It's only money

Although any one administrator is not necessarily dumber than any one box of rocks--I know some teachers who wouldn't pass that geological muster and am lucky to not now be so dully supervised--the one of whom I'm thinking is. I'm still not sure she realizes why I couldn't be employed in the bilingual program of her fuzzy dreams (not that it's certifiable in the state), or that my students speak more than Spanish, even that in three dialects. At the moment, along with the Mexican majority, the Honduran, and the Uruguyan, I also have a couple of Chinese girls, including one who's forgotten how to speak it, a Korean kid, and a Filipina, along with our new Brazilian friend. Compared to any coastal classroom (may the SoCal inferno soon be extinguished), we're quite homogenous, but, regardless, it's interesting. And home language is not the only way we're diverse. Just watch the faces on the audience, mine included, when one describes dropping $500 on a Coach bag and see what I mean.
"I just couldn't sleep until I had it."

"Honey, if something possessed me to spend that much on a purse, I couldn't sleep until I took it back," I reply, and one of the girls who is listening as she completes her assignment lets out a sigh, appearing assured that the seemingly wealthy shopper is, in fact, insane. "That's rent."

They think about money all the time, some of these kids, the way you do when there is not enough of it, when you wonder where it will come from. Some of them, despite free lunch and minimal income, do affect to believe that fifty dollars for jeans is nothing, that twenty dollar Hollister t-shirts are "cheap." Some of them, well one, are now varsity cheerleaders. Some of them, well, one, had her boyfriend take off yet another day from school to drive her to the suburban hospital to ask, in person, just to make sure, if the $400 in well-baby bills were really, honestly covered, so intimidating was the fine-print, so overwhelming was the thought of $400. I try as best I can to warn her that she is likely to get a bill for labor and delivery that may rival her contractions in its intensity, but that it's just the way the system works and not to worry, but mentally chalk up another absence for her driver just the same.

Bills are scary. It's the bills that even I fear for her. When she came back to school this August, she quit her second job, and so did the daddy. This little maternity leave, such as it is, is borrowed time, and perhaps borrowed money. It cannot last. Full-time work, full-time school, full-time baby. I counsel all I can, but what she really needs is cash. I wonder if a certain someone could be persuaded to part with a certain purse?