of the language we had actually mastered. And so, it is with a sense of profound gratitude to Senor Munoz that I shout, for all the world to hear, "Gracias a Dios que hoy es Viernes!" And in English --


What a week this has been. Let me say that again -- what a w---E---E---k!

I haven't had a seizure for two days, so my little world seems to be settling down again. The headaches, however, haven't quite finished reminding me that The Brain is in charge of things no matter what I think. All in all, though, I can't complain too much about The Brain's obsession with electrical surges; it is what it is, and I'll continue to muddle along as usual. So what has made me so thrilled that the end of the work week has come, at last? In a word, students.

If it weren't for the fact that I will soon be a retired educator, this professor is ready to throw in the teaching towel. Yesterday, my students, who have been working on a research paper for four -- count them, folks, FOUR -- weeks, should have had a rough draft of their essays ready for their classmates to read and critique. Between the two classes, no more than a dozen students actually had a draft for their group members to read. Many still hadn't completed the required research and had left their peers in the lurch, as they couldn't write a draft without the research that their group members should have collected and shared.

In all my years of teaching, I have never seen such a blatant lack of consideration for others as I witnessed yesterday. They have all known for four weeks that this assignment requires cooperation with one another and that if one member of the group fails to meet scheduled deadlines, the others suffer. Despite this knowledge, some of them decided that the undue, uncalled for, and unnecessary stress they placed on their group members was simply not as big a deal as their inability to conquer their procrastination habits.

Let's just say that I let them all hear my displeasure with the irresponsible behavior. It didn't help those poor students whose stress levels had risen to new heights, but it just might act as a wakeup call for the inconsiderate and irresponsible.

I may be shouting T.G.I.F. to the world, but I'm still a cockeyed optimist! Amen and Amen.

I've written before about the feeling of running in a hamster wheel and not getting anywhere, especially when it concerns the miserable Chiari headaches that I get more than often than I like. The past few days have involved a lot more running in circles without getting anywhere, and I am intensely frustrated about it.

Sleep, or rather the lack thereof, which is often at the center of the circular dilemma, proved even more elusive this weekend than normal. I played musical beds all weekend long as I tried to find a comfortable position for my neck so that sleeping didn't trigger a headache and wake me up. Fat chance! Whether I built the nest of pillows on the couch, our bed, or the futon in Iman's old room, I simply could not get comfortable enough to sleep longer than 30-40 minutes at a stretch. My neck doesn't usually give trouble, unless the muscles tense up in response to a particularly nasty headache; however, the bones in my neck are now a source of pain on their own. It's a bit freaky to roll my head around in an attempt to loosen up the neck muscles and hear the grinding of bone on bone when I do! The grinding sound gets loud enough that even Ali can hear it. So, I now have to figure out if the pain the neck is the source of the sleeping problem, or if the the sleeping problem is causing the pain in the neck. Wonderful!

Now that the rant / vent is over, I'm going to move on and make a real post, LOL!

The more I think about it, the angrier I become. I'm a very easy going and easy to get along with individual; I don't rile easily, nor am I quick to anger. In all the years that I have been teaching, I have never, ever had a confrontation with a student. Never, that is, until this afternoon.

As the end of the semester nears, students begin to feel the stress of catching up with readings, preparing for finals, and completing major projects. They want to start seeing the light at the end of the semester tunnel, as do I. We've still got three weeks of classes left, and most of that time will be filled with some heavy duty assignments -- the big ones that professors assign as a culmination of a semester's learning. My students have begun working on one such assignment for me.

My classes are built around the theme of censorship, particularly as it relates to textbooks and other reading materials used in the public school classrooms. It is designed to introduce future teachers to the types of challenges they will face as educators in the K-12 system. The course culminates in a complex research assignment modeled after the procedure that teachers commonly follow when forced to respond to a parental challenge requesting the removal of a book from the curriculum.

Because the research assignment is quite involved, students work in groups. As a group, they choose one book from a list that I have compiled based on two important factors: (1) it appears on the American Library Association's Most Frequently Challenged Books,and (2) I have verified that our school library has the resources needed to complete the required research. After choosing the book they want to work with, the group members divvy up the research sections, assigning one portion to each member. Students share their research with one another but write their own essays.

Last week, we went over this final assignment thoroughly. I offered a synopsis of each book on the list, indicated the grade in which it is typically read, and the reasons why it is most frequently challenged. A couple of groups asked to use books that were not on my list, which is fine. The books in question have, indeed, been challenged and would work quite well within the parameters of the assignment. All was right in the world at the conclusion of last Thursday's class. And then came today.

**Disclaimer: Because my blog is in the public sphere, I cannot divulge specific details about the incident that follows. I may be retiring in a few weeks, but I certainly don't want to end a career that I dearly love on a bad note and providing more specific information with the knowledge that some of my past and present students read my blog and might be able to identify the persons involved in "the incident," would be irresponsible of me.

One of the groups that had chosen a book not on my list had read their selection over the weekend. While the rest of the class was busily working on an activity, Student X began bullying the other group members for having suggested such a "disgusting" book for them to read. Suddenly, in what can only be described as the irony of ironies, Student X challenged the group's decision on a challenged book and sought to censor it, and them, in a class about censorship!

When their voices could be heard across the classroom where I was helping another group, I had to assess the situation and run interference if needed. Student X had staged a coup, and the group was, without notifying me or asking if it was even okay, scrambling to make another book selection. With a mind locked as securely as Fort Knox, Student X refused to hear anything about the literary quality of the book in question, even when its defense came from me. Despite my explanation that we are all adults, in college, and that we ought to expect sometimes to encounter ideas that make us uncomfortable, Student X remained steadfast and determined to control the situation. Rather than creating any greater discomfort for the other group members, I advised the students that changing their book selection to one not on the assignment's list meant that I could not guarantee they would find the required research materials and that I would not help them search for it. The group seemed to settle down, and I turned my attention back to the other students. When all was said and done, the group capitulated and chose another book. Chalk one up for the censors!

At the end of the class, Student X hung around until everyone had left the classroom and asked to talk to me. After requesting an extension on the essay that was due this evening, which I granted, Student X expressed upset with me for having interfered with the group dynamic. As our conversation continued and I let Student X know that it was my responsibility to maintain control in the classroom and to prevent any student from bullying another, Student X began to look like a deer in the headlights and slowly walked backwards -- yes, literally backwards!-- weaving through two rows of seats, complaining all the while about being "disadvantaged" by me and my interference, until backing out of the classroom completely. What had happened? A breakdown? A meltdown?

I headed off to the parking lot and the peace that leaving campus would surely bring. Incensed, confused about what I had just experienced, yet concerned about Student X's mental health, I wandered the parking lot in search of my car. And I do mean in search of -- in my confusion and upset, I could not find the darn thing anywhere! As I always do when in a state of panic, I called Ali. His reassuring voice calmed me enough so that I found the car and began to make my way to our business.

I knew that I needed to inform my department chair about the incident and attempted to call his office from my cell phone. But lucky for me, I had, just the night before, finally figured out how to sync my email contacts from the computer to my iPhone and in the process, unbeknown to me, erased phone numbers that were already in my phone but not in the computer's contacts. I had to wait to call until I could get to the office and look up the number on the school website. At least the time lapse would allow me to arrange my thoughts enough that I didn't sound like a complete unprofessional idiot when I did call.

While I was scouring the parking lot for my car, Student X was in my department chair's office reporting my wretched behavior. Before making the phone call, I had decided that since we have only three weeks left of class, it would be best if Student X, who travels quite a distance to get to the campus anyway and always arrives late for class as a result, did not return to the classroom and that any outstanding be turned in via email. My solution provided an out for an obviously stressed student and a reprieve for the other group members who wanted to complete the assignment with the book they had just purchased and read. The chair indicated that our stories were nearly identical, except that Student X claimed that I had behaved "aggressively." After discussing the situation with the chair, it was agreed that the group would use the new book with the understanding that I couldn't guarantee they would find the resources they needed nor would I help them locate any. Problem solved? Not really.

As the day turned into the evening, I began to hear from some of the other group members. They resented Student X's attitude and felt pressured to change the book selection, even though they didn't want to, because the thought of having to work so closely for the remainder of the semester with such hostility, anger, and bitterness was worse. Perhaps I should have insisted that Student X not return to the classroom after all. But, if I had done that, Student X's claim of being "disadvantaged" would become truth. On the other hand, I now have three students who are genuinely "disadvantaged" by the coup. Their day was every bit as terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad as mine.


Things are, however, looking up for me. It's the little things like this email I received a short time ago that make teaching a worthwhile career choice in spite of the nitwits:

A couple of days ago, I happened to stumble upon a documentary on HBO. By the time I found it, the first 30 minutes or so had already aired, but that didn't matter at all; it caught my attention immediately. Hard Times at Douglass High: A No Child Left Behind Report Card re-opened my eyes to what I see as the most utterly dismal domestic policy failure in decades.

Frederick Douglass Senior High School, an historic African American school in Baltimore, loses nearly half of its incoming class of freshmen by 10th grade, a loss that only grows through the 12th grade. Disciplinary issues, student apathy, and a lack of parental involvement or supervision all contribute to the problem. But Douglass High wasn't always like this; Thurgood Marshall and Cab Calloway are just two of the many famous graduates from this icon of black history. So what has changed? What has contributed to the transformation of an historic school with a roster of distinguished graduates to one whose students perform so poorly on standardized tests that, more than once, the state of Maryland has prepared itself to take over?

Never understimate the importance of location, location, location! Douglass High is an inner city school where the tax base is nearly non-existant and funding for schools is hard to come by. In the film, one teacher explains to the principal how she called in a favor from a teacher at another school to get some much needed textbooks for one of her classes. Hers, it turns out, is not the only class without the necessary materials. Despite ever dwindling funds and resources, the teachers at Douglass High are faced with the daunting task of preparing their students to meet the standards mandated by No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Students who enter Douglass High as freshmen are already performing far below grade level. According to one of the school's counselors, approximately 80% of the freshman class of 2004, the year the film was made, had a 4th grade reading level. Only 10% of the freshman class passed the standardized reading test, and less than 1% of them passed the test for math. By the time the academic year is over, half the students in the freshman class will not return to school as sophomores. And as these students fall off the radar, the school as an institution is punished by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Taking away the funding needed to provide resources to an already cash-strapped school system in an area where so many of the residents live at or below the national poverty line, seems absolutely criminal to me. What is the logic, the rationale, behind cutting off the funding necessary to purchase textbooks and supplies while still requiring students to pass standardized tests based on the information contained within them? Beats me!

As an educator, I would agree that our school system needs a major overhaul. But in a society as dynamic as ours, placing the blame for our youth's failure to pass standardized tests on teachers who aren't given the tools needed to perform their jobs effectively is not a solution to the problem.