Reactive Human Tries to Train Her Reactive Dogs-Week 1

My first week trying to figure out how to retrain my reactive dog pack ended up turning into an excavation of my soul and a reflection on where I currently am in life. (Follow me for more light and easy dog training tips!!!!) And, currently, in my life, I am in the middle of a scorched-earth, take no prisoners, I-hate-my-job kind of warpath with the school district I teach in. Superintendents see me and do an about face in the other direction. Administrators see me and all of sudden get very busy with whatever is happening on their walkie talkie. Curriculum directors quietly try and blend into the wall. How, you may be wondering, did I go from "nice, respectful employee" to "employee from the depths of Hades?" Well, as with every other educator in the universe, I have had a hell of a time being a public school teacher for the last 5 years.

I used to like my job as an English teacher (kind of). I chose this profession. It was something I wanted to do. I remembered all of the helpful teachers that I had had in my life and hoped I could be that for someone else. I wanted to serve my community. I even had aspirations to be The Best. But I knew after my first year of teaching that I would never be one of those teachers that kids remembered. It took all of my energy just to survive a basic teaching day; I am not extroverted and I don't want to hang out with kids during lunch or after school. I am good at teaching content but who cares about that. Every career needs foot soldiers, I reasoned with myself; every soccer team needs boring 'ol midfielders; we can't all be the best. I'll just do my part as a brick in the foundation. Sometimes I did have great years, but mostly I am just an unmemorable stop on the way to graduation.

For 15 years, I had been cruising along in this state-not hating my job most days; not totally loving it , not really being great at it-kind of the same feeling as when I buy a bra from Target: It's fine and will get me by for a while, but eventually, I should figure out my real bra size and invest in one that fits just right, but EH... that's a later problem. My job was always a later problem and, hey, if I pushed it off long enough, maybe I would be retired before I even had to think too much more about it.

And then my whole school system went sideways. The COVID cyclone swooped in, picked up the district like a lost little rowboat in the water, and slammed it onto the beach to splinter into a 100,000 little pieces, never to be put back together into a functioning boat again. My school got a new principal. My district got a new, inexperienced superintendent. The students turned feral. I was punched by a student. Shoved through a doorway by another. On the day one of our secretaries died from lung cancer, my coteacher was put in a headlock by a student.......and I didn't help. I froze, watching everything play out in slow motion from the haze of my disorientation from the news we got that morning. The union leader that was supposed aid us was caught embezzling money. Fights broke out weekly, daily-with no discernible consequences. Phones were everywhere. I would talk and be completely ignored-by kids, by bosses, by superintendents. The little sip of remaining naivety that I had strung along the last 15 years-the idea that I was helping kids-evaporated. My life felt purposeless. My depression hollowed out my insides so that just zombie-me existed. My personal light dimmed to nothing and I started to wonder what type of paperwork I would need to do to check myself into a mental health facility and not lose my paycheck The situation was dire....for me, and for everyone else in the school, as well.  

I felt that it might be time to quit this gig but I couldn't (can't) bring myself to do it. Mainly-bills, but also I didn't want to disappoint my dad. My parents were happy I had landed a stable job and had held on to it even though I didn't to wake up on time for anything my entire childhood; they worried I never would get a job with habits like that.

When, and if, I was ever lucky enough to get a job, they had also taught me to never, ever, say anything to a superior of any kind except "Yes" and "Thank you." Any problem I had with my job or boss should be buried deep in my belly and never see the light of day. These values were totally fine when my job was normal and stable and I really didn't have much that I wanted to complain about. Until I did.

I couldn't (yet) quit, so, I opened my mouth... and not in a civilized, let's-discuss-our-concerns -like-adults kind of way but in a "I've been holding this in for 5 years and now EVERYONE IS GOING TO HEAR ABOUT IT" kind of way.

The enraged torrent that came out of me was uuuuuuuuuugly. I wanted a system for the reading students. I wanted faculty bathrooms back. I wanted my old health insurance back. I wanted consequences for students. I wanted control over my curriculum. I wanted the old grading system. I wanted the phones locked up. I wanted someone from HR to talk to me when a student punched me...and on I went, popping off if the county even THOUGHT about changing something into a dumber, stupider version of its old self. I was never able to put the plug back in.

I would try to, though, because I would feel bad for blowing up at people. I still wanted to be Good. I still wanted to be the employee that everyone described as "always smiling," but then the rancor would just seep out of me in other passive-aggressive ways until, like a trigger-stacked Mabel, I would burst all over again. I could not keep my mouth closed and I would not: I liked when I got riled up because it gave me the courage to say what I couldn't say when I was calm. I needed my anger to help me overcome the constraints built by the younger me.

But all of this, even though it felt good to speak my mind, did not come without personal cost. I was battling the values of my old self, which made me tired. Carrying a anger around all the time so that I could stand up for myself when I needed to was tiring... At the same time, I didn't want to lose my ability to speak up, but it seemed to be fueled only by rage.

On top of this, I also had a more serious trepidation about speaking up at all, ever: I didn't want to become my mother, who fights all the time, with everyone, spewing fury everywhere with impunity. It was hard , growing up, to tell what would set her off; it was best to be invisible and have no voice.

I likened this internal battle I was having with myself about speaking up and feeling like my mother to that of Harry Potter. Like Harry Potter, I WANTED to be good...I wanted friends. I wanted to be nice to people... to be happy...but when Voldemort zapped Harry when he was a baby, Harry got a little bit of Voldemort's evil inside of him, just as I've got my mom's trauma and anger and ways of dealing with people inside of me. This is my core: it's unhappy and unstable and does not speak up for itself in productive ways and I have built a facade around it to exist in the world. I tied my core with restraints to a hospital bed deep in my subconscious. I do not let it out. Or, I did not let it out.

At my job, pushed to the edge, I let my guard down and out the animosity came. I grabbed frantically, trying to stuff it back in but it was too late. I liked my new power. And I hated it.

What happened with my mom, over time, is that people eventually just started ignoring her.

I suspected, if I kept blowing up at work, people would start ignoring me, too. I didn't want people to ignore me because I wanted to undo the changes that had been made during COVID, and I wouldn't be able to get anything changed if everyone ignored me. Then I would end up where I started--actually, worse then where I started, because I would be stewing in my anger slop, bitter, with everything around me still the same.

Which brings me to my dogs. Like my dogs, I have to learn to reign this all in some way, shape, or form. I can't just go around barking and biting people who are also trying to exist in the world just because they are fluffy and had the gall to walk in a door, walk on my street, or pee on my shrub.

I'm expecting them to pull it together even though I didn't raise them perfectly...not even close... and, so yeah, so I guess I need to try, also. Look in the mirror first and all that...

This is as far as I got in my first week trying to train my reactive dogs.

Stayed tuned.