OH GOD OKAY

-I was a theatre arts teacher with no budget. Absolutely none. In fact, my budget was so small that when I came to the headmaster saying “okay, rights for the fall show are going to cost X amount” he nearly hit the ceiling. TURNS OUT THEY HAD NEVER PAID THE RIGHTS FOR ANY SHOW EVER. When they performed Annie for a summer camp the year before, they had literally just copied the script from the movie and performed that.

-The headmaster knew the names, family members, and general backgrounds of every kid on the football and baseball teams. He came to one performance of the spring musical and texted the entire time.

-The school was so totally anti-gay that when I cast a particular student in the fall play, the MS/HS principal came to me IN THE MIDDLE OF CLASS and told me that if “[student] is acting too gay, his mother has instructed that you tell him to stop and be a man.”

-Since it was a Christian school, they were VERY strict on dress code. My usual outfit was a dress, leggings, cardigan, boots. All day every day. And at least once a week, I would get a “talking to” about my clothing. Why? Because my skirts didn’t cover my knees. My knees weren’t even bare. They were just knees.

–bonus story: when I told them I couldn’t afford new clothes on what they were paying me, I was told “just go ask some of the other female teachers for their hand-me-downs.”

-Which, on a related note, I was:

–the theatre teacher

–I directed the fall and spring shows

–the director of the MS/HS aftercare program

–assistant to the music teacher (who was a raging asshole of a bitch)

–a tutor (grades K-12)

–the school librarian

and I was paid *drumroll please*

$264

every

two weeks

That’s $26.40 a day

for working at this school

from 8am to at least 5:30pm

Not counting weekend rehearsals, and lesson plan prep, and all the extra work that goes into teaching.

And it was an hour there and an hour back from my home.

Oh, and benefits?

None.

None at all.

I shall leave you with one of my favorite stories from my two and a half years of hell.

We had an end-of-semester teachers’ lunch on our in service day before everyone left for Christmas break. They brought us Cracker Barrel food…

…which had been left over from someone else’s church function. Two days earlier. We weren’t even worth fresh food.

But we all chipped in and got the headmaster an iPad mini, so that was nice. It matched his iPad, and iPhone, and Mac computer. And when he explained that our Christmas bonuses weren’t going to be as good this year, he told us “in the big picture, it doesn’t really matter, because you’re doing this for Jesus.”

Yeah, I’m never going to be a teacher again.