Before I get to what happened today, let me take a minute to review how I got here.

I come from a family of teachers. My parents both taught, my mother's sister and everyone in her family (including grandchildren) are or were teachers, and my mother-in-law is still teaching at 83. Many in my family veered off into business, but when that part of my life ended, the first thing I came up with as something I would like to do was to teach math. I got that idea in part because I almost failed Calculus in college, but that's another story.

I ended up at Akiba by a happy accident. I had decided to get a Masters in education at Penn, and they told me I needed some prerequisites for a math teaching degree, but advised me "don't take those courses here, it's too expensive," so I took I think 7 math classes at Temple while substitute teaching at several area school, including Friends' Central School, where I was under the impression that the head of the math department was a friend.

One day in December 2002 (I think) there was an ad in the paper to teach one class for one semester. I came into Akiba, had an interview and taught a demonstration class, and was offered the job. I had been told I was getting a better offer at FCS, but my supposed friend screwed me, I took the Akiba offer, got a full time job the next fall and that's where I've been ever since. There are actually many more twists and turns to it, but that's the abridged version.

So now after 7 years working here, I found myself part of a group that was backed into a corner and pretty much forced to strike to maintain our pensions and I had no idea what it would be like. It was very lonely on the weekend leading up to first day and I was terribly upset, but now after a week out on the picket line with my colleagues, lonely is the last word I'd use to describe how I feel.

I've been through strikes before on the management side, and the union rep said that's the "nicer place to be" during a strike, and I suppose that's true on a financial basis, you're still getting paid and all, but I found the emotional toll to be very heavy. And I suppose if you're on the union side it depends on the situation. If you're striking coal miners, like in Billy Elliott, or omg Matewan by John Sayles, it's way worse (and again, you have no idea how much worse unless you watch Matewan or something along the same lines) that what we have now.

There are always people caught in the middle of strikes, and their reaction is key, because they are what we business types like to call stakeholders, as in they hold a stake in whatever sort of thing the striking workers do. In many cases, like coal miners and transit and even public school teachers, normally the inconvenience that the stakeholders suffer overwhelms their sympathy for the strikers. That's because there's not any kind of connection between the workers and the inconvenienced (sorry, I'd have to shoot myself if I had to use the word 'stakeholders' again in that paragraph- Augh!). I can say with reasonable confidence that that's not the case here. As much as people who run the school like to trumpet the close bond between the students and their parents and their teachers, I'm not sure they really understand it. It's not necessarily a criticism; how could they, really?

The rest of the day was a Shabbat celebration, with food and blessings and singing and togetherness.
Nope, not feeling lonely at the moment.