Open Letter to Cindy Satan Principal

Dear Cindy,

Tomorrow is the first day of school for another year. Congratulations to you at the beginning of your fourth year as a principal. I thought I would write and let you know how your first first-year teacher is doing.

Had things not gone the way they did, I would be in a very different place now in so many ways. The most obvious way in which it would be different is that I would be starting my third year as a teacher, almost halfway to my goal of teaching for at least five years. As you probably know, I did not get another teaching job, despite putting in approximately four frillion applications last summer.

That's okay, though. It really is. Does it surprise you that I'm okay with it?

Perhaps I should give you some background�a little insight into what's happened to me. My side of the story, if you will; the side you didn't want to hear, wouldn't listen to, because to actually listen to me and hear MY truth would have been tantamount to admitting what a fabulous actress and horrible human being you are.

It certainly shouldn't come as a shock to you to know that the months of October 2004 through May 2005 were some of the most miserable, difficult months of my life. I guess I should preface this by saying I believe I know what you are thinking right now, that you did what was best for the children. Deep down in your black, withered soul, you must know that isn't true. You didn't do what was best for the children. That would have included helping me become a better teacher, but you should realize that only a superhero could improve marginally, much less perform well when s/he is being terrorized on a daily basis. Yes, you terrorized me. I sucked as a teacher, I know, but you didn't help. You can actually thank yourself for my suckage. I didn't know what I was doing and you didn't help. You threatened me�they were veiled threats, but threats all the same�and the stress you put me under caused me so many health problems that I am just now, almost two years later, beginning�BEGINNING�to recover.

I still don't know what I did to evoke such hatred in you. Was it because I was nervous? Completely intimidated? Unskilled and unprepared? I didn't make you look good, and that is all that matters to you. You give lip service to "it's all about the kids," blah blah blah, but it's all about what makes YOU look good. It's about MONEY. My GOD, I worked so hard, I went to college in the morning/daytime and worked evenings and weekends, commuting two hours a day, for six years, year-round, graduated with a 3.62 GPA, finally believed in myself, that I was smart, that I could do it. I AM smart. I COULD have done it. With a principal who gave two shits about me, I could have done it and I could have been great. But I entered your school with literally two weeks of teaching-by-myself experience. You knew it was my first year. You reminded me of that lots of times. Why did you hire me if you wanted an experienced teacher? I know I came across well in my interview, and you liked me at first. I still don't know what caused the animosity. It couldn't have been because I mouthed the F-word in the hallway that time. Nobody saw me but you, and I was mortified and I apologized. The counselor dropped the F-bomb every five seconds and I swear if you were gay she'd be your lady love. That must have been close to the start of your dislike for me. I have never been so embarrassed in my life, and when I told one of the aides about it, she reassured me that you didn't hold grudges. Apparently you don't hold them against anyone but me.

So why was I the exception? What went wrong? You told me in one meeting that I needed to ask for help. In another meeting soon after, I asked for help and you icily informed me that you were not going to do my job for me. All I wanted was to know what you wanted from me, what you were looking for in an art teacher, what you expected me to do... but no matter how I tried, I couldn't do anything right by you. I had a coffee cup once, it was a Far Side coffee cup, that had a man in hell being prodded in the back by the devil (complete with pitchfork), and the devil was saying, "c'mon, it's either one or the other," making the man choose between two doors: one that said "damned if you do," the other that said, "damned if you don't." That's exactly what happened to me. You were my devil and those were the choices you gave me.

By Christmas break I knew I wouldn't be back the next year. December 3, when you put me on that awful plan, which certainly wouldn't have been so awful if you had not been so incredibly hateful in the meeting where you informed me of it, was the second worst day of my life. Any normal person with a beating heart who knew what happened on the worst day of my life, and I am certainly not going to tell you what that was, would understand that the second worst day was pretty damn bad. If I had known how bad it was yet to get, and that I would not be able to find another teaching job, I would have quit mid-year and let you rot in it, and contract be damned.

At that point, I'd had strep throat and the flu on two separate occasions, three weeks apart. I started a period that would last for five months and eventually cause me to have an endometrial biopsy (more to come on that, and wasn't it nice to worry about whether or not I had cancer on top of everything else!). I missed a lot of school, and the more I missed, the more I struggled to catch up; the more I struggled, the more stressed I got; the more stressed I got, the sicker I got, and the worse you treated me. The veiled threats, the narrow-eyed scowls in the hallway, the coldness when you talked to me�worse, when you completely ignored me�honestly, I cannot ever remember being treated so badly, not ever! What was worse was I had no recourse. I could not fight back. You held all the cards, and I knew it, and I knew you knew it. I also knew you were not going to renew my contract, and that I should go ahead and resign in order to not have to explain for the rest of my career why my contract was not renewed after my first year. My parents, who, as you may or may not remember, are both teachers themselves, and were horrified at what was happening. My father had encouraged me to apply in T0mball. He still feels so bad about it, but he'd heard such great things and was so very proud when I was hired there. You don't know my dad, which is probably a good thing, because I think he would have snatched you bald-headed if he had come face to face with you. You're lucky my mom is a lady or she would have done it on the last day, when you had the audacity to HUG ME goodbye. Cindy, I swear to you, I was on copious amounts of Vic0din from my leg surgery so I was not clear what was happening; had I not been drugged, I probably would have thrown up when you touched me. Did you notice my mother did not say a word to you? Omigod, she wanted to kill you. You have no idea what that year did to me. No clue.

But I digress.

All Christmas break I was a total wreck. So, so, SO relieved to be in Austin, where it was safe, with my family around me, but knowing that it would end all too soon and I would have to go back. I didn't have my calendar, so I thought I had to be back on the second of January for inservice on the third�turns out the inservice was on the fourth, so I came back a day early. I stopped by my ex-fiance's apartment on the way back�he has a vested interest in me, since he helped support me all through college�and when it came time for me to go, I completely broke down. I cried all the way back to T0mball, and I don't mean a few glistening tears sliding down my cheek. I mean I sobbed, and it is actually remarkable that I didn't have a wreck. I got back to that apartment (I still have flashbacks of that apartment on a daily basis), and I was unpacking my suitcase, and I smelled home in my clothes, and I broke down again.

I cried all the next day, because I had come back a day before I had to. That sucked.

When you saw me the first day back, you said you'd thought about calling me to make sure I was okay. I thought maybe you were human after all, that you had seen and been perhaps a little bit moved by my obvious distress. I was about to be proven wrong. It was another mind game, yet another time you put me off my guard so you could ambush me again.

The next couple of weeks were a blur. I know of at least one time when I woke up crying and couldn't stop, not even when I was in the parking lot at school, and I called my mother because I was so scared that I couldn't stop crying, and how could I go in and face my kids if I couldn't stop crying? And I messed up with the Rodeo Art and I cannot even come up with a word that would accurately describe how supremely horrific you were. I went out to my car and called my mother on my cellphone, crying so hard she couldn't understand me, because you were bringing in the fine arts director to talk to me about my screw-up, and I was just certain he was going to be horrible too, and how was I going to get through this "meeting" being dressed down by both of you at once? How? My heart is pounding, well over a year and a half later, just thinking about it. Thank God he was a human, that's all I have to say. Thank God his wife was an art teacher too, and was willing to help me. Thank God for both of them; I will be forever grateful.

Did I mention I was sick a lot? Did I mention you had terrorized me? I was terrified of you; Good God, you were mean. Did I mention the origami swans, when I realized the origami cranes would be too hard for the kids so I switched the lesson to the swans, which were easier, and the kids had a ball�they were making them from scrap paper in their other classes�and you gave me an impromptu evaluation, a SCATHING evaluation, an evaluation that makes me want to throw up just thinking about how malicious it was, stating that I said I would change the lesson and I didn't, and that 75% of my students were unsuccessful (SO UNTRUE), and even though you were WRONG and you knew you were WRONG you gave a halfhearted apology and said you would change the evaluation and YOU DIDN'T, at least not that I saw. You had it in for me, just admit it. You said once, "I know you feel like you're being targeted, but you're not," and I remember thinking, WOW, I WONDER WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE TARGETED. Oh my GOD, you CONTEMPTIBLE, LOATHSOME woman. All that time, you stripped me of the little confidence I possessed, you turned me into a LOSER, you NEGATED my degree. You fucking DESTROYED me, and I still don't know why. Why? Was it so you could get the previous art teacher back? Oh, yeah, I know about that. I know that she was unhappy at the school she went to, and I actually thought when I put in my resignation ON JANUARY 10 that I might call her and let her know the position was going to be open if she wanted to apply to come back. You were all over that, though, because just a short time later, one of the custodians told me she'd been rehired as my replacement.

That really hurt. It still hurts.

My dad thought that, once I'd formally resigned, you'd let up on me. HA! You sure didn't. It was laughable. I went home to Austin every weekend because I could not bear to be in T0mball one single solitary second longer than I had to. Meetings on Friday afternoons were hell, because you NEVER had anything good to say, and I didn't even like meeting with the assistant principal (though she was infinitely preferable to you), because I knew she had to do what you said, and she invariably passed on a stinging rebuke from you. So I drove home every weekend, most of the time in tears, and I promise you that I will never, ever come back the way I came before. Not for anything. I will not go through Giddings. I would rather stab myself than go east of Bastrop, and I would die before I would let anyone drag me back to T0mball. Just so we're clear.

You have no reason to suspect you will ever see me again. I'm sure that's fine with you, and let me reassure you that I wouldn't have it any other way.

Do you remember the day you came in and found me in the tutorial room, where I was supposed to be�no kids in there�and I was in that recliner with my feet up? You thought I was asleep. Without even talking to me about it, to hear what I had to say, you wrote me up and then had the assistant principal break the news to me. My feet were up because my ankles were the size of grapefruits, just so you know. I hate you for that. I know you didn't put the write-up through, thank you very much, because the AP told you what happened. If it hadn't been for her I don't think I would have survived, I really don't. I'm not sure she liked me much, either, but it might have been just that she resented being put in that position. At any rate, she helped me. She tried. She didn't have any power and I don't think she agreed with how you treated me, but she certainly couldn't tell me that. Don't think she was the only one who noticed, either. Lots of people in that district who thought you were sweet as pie and pure as the driven snow know you have a different side because of me. One of the aides, the one who told me you don't hold grudges, shook her head and exclaimed that she couldn't believe how horrible you were to me. She said over and over that there must have been some misunderstanding, because she thought I was fabulous, and she thought I was fabulous with the kids.

God, I loved those kids. I spent well over five hundred dollars of the money I earned suffering under you to make life good for those kids. I spent hours at the Target dollar bin deciding what little crap trinkets would appeal to the kids the most, because I had to have some rewards for them. I bought hats and gloves for the kids who lived in the slums. I spent a hundred dollars on pre-cut mats alone for the art show at the fine arts festival because it was my GODDAMN BIRTHDAY--my 30th--and I was not going to sit there all night and cut mats. It was bad enough taping all the artwork to the mats. I agonized over that art show, I spent hours and hours getting it ready and setting it up because those kids deserved an excellent show and I was trying to get a good reaction out of you. I picked one of my kids up in the projects and two of her siblings so they could come to the festival, and I took them home afterwards.

I know I could have asked if you could give me some money for the mats, but the thought of looking you in the face made me want to throw up; God, I couldn't even stand to walk past your office! I took the long way around the school just to avoid you. Every day. Even when my feet ached like they were going to turn black and fall off.

You know the funny part? It was really funny. I blamed myself. I thought I sucked. Never mind what everyone else said. I thought it was all my fault. Sure, I gave some of the blame to you when I was talking to other people, but inside, I truly thought it was all my fault, that I wasn't fit to be a teacher. Never mind that the kids loved me. I couldn't get them out of my room. Never mind that my cooperating teachers when I was student teaching loved me and thought I did a great job. Oh, yeah--they helped me. THEY DID THEIR JOB. You think I didn't do my job? YOU DIDN'T DO YOURS, EITHER. You didn't want me to succeed--in fact, you made damn sure I didn't.

I loved those kids. I loved Skyler*. Remember Skyler? Little punk dude, that's what I called him. Skyler with the multicolored hair and the black fingernails and the blue eyes and the freckles. He was my favorite, my absolute favorite, besides being sent to the alternative school twelve times that year. None of the other teachers could stand him, he was such a troublemaker, but nobody saw what he needed but me. He needed to be accepted, for somebody to tell him that he was Worth It. I did, and he loved me. I think to this day that he was the reason God sent me into your pit of hell, because I seriously doubt there will be another teacher who will love him like I did. There was also Josh, there was Robert, there was Jenna. You would not believe how many of those kids begged me to stay another year. You would not believe how many of the fifth graders vowed they would not take art because I wouldn't be there. I wanted them to take art. I told them my replacement was a nice lady and a good artist. I truly do hope she had a good turnout for their sakes.


If I could have survived, if I thought there was a chance you would have allowed me to succeed, I would have stayed. Not for you, not even if you had wanted me to (which of course you didn't). I would have stayed for those kids. I would have improved if you had empowered me instead of ripping me apart. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to teach. I didn't know what I was doing--the counselor reminded me several times that I wasn't in Austin anymore and things were done differently in T0mball--but you didn't give me a chance to learn. You had the opportunity to teach me, to turn me into a teacher, and you failed miserably. You wouldn't tell me what you wanted from me, and then punished me for my ignorance. How was I supposed to be a good teacher under those conditions? How was I supposed to grow so I could teach those children when you kept beating me back down? Howard fussed at me once for not taking care of myself. I never told him a thing about my interactions with you because I knew how close the two of you were. How could I confide in my mentor when he was yours to command? I was stuck with no way out. All I could do was endure.

I think the thing that I am most bitter about is that I missed my nephew's birth...but conversely, I am so, so glad that I left, because had I stayed there, I would have missed out on his life. I would have missed out on this past Wednesday, when I babysat, and he showed me his toes and I took him outside to play in his little pool and listen to him shriek with laughter when he gets sprayed by the hose. And I got to hear him say "uh-oh" a million times and when somebody asks him who his Aunt Sweetie is he points to me every time. I would have been in T0mball, getting my classroom ready, going to inservices. dreading seeing you, and instead I got to rock him to sleep and feed him oatmeal cookies and milk. I know that if I had stayed, if you had not made me wish I was dead every day, I would not have been with him so much this last year, and he might not know who Aunt Sweetie is. So, I guess I owe you thanks for that, even though it came at a heavy price.

You know, after I put in my resignation, I started a calendar on my computer. It was very in-depth. I color-coded the days I had to work and I numbered them so I knew exactly how many more days I had to deal with seeing you. I even made spreadsheets of how many hours there were left until I got to drive out of there. It kept me sane, though I couldn't sleep and I kept breaking out in hives and my eczema was out of control. Then Reid was born and I could not get out fast enough to see him, thank GOD he was born right before Spring Break so I got to spend literally days with him and nights with him sleeping on my chest. I kept track of how many school days and I kept track of how many days total, and I went home every weekend except for the weekend just after my birthday because it was the weekend of the Fine Arts Festival. My mom and her sisters came down to spend that weekend with me so I wouldn't be alone. The high school secretary lost our school banner and I was SO INCREDIBLY PISSED because I repainted it to make it look less like shit and took it over there and I was so careful because I knew having the banner was important. And thank GOD the secretary remembered me giving it to her or I'm sure I would have gotten blamed for that, too. When I went to set up, the Fine Arts Director was there and I asked him where the banner was and he said he was going to ask me the same thing. The story came out, but even so, I imagine you blamed me anyway. Then I was told I had to make a poster with the school name on it since the banner was gone. OH MY GOD, I hadn't slept in THREE DAYS and I was BLEEDING from stress...SO TIRED...and then I had to make a poster? ARE YOU SHITTING ME? My aunt made the poster so I could sleep. My mom was so mad she could have spit nails. And this was right around the time I had to have the biopsy done, and then I was put on progesterone and started to hemorrhage and had to go to the ER (you very kindly offered to have someone drive me to the ER, thank you ever so much for caring) and I went to the ER where they said they would not do an ultrasound like my gynecologist in Austin asked them to; no, they did a pap smear (I know, TMI, but you can handle it, you did it to me), which told them absoutely nothing, and I knew it wouldn't because I'd just freaking had one in Austin and it didn't tell anybody anything either and that's why they put me on progesterone in the first place. And then I drove back to Austin, despite the fact that I was HEMORRHAGING, so they could do an ultrasound, and they found out that things were severely effed up in there and I had cysts, too. So then I had the biopsy and no, I didn't have cancer, thank GOD, so they put me on this unbelievably heavy dose of birth control to stop the bleeding, which had the lovely effect of making me so sick I could barely breathe without retching. And that happened to be the week of the standardized testing/re-testing (I can't remember which) and I had to pace the hallways every so often, and the counselor griped at me for sitting too much. That was great, that was so great.

Looking back, it's a wonder I didn't just shoot myself and end it. Thankfully I held myself in higher esteem than you and the counselor did, because I feel quite certain the two of you would have cheered me on.

So anyway, two weeks before the last day of school I was taking out my trash and I fell down the stairs, which you are aware resulted in a severely dislocated ankle and a compound fracture of my fibula. Or, maybe you just knew I got kinda hurt, who knows. When I was at the bottom of the stairs and blood was pouring out of my ankle and I couldn't get up, you know what I thought? HOW AM I GOING TO TEACH? I have to go to school tomorrow! Seriously! I was freaking out in the ambulance because I didn't have any more sick days left--I had used up the last one for the endometrial biopsy. My parents were three hours away and I was stuck in the emergency room by myself; the nurse wouldn't give me any pain medication and my ankle was still bleeding, my heel sat in a red puddle in the splint. Thankfully, my mother called the music teacher, who came and sat with me in the ER, and I have never been so happy to see a friendly face. She haunts me to this day, since she was so desperately injured just a few days later. She sat with me, she made the nurse give me something for the pain, she held my hand while they sedated me and attempted to set my leg. Whenever I was conscious, the only thing I was freaking out about was that this injury was going to get me in more trouble with YOU.

I was out for the rest of the year. The broken leg, the surgery, the metal and the pins and the screws and the staples and the six-month recovery and the fact that it still aches when I stand on it too long are all worth it because it saved me two weeks of having to deal with you. And also, the last time I saw you I was out of my mind on Vicodin. Blessings, blessings. And I got to say goodbye to my kids, thank God. And in our last faculty meeting, the other teachers praised me, I remember that. Everybody wrote good things on that paper for me, and I remember when you were writing on it I was sick with dread about what it was going to say and I remember feeling like I was going to throw up. You wrote "good luck." That was it. That was all I got.

And you hugged me goodbye. The look on my mother's face when she looked at you frightened me. She had to be there with me, you know. I couldn't drive and I was in a wheelchair. She had to push me around. I don't want to know what she was thinking when she watched you hug me. Her lips were white. Like I said, you're lucky she's a lady. I'm her baby. Think about how you would feel if someone had treated one of your boys like you treated me. I guaran-damn-tee you, knowing the side of you that I do, that you would not have been as nice as my mom was to you. My parents saved my life that year. If they hadn't supported me (and believe me when I say there have been MANY times in my life when they have NOT supported me because they felt I was wrong--this, praise God, was not one of those times), I would have ended it. I could not have gone on living without them.

I left T0mball for good in July. It was the first time I have not been the least bit sad to leave a place. In fact, had I not still been on heavy doses of narcotics, I would have had about twenty-five margaritas in celebration. Frozen, with salt.

You broke my heart, Cindy. That probably sounds melodramatic, but it's quite true. I threw away so many perfectly good things because I could not bear to look at them because of the memories they evoked. I wanted to wash everything I owned in holy water if I couldn't throw it away. In my new apartment, I put everything in a different place. I didn't want anything to be like it was before.

I searched for a job all summer. I got one interview and I hobbled in on a leg just barely healed, just barely off crutches. I didn't get the job. Obviously. By the end of August I was starting to get really worried that I wouldn't find any job at all, not just one teaching. I had no confidence in myself. I couldn't take a job where I had to stand up, so retail was out. I couldn't even get a job at McDonald's. And I started to think about not going back to teaching. The more I thought about it, the less I wanted to.

I finally got a job in November. I won't say where, because I don't want you to know. I'm not teaching and I seriously doubt I ever will again. I have post-traumatic stress disorder and am plagued with flashbacks. I changed my antidepressant and had a bad reaction to it, and that combined with residual misery and self-loathing threw me into such a depressive state that last month I spent a full week in a dark room contemplating suicide. I didn't like my job, to be honest--or I thought I didn't. It was my mindset. It was my fear of failure and the way your malevolent rejection still haunts me that caused me to feel I was no good at anything, that I am inherently worthless.

Because of you, I almost died last month. I almost died. How DARE you do that to me? How could I have given you that kind of power? That, I admit, was my fault, because you are not worth it. You are not worth my life. You are not worth one more second of my time.

I am now on a different antidepressant and under the care of a therapist and a psychiatrist. I'm doing much better. My job is wonderful. I am helping people. I never have to take work home with me. I work seven hours a day. I don't get summers, but I get every holiday off if I want it and I am in Austin and I am beginning to recover. The flashbacks have tapered off, I am no longer suicidal, I am starting to want to make art again (I haven't created a single thing just to create in almost two years). I live fifteen minutes away from my brother and forty-five from my folks. My aunt is just fifteen minutes away as well. I took a gigantic paycut, but if I was teaching in the district where my dad teaches, I would be making the same thing for a hell of a lot more work. And sure, I would have summers off. I would have two weeks at Christmas. But I would rather work every summer and every Christmas for the rest of my life than relive last year with you.

You're right. I am not a teacher. It's not for me. Had I been given the chance, I could have been excellent. I know that. Nobody's good their first year. But I didn't get into teaching to teach a standardized test. I didn't get into teaching because I wanted to stress everyday about keeping thirty preadolescents (two of whom don't speak English and at least three of whom are emotionally disturbed) in check and on task. So good for you for showing me that I'm not meant to teach. My talents are better used elsewhere. You don't deserve me, and nor does any system that would employ someone like you.

Sincerely,
Nobody Calls Me "Miss" Anymore

*all children's names changed