I’m pretty creative in the kitchen. I’ll try just about anything as long as it doesn’t involve ingredients I hate, and due to perpetually forgetting to take meat out of the freezer to thaw, I’m constantly having to practice my improvisational skills to keep the family fed. My husband has also taken over a great deal of the cooking as writing, research, and editing has taken up more and more of my evenings, but it was finally my turn to cook a few nights ago.
I had chicken thighs, some garden veggies I’d roasted earlier and froze, and some potatoes that needed to be used up. I placed them all in a pan with the thighs on top, and in a moment of inspiration, grabbed a jar of pesto and poured it all over the ingredients. I baked it at 375 degrees until the thighs were fully cooked, which took about an hour.
It was delicious, and as happy as it made me that it all worked out, it struck me that as good as improvisation can be, there are times and situations it should be the last resort.
I’ve put up a new page on my site, called, “Teacher Shortage Info.” Until recently, most of my subscribers were here for my work on the JFK assassination or my upcoming book, “How to Not Start a Cult (Probably).” Much of my work has been paused, with the exception of the production of “Wilderness of Errors.” It became very clear to me over the summer that education in Montana is in big trouble. BIG, BIG TROUBLE.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be releasing results from a survey of teachers in Montana that examines why teachers in my state are leaving in droves. I care about this for a lot of reasons. I care about education because it is so critical to the stability and success of the citizens in my state. I care because over the last 23 years, I’ve seen a lot of things that are likely contributing to the shortage. I care because music programs are already being lost due to a lack of staffing. I also care because my son has chosen to enter the profession, and I want him to have a better experience than I have.
For many of our districts in Montana, they’ve had to improvise with inadequate resources for so long that both the buildings and the social structures within the schools are held together by bubble gum and good wishes. To try to do what I can to address the issue, I’ve dusted off my social research training, which was indeed buried under a mountain of metaphorical dust.
I hope to bring awareness to the fact that while education is troubled everywhere, it’s particularly apocalyptic here. We have all the ingredients in place for a disaster in coming years, mostly due losing droves of young teachers and the probability that a large number of teachers are nearing retirement. There’s still time to right the ship, but only if changes are made now.
I am aware that the most likely outcome of this venture is to be ignored at best, and seen as Chicken Little at worst. But hopefully, the information gets to the ears of the policy makers in time to be able to make some changes.
Hopefully, we can stop improvising and just trying to make it through the day, stabilize working conditions for teachers in the state, and most importantly, start building more stable and sustainable plans for the future of education in this beautiful state.
