Am I the only person who is frightened?

No, I'm not afraid of terrorism. As Randi Rhodes pointed out, and John Kerry before her, fighting terror is a matter of good intelligence working with a good police force. I think we are wasting our NYPD having them do random bag searches in subways. They know that anyone with a serious interest in causing harm would be much more devious because they have seen much worse. They see much worse breaking up fights in some of our worst high schools. One local school is so chaotic that the neighborhood stores shut down at 3pm and don't open until the students have left.

I'm more frightened of what makes our students behave like terrorists. And selfishly, even more frightened of the fact that I bought into the American dream that hard work and an education would help me to advance, and they haven't. In fact, my education has begun to work against me, as I am much more in need of training in psychology, counseling -- I need some hard strategies for how to teach a student body which grows more and more inflexible and desperate every year. And no one will pay for this training, so I am about to get myself into debt. I have accomplished the bare minimum I set out to do. I have moved away from home and have privacy. I grew up without my own room and without any level of personal space, so this has been a tremendous relief. Perhaps it is all there is for me.

As a person with Asperger's Syndrome, I am often stumped by the simplest things. This makes it hard for me to work with traditional students because I don't know how to blend in -- I'm clueless about the unspoken codes of dress, behavior and attitude which exist even in the neighborhood in which I was raised. All of my life, I have been an outsider. An observer at worst, an amateur sociologist at best. I don't respond at all to popular music or trends, and in fact, I often can't understand or follow them, literally. By the time I have caught on, the next items have become popular. Perhaps I could present myself as a "scholarly nerd" but more is wrong with me than this: when I get depressed, I lose the little bit of ability I have to "pose". Since I don't respond to the peer pressure to dress up, etc., it is a tremendous effort for me to put on the various costumes of work and play. I'd live my life in cotton t-shirts, sweaters and jeans if I could, both because these are easy to manage and because, one result of A.S. is having sensitivities to fabric, light, smell and food. Putting on lipstick actually makes my lips feel awful.
I have to take it off or I can't talk. Cotton never bothers me.

In the world of the at-risk student, my oddnesses are signals that I might be sympathetic. While none of my students would want to be me -- or any teacher, for reasons I better explain below -- they look at me and they can see what I feel and think right on my face. I can hide nothing because I simply can't. Honesty is a big asset when you are working with students who don't trust anybody.

The problem for me is that the world I live in is collapsing and I am unprepared. A product of gifted and talented programs and selective schools, I've always been rewarded for my academic work, especially my use of language. Even at work, a great deal of tolerance has been accorded me because of my ability to speak and to sometimes clarify difficult ideas gracefully. However, as teachers become, as Kamsin put it, "disposable commodities" principals are inclined to find fault as much as possible, on the theory that, in a failing system, one mediocrity is exchangeable for another. (Kamsin's comment is to the post which precedes this one on my blog. Her blog can be found at http://thefarsideofthesea.blogspot.com/) That there may be aspects of my work which have helped me to survive and my students to succeed beyond expectations is unimportant. In a system designed to burn out young enthusiasm, sparks of love and admiration are also replaceable. Besides, at 28, though I was sloppy in classroom management and graded more with sentiment than sense, I lacked the bitterness I have now and also the ability to fight back when pushed. So, a school system flooded with energetic workers too new to resist their bosses is rapidly coming into being.

Granted that many of these young teachers are being trained more thoroughly through incentive programs. However, they are being trained to work with the problems which currently exist in the system, and they will need to develop their own methodologies and adapt as their students and their respective problems continue to transform. This adaptability is hard to maintain without further training, and also, in an environment which is unappreciative and unwelcoming. Not to mention, at a pay scale that barely keeps up with inflation.

So, selfishly, I am very frightened. I have enough "grit" to face the prospect of terrorists. What I have a hard time facing is the system which creates them.