People ask me, “What do you like best about your job?” and I answer,
“Students.”
People ask me, “What do you like least about your job?” and I answer,
“Students.”
I’m being a little bit facetious. Boring meetings and report cards (especially Middle School report cards!) are certainly not fun parts of my job, but truly, a determined student can make my job really awful.
Two weeks ago, I’d discovered, much to my astonishment, that I really liked teaching in the Middle School. I really liked my students (even the little rebels and the mouthy ones) and enjoyed heading to work every day. Then some little monster decided to steal my iPod Touch out of my purse (and unless s/he pickpocketed it while I was carrying the purse, from a locked cabinet as well). I like them a whole lot less now.
Isn’t it sad how one rotten apple can spoil everything? Now I look around the room and I wonder who is a sneaky, lying thief. I wonder who has so little respect for her/himself and for me that s/he is willing to go to that effort. I am saddened that after 18 years, someone stole from my personal property in such a callous and ignorant way.
I wonder, is the thief is a pathetic kid from a crappy broken home who doesn’t know any better? or a kid from a wealthy home who just wants to see if s/he can do it? was it a dare? or an impulse?
What happens next? Is s/he afraid to return it? is it hidden somewhere?
I know a couple of boys who at that age ‘accidentally’ stole things. They didn’t really mean to, but the impulse urged an action, and then they had stolen goods in their hands and were too afraid to return them, fearing greater consequence. I suspect that is what happened in my classroom. I think it was a bit of a challenge, and then the thief didn’t know what to do.
Well, I’ll help you out. This is what you need to do to avoid a lifetime of guilt and bad kharma:
Put the iPod in an envelope. Label it “Mrs Bird. Carlin” Take it to any SD83 school or to the board office and have them put it in the school mail. It will arrive in my hands a few days later. Your guilt will be absolved, and I will send you some good kharma for making a good decision.
Seriously. You don’t want bad kharma. The last kid who stole from me ended up as a drug addict for a $5 theft. You don’t want that multiplied 100 times. You’ll end up rotting in a hundred pieces in a tar pit or something. The universe looks after this sort of thing in a big way. Save yourself the agony! Return the iPod!
Shawn L. Bird 
One Closure on the Highway of Tears December 11, 2010
Tags: Extremities, Highway of Tears, murder, Prince George, The Lovely Bones, Wendy Ratte
The Yellowhead Highway that cuts through Prince George is known as The Highway of Tears. There is a long list of women who have disappeared along this highway. A police task force continues to investigate. One woman didn’t seem to fit the pattern of the others: Wendy Ratte. Wendy didn’t go missing on the highway, but was last seen downtown. Wendy was a teacher and I knew her. She had been a substitute teacher in my class room not too long before she disappeared.
I’d had some concerns about the circumstances of her disappearance, because that subbing day, instead of the lesson I’d left for her, she’d brought in a script and did a play reading with my senior drama class. The play was Extremities. It is a very violent and graphic play about rape and justice. The kids were very upset about the language and theme. I remember wondering what was going on in her life that she thought it was appropriate that this explicit play of female revenge on a rapist be explored in a high school class room.
Well, now we have a little more inkling of her reality. Her husband has been charged with her murder. According to the news this morning, he has confessed and explained to the court that he dumped Wendy’s body in a swamp.
Perhaps the trauma of this news is deepened by the fact that in a painful coincidence I read Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones this week. It is narrated by a child who has been raped and whose body is never found.
The loss to the education community in Prince George and the loss to Wendy’s children seem particularly striking. Wendy’s children need the closure of knowing where their mom is buried, so for their sake I’m thankful their father is owning up to his role in their mother’s death. How painful to have been told for years that their mother abandoned them, when the real abandonment was their father’s. Now they have lost both parents. What a tragedy. Finding something normal in every day life is going to be a challenge. Their whole world is upside down.
Rest in Peace, Wendy. You’re still teaching.
(Note- edited December 2022 to change ‘daughter’ to ‘children’ in the last paragraph, with related pronoun adjustments. You may wish to note updates to the case in which the father has since recanted his testimony and claims not to have murdered Wendy, after all).
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