My email has been overloaded with courses lately. I’m not sure why. Are the trainers and higher-educators getting desperate for business? I know few of us are taking extra courses or earning higher degrees now because we can’t afford it and because additional training and education no longer pays.

But reduced pay scales aside, this offer came through recently. There’s a lot of public attention to mental illnesses these days, so I actually read it instead of hitting delete.

Dealing with Metal Illness in the Classroom

I could have used this a few years ago, or a few years before that, or – the list goes on. Or could I? Let’s look more closely.

This course is designed for teachers, support staff and school counselors.

Okay, the focus is good. School counselors have been cut way back, though, due to the usual and customary budget constraints. When a student needs counseling, the teacher is the first and sometimes the last to handle it. If the student is lucky, his/her teacher will have had at least some counseling training. Next, please.

Participants will learn about the diagnostic characteristics of the various types of mood disorders and the other types of mental health disorders that mimic the symptoms of each.

Now they’ve lost me. Teachers can’t and don’t diagnose illness, whether physical or mental. We may recognize head lice and flu, and we might be the ones monitoring behavior that suggests attention deficit disorder, but we do not diagnose. Training us in “diagnostic characteristics” isn’t the right direction at all.

If we teachers are to help students with possible mental illnesses, we need to have opportunities to refer these students for real diagnosis and treatment. We need to have the connections with medical professionals, and we need permission to contact them. We need administrators who take our concerns seriously, and we need time – yes, time – to meet with and call parents so we can work as a team. We need school psychologists who take our concerns seriously, school social workers who do more than push papers, and most of all, administrators who care about our safety and well-being.

We need coworkers and support staff that will work with us. We need the public to respect our knowledge, our experience, and our observations.

Most of all, we need this because the students, the ones who need help, need us.

Oh, Lance. Think of the good. Rejuvenating the sport of cycling. The Livestrong association. Donations to cancer research and cancer treatment. Bringing attention to a major sponsor, the USPS.

Does the good mitigate the bad?

The bad is damaging. The bad that’s coming to light now ranges from dishonesty and poor sportsmanship all the way to criminal rule-breaking and intimidation of teammates and now, witnesses.

Between the good and the bad we have the ugly: the Too Big To Fail attitude. The I’m Too Cool to Lose or I’m Too Important to Get Caught syndrome.  The I Am This Team and Don’t You Forget It outlook.

Lance, you let a lot of people down. Not just those in cycling and those in your immediate family, either. You’ve let down people who knew and trusted you, those who thought you were the world. You’ve let down people who never met you, but knew you through the ubiquitous yellow bracelets and all that the bracelets represent. Wearing a Livestrong bracelet right now invites arguments to which there are no resolutions.

Then we have the seemingly random quotes that keep getting you in more deeply. Cheating? If you really didn’t know what the word meant, you weren’t in competitive sports. And the argument of Everybody Did It? That doesn’t fly with parents of teenagers, and it doesn’t fly with the enforcers or with the fans – of any sport.

Maybe that’s where the conflict is. It’s not the good vs. the bad or the generous vs. the selfish. It’s the idea of being too cool, too important to follow the same rules and laws as the rest of the world. In that way, Lance, it’s simple.

Daisy’s desk on a big grading day – note that all the papers in the stacks need to be graded, the grades entered in the gradebook, and then the papers get mailed back to the students. Three tasks before I can call the desk “clear”.

The Before Picture

How did I avoid taking an After Picture? The desk looks much better now. I’ve updated the gradebooks for all of my students, mailed back copious numbers of portfolio papers, and even took a few wet wipes to the desk surface. It’s so much easier to work now!

We were advised to keep the mailing envelopes for progress reports in a safe place. I stored mine in plain sight. With Fluffy and friends on guard, no one will mess with my envelopes.

Fluffy and friends on duty

I showed you the office fashion show of the fingerless gloves.

But then the temperatures took a dive below the zero mark and added a wind chill, so we really pulled out all the stops. Here’s Daisy’s cube in the drafty office in below-zero weather.

Gloves and warm sweater – oh, and snack, too.

Snuggie!

Blankets and snuggies abound in our cubicle world. Mine is from the Packers Pro Shop, of course.

Mug Shot

Warm beverages help, of course! The challenge is drinking it before it cools down.

Meanwhile, progress reports call. Time to warm up the gradebook!