Bernie listening to last week's broadcast of Elektra

lovely larry

What's a vacation?

A break in work for a teacher is like a break between two championship series for a baseball team. You know you should rest, you also know the next battle will be even harder. Except for the teacher there will be no rings and no world-astounding end. The books will close, students will pack up and go home. And then a longer or shorter break, etc. Do business people feel this way? The one friend I used to have in business used to truly enjoy her vacations. She stayed out of contact with her office and she shopped and hopped around the globe. I can't imagine having the concentration to do this. There are so many other things to think about and so many to avoid.

I turned on the radio in time to catch Leonard Lopate interviewing a Yale professor about a book called, It Can Happen Here. Lopate was doing his best to dismiss the possibility that the "it" could be terrorism or violence, but was less able to quash the possibility of total economic disaster, though he did argue the usual "we've been through this before...." It was right for him to play such a strong devil's advocate, both as a good host/journalist and someone who knows that an audience that literate and free at noon is either over-educated and underpaid or unemployed. As someone who now tries VERY HARD not to listen to rumor, not to predict what is going to happen next, but just focus on immediate tasks, I was especially grateful. I called a former colleague who proceded to give me the latest news of what was "on the table" for our upcoming contract. We all see those tables so vividly and we argue for our deaths better than our lives because we accept both that we are powerless and that we were smart enough to have been given more power. So what? I know that "It" of various kinds can happen here and am less dismissive of the possibility of total economic collapse. But, I can't think about that either. It won't profit me. Panicking has caused me enough trouble.

Still, what do I do with this bountiful time? I've bought a test prep book. Bookmarked some textbooks to buy when I have more money. I'm going to surf for some more test prep and lesson plan materials I need and look for reduced-priced middle school readers. That, clean the cat box, eat and maybe look at a movie on Netflix (which I keep largely as it might be useful to my classroom) seems about as much as I can handle. In between, I do bits of massive cleaning around the apartment. What I don't do is talk with anyone. I don't know if this has happened to anyone else, but my friends have all reduced themselves to texting or to the kinds of conversations which don't last beyond a minute. "What else is there to say?" No one is going out much. Even on the rare moments when I think, "I would like to see that," I never pursue the thought. First, I'm broke. Second, everything seems indulgent. Everything. Except what I need right in front of me. There is no reason to get away. It will be there when I get back and there will be less time, less energy and even more fear. More fear. I never knew how much fear I could feel.
When I was a kid, they would show us pictures of the holocaust so we would be aware of how badly Jews had been and could be treated. That fear was nothing like this. This is not to minimize genocide. Thinking about its possibility and looking at miserable sites makes me bilious. Being in a position in which thinking ahead is frightening is living in a conscious slow motion. Stultifying.

How should schools handle the holiday season?

It's impossible, in your first year as a school, not to respond to the irrepressible enthusiasms of ten year olds for everything from secret Santas to decorating the classroom, etc. in honor of the two holidays which dominate the December shopping season, Christmas and Hannukah.

But, if you have a chance to think about this for the future, what is the right position for a school to take in this throng of powdered-sugar inspired sentiment?

Mine this year was to do as little as possible to acknowledge it. Both the popular mythology of Christmas and Hannukah figured into World History this term, so I got to talk about the connections between the two holidays and cultures in an academic sense. Since the fact that Jesus was a Jew was a brand-new shocking detail to one of my smartest students, the entire contextualization of the famous crucifixion among the murder of over 30,000 Jews during the Roman occupation of Judea may have fallen by the wayside. And that's okay. It isn't important to me that the religious stories attached to periods of history be the highlights of my units. It just seemed like a way to get studets to visualize the events in occupied Judea at the time. Overall, my students knew more about that event than they had before, so I was fairly satisfied at the end of the unit.

Still, it irked me that what followed was a thunderstorm of requests for parties and pleasantries attached to Christmas. Having thoroughly established that several students and myself didn't celebrate the holiday, you'd've thought there would have been more discussion of what, if anything, we should do as a class. Instead there was this onslaught of presumptions which caused the muscles in my back to tighten like hubcaps on a wheel. To keep my back attached to me, I insisted as firmly as possible that nothing was to be done. I reminded my studets of "Separation of Church and State." I told the story of a student of mine early in my career who came to school on a day before the holiday to find my class was watching partying and listening to poetry who said, "I walked here for an hour through the snow, to find you are doing nothing!" Still, no one was moved. A colleague begged me not to do force her to "do any work" 8th period and, by this time, my jaw was so tight, I wasn't opened to making things easy. As it turned out my lesson moved at the pace of molasses, but we got through most of it. We were obliged to clean the classroom to prepare for an upcoming move so we started on that when the pulse and the point had basically become leaden. As we did so, streams of children came down the halls with food to give away, which, at first I prohibited, then gave into as we were closer to the end of the day. Sadly, I saw a colleague feasting on the snacks being offered when I had asked her to check on why these students were outside. Of course, I was making a big deal of nothing -- in the last five minutes before we were to leave, these studets obviously wanted to get rid of extra food from their parties. It was no big deal. Everyone around me had taught real lessons but had perhaps allowed for a little more festivity around them.

Students presented me with presents which I politely refused. I had told one that I could not accept presents -- that would be like accepting a bribe. What I told them were my presents were the questions they asked during class and their good work. They didn't need to thank me in any other way.

The week left me tense and I felt scrooge-like. It wasn't that I hadn't been generous, but I'd been pushed into a corner I didn't like and my views only solidified my exclusion. But, it was all right.

Given that we left off in the middle of a discussion of urban sprawl, I should have done more to talk about organizations who discouraged consumerism and who encouraged helping the less fortunate during the season. I know my students would've liked to hear about this. So, somewhere, next year, I will do just that. And more.
World peace won't be solved by one more Wii machine and one less meal.

Shut up! I can't handle your pain. Take a tranquilizer!

The above quote came from my mother, five minutes into my describing my teaching life. It occurred to me that she has probably NEVER been able to to handle any of my pain -- why I learned to tranquilize myself with everything from ice cream to spaghetti as a child.

And I wonder how many of my students use other drugs, violence and just the extension of rage for the same reason.

We must have more psychologists in schools. I got regular counseling in HS and College which is how I survived.

One time only

Two days ago, a student who had not done one ounce of work in my class and who talks continuously regardless of all punishments, worked. I knew he might because we were playing a jeopardy-style game about early civilizations and he likes competition.

And then nothing. I had even called his mom to tell her he worked that day. I did tell her I would call her again if this seemed to have been a "one-time-deal."

Not looking forward to that call.

I don't go out much

Today, both my mother and my uncle suggested arts events I ought to see. This was especially amusing, as I had just finished telling my uncle how angry I was that my mother wouldn't just accept the fact that I don't make plans in advance and I don't go out much, weekday or weekend.

Given the choice of getting rest, planning ahead for school, relaxing or hauling myself across boroughs or neighborhoods for a momentary escape, the latter rarely wins. I read a lot. When not at work, I stay home. My days are long. It's nice to get in extra time at home, when I can.

A Thanksgiving Story

Early this afternoon, I left my apartment to pick up some bread and litter, the two staples of my household. Just a few feet away from me, there stood a religious Jewish woman in her fifties, stylish blonde wig and dazzlingly multi-colored dress garneshing her heavyset frame. The door was open to her black sedan and diagnonally across from it was her husband, white shirt and foamy beard tinged by his nervous hand. "What did you want me to do?," he said. I looked around for a minute, and about ten feet away was a Chinese man in his thirties, his bangs fashionably gelled upward which now, coincidentally, matched his confused stare at the clamshell-like dent in his silver sedan. There wasn't really anger or humor. Just puzzlement, to quote The King and I. "Did you take the information?" said the husband. "No. When the police come, they'll take it." They stood about five feet away from each other, and you could see his heels beginning to lift in reverse. "I knew I shouldn't have called you," she said offhandedly. He walked backwards, stopped, then turned around and walked off. She and the Chinese man just held on to their car doors, staring outward, as if they knew something had happened, but had forgotten what.

.............
As anyone unfortunate enough to know me closely knows, this is my least favorite time of the year. All sorts of horrible things have happened to me on this holiday, though one year, Queequeg, my godson-cat, was re-born in the ER of the Animal Medical Center. That was supposed to have re-christened the holiday for me, but I can never shed the fears that come with this section of the calendar. I have much to be thankful for, not the least of whom I just scolded for trying to eat an old piece of hard food off of the floor. Being the faithful son that Larry is, he did not. Bernie hovers on the corner of the bed and I know Larry is hinting that he would like to be brought up here, so I will. It should be a quiet day for us, and hopefully one of inner peace, at least for them -- and all of you who might be reading this.

For Nov 23, 2009

I miss you.

Karen Beth Hunter, Nov 23, 1951 - Sept 2, 2005

Very bad.

I've got a lot of good people behind me, so maybe I shouldn't say bad. How about, "very different."

Not really much to say.

My students said that Cleopatra's biography was "hot." Since this week's essay is about her, I hope that means they'll enjoy it.

Bronchitis

It turns out I've got a bad case of Bronchitis which is probably what has been plaguing me for weeks. Even with albuterol, my lungs wouldn't open up much. Plus my fever was 102 yesterday. So, I have to rest, ingest massive amounts of antibiotics, drink fluids and get better. Makes sense I'd be spewing pleghm, be dizzy and run down if I'm not getting a heck of a lot of oxygen.

Take the AX out of the ATR's Back: A personal story

A year ago, I was an ATR eager to find permanent placement. At the same time, I was in a relatively unstressful position which would have allowed me the room to consider any offers made to me. The volume and intensity of the Bloomberg press campaign was the first to shatter my sense of space for reflection. I walked in to my weekly therapy appointment and the first words out of my normally Pollyanish psychologist were, "You're right. You are going to lose your job. I thought you were just catastrophising." She had just read a series of articles in The Times and they had bowled her over. My anxieties came less from the mainstream press which I knew to be largely biased in the Mayor's favor, but from the words of the bloggers I have come to trust on many things and who had been very helpful to me in my first encounters with the 3020a machine. Still, some of the points they predict about ATR's have yet to come to fruition and worse, the cloud they have placed over the heads over ATR's have caused some of us, like me, to make career decisions out of desperation.

There have always been those on the blogosphere who take some of the choices in the UFT's negotiation process to their darkest logical conclusions. The pictures representing ATR's being loaded off on trucks and the tales of "secret deals" made re the ATR positions proliferate on websites of organizations and people who are often right on larger political points. But, they have been wrong about the UFT's dedication to ATR's from the beginning. If they had thought about it, aside from the fact that our UFT stands for job security, if for nothing else, there is the "Thorn in the side" which the ATR plays in the bargaining process. Since the ATR's cannot be easily done away with and they represent an embarassing managerial and financial situation at the DOE (what CEO of his company can't get his directors to hire a constituency to which the company has legal obligations) finding suitable and efficient placements for the ATR should be something of priority to the DOE. The DOE doesn't look any better than the UFT if it can't GET principals to hire teachers and they therefore languish in the lounge.
During my time as an ATR, I did have few days of such dullness, but most of the time there were multiple things to do, particularly during the term in which I served as a Dean.

But, in refusing to see that
1)the UFT has not yet abandoned ATR's or made statements to that effect and;
2) while few ATR's are in comfortable situations, they are, at least, still eligible to be hired and, for now, to be chosen by a school which might be a good fit;
those who spread the rumors of the doom of the ATR place the brunt of the ax they have to grind (legitimately or not) with the UFT squarely on the backs of the ATR's. Many of us, myself included, jumped at job offers which, given a lesser feeling of desperation, we might have much more rationally turned down. I'm teaching 6th grade two hours from my house at a brand new school. Fortunately, I have a supportive administration and I'm eager to learn. However, I am currently as effective as a first year teacher with no training with this age group. At 41, I have to completely reinvent my methodology and personality and while it is an interesting challenge, it is not easy. I've been playing tug-o-war with the flu and sinusytis and their winning. That plus the stress which comes from feeling like a novice at a game you used to dominate can make it hard not to grab a Hairshirt and take penance.

Like in much of my career, I've been lucky. I worked with some visionary and patient educators like Malaika Holman-Bermiss at Brooklyn Comprehensive. At my current school, my administration shares her respect for the process of learning necessary to developing good teachers. Moreover, I've been helped by the UFT in so many ways and by so many people. I will have a mentor at this position due to the intervention of Amy Arundell, who has been as understanding as a human can be. A few years back, Charlie Turner represented me with such clarity of strategy that he created the foundation for my getting out of a difficult situation. And I will never be able to thank Arthur Solomon enough, for serving as my surrogate father during my year of hell in the land of the reassigned. And Randi Weingarten read so many of my emails, regardless of my point of view, that the dialogue was a continued source of much needed comfort and intellectual challenge. Plus, she directed people like Amy to me who have made an enormous difference to me.

I cannot forget either the enormous support which the blogger community gave to Brooklyn Comprehensive, especially Norm Scott and the entire ICE community.

All I am saying, however, is that the aggression with which the image of the ATR on a tightrope has been pushed forward has had terrible consequences for UFT members. I am not alone in my awkwardly fitting position, two hours from my house, and at this moment fighting off infections which are also the results of being so run down by the intense challenge of the situation. I've taught mostly older adolescents a range of subjects from college prep to AP English and a lot of skills courses along the way. The transition to ten year olds who need very many of the same skills courses but in different packages is fathomable, but just. Barring my dying of a never-ending battle with infections and flus, I should be able to see my way clear to this in a few months. I have a supportive administration and faculty. But, had I not felt an ax in my back, I might've waited until I found a similarly exciting school in Bushwick or East New York.

In bits and pieces am getting some hang of it

But I am not to say "C'mon guys" nor "Please." Have switched to "Kindly" and "Ladies and Gentlemen."

Survived my first formal observation

But there's a lot of work to be done. All things considered, I'm pretty lucky. Working on the voice. Trying to lilt upwards...

The principal comes in my room and whispers in my ear

He can't stand the sound of my voice. It's too loud.

I got sick

and I went back too early and hit the rebound and then the "age" issue came up along with my health. I got sick when I was in my 20's, too.

The pursuit of anxiety

Anxiety pursues me wherever I go.

That's the sum of a life in teaching.

Standing in the rain

As my weekdays are no longer my own, I don't know how much energy I'll have on Sept 2, the fourth anniversary of the death of my friend Karen Hunter. So, I'm putting up this picture in advance and I'm going to spend a lot of today, I'm sure, doing what I've been doing since that day: standing in the rain, alone, which also feels unnatural. Standing alone doesn't make any sense, period.

Karen took this picture in a park across from her office in Brooklyn Heights.

Lost in space

There is something very jarring about being on a staff in which, at 41, you are the most senior teacher.

I could say that what's different is what we do on weekends -- I try to replace joint fluid with vitamin supplements and my younger colleagues go out and engage in activities. That's not it, however. Many colleagues older than myself are far more spry. There is some truth to what might be a stereotypical complaint: I feel as though I'm a third-tour sergeant among first-tour infantry. Battles have made me less self-assured, though better prepared. I'll know when to jump and when not to, but I also know that there are always challenges which you cannot predict. But, that's not the complete source of my unease. A lot of it has to do with knowing what preconceived ideas younger teachers sometimes have about older ones. Not a small part of it has to do with the fact that I know there are senior teachers out there who don't have positions with whom I could be working if the irrational budgets that Bloom/Klein has created did not make that impossible.

Yet none of these feels completely right. Perhaps the biggest part of it, is that I've never experienced this before. I've never been without people senior to me and without contemporaries. It's unnatural.

The dangers of meaningless success

It's hard to tell a parent NOT to be encouraging to a child. They want to convince their kids they can be superheroes so that, I think, when the time comes for them to make their choices in life, they will not feel that they did not have the opportunity to follow their dreams. I'm not here to make the conventional lecture about this attitude, that, yes, little Zeno may have the opportunity to play basketball, but if he has poor balance, the NBA may not be in his future. Many little Zenos have worked so hard as to build serviceable careers either as athletes, broadcasters, writers or coaches at all levels of the sport. What I'm concerned about, besides the fact that there are so few opportunities even for the hardworking in an economy which out-speeds itself in speculation as opposed to observation, is that behind the parents' insistence that Zeno can do it, is an acceptance that, if he can't, it's okay, he can live at home.

Now, I have nothing against parents or their adult children who live with them. My question is, though: Did they really give Zeno the green light to go after his dream or to fail at it? And I believe our public schools are complicit in this regard.

In NYC, parents of public school children are given plenty of reasons to feel content with their children's development. Every year, their children are "tested" to see if they can advance to the next grade. The fact that the NY State exams have been proven invalid as markers for appropriate academic achievement by the results of the NEAP exams is not at the forefront of our media. For 18 million dollars, Mike Bloomberg has launched a campaign that makes "I Like Ike" look like it was the slogan for a student-body president. He isn't lying in the sense that these children did pass an exam. That the exam was beneath the students to whom it was given doesn't matter. After all, he could argue, do you ask the average third grade ballet student to be held to the rigor of the American Ballet Theater school? But, if we don't, then how will this young person really know if he/she is on the path to his/her dream? How will young Marie know her math skills are where they need to be if she is to develop into a scientist? How will her parents know?

You're probably thinking Marie and Zeno's parents are happy enough that they enjoy something in life and have some proficiency in it. They know, right, that the odds are good their kids are going to work a job they hate because they're going to have to "do what they gotta do" to survive?

While it may be true that most people don't go on to make a living at what they want to do, that's no reason to destroy their true opportunities from the onset. Worse, it's leaving most of our students with a proficiency which wouldn't even let them follow the field in popular literature or as amateur enthusiasts. Zeno will get all he needs to know about basketball from watching TV, you think? What if he can't understand the best commentators on the sport. I heard a cashier at a local supermarket talk about how she can't stand listening to legendary broadcaster Tim McCarver because "he knows nothing." When I pressed her for an example, she said that he "just goes on and on and nobody understands him." That's like saying that Keith Olbermann has no sense of irony. So, if Zeno's language skills are low, he may miss a lot of information and perspective which would help him to understand the game, how it's reported and how it advances.

When I was a kid, I was given the sense that the world was open to me. When I went on to high school, I was given even more of a sense that I might be a leader within it. In college, I floundered --not academically-- but somewhat artistically. My critical skills were always strong, but I didn't know nearly as much about how plays are actually put on as I thought. And I didn't integrate well into a performing ensemble because I was extremely defensive. Nevertheless, I got excellent grades in my major of Theater and no one ever sat me down to talk about the pragmatics of my entering the field. I went to an esteemed school and my degree was not an artistic one, but one in liberal arts. In other words, for a non-artist, I had done well. But, no one explained this to me, then. I learned this when I went on to get an MFA--a degree designed to test my abilities as a theatrical artist. I learned about what BA programs were and weren't designed to do, and I faced the fact that I could teach, write about or work in a quasi-academic role assisting a director, but that my temperament in itself was going to make it hard for me to direct or act, whether or not I had real talent. Had I been assessed this way in college, I'd probably have changed the strategies I used to plan my studies and my future. I'd've known that I needed to head to a Ph.D. program and I'd've thought of myself as a historian/scholar. Thankfully, my schooling did give me advantages I could have and could still use to pursue that aspect of the field.

My mother and I had a few exchanges in which I assured her I could become a teacher if theater didn't work out. When she asked me, about two years ago, why I felt unsatisfied with my achievements, I pointed out among other things, that I had never "made it" -- never written a play which went to Broadway, etc. She responded in complete shock, "Is that what you wanted? Very few people can do that." It's not the sweet assurance that I wasn't alone in my lack of achievement, but the disbelief that so disheartened me. I had been writing, acting and going to see plays and operas my whole life. Yet, I wasn't expected to have wanted to attain conventional success in the field I spent most of my time working in, at all. What did she think I was doing in those summer acting classes? What was I dreaming about? Was I expected to languish in precocity my entire life? My uncle, I learned about a year earlier, hadn't really given any thought to what I would become -- this despite his being the cheering section at several debates I lead in elementary school and the catalyst for my attending Stuyvesant High School. He said to me, "I had no idea...You were a girl...I thought you would get married." I went to college in the 80's and my uncle is a dentist, my mother a semester away from college graduaton and my father (though absent from my life) was a CPA. My mother insisted in a way I came to see more as pragmatic and faithless, that I could always live at home and she could support me. I'd gone to top schools which had made me a shrewd student, but for all my decent grades, no one really thought they had proof I was going to "be anything." What I had thought was a track record of success was meaningless to those around me. Fortunately, I had been competitive academically my whole life so I had developed useful skills and ideas and even strategies for survival. I had assumed, too, that I probably wouldn't live as an artist and took a teaching job fairly soon after graduation. Until this June, I still worked in the theater as a dramaturg, but it's harder to bifurcate my energies between two worlds and I need to harness them for the job that pays the bills. Acting and directing did help me as a teacher, and I haven't stopped looking at things as an artist. I encourage my students to do the same, but I hold them to real standards. I've found there are a lot of good, young artists out there and not enough good training or work. At least, however, an artist should know if he/she is really as effective as he/she can be. So they know that they had the chance to make use of what luck, hard work and time did offer.

In giving public school students weak assessments, we are denying them their dreams and their parents know this. Parents, I think, have become complicit in extending their children's agonies/adolescence because they don't want to seem like they are limiting their exploration. Inherently, however, their dooming them to floundering, rather than finding their niche. The testing movement is a defensive reaction, not a proactive step toward giving students real skills and choices. It's like saying, "Well, for non-students, they're pretty good." The only ones not in on the game are the kids. And they're not reading the commentary in the local tabloids because it's not there -- our major newspapers don't use higher than 8th grade vocabulary, so it might be possible that some of them would understand it. My students who do see postings about the ease of the NY State exams get infuriated. We ought to ask them what they think should be done. They wouldn't mince words.

Mornings

The child screamed as if her hair were being torn off by a motorcycle.

I looked down to find a very upright girl of about two yelling and insisting on something I couldn't understand to her mother, who was trying to get her to come into the back seat of a car. Her father just looked over the open car door from the driver's seat. A moments later, all the noise stopped and the child got in.

Events like these fill my mornings, as the noise from the street raids my apartment at will. They are ordinary events, but they carry with them the kind of off-handed violence that I try to avoid whenever possible. I was a very quiet child for a reason -- hysteria unnerved me. My mother could go from calling upon the gods to help her find her cigarette case to benignly asking me to have a slice of cake in 15 seconds or less. Every bite of cake was useful as a means of numbing my ears and skin from the lasceration which came before.

I'm sure that little girl is eating an ice cream cone right now.

Michael Jackson - They Don't Care About Us

Should be the anthem of the next political campaign by a real leftist.

Small schools

I prefer small schools. With the exception of ONE YEAR in my career, I have only taught in them. That one year, I was placed in a large school as an ATR. It wasn't a choice.

What's great about small schools is how well you get to know your students and they, you. You really get in sync and teaching them becomes much, much easier as you know how their minds work. Plus, the atmosphere is much less aggressive and more like a family. It's also easier to get things done -- you know what you need to do and there are fewer hoops to jump through.

The one horrible thing about the small schools in which I have worked thus far is, for all the knowledge that you have of the kids you are neither:
1) Given liberty to design a curriculum completely for them as you are bound by state standards which don't always make sense and tests which are capricious in their focus and lackluster in their challenge. It's like being an Olympic coach and having to prepare your athletes for a strange set of unhelpful and bizarre exercises which might cause him/her injuries.
2) Funded sufficiently to take care of the problems of which you are well-aware. You'd think if you were given the opportunity to work this closely with students, you'd be given the means to help them. Brooklyn Comprehensive had a part-time social worker on staff. Do you know how many of our kids needed help with everything to getting housing to being counseled through the anxiety of returning to school at the ripe ages of 18-21?

The "new small schools," I've seen have no more money than we did, and some of them seem to have less. I didn't see any social workers at all at the ones in Tilden and they SHARE a psychologist. Why? Why not give people the ability to make the idea really work? One transfer high school has a van with which it picks up students. This is made possible by funding the city gives to community based organization who then pays for the van. This is because this organization demands large fees to work with students -- so it can do the job right. Not everyone can afford to get to work with this organization. And they're getting overwhelmed.

But, I ask you: why not just give THE SCHOOL the money for the van? What's with the middleman? Cronyism, I think, but I could be wrong.

What I know is that IT IS WRONG for one school to have so much more resources than others and for them all to be judged in the same way. I think it's also against the equal protection clause of Amendment 14. Is this not, "separate, but equal"? Why does no one raise this? Well, maybe they think this Supreme Court wouldn't rule in favor. That's still no reason not to bring the case. Can you imagine if all of the schools had the ability to help the students they know, and in some cases, know so well?

What would it take

1) For people to realize that taking a big school, dividing it up into four smaller schools, each with it's own administration, will not ultimately save any money. Theoretically, you want all of those teachers to stay with the school they founded. So, eventually, they will cost more than they do.

2)For people to realize that there have been small schools before and many of them have been closed. Small is good, but not enough.

3) For people to actually think about what their kids are learning. Do any of these parents LOOK at the tests their kids take?

If President Obama is serious about keeping unemployment down

Then stop firing experienced teachers all over the country, so that you can hire newer, cheaper ones!

What is the offer for after ten years?

Joel Klein has said more than once that he thinks no one should remain a teacher for more than ten years. Aside from the obvious prejudice against experienced teachers which this shows, I wonder what he has in mind for the individual who is beginning to become masterful at an intensely difficult job and has by that point also accrued a mortgage and begun a family?

Teaching experience translates to NO other profession. Though you've managed hundreds of kids, you are not considered management. Though you've organized a classroom and possibly a whole school organization, that isn't considered the same as handling an office and office supplies. You can't even necessarily qualify as a paralegal because you don't know the computer systems or the jargon. You've lived in a universe entirely a creation of the school system. At interviews, people will view you the same way they would someone who has worked at a factory installing a particular kind of car door. Except that even the factory worker has recognizeable skills which translate elsewhere -- an ability to execute instructions precisely and to work with a team on a prescribed schedule.

So, unless you were the kind of person who enjoyed or had the money to take a new job at entry level, your only other option would be to go to graduate school and take out loans for both school and upon which to eat. In New York City, it's impossible to get loans to cover the cost of our living expenses -- it's too much money. Plus, because you've been earning a salary which in other states would allow you to save, but here helps you to live in your own apartment and eat squarely, you won't be awarded grants or most other kinds of financial aid. At 32, you'll be a fairly old-ish candidate for Medical School, Veterinary School, and less so for Law or Business school. The odds are good that the only way to realistically re-train will be to go at night or on-line while you are still working. I'd like to see the teacher with the energy to work on something completely different and teach full-time. You'll have to go part-time - should you start re-training at year 4 or 5 then? How do you explain to your principal your sudden unwillingness to put in all the extra time you used to and that most new schools now ask for? You can start raising issues like "it's not in my contract," etc. Go ahead. At most schools, see what that gets you. I guess, if you end up in the Rubber Room, THEN you will have some of the energy necessary to re-train.

So, I get it: You work very above and beyond the contract for four years. Then, you start to limit how much you do this using something as spurious as the law behind you, and, in most cases (I have a decent principal, not most cases) you get an automatic pass to The Rubber Room. Since it takes years for your case to be heard, you use that time to start your part-time degree in some other field. When you go back to school (as you will because you can't really be fired for having been competent and just refused to say, stay three extra hours after school a day, unpaid) you raise the same issues again and get sent away again. You keep doing this until you finish your degree, and in fact, find a job in your new field.

That's the only way that a reasonable person would quit teaching after ten years, assuming he/she was competent. Get yourself into trouble, anyway, so you actually have the energy to do something else -- you won't be teaching. Assuming you are not like me and do not internalize the experience of being removed from your school and develop deep depression (and you do not let being placed in a room full of similarly anxious people get to you), you should be able to take a class or two afterwards or online.

Of course, the odds are good you won't have been able to do this at a top-named school as you couldn't afford it. So, you will have to hope that people will still remember you in your first-four-year incarnation and give you glowing references. Unless of course, they're also on the same ten year plan....

Only a lunatic would leave a job he/she was competent at under these circumstances. Now, that's another possibility -- you release people from mental institutions and dope them up, hand them a script to teach from for ten years and then take it all back and put them back. Some of them might not notice the difference. And since you don't give parents a voice in anything, there will be no complaints. You just tell the UFT that these people went on the Open Market and were hired. No one has the manpower to check...

The Trouble with Testing

And this is from the NY Times -- a corporation which has shown great fondness for all things Bloomberg.

August 3, 2009, 6:41 pm
What Do School Tests Measure?
By The Editors


According to a New York Times analysis, New York City students have steadily improved their performance on statewide tests since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took control of the public schools seven years ago. While statewide passing rates on the tests have risen in every grade on English and math tests, New York City’s scores have gone up even more, and across all neighborhoods. The racial achievement gap has been cut in half on some tests.

This is good news for Mayor Bloomberg, who has made standardized testing a linchpin of his administration’s stewardship of the schools. Critics say the results are proof only that it is possible to “teach to the test.” What do the results mean? Are tests a good way to prepare students for future success?


Sandra Stotsky, professor of education reform
Richard D. Kahlenberg, Century Foundation
Bruce Fuller, professor education and public policy
Lance T. Izumi, Pacific Research Institute
Marcelo and Carola Suárez-Orozco, N.Y.U.’s immigration studies program
Marcus Winters, Manhattan Institute

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Are These Tests Any Good?
Sandra Stotsky is professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas.

I know of no country that doesn’t test its K-12 students at some point before they graduate from high school, with some countries giving more tests than others and at different grade levels depending on the number of years of compulsory education and levels of schooling available. Tests covering what students were expected to learn (guided by an agreed-upon curriculum) serve a useful purpose — to provide evidence of student effort, of student learning, of what teachers taught, and of what teachers may have failed to teach.

Good tests come in 47 varieties. There are reading-based prompts requiring extensive essays written on the spot, or sets of questions requiring a choice of the best answer from a group of possible answers (both formats can assess conceptual understanding). There are also “product” tests that reflect the application of the knowledge and skills acquired in a particular course of studies. The hysteria about testing per se is unwarranted.

While the number of students ‘passing’ has risen, nothing is happening at the level that should indicate academic success.
More serious questions arise about “teaching to the test.” If the test requires students to do something academically valuable — to demonstrate comprehension of high quality reading passages at an appropriate level of complexity and difficulty for the students’ grade, for example — then, of course, “teaching to the test” is appropriate. That is exactly what we want English or history teachers to do. What is not clear with respect to the New York State tests is the extent to which the English tests actually compel teachers to teach students how to read high quality literature written at an appropriate level of complexity or difficulty for the grade.

Based on a perusal of New York State’s grade 8 reading selections several years ago, I judged that the test was assessing the ability to understand passages more appropriate for grades 4 and 5. And this judgment was independent of where the cut score was set.

Why is this relevant today? The combined scores in New York City show a decline from grade 3 to grade 8 in the percentage of students who are “advanced proficient”: from 17 percent in grade 3, 20 percent in grade 4, 22 percent in grade 5, 16 percent in grade 6, 14 percent in grade 7 and 9 percent in grade 8. These combined scores are heavily influenced by the mathematics scores (which also decline regularly over the grades). If we look at the scores in English separately, we find that the percentage of students who are “advanced proficient: went from 8 percent in grade 3, 5 percent in grade 4, 10 percent in grade 5, 7 percent in grade 6, 4 percent in grade 7, to 3 percent in grade 8. Moreover, the percentages for this level of performance do not appear to have risen at all in the past decade; if anything, they appear to have declined. While the number of students “passing” has risen, nothing is happening at the level that should indicate academic success.

Reading is the crucial subject in the curriculum, affecting all the others, as we know. Teachers should be teaching to a demanding English test, but until we know that they are, one may ask: Should English teachers be teaching to these particular tests?


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Beware the Mayor’s Claims
Bruce Fuller is professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

New York City’s schools are getting better, according to multiple barometers, thanks to a variety of gutsy reform efforts. But the exaggerated trumpeting of modest progress — what’s become a yearly ritual in the mayor’s office — undercuts the credibility of Michael Bloomberg and his schools chief, Joel Klein.

Mayor Bloomberg claims that more than two-thirds of the city’s students are now proficient readers. But, according to federal education officials, only 25 percent cleared the proficient-achievement hurdle after taking the National Assessment of Education Progress, a more reliable and secure test in 2007.

When New York lowers standards and the mayor hypes the progress, it’s no surprise that parents and employers remain skeptical over the schools’ true efficacy.
This gap is precisely why few informed analysts still take seriously where state and city officials peg “proficient” student performance. Magically, even more students in Mississippi are “proficient” readers than allegedly high-flying New York City pupils.

The major lesson is that officials in all states — from New York to Mississippi — have succumbed to heavy political pressure to somehow show progress. They lower the proficiency bar, dumb down tests and distribute curricular guides to teachers filled with study questions that mirror state exams.

This is why the Obama administration has nudged 47 states to come around the table to define what a proficient student truly knows. Somehow the mayor’s back-slapping press release failed to mention this test-score inflation that has raged in New York and across the nation ever since No Child Left Behind let state officials define cut-points signaling when a student is proficient or not.

Mayor Bloomberg’s claim of dramatic achievement growth is dubious when placed in historical context. The mayor claims that the share of eighth graders proficient in math has climbed from 29 percent in 2002 to more than 82 percent this past spring — an eye-popping 52-point increase in just seven years, three times that detected by the more reliable federal assessment over the last two decades.

The city’s youngsters are certainly acquiring basic literacy skills more effectively now than a decade ago. But when Albany lowers standards and the mayor hypes the progress, it’s no surprise that parents and employers remain skeptical over the schools’ true efficacy.

What’s key in moving forward is to depoliticize student testing and hold public officials accountable when they grossly overstate progress. Given Mayor Bloomberg’s faith in education markets — forcefully backing charter schools and competition among reform groups that help lift the schools — he should know that parental choice works only when families have sound and reliable information about school quality.

The mayor’s self-congratulatory interpretation of student progress prompts a feeling of disbelief, not one of confidence.


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The Problem for Low-Income Students
Richard D. Kahlenberg is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and author of “All Together Now: Creating Middle-Class Schools through Public School Choice,” and “Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race and Democracy”.

Test score gains among New York City students are important because research finds that how well one performs on cognitive tests matters more to one’s life chances than ever before. Mastery of reading and math, in particular, are significant because they provide the gateway to higher learning and critical thinking. But test score results can also be easily overblown and obscure significant disadvantages still faced by children in New York City’s high poverty schools.

Whatever the score, children in high poverty are still cut off from networks of students, and students’ parents, who can ease access to employment.
Consider, for example, the over-the-top coverage provided to gains in New York state exams by students at an overwhelmingly low-income school that is part of the Harlem Children’s Zone. According to The Times columnist, David Brooks, by eighth grade, in math, the Zone’s middle-school, the Promise Academy, “eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.” The “approach works,” Mr. Brooks wrote, implying that separate schools for rich and poor and black and white can, in fact, be equal after all. But this conclusion raises two problems, which illustrate the limitations of test score results.

First, just because students are trained to do well on a particular test doesn’t mean they’ve mastered certain skills. As the Columbia University professor Aaron Pallas pointed out, on a different assessment — the Iowa Test of Basic Skills — eighth-grade Promise Academy students scored at the 33rd percentile for a national sample in math. This is important, Mr. Pallas notes, because if the New York State test score gains are real, and not just the result of test prep, the success should transfer to other tests.

Second, whatever the test score results, children in high poverty schools like the Promise Academy are still cut off from networks of students, and students’ parents, who can ease access to employment. This is important given research finding that more than half of jobs are filled through connections.

By all means, let’s celebrate test score gains in New York City, and the narrowing of the achievement gap. But hold the champagne until we can show more.


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What Tests Can and Should Do
Lance T. Izumi is the senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute.

In the wake of widespread state testing following the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act, critics have claimed that teachers are simply teaching to the tests. Yet this argument is overly simplistic and ignores the benefits that come from good tests.

Opponents of testing try to have it both ways. When test scores are low they argue for a holistic view of student achievement that focuses on non-test indicators of performance rather than teaching to the test. When results are high, as in the recent rise in New York City scores, they counter that the scores are suspect because teachers are just teaching to the test. If a state test is well conceived, both these arguments fail to hold water.

If tests are reliably aligned with rigorous state academic content standards, then teachers are right to teach to the test.
Susan Philips, a professor of education at Michigan State University and one of the nation’s leading testing experts, has testified that well-developed standardized multiple-choice tests give more individual examples of student knowledge and skills, are more consistent in scoring, are capable of measuring higher-order thinking and are fairer than other non-standardized assessments. Since standardized testing can accurately assess the “whole” student, low test scores can be a real indicator of student knowledge and deficiencies.

If tests are reliably aligned with rigorous state academic content standards, then teachers who teach to the standards are teaching to the test, and there is nothing wrong with that. E.D. Hirsch, author and University of Virginia education professor, notes that “grade-by-grade standards and some form of fair grade-by-grade tests are logically necessary for monitoring and attaining grade-by-grade readiness.” Many teachers at high-performing, high-poverty schools have said they use student test scores as diagnostic tools to address student weaknesses and raise achievement.

While inappropriate use of test materials should not be countenanced, a valid standardized test linked to tough standards is a critical tool for measuring and improving student performance. Assuming New York has such a test, when Joel Klein says that if test prep means “teaching people to read and understand paragraphs, that’s what I think education is about,” then he’s right.


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Ignoring the Needs of English-Language Learners
Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and Carola Suárez-Orozco are the co-directors of the immigration studies program at New York University and the co-authors of “Learning A New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society.”

This article overlooks the elephant in the American classroom: the educational progress of English-language learners, the fastest-growing group of students in American schools. This neglect may not be surprising given that the ever more Byzantine academic testing architecture has never been designed with the educational needs of this population in mind.

This test regime has huge implications for dropout rates and access for immigrant children.
The current high-stakes testing and accountability systems create unintended consequences for immigrant English-language learners, which outweigh whatever benefits standardized tests may have. Because too many immigrant students attend highly segregated and impoverished schools, are not exposed to quality curricula and undergo multiple school and programmatic transitions, their performance on such tests is often compromised. Is it any surprise then that in the “gold standard” (not what The Times calls “the dumbed down” New York State Test) National Assessment of Educational Progress reading assessment for 2007, 71 percent of English-language learners in the eighth grade scored “below basic” in reading and zero percent scored at the “advanced” level?

The high-stakes testing context is proving to be extremely challenging to newcomers. Not only are many immigrant children tested before their academic language skills have adequately developed, but all too often their day-to-day educational experiences are shaped by instruction that teaches to the test, which is far from an adequate measure of what it takes to succeed in the complex and challenging economies and societies of the 21st century.

This eye on the omnipresent “adequate yearly progress” is more often than not at the expense of more engaging, broader academic knowledge. What’s more, this test regime has huge implications for dropout rates as well as college access for children of immigrant families.


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Making the Best of a Flawed System
Marcus Winters is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where he has done several studies on high-stakes testing, school report cards and the effects of vouchers on the public school system.

One of the pitfalls of standardized tests, perhaps the most important accountability-focused reform, is their elevation of scores over genuine learning. In high-stakes testing jurisdictions, anxious teachers, in order to avoid earning bad grades themselves, “teach to the test,” as the saying goes. In doing so, fortunately, some teachers adopt classroom techniques that produce real increases in student proficiency, particularly among the lowest-performing students. Tough proctoring rules can deter less well-motivated teachers from raising test scores in more underhanded ways.

The bigger problem with standardized tests is their emphasis on the achievement of only minimal proficiency.
The bigger problem with standardized tests is their emphasis on the achievement of only minimal proficiency. In most programs, the proficiency benchmarks that students must pass are levels of literacy and numeracy so low that only the most academically troubled students will find themselves better prepared for the outside world. High-achieving students, by contrast, will have already far exceeded them. While it is imperative that even the least accomplished students have sufficient reading and calculating skills to become self-supporting, these are nonetheless the students with, overall, the fewest opportunities in the working world. Meanwhile, limited resources are relocated away from the most promising students. If the premise of our educational system is that all students must be able to crawl before we help others to run, then such a policy is a worthy one.

Regardless of how high or low we choose to set the proficiency bar, standardized test scores are the most objective and best way of measuring it. Still, they are flawed. On a multiple choice exam, a child can demonstrate whether he can read and grasp the gist of a piece of writing, but he cannot usually demonstrate the depth or thoroughness with which he comprehends it. The gap between proficiency and true comprehension would be especially wide in the case of the brightest students. These would be the ones least well-served by high-stakes testing.

One year later and it makes even less sense

Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School has been closed for a full year, and in retrospect all I can see is the damage that resulted. The DOE didn't save any money -- all except one of the faculty, staff and adminstrators are still working. A school is a sum of its parts and all the parts have simply been moved to other budgets. All that has occurred is that there are fewer ways for at-risk youth to gain a high school diploma than before. With the closing of South Shore, Tilden and Canarsie high schools there will be more students without diplomas with fewer options available.

What would it take to re-consolidate the parts in a building (we didn't have our own)? Won't it be cheaper than the unemployment, the welfare and all the other monies which will be poorly spent helping young people subsist?

And which teachers are wandering? Teachers who refused to pass kids through the system if they weren't ready and people who helped those kids develop into students. In both cases, teachers did exactly what everyone expects of them. They held students accountable and they gave them as much attention as humanly possible.
It's ironic that the teachers who held to the standard and the teachers who helped students meet those standards in a smaller environment with extended time ARE BOTH being punished. None of us should be. What it shows us is that Bloomberg et al don't care about true student success. They want a cheaper, more quickly made product. Graduate the kid on watered down tests and in less time.

What's sad is that some parents actually buy in. A friend boasted about her child's "4" on her grade level exam. All the publicity about the dumbing down of the Math tests hadn't reached her. Worse, as someone who graduated from a school where such exams were considered meaningless, she had lost sight of her own academic values. The pressure had been so high for her child to pass that the relief which came when she did clouded her judgement. She talked about Bloomberg "holding teachers to task." Meanwhile she'd had to get her child lots of tutoring in addition to that provided by the school. For what? Just to get her to pass an exam we'd've both agreed was inferior under different circumstances. But, all the fighting she had to do to get her child services, the over-crowding of her class -- all that disappeared when she was given the magic "pass" on the grade exam. I guess we do live by the standards we set, and our Mayor has seen to it that these are lower than we would have stood for before he came into office.

My friend's kid won't ever need a school like Brooklyn Comprehensive because she will just get her tutoring for as long as she needs, and when she recovers from the temporary euphoria, she'll go back to fighting the school for services, etc. It's the kid sitting next to her child whose parents are uninvolved or who glides by barely passing these exams who is in more trouble. What happens to him/her when the tides change again and the tests are strengthened or eliminated in favor of real accomplishment?

Perhaps one of the teachers from our school will have been shuffled into his/her school by accident of fate. I doubt it, though.

Wishing I were green

So, as you all know, I finally got hired by a new school a few weeks ago. For a while, I was really happy and confident. Now, an incredible fear is setting in. It's a new grade level for me, and two new courses. When I was younger, I might've continued to feel fearless. Now I wake up in the morning wishing I could forget this job offer had ever happened.

A lot has happened in the 17 years I've been around the Dept. of Education. I've had many good years and learned from mistakes. However, I'd become good with certain populations and my strengths were very much natural outgrowths of my own personality and history. I tried to get work at schools which work with this population, but they are almost completely controlled by New Visions -- a non-profit which doesn't seem very interested in teachers over 40. In fact, that company consistently only offered me substitute positions. When I wrote to them repeatedly explaining that I was an experienced, full-time teacher and didn't know why they kept making me these offers, they would apologize, then repeat the pattern.

Many people believe if you can teach, you can teach anyone, but think about it: do you hand an internist who has been working with diabetics and heart patients in their middle age to a population of pre-teens? Of course, the doctor can read up on this group, but it's not the same as knowing them from long experience. Doctors become known as good for particular problems. Why would you deny teachers the right to a certain expertise? Do you think the same methodology works for ten year olds as it does for sixteen year olds? It doesn't, and actually, the populations require very different personalities.

So, I'm sick to my stomach with the prospects of the job ahead. Not that I don't want to learn new skills, but wondering if the learning curve is too large given the time I have before September. I know that if I am not emotionally connected to the material I teach, I am very unconvincing in delivering it. I haven't quite found what I want to present and when I settle on something I wonder if it will work or not.

The Dept. of Education's purposeful removal of teachers from their areas of strength, first by putting them in the Assigned Teacher Reserve, and then by denying us the right to use our seniority to help us find jobs which best meet our skill sets is destructive to students and teachers. Teachers are methodical creatures and those who have survived as long as I have usually have excelled in a particular area. As with pitchers, some of us are starters and some of us are relievers. Principals have used us to their advantage the way managers have.

Not many people are John Smoltz and can move from reliever to starter at any point in our careers. The blessing came for us, as it does for pitchers, doctors, lawyers, etc. when we found our niche and proved excellent within it. I face the prospect of my new position now as if I were a new teacher again, but I lack the novice's ignorance of what can go wrong. I know that in this economy, people are loathe to care about fairness: a job is a job. I wonder if that is the recipe for a system which will sustain itself, however. How many people will find themselves readily unemployed by moving from position to position after first having had a lifetime of success at something which they have been forced out of doing.

I don't remember ever thinking of my teachers as cogs in a machine -- placeable wherever you put them. I don't know if anyone, given a chance to think about it, would want their first grade teacher to have reappeared in high school, gold stars and rubber stamps in hand. Nor would you have wanted your intrepid, psychologically astute 11th grade literature teacher to be teaching second grade.

My life feels no more secure now than when I was an ATR and I feel very much like I've made a terrible mistake.

FOR HENRY, aka Hennybee, Henny, Neenee, "Little King," etc.

A rare moment when he was not cuddling someone, playing or just generally being warm and effusive

CHARTER SCHOOL DATA

Reprinted from GEM New York

"Grassroots Education Movement (NYC)" - 1 new article
The Truth about Charter Schools
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The Truth about Charter Schools
A study on charter schools released on June 15, 2009 by Stanford University (sponsored by PRO-CHARTER groups: Walton Family and Susan Dell Foundation) studying 15 states and District of Columbia found that:
• 80 % of charter schools performed the same or worse than traditional public schools: (37% that did significantly worse and 46% that performed the same). • African American and Hispanic students were found to do worse in charter schools in math and reading scores. • In Florida, the leading state with charters (389 schools), “Black students, bottom-tier students and top-tier students in Florida charter schools all perform "significantly worse" in reading and math than their peers in other public schools. A study released on August 22, 2006 by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) found:
• Students in charter schools performed several points lower on reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress Test (the gold standard). A report by the United States Department of Education (under George W. Bush) in 2003 found:
• Charter schools in all five case-study states were less likely than traditional public schools to meet performance standards even after controlling for several school characteristics. • More than half of authorizers (of Charter schools) report difficulty closing a school that is having problems - a key responsibility of authorizers in this educational reform.”
• The reality is that only 36 percent of authorizers had a charter school office, or staff in 2001-02, suggesting limited capacity to address charter school oversight. • Only four percent of authorizers had NOT renewed a school’s charter and six percent had revoked a charter as of 2001-02. (Bad charters keep on going).
• Charter schools are more likely to serve minority and low income students but less likely to serve students in special education. • According to the 1999-2000 SASS, 79 percent of teachers in charter schools held certification, compared with 92 percent of teachers in traditional public schools.
A study by Arizona State University (EPAA) in August 2002 finds:
• charters in economically depressed areas may receive more funding than the traditional public schools that surround them, placing traditional public schools at a funding disadvantage. • In the case of DC charter schools, private funding was found to have accounted for $780 per pupil and, combined with a higher level of public funding (mostly due to non-district funding), resulted in considerably higher funding for charters than comparable public schools. We at GEM (Grassroots Education Movement) believe: The invasion of charter schools is an issue of race. If white affluent public schools have low teacher-to-student ratios and access to top notch academic building and programs, why is a lottery system the only means by which urban minority students can access these equitable conditions. A lottery system of winners and losers, is abandoning the conversation that ALL students, regardless of race and socio-economic backround deserve the greatest of educational opportunities. Charter schools, like those in Harlem, vastly under-serve English Language Learners and Special Education Students. Due to the self selection process of lottery systems, not only are Charter schools creaming off the top of various student sub-groups, their lack of programs for Special Education and ELL students dissuade those parents from seeking their children’s enrollment. Charter schools are a political and corporate tool used by those favoring privatization to access the 800 billion dollars spent yearly in public education. If public education goes the way of the current health care model, a vast number of students will get education on the cheap. Profit not education, and shortcuts not support, will be the guiding principle. The funding gap and resource gap will become even more stark than it is now. The current limited success of a few charter schools bedazzled by huge corporate sponsored budgets can not be replicated on a system wide basis. For example, the budget of Harlem Promise Schools requires a yearly 36 million in private funding alone. If Harlem Promise Schools have shown anything, it is that lowering class size, providing the best supporting services and resources, should be the goal for every student in the inner city – not just those that win a lottery. We are abandoning the goals of an equitable public education, which although never fully realized, have made significant gains since Brown vs the Board of Education. Charter schools are in essence legitimizing the two tiered system of education for the lucky versus those left behind. Furthermore, charter schools open the door for skirting a fine line between church and state. Recent controversies pertaining to Hebrew Language Charter Schools, Arabic Language Charters, Hellenistic Language Charter Schools, and the conversion of Catholic private schools into charter schools, may provide loopholes that may further segregate rather than hold the public school ideals of democratic multiculturalism.

Living in New York City

The voice on the radio was over 40 and old school. He sounded about as comfortable mouthing the words of the Rap song he just played as I felt hearing it billowing in through the screens on my windows. It was embarassing to hear his intro and his reference to the artist whom he was pretending to understand. Since I've faked understanding Rap and been caught, I know the sound, the affectation, very well.

Now I listen to more Rap than I used to so I can stay in touch with what my students are listening to. And I like a lot of it.

There is no need to blast this OR ANY OTHER MUSIC in front of building on a residential street in mid-evening on a weekday night. There is no reason to blast any music ANYWHERE at ANY TIME.

Why do people do this? If I drove by in a car and blasted Jussi Bjoerling people would become irate. People are intimidated by Rap music. I hate that part of it. I should sit outside with my speakers and my computer and play the entire Ring Cycle. Now that will intimidate anyone. Why don't I do that? It's wrong, that's why.

Someday, I will find a way to convince people NOT to invade each others' spaces. We live in a city, one atop the other, ceilings and walls caving in further every night. We pay for our little bit of privacy. Why do we think we can abuse others by stepping on theirs?

I live in Brooklyn, in a section between Boro Park, Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge and Chinatown. Muslim and Jew, Christian, Zoroastrian -- we have every religion and multiple ethnicites and nationalities represented here. All of us get along -- this is a very, very low crime neighborhood. So much so that the police COME when you call about people disturbing the peace. I just wish I didn't have to make that call.

So, I ask as if my neighbors could hear me, "Was that necessary? Did you have to crack the air like plastic and trap me with what you felt you needed to say? If you came to this blog it was because you wanted to do so -- I don't throw my words, my website, my voice or anything with volume. Why are you so cruel to me and others?" And it's cruelty, no twoways about it, whether I like it or whether it sounds fake and designed to catch you with a commercial edge.

The Children of Willy Loman Updated

This is the second draft of a post I will work on for a while, but I'm putting it up in case anyone has any comments along the way.

All my life, I have struggled with Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The language feels sifted of any ethnic connection, yet it only makes sense to me within the context of being Jewish in Brooklyn in the 1940's. That other cultures have been able to adapt it doesn't take away the feeling for me that to thoroughly understand it, you have to imagine it from my mother's point of view.

Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in 1949, when my mother was nine year's old. One year earlier, she had lost her 38 year old father to a heart attack precipitated by pneumonia and a life working as many hours as possible and filling what remained with whatever it took to become an accountant. On the wall, next to the dinner table was a black and white photograph of an entire generation of Greenbergs who had been recently slaughtered, each one with a story more gruesome of how his/her death took place. One had her baby tossed in the air and shot before her own throat was slit, another starved to death and some of the rest followed the now familiar last walk into a gas chamber. At eight years old, my mother had accompanied her mother to her father's funeral because she was expected by that age to understand death and be ready. For all she knew, the Nazis were still waiting around the corner to grab her by the neck and march her into a pile of bodies. The sense of expectation that your life could be ripped away from you by evil forces -- and that little would stand in their way -- took hold of children in the 1940's the same way it did Miller's Willy Loman. He held onto the idea of being "Well-liked" as his last armament against a city which had gone from being lush with space to one literally closing in on him.

Industry had made it nearly impossible for him to do more than scratch out a living at a job he committed to because it held more practical promise, say, than being a carpenter or a bricklayer at the turn of the century. For that reason, he also dreamed repeatedly of his brother Ben's magificent and seemingly luck-driven landing in riches. The "America" my grandmother knew when she came here in 1922 was a place you called, "charming," "enthusiastic," and "gay," and "full of opportunity." Whether you were 14 year old Benny Goodman playing with major Jazz bands or you sold paper or fur coats, you could put together a living and eventually you could rise in stature enough to have some kind of savings. The 30's took away the opportunity, but not initially, the promise it might be back. Benny Goodman's father never got to see his son perform because he did not want to be seen in shabby clothes (and he was hit by a car and killed early in his son's career.) In that refusal, lay the belief that there would be a time in which he would have the right clothes. I don't know if it was the rise of Hitler or the mercilessness of unchecked capitalism or both which gave Americans, especially new immigrants, their first sense of themselves as corpses.

Perhaps it was this sense that helped The New Deal to be passed and allowed the government to just create jobs in an economy which had been eager for cheap and disposable labor. Some of the audience who heard Willy Loman's famous complaint, "A man is not a piece of fruit!" had memories of a time, place and government which didn't tolerate the abuse Loman railed against. The children, however, grew up with the tension that remained around the frailty of the government created jobs at which their parents worked. This combined with growingly vivid pictures of mass genocide was part of their normal day. For the baby-boomers, things were not the same. Their parents were coming home after a conquest and were eager to make things safe and pleasant and better for their children. A friend told me that the baby boomers were the first group of teenagers to be targetted as a specific market.

My mother found dolls like Ken and Barbie very frivolous. For her, the 60's were not a time to blossom and dream big, but a time to corner a piece of the stock market in male form and to guard your every posession in plastic or moth balls. The many elegant services of silverware remained in the closet. She said they were supposedly for me, but I knew intuititively that no one, not even I would use them. They remained as possible barter for hard times. Though she dyed her hair and she wore the full "Jackie-O" make-up, she could not and cannot to this day smile convincingly. Most of her life was spent with a simple cloth or vinyl hat on her head, a "car coat," and bags and bags of food in her arms, on her hips and stomach. We stored food in our house in permanent fear of the inevitable day of either joblessness or homelessness or what we would now call, "the haters" appearing at our doorstep. "You can't trust anybody," and "Nobody will appreciate you," were two of the mantras in the tiny apartment across from the Belt Parkway, in which we lived.

As though it were expected of her, my mother effectively killed the part of her that wanted joy, improvement, education, sex, physical activity -- any part of young life. At 8 years old, she'd been prepped for the life of Willy Loman. She worked a job in the civil service -- the one place left you couldn't be disposed of when you hit a certain age or lack of production. And she was forced to retire at 55, anyway, because the mindlessness of the job contributed to the overall destruction of her mind that a life without pleasure induced. She had no hope of pleasure, except in prurient gasps -- in cheating. In taking me out of school to go to the theater (it was okay because it would be educational for me, so it wasn't just a joyride.). In looking too closely at the teeth or the legs of someone nearby. She clobbered through her days and her muscles stretched the skin around her broad cheekbones to their limits. No rouge could make her look anything less than a heavyweight boxer, too thick to move quickly enough to win, but strong enough to make people afraid and give her dominion over the tiny space within our apartment which was hers.

IT IS TRUE, AS SHARON PEARCE POINTS OUT, that what my mother (and her generation or her clique within it) could've learned from the baby-boomers' was, simply, to fight back. As a rule, the Lomans expect to be treated fairly for mostly playing by the rules -- or not deviating anymore than anyone else. And they didn't "make waves." Even in the 1970's, my Hebrew school was still teaching us "Don't break away from the group," -- don't be strange, don't protest, don't act up. An entire generation's impulse against this hadn't made an impact on the lower-middle class Jewish community in Brooklyn in which I grew up. I didn't get a full sense of the power of civil disobedience until college when I was taught by professors who had participated within the civil rights movement.

The boomers were asked to do two completely hideous things -- to continue to repress civil rights even as African-Americans laid down their lives for basic freedoms and to fight in Vietnam. And mostly they refused. My unde went for the Loman reasons -- "America is this great country and I thought I should give something back." I don't disparage those reasons. They are the response of grateful immigrants who tried to be everything they thought that this country wanted them to be. I don't know what gave the boomers the power to protest, except for the heinous and un-American nature of what was being asked of them. I guess, also, having not been inundated with WWII and the Holocaust, they didn't have the sense that you can't stop a gigantic hate machine. At least, that's where I get that feeling from. That and my mother's insistence, "you can't fight City Hall." The fervor left from her unqueched passion went into the chaotic raising of me -- the second generation of Lomans. I, too, became a civil servant. I've never expected to travel, own a car or a house. I snatch pleasure in the quick and cheap --- chocolate soy milk, soy pudding, etc. My fervor goes into my cats whose lives are built on simple pleasures, too. My education was carefully planned as Jews didn't let go of that trope within The American Dream publicly. Sure, we knew imbeciles who opened delicatessens and made fortunes, but the pristine nature of the intellect has not yet been fouled by the cruelties of industrialization. Look who beat Willy Loman? Bernard, the nerdy kid next door who went on to defend cases in The Supreme Court. How had he done so? By avoiding the "evil eye" of talking about what you do before you do it. And Miller maintains a belief that academic achievement will help an individual survive in the corporate world, which I don't think people share commonly today.

Never forget, however, how nervous Bernard is for Biff -- he sees the edge of doom coming toward him in the same way that Willy does. But, he never gave up his end of the bargain with Biff, either -- he was always assisting him in the hopes that his athletic efforts would pull him out of high school and safely to a career, after all. I wonder, if when Willy Loman talked about being "well-liked," and not being "a piece of fruit," if there weren't people in the audience who never expected that he would be treated so badly. True, he's not perfect. But, one year earlier Harry Truman had just won the presidency. Describing his campaign, David McCullough writes
No president ever campaigned so hard or so far. Truman was sixty-four years old. Younger men who were with him through it all would describe the time on the train as one of the worst ordeals of their lives. The roadbed was rough and Truman would get the train up to 80 miles an hour at night. The food was awful, the work unrelenting. One of them told me, "It's one thing to work that hard and to stay the course when you think you're going to win, but it's quite another thing when you know you're going to lose." The only reason they were there, they all said, was Harry Truman. For Truman, I think, it was an act of faith--a heroic, memorable American act of faith. The poll takers, the political reporters, the pundits, all the sundry prognosticators, and professional politicians--it didn't matter what they said, what they thought. Only the people decide, Truman was reminding the country. "Here I am, here's what I stand for--here's what I'm going to do if you keep me in the job. You decide." (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/character/essays/truman.html)

The country had just voted, essentially for Willy Loman. All the more reason that Linda Loman is so shocked that the businessworld has shown such disrespect for her husband, when they are even debt free. Why is it, now, it is so hard to feel that same disgust and how did Miller know we would become such traitors to ourselves? It isn't Biff that's right, Bernard that's right -- but in fact, the country agreed with Willy Loman at the time. You rewarded people for steadfastness and you permitted them faults. However terrible a salesman (and I'll take the fifth on arguments that technology would've helped him to be better as some articles say, missing the whole point of the play) Willy had been loyal, mostly hard-working and had trudged down those roads on an act of faith, just like Harry Truman had come to the White House. He deserved better, and though it was clear he wasn't going to get it, I think the audience would've been much more outraged at the end of the play than we usually believe. Maybe they wouldn't have protested or "made waves," but they would've expected more from the people they worked with -- or hoped for more, against their best instincts and fears. Just as people didn't leave New York City for Wyoming at that time, I think no one expected anyone to be put out on the street after long years of service. It wasn't supposed to be done. My grandmother would've been disgusted with the company. My mother would've hoped for better, but not been surprised. I grew up learning that Biff had the right idea and that Loman's tragedy was his own failure to see his own flaws. That never made complete sense to me, I think because I was raised to expect the worst from my mother -- but to know it was "the worst" -- that it was treacherous. If we are supposed to feel horror about Willy then why not stop the play after we find out he cheats on his wife? Why not kill him off there? The horror is to see this Everyman be treated so miserably by his company -- yes, he should've seen it coming, like his children did, but there was no way he could've. Abandoning someone to the streets was unheard of -- there had been a New Deal and even my grandmother's family moved into the new government sponsored housing projects built after World War Two. My mother clinged to hope against hope and she practically made it, small pension and insurance and all. What Willy wanted was NOT unheard of, and it really shouldn't ever be.

Got a job!

Won't say where yet until September or so....fear of all sorts of budgetary craziness. But, so far so good!

Flower growing out of stones

The stones did not stop it from finding roots nor keep it from growing.

Chairman of the Board and Divine Divan Man

Why Tony Avella must win for Mayor

This is right off his webpage. Link to his Homepage http://www.tonyavellaformayor.com/

Take Back Our Schools
Tony Avella's record shows his commitment to creating an education system that works for all New Yorkers. As a City Council member, he worked closely with Parent Teacher Associations in Northeast Queens to make his school districts the best in the five boroughs. And when the Mayor failed to provide money for classroom technology, Tony secured the funding to acquire state-of-the-art computer labs and to install Internet wiring in schools. As Mayor, the first thing Tony will do is fire Joel Klein and replace him with an experienced educator. He'll also allocate funds so that we're investing in our kids, not in bloated bureaucracies or corporate testing systems. Tony believes no one understands education better than the teachers, principals, and parents. He'll make sure these stakeholders have a voice and a seat at the table when planning the future of our schools. As Mayor, Tony will:
Fire Joel Klein as the head of the Department of Education and replace him with an experienced educator
Open up the Department of Education to the parents and teachers who know our schools best
Stop teaching to the test so that our kids can enjoy learning again
Ensure that every school and every child has access to the latest technology and computers
Begin the process of reinstating free tuition at the CUNY colleges

for Mary Pearce, her family and friends

John Donne


Hymn to God, My God, in my Sickness

Since I am coming to that holy room,

Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,I shall be made thy music;

as I comeI tune the instrument here at the door,

And what I must do then, think here before.

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown

Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie

Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown

That this is my south-west discovery,

Per fretum febris, by these straits to die,

I joy, that in these straits I see my west;

For, though their currents yield return to none,

What shall my west hurt me?

As west and eastIn all flat maps (and I am one) are one,

So death doth touch the resurrection.

Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are

The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar,

All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them,

Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.

We think that Paradise and Calvary,

Christ's cross, and Adam's tree, stood in one place;

Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;

As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,

May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.

So, in his purple wrapp'd, receive me, Lord;

By these his thorns, give me his other crown;

And as to others' souls I preach'd thy word,

Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:

"Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down." John Donne

Iron Maiden: In memory of Mary Pearce

Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.
--Proverbs 27:17, King James Bible

Whenever I describe Mary Pearce to anyone, the first thing I say is that "she has a core of iron," for, except for her daughter, Sharon, I have never met anyone more strong-willed. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being this way -- as Proverbs teaches us, we become "sharpened" by our strong friends. And Mary Pearce was an incredible friend to me, as well as a substitute parent.

What made Mary Pearce so tough, in fact, was her ability to accept people and ideas. She never gave up on anyone, even if the person was so contrary that he/she -- usually me -- made her head spin. Not that she didn't give me a very strong argument back, not that she would give in to my argument, either, no matter how loud or intense I became. But, she was always willing to understand the perspectives of others. In time, we grew to agree more on things, most recently Barack Obama. It's possible that Sharon and I are now both more conservative than Mary was -- she saw a lot of possibility in this young administration, just as she saw a lot of promise in me and some of Sharon's other crazy friends. She reserved her greatest acceptance and belief for Sharon, who, like she did when she was young, moved thousands of miles away and did what people call "God's work" -- teach. It is very easy for me to imagine Mary captivating kindergartners with trees magically made from paper, her fine intelligence and her beautiful nature. People don't realize that small children are as hard to teach as teenagers -- and I think harder because they don't know what to be afraid of, yet. Children, however, do respond to the kind of love that is both truthful and encouraging -- and Mary Pearce was one of the few people in the world who could be both.

Because she recognized the potential, the sincerity and the spirit in me and in everyone she met, Mary Pearce made all of us feel more hopeful about our futures than we did.
And she changed us -- made us wiser, better and more honest. In doing so, she will also never leave us.

Gritting it out

I'm going to hold on until I either

1) Get a permanent position I want

or

2) Am placed somewhere

I am NOT GOING TO PANIC.

The ATR job market...same time, this year

So far, incentives and hiring freezes aside, all the experienced teachers I know over 40 seem to be getting the same cold shoulders they did last year. Teachers with 25 years of experience who are bilingual and can teach music and other things out of license are being asked, "Why should I hire you?"

I know one person with experience who was hired and he is 34.

I am "Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's" hopeful about one school which I adore and to which I hope I can be of use. Two more interviews loom at two other schools in which I'd gladly work and I plan to make big, cheerful presentations, full of aspirations, some student work, and concretely designed ideas. If my heart will not be sunk by the usual fear and sense of doom which comes from some of the continued grim realities of things, I should be able to do what I aim to do. It's amazing -- I can feel an influx of warm oil over the nerves and my brain sinks like a sponge full of jello. That's what it feels like when I think too much about the odds or the horrors my colleagues and I have experienced in downright disrespectful situations. None yet for me this year, and I hope (and I blow a full balloon inside my chest when I say that word) none too soon.

But, I know the removal of music and arts programs at certain schools is part of an effort to de-stabilize them so they can be closed. This ATR pattern is not going away.

If, in the end, 85 percent of the ATR's are not hired by finding their own jobs, but are sent by the DOE to be interviewed and eventually find work that way, why not start now? Klein initially called ATR's "undesireables" -- not many of the new principals have enough experience with older teachers to lose that first impression no matter how many times Klein now calls us worthy. Why not just place us now? Does Bloomberg think that in an election year he can negotiate a contract in which the UFT gives up job security? What would the UFT do, then, effectively? The 3020a process would dissipate as people could be excessed and then let go. Could they really justify their salaries just for a medical and dental plan (the latter of which I have spent my life avoiding using thanks to my uncle being a dentist. Since he retired, my teeth have been living in fear.) Would they just negotiate another raise? Would it just be about money? Then we would definitely be abandoning the children. No amount of money can replace acceptable working conditions. By acceptable, I mean ones in which the students and you feel secure enough to invest in the school in which you can be adventurous, challenging and creative.

I LOVE THIS GUY

He has talent and he hustles....tonight he said, "I just kept running. I heard the screaming and I just kept running." He never looked back. As Joe Girardi said, "We won this game because of Mark Teixeira's hustle."