Detour, Part 2

It was only six months ago that I unexpectedly learned I would be departing from Gori, the Alaska village where I spent last school year and where I was fortunate to build some close friendships. That surprise, of having to leave a place in which I had chosen to stay, was bad enough, but an altogether nastier one awaited me when I arrived at a little town on the northern bend of the River Goldlace a bit less than two weeks ago.

I came here excited, if with trepidation. This region of Alaska is famed for its evergreen forests, its neon winter skies, its abundant wildlife and sparkling rivers and luminous midnight sunsets. Its Native group is ancient and storied, and its proximity to Aurora City provides a resource for leisure and necessities that feels more measured than Iceport. Point Goldlace is beautiful. But Point Goldlace is not what I thought it would be. Point Goldlace is not what I was told.

The catalogue of administrative incompetence and misinformation that led me to this juncture doesn't need to be recounted. In fact, I am exhausted of recounting it. But there were signs at every step of the way, little things that in isolation seemed outliers but that taken together, and in retrospect, are now obvious indicators of fundamental dysfunction. And the awful truth is, I knew. Somewhere deep down, I knew, and it kills me. I knew that this place was not right, but I persisted anyway because I doubted my own instincts. And then I got here, and found a system in such disarray that regular housekeeping elements of education just hadn't happened. Here it is, the Sunday before the start of a new school year, and teachers still haven't been furnished with class schedules. When the district staff revealed, cavalierly, an Internet capacity so poor that even accessing e-mail accounts was sometimes a challenge, I knew I'd had enough.

A few days later, I was standing in a vacant music room with a tight-lipped man. The superintendent was grim after what had been a difficult conversation, on both our ends.

"Are you asking me to release you from your contract?"

"Yes."

Of all the things I never thought I'd do, all of the positions in which I never thought I'd be, withdrawing from a teaching contract a week before the start of the fall semester was high on the list. It was a hard realization to come to. It was a hard thing to ask. And it was a hard answer to hear.

"Well, I can't let you go until I have someone to replace you," he said. "And I have to be honest, I do not foresee that happening soon." He shook his head. "I've been doing this for forty-eight years and I've never had this happen. Not at this juncture."

Another lie. He couldn't know I knew, but gossip spreads fast in the village and I'm quick to make friends: another new teacher abandoned his post here a week ago, just days after arriving. The district had made promises it had not kept, in his case pertaining to housing, and he felt he'd been misled. Imagine that.

So now I'm in what by any reckoning is a difficult situation, tied for the immediate term to a place and a team after declaring my intent to break off, forced to grapple with a role in which I lack essential resources and supports. I hope, dearly, that I am able to leave Point Goldlace as quickly as possible, but until then I'm holding down the fort with no idea how soon relief will come. If I'm not able to head out at the commencement of this semester then I will attempt terminate my employment at Christmas, but who knows what jobs will be available in the middle of the year? Who knows if this employer will release me in any case?

I've not had this much uncertainty in my professional life since the moment in February 2017 when I realized I would be coming to this state. It is my dearest wish that the ambiguity be short lived.