28 February, 2009
23 February, 2009
Too many days without Randi Rhodes
Enough said. Get her on, somewhere. She and Mike Malloy are the only people I can listen to no matter how sad I am. I've begun listening to Bill Moyers Journal (podcasts) and they're reassuring, but I need to laugh and I need the C-Span Junkie reports....
22 February, 2009
Separation of Church and State
Can we challenge all this infusion of funds into, what are often, FAITH BASED private organizations on the basis of "Separation of Church and State"? I mean, I know Obama has to care about this....
No one ever consults a teacher...even Frank McCourt
In an interview with PBS...
Q: What can we do to help improve our nation's schools?
McCourt: One of the reasons the schools are in such a state is no one consults the teachers. I used to watch some of these programs on television and you'd have somebody from some corporation, and you'd see some jerk from the think tank, and then you'd have a union official, and I'd call... One time I called Channel 13 in New York, they had one of these discussions about schools, and I said -- they were inviting us, calls from the outside -- and the lady said, "Well what would your question be?" And I said, "Why don't you have a teacher on this panel?" "Oh, that's a very interesting question..." I said, "It's about schools, isn't it?" "Yes." But I never got through. One never gets through."
Read the whole interview http://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/today8.html
Q: What can we do to help improve our nation's schools?
McCourt: One of the reasons the schools are in such a state is no one consults the teachers. I used to watch some of these programs on television and you'd have somebody from some corporation, and you'd see some jerk from the think tank, and then you'd have a union official, and I'd call... One time I called Channel 13 in New York, they had one of these discussions about schools, and I said -- they were inviting us, calls from the outside -- and the lady said, "Well what would your question be?" And I said, "Why don't you have a teacher on this panel?" "Oh, that's a very interesting question..." I said, "It's about schools, isn't it?" "Yes." But I never got through. One never gets through."
Read the whole interview http://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/today8.html
21 February, 2009
Diane Ravitch calls Obama's Education Policy -- Bush, continued.
http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/Diane_Ravitch_ED3CC65A-1240-42E1-9716-8DB5FD3426D8.html
Not the change any of us believed would happen ... no change at all.
Not the change any of us believed would happen ... no change at all.
20 February, 2009
Slam Dunk from Dave Zirin
"For me as well, in a divided New York City, thebasketball court was where walls felt like they could come down. But I havefar more faith in the sacred power of hoops than I do in an educationsecretary who presides over an apartheid system and attacks teachersand public education in the name of reform. If Duncan tries to bringthat into my lane, I won't be the only person ready to smack that junkback into the third row. "
--Dave Zirin, "Obama's Unfortunate Hoop Dreams" which appears in the current edition of Progressive Magazine.
--Dave Zirin, "Obama's Unfortunate Hoop Dreams" which appears in the current edition of Progressive Magazine.
18 February, 2009
Randi Rhodes is off the air....
This has to stop. Randi Rhodes has to be back on the air. It's hard to believe that a station which can retain Mike Malloy can't hang onto Randi Rhodes...anyway, gotta get her back.
I just realized this but I think it's been going on a while.
This is not acceptable.
I just realized this but I think it's been going on a while.
This is not acceptable.
17 February, 2009
"Yes," to the Stimulus Passage. Duh?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-pettifor/the-fiscal-stimulus-will_b_167119.html
The above link will take you to Ann Pettifor's concise, clear and brilliant argument for the stimulus package. It's interesting that she uses an interview with Jeffrey Sachs as her jumping off point, but is too polite to mention how his idea for economic stimulus nearly destroyed the Russian and Polish economies.
Don't we know that a "stimulus package" is THE LEAST we should be doing..... Or does no one actually do research but just read revisionist ideas about FDR. I started hearing that The New Deal didn't save the economy in seventh and eighth grade, just as the Reagan era approached.
I remember, too, that in a school election, we didn't elect Reagan. But, what did we know, we were just a bunch of bright little kids? We thought his ideas sounded crazy. Even the girl who got to represent Reagan found she had to keep emphasizing the last syllable of his name as a way to underscore the basic thread of his policies -- "gun." Defense, guns, rough talk. Having just re-watched Bowling for Columbine it feels like she was on to something.
That was a horrible election year in NY. Jack Javits ruined things for Liz Holtsman and John Anderson screwed things up for Jimmy Carter nationwide.
At my school's little election Javits won because I played me instead of him, which infuriated my English teacher at the time. Still, in the real world had that happened, he'd've won, died the next year and then a Democrat would've been placed in his stead -- not as bad as having Al D'Amato just win, as did happen. The school voted for John Anderson, who endorsed Obama in this campaign. So, had Carter been displaced by Anderson maybe things would've been different. We were just a bunch of kids now suffering as adults from the choices the adults made back then. This is not to say that the election eligibility age should be dropped to 12. Though it wasn't the 12 and 13 year olds who voted, but everyone younger...
All the more reason to read Pettifor's article though because it confirms that the stimulus package will help the 12 and 13 year olds and their younger friends when they are 41...and 64.
The above link will take you to Ann Pettifor's concise, clear and brilliant argument for the stimulus package. It's interesting that she uses an interview with Jeffrey Sachs as her jumping off point, but is too polite to mention how his idea for economic stimulus nearly destroyed the Russian and Polish economies.
Don't we know that a "stimulus package" is THE LEAST we should be doing..... Or does no one actually do research but just read revisionist ideas about FDR. I started hearing that The New Deal didn't save the economy in seventh and eighth grade, just as the Reagan era approached.
I remember, too, that in a school election, we didn't elect Reagan. But, what did we know, we were just a bunch of bright little kids? We thought his ideas sounded crazy. Even the girl who got to represent Reagan found she had to keep emphasizing the last syllable of his name as a way to underscore the basic thread of his policies -- "gun." Defense, guns, rough talk. Having just re-watched Bowling for Columbine it feels like she was on to something.
That was a horrible election year in NY. Jack Javits ruined things for Liz Holtsman and John Anderson screwed things up for Jimmy Carter nationwide.
At my school's little election Javits won because I played me instead of him, which infuriated my English teacher at the time. Still, in the real world had that happened, he'd've won, died the next year and then a Democrat would've been placed in his stead -- not as bad as having Al D'Amato just win, as did happen. The school voted for John Anderson, who endorsed Obama in this campaign. So, had Carter been displaced by Anderson maybe things would've been different. We were just a bunch of kids now suffering as adults from the choices the adults made back then. This is not to say that the election eligibility age should be dropped to 12. Though it wasn't the 12 and 13 year olds who voted, but everyone younger...
All the more reason to read Pettifor's article though because it confirms that the stimulus package will help the 12 and 13 year olds and their younger friends when they are 41...and 64.
15 February, 2009
My Funny Valentine
Sorry this song is a day late...
This, like many Rogers and Hart songs, is one of the best songs ever written and it is the best Valentine's song ever. Because, ironically, the greatest beauty, like the strangest, is almost impossible to photograph and capture.
For Karen
and Denise and Jonathan and Sharon and Henry Wozniak, Jr.
and all of my cats...
who have all loved me so much despite myself and whom I have loved so much back.
And, after all, Karen you were right -- you got top billing, way above my cats. You must be smiling in your heart up there and, like you said you loved to be, "in the wind." I was crazy about you pretty much the moment I saw you looking for my phone number on that receipt for Chinese Take-Out (or was it for the Chinese Laundry where you sent your shirts?) on our first (blind) date. Somehow, I think you did know that was me as soon as you looked over, before I answered the phone. You couldn't believe I was so funny looking, but you couldn't walk away either. And you smiled. You were befuddled, but you smiled.
When you left that day, as you left the subway car, I will never forget how you closed your eyes just after you said I could call you -- or whatever the words were that indicated we had connected and yes, this was definitely continuing. You closed your eyes and smiled and again to show me that I had reached in and found you and that you cherished me. Whatever it was I looked like...I felt...beautiful to you and it was one of the most beautiful moments in my life.
And when you said, in the car, on that crazy date when we were driving in a rainstorm to Staples which was already closing...Staples in New Jersey... that you loved to be "in the wind," you imprinted your smile in my heart forever. That's how I remember the lyric -- not "Smile With My Heart," as it seemst to be. I'll look for a book tomorrow which can give me the definitive answer. I have your play in my cabinet, but this apt is so disasterous, Jonathan, that I need to get out of it even earlier than my appointment today to meet with the genius Ira Siff, who also should be on this list, but isn't because I haven't embarassed him as I have embarassed all of the people on this list, by being goofy "in love" only because I am now, sadly, too self-conscious to let myself do that with someone so gorgeous and unavailable to me. To everyone, but Karen who is on this list, I have had to apologize in some way for that. Except for my cats, of course, which is why, Karen, it was hard not to say that I love them equally. But, they wouldn't drive their car as a snowstorm hit to get me and them so that we wouldn't be apart for a day on my vacation...because they can't. Which is why you get top billing...and also why they keep creeping back up - because they would, if they could. But, you were right. You remain top billing.
Of course, it's Rogers and Hart's "My Funny Valentine" which I will now credit, as I owe most of the good lyrics I know and the beat underneath my own, to Jonathan Levy for showing to me, in introducing me to Rogers and Hart and through his play, Ruth.
And, of course, Karen, like everyone on the list, but probably most, you were brilliant. But, genius, too, is too unfathomable to really call, "smart" and often, capable of some of the silliest moments in the world -- which were also the best. To steal from Jonathan again -- see The Marx Brothers, and anytime Karen and I went to go get something chocolate.
My funny valentine
Sweet comic valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable. Unphotographable.
Yet youre my favorite work of art
Is your figure less than greek
Is your mouth a little weak
When you open it to speak
Are you smart?
But dont change a hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay little valentine stay
Each day is valentines day.
This, like many Rogers and Hart songs, is one of the best songs ever written and it is the best Valentine's song ever. Because, ironically, the greatest beauty, like the strangest, is almost impossible to photograph and capture.
For Karen
and Denise and Jonathan and Sharon and Henry Wozniak, Jr.
and all of my cats...
who have all loved me so much despite myself and whom I have loved so much back.
And, after all, Karen you were right -- you got top billing, way above my cats. You must be smiling in your heart up there and, like you said you loved to be, "in the wind." I was crazy about you pretty much the moment I saw you looking for my phone number on that receipt for Chinese Take-Out (or was it for the Chinese Laundry where you sent your shirts?) on our first (blind) date. Somehow, I think you did know that was me as soon as you looked over, before I answered the phone. You couldn't believe I was so funny looking, but you couldn't walk away either. And you smiled. You were befuddled, but you smiled.
When you left that day, as you left the subway car, I will never forget how you closed your eyes just after you said I could call you -- or whatever the words were that indicated we had connected and yes, this was definitely continuing. You closed your eyes and smiled and again to show me that I had reached in and found you and that you cherished me. Whatever it was I looked like...I felt...beautiful to you and it was one of the most beautiful moments in my life.
And when you said, in the car, on that crazy date when we were driving in a rainstorm to Staples which was already closing...Staples in New Jersey... that you loved to be "in the wind," you imprinted your smile in my heart forever. That's how I remember the lyric -- not "Smile With My Heart," as it seemst to be. I'll look for a book tomorrow which can give me the definitive answer. I have your play in my cabinet, but this apt is so disasterous, Jonathan, that I need to get out of it even earlier than my appointment today to meet with the genius Ira Siff, who also should be on this list, but isn't because I haven't embarassed him as I have embarassed all of the people on this list, by being goofy "in love" only because I am now, sadly, too self-conscious to let myself do that with someone so gorgeous and unavailable to me. To everyone, but Karen who is on this list, I have had to apologize in some way for that. Except for my cats, of course, which is why, Karen, it was hard not to say that I love them equally. But, they wouldn't drive their car as a snowstorm hit to get me and them so that we wouldn't be apart for a day on my vacation...because they can't. Which is why you get top billing...and also why they keep creeping back up - because they would, if they could. But, you were right. You remain top billing.
Of course, it's Rogers and Hart's "My Funny Valentine" which I will now credit, as I owe most of the good lyrics I know and the beat underneath my own, to Jonathan Levy for showing to me, in introducing me to Rogers and Hart and through his play, Ruth.
And, of course, Karen, like everyone on the list, but probably most, you were brilliant. But, genius, too, is too unfathomable to really call, "smart" and often, capable of some of the silliest moments in the world -- which were also the best. To steal from Jonathan again -- see The Marx Brothers, and anytime Karen and I went to go get something chocolate.
My funny valentine
Sweet comic valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable. Unphotographable.
Yet youre my favorite work of art
Is your figure less than greek
Is your mouth a little weak
When you open it to speak
Are you smart?
But dont change a hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay little valentine stay
Each day is valentines day.
14 February, 2009
I will celebrate Valentine's Day on another day
Too sad. Grief comes in waves. I'm fine. Just embarassed by my week... Not my best.
I've taken down the earlier post because, re-reading it
It was really just my confession to myself. It helps no one else.
13 February, 2009
Disappearing in Blue
This is a furious post. I needed to write it and some people need to know what it feels like to have things like, you know, schools, fly in the face of reason. But it's more than about schools. It's what it's like to be INCAPABLE of a mid-life crisis because I know too well what my mistakes have been, and how I have failed. It's my confession. Perhaps that's why the Catholics do that -- they tell someone, without an expectation of real solution, just absolution. I don't want forgiveness. I just want to see it in print, to know what I know and what I don't. So, being Jewish, it makes sense that this is half-Confession, half Kol Nidre -- the accounting we do on The Day of Atonement. I'm accounting, but I'm not letting go. I need to read it. To see it, to edit it, to re-visit it. It needs to be public so that it can explain what I cannot. If anything, I wrote this because I cannot explain what I keep trying to.
And before I forget, I know how completely and brazenly I steal from Jonathan Levy's rhythms when I speak and write. The only person I know who has ever explained why I so inhaled them is Michael Chabon in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh where the central character talks about stealing other people's characteristics so that you would never really lose them. Even before this onslaught of things that don't make sense, people had tended to disappear on me and me from them for a lot of different reasons. Unfortunately, this theft is not for me, like it is for Chabon's character, a substitute for being more around the person I've stolen from or being more in whatever my own voice is. It's a comfort and it has become what I call it to people who don't know who I'm really referring to -- my self-adopted step-father's voice. Getting to feel like you had a father when you didn't is an amazing gift and, in this case, it also came with a very late and necessary shot of morality. At around 26. Truthfully, what is "me" is mostly a punk-kid. I do try to let the punk out in an effort to not steal so much. And that's why this is probably not such a great piece of writing....but I am and have been carving my own voice somewhat more and more with a better model than I had before 26. I'm still a lucky kid, in many respects, and I know that, too. I just don't get it -- I have luck where I haven't earned it and disaster where I thought I had been more careful. So, here are "the books."
Sometimes, lately, I have absolutely no interest in having any will over things. I forget appointments, I sleep through things I have been looking forward to for weeks. I can't remember where I put anything. Worse than usual on the latter.
I have tried to do what you are supposed to do, say what you are supposed to say, be where you are supposed to be for most of my life after the age of 26. In graduate school, the reality that what I did was not being filmed for play on prime time or in independent movie houses was brought home to me. Students are who I was when I wanted to be all the things I wanted to be and expected that I could be. It's my job to make that closer to reality. And, people really have schedules, responsibilities and their own tragedies. It was time to say what I meant. To "be the thing" as another friend says.
So I mostly did. And there was a grand logic to things for once. I went to bed at 11, got up at 6, was at my office by 7am. I became what a friend called, "dutiful". Whenever I was needed to be there, that's when I was going to be there...mostly. I took on too much, got lost in a lot of dreaming and didn't often know how much work I really needed to do to accomplish what I had just said I would. But, there was going to be a will for most of the ways I felt I had to create. If I had to write and print out letters at 2am, then that's when it had to be done. I made it work.
But my "tin tooth" to steal from Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift was an innate need for there to be some sort of reciprocal feeling in exchange for this. I was good many, many times to try to win affections of many different kinds. I wanted to be good because I loved and wanted to be loved.
The kid my grandmother said "would have a dirty end" had been banished because I was devoted...I was there. I loved somebody and stood behind them, in front of them, next to them --was as near as I thought I could be, let someone amazing "get close" to me. I told the truth, but I tried very much not to hurt anyone. I got better at that. At first, I cared more about being truthful, about the sense something made in my head, than being careful about how and why and when I said things but by the time I was 36 or so I was better at it.
My grandmother cursed me because I fought for my freedom to leave home and not be the appendage of my mother's perversity. She thought I was born to sustain my mother the way she died to do that very thing. On my watch, the new "kid," the girl who found a way to work three jobs to loan people money, the girl who went back and forth and back and forth to help a friend go forward, the girl who said, "you're right, I'm an idea. The word needs to become flesh" and finally made a move...BAD THINGS JUST DIDN'T HAPPEN ON MY WATCH. I got the job, got the extension, got the cash, got whatever, somehow, someway, I always pulled out of trouble. If nothing else, the girl in me surfaced and just pleaded and I got the special paper, the copies in miraculous time, the award for a friend, that piece of research that was elusive, the phone call with the right person. I even found THE PERFECT SCHOOL for the over-aged, under-credited and sometimes zealously overwrought or just over-tired. God laughed at me, but she didn't hurt me. She seemed to be even deciding that, like for Frank O'Hara, the sun would finally talk to me -- I had a love, a soulmate. And then it all ... the mistakes of the toothfilled grinning kid hung like a chain around my neck. Bad mixed metaphor, but that's what it felt/feels like. Like the mark of Cain. It's not "why me?" It's "why now?" It's "why?" And it's still, "You can't be serious, I'm going to wake up, right." But, I can't sleep much to begin with. When I walk into Tilden, gloriously nice as most of the people are, I know it is 2009 and something terrible has happened. It's backwards. I had a soulmate I could talk to, friends I could talk to and a principal who knew me like a mother is supposed to. We didn't buy into bullshit -- collectively. We spoke freely and we acted freely. We. "We". I don't include the last two years of Brooklyn Comprehensive -- or the times I was more of a blithering idiot than usual, generally. Remarkably, for a set of human beings on task to help kids, and in Karen's and my case as two people trying to love, destruction of the individual was very minimal overall. Which is why it absolutely irks me that Karen and the school and my principal -- they all died ON MY WATCH. As an inspired friend said about our school, "Malaika gave us the gift of letting us be ourselves." And Karen gave me that gift at home. I thought being truthful and being loyal meant these things weren't supposed to happen. I'm not being foolish -- it's common sense.
Let me give that some perspective:
I have spent almost 17 years walking through dangerous neighborhoods at dangerous times on dangerous subway lines. Karen worried about this a lot, and sometimes she went to pick me up because of it. But, nevertheless, I sometimes walked through places I'd rather not admit to at 2am, got off at even worse places than where I started, while being short, fat, white, female and obviously carrying an expensive backpack with a laptop in it.
I also believed that, if you really could die just because your engine couldn't get gas at the moment from a clog or you mis-calculated by a gallon because you had a really good dinner and you didn't give this the normal second-thought you would have or you had what you thought you needed and it was wrong -- if a half gallon of gas can be the measure of a person's life-- I never would've believed that letting these confounded cessnas in the air would've been allowed. Period. Think about it. Karen had to wear, and did, a helmet while riding a street-worthy bike through NYC. No one in their right minds would ride a bike whose tires could give out on the drop of a dime for no apparent reason, or could give out for good reason and throw you into the nearest building. No one would buy that bike and ride it through a park. But,we let people go up thousands of feet without airbags and without the contraption that makes the plane into a veritable parachute -- breaking the plane, but saving your life. That makes no sense. Less sense than the fact that I have ridden trains home at 2am from Brooklyn's version of Gaza and lived.
Only in that awful movie, The Unbearable Lightness of Being do people die at a height -- in a moment of true happiness. I'm sorry, I hate that kind of mystical bullshit, too. When you're happy and you know it, you aren't supposed to let the f'ing car flip over. You're supposed to be a little bit more careful about the f'ing gas tank. And for god's sake, people are supposed to rally around a place that helped them when no one else would. They are supposed to say SOMETHING. And we weren't supposed to turn into vile animals -- all of us -- in those last two years, all out of fear and a need to prove points. Everything was still in our hands, all we had to do was say what we meant, tell the truth, "be the thing". And we slipped. I slipped, anyway. That makes me the most reprehensible person in Karen's life and I know it. I know it now because of how badly I have slipped also since she died into a bilious sloth. Not the most profound of the type, but nevertheless, not even remotely close to who I was before Sept 2, 2005. Two different people. And even the better one was, it turns out, awful.
I failed. I failed as a guardian of love, honor and respect. There is no way to deny that. I had a sense something bad was going to happen that night and I didn't say anything. I let the vinegar of a bit of anger and fear of being thought possessive settle onto what I had refined into a pretty good nervous system. I let myself nearly get my FRIENDS in trouble, people I knew since before I was 26, out of reckless despair. How can so much horror creep into something beautiful in a moment? I know, I know, they were having so much fun and so into the event that they missed the bump. That's idiotic. That's irresponsible. And I let it happen. All that night that Karen died Michael and Sharon kept asking me if I wasn't afraid of her crashing. They wouldn't stop. And I thought, "of course she won't crash. She told me the plane can glide for miles. People land planes in baseball fields if they need to...for god's sake she's KAREN. I have loved her too much for anything to possibly happen. " I know. I really DID THINK it could NEVER happen to us because we were too good, too nice and what was it? A little f'ing flight to nowhere.
F-- Kundera and his damned book and the movie. That's what I abhorred, I thought. I was supposed to be way too grounded and practical for that kind of B.S. and it walked right in and stole everything. "Unbearable" is definitely the right word. "Unfathomable." "Vicious."
Precocious, precious, stupid. That's what I was. With the most valuable things in the world. The only reason I am good at keeping my cats alive is that my mother was good at crisis healthcare. Not the everyday living -- she took overall terrible care of maintaining me, but it's little work to do that for Larry and Bernie and they are, in my mind, children to be watched over. My mother was excellent, however, when I was violently ill. She knew how to push through the crowd to get the right doctor then and so, so do I. It's maybe my one skill. How to plead for my cats and my life. Good one. Really useful. So long as my life hinges on a dime like it does nowadays, I guess that's important. I am incapable of being good, perhaps because I haven't got all the skills for it. I MISS THE BUMP. I have Asperger's Syndrome. I get lost in dreams. Maybe I can never love any human at all. My love turned out to be the most worthless thing and I dedicated most of my energies to living by that feeling and being loyal to it. And I was worthless, nonetheless. Worthless.
All of us -- Karen, me, the faculty and students at Brooklyn Comprehensive -- we were good. We had all made mistakes, but we were all making amends. Nothing made sense, nothing has made complete sense since Sept 2, 2005 and, doubly so, since Feb. 2006 when it was announced that Brooklyn Comprehensive would close. You decide to fund a school, you foster it, and when it's clear what needs to be done to take it to greatness, you close it and make a commitment to another school which opens with a violent incident, has a student and faculty strike and will take years to learn what we already knew. I'll take the bet -- in less than 17 years, the DOE will close the school which succeeded us. I give them ten years. By then, the argument will have been made that ALL overage and under-credited students should be doing GED programs virtually through the public libraries. And why not? Once you argue that you shouldn't be offering HS diplomas to the 18-21 year olds, it follows that soon the 16 year olds will also be asked to consider the virtues of just taking a test and saving the DOE the cost of actually re-teaching them.
The faculty at Tilden also have every right to feel outraged about their closing, the ridiculousness of it perhaps, epitomized by my being placed there out of nowhere, from my closing madness into theirs. They were another kind of good school -- they took the stand that the kids they sent to us needed more time. If they hadn't been so bold and stuck to their standards, they would've pushed those kids through without their ever having had the chance BCNHS was able to give them to shape up and really understand their work. It's a good school which DOESN'T graduate kids before they're ready. They ran a good shop. Too good. You're not supposed to be that honest. We could be that honest because we were the MASH unit and the conditions of our patients were already deemed critical. But, like malevolent insurance adjusters, they were supposed to sign off that the half-dead were actually "mostly alive."
You can't get the job of teaching most of the disaffected youth of this city -- of bringing them to TRUE 12th grade reading level -- in four years. Like I said in a previous post, I've worked at schools with 99 percent graduation rates (which were not Specialized High Schools) and they had the same cruddy Regents scores and deplorable SAT scores of the kids that Tilden refused to graduate. Should any student graduate high school with only the skills to achieve 300's in all sections of the SAT? With the minimal passing rates on the Regents? Why? Why push those kids through -- what's the rush to send them out virtually ignorant into "the global marketplace." Remember, you get 200 points on the SAT just for writing your name.... The GED is a 9th grade level test. And it will be hard for these kids to pass that too, en masse.
It will take a Supreme Court case to change this, but it's not my point here. I'm much too sad for a point. My guess is Manhattan Comprehensive will take a case to the Supreme Court if they threaten to close it. God bless Howard Friedman's luck and give him more of it. The sad thing is, the case will be for a 19 year old girl from Chechnya who is sponsored by some major foundation and has been so physically and psychologically wounded in such obvious fashions that not even Clarence Thomas would deny she deserves extra time to finish her high school diploma. The kids we see are equally battered, just not in the language of international warfare. Though I wonder if you can argue that it IS international warfare when our economy is ravaged, our unions are decimated and whoever profits from wherever gets a major upper hand over the futures of kids from East Flatbush. I'm too tired to try to really make this point.
...So, when the things that didn't happen to the nice, lucky kid I had become at 26 started to happen, I started to slowly, well...disappear. Since Tilden's color is blue, lately that's the color I fade into. Only it's colorless -- I have all the blue oxford button down shirts a human being can have in all the shades, but they don't look any different, one from the other. Karen had blue eyes that lit up like lightning and I can see them. And then I close my eyes in total rage against everything, especially me.
Of all prosaic things, I'm angry and I hate...you name it, given the day of the week, the latest news, etc. I take Mike Malloy's "Have I told you how much I hate these people" which he says with gusto about Republicans, to a universal level.
For a while I was listening over and over again to Sweeney Todd. Prosaic, formulaic, but honest -- "so what" creeped right back into my vocabulary the way my favorite English Teacher warned me it would. I am one of those "so what people," Mr. Wozniak. It happened. I had no idea what you meant, but I do now. I warn my students not to be and it's not all the time.
Oh, and by the way, nice, dedicated teachers with a love of beautiful language and music are not supposed to feel they have to kill themselves and then actually do it because they have a horrible disease that was then being ignored by a maniac Republican White House. Whether I was good or not, that was not supposed to happen. Mr. Wozniak was good enough on his own. Do you know what it means to let a fatherless kid follow you around desperately every day, to read the idiot kid's work no matter how stupid, and to call the idiot kid when she's in college and has this sixth sense feeling of being really worried about you and LIE successfully so she only sees later that IT WAS SO OBVIOUS you were saying goodbye in the last letter and postcard? He watched for every bump, except the wall that the plane was about to hit. Like Karen, he just turned the plane to try to get away or, at least, get the passenger away. And I flew out onto the ground, shaken to the brain, but salvageable. It took someone to tell me he committed suicide. I did a good job of fooling myself for about a month. Karen did not commit suicide, but she also missed the bump that affected HER. That one last bump. What is it, hubris? This vicious "lightness of being" crap. Mr. Wozniak needed more of it, we -- Karen and I -- needed a lot less.
I will never believe suicide is painless. How the heck can it be -- your brain is on. I don't blame him. I can't stand a kidney stone let alone what AIDS did before the wonderful world of cocktails to control it. But, what kind of nutty drive was I and the rest of the country on....? That is not a rhetorical question because we're doing it again. And we know it. We're not solving anything...
And what kind of an idiotic country, as it nears the twentieth century, had fools at the helm. Ronald Reagan was a professional fool. A court jester. Literally -- that's what a "B Movie" actor is.
We failed a generation of gay men, but that story has long been told...
What is it I feel...It's just there, like a literal grey film, a residue. The distrust and the destruction of what is hopeful. It lingers. My job this week is to exorcise it. To find a way to live in which it doesn't settle. To begin to, anyway. I can feel it piling up on my nerves like dust, making it harder to feel anything.
As my therapist says, "Who knows" really what anyone or anything will be in the future. And since it's likely to come, best to try to work on making it happy.
I look at my cats who must find me a puzzle -- they understand me completely, but must wonder why I have no fur, why I am so vulnerably built. And I wonder if that is my relationship to god -- I understand some of what she might be, but cannot fully grasp her. There is hope in that. There is hope in the limits of my logic. And I remember Karen yelling at me in the car for having no faith.
If I can just feel it more. Who knows? Is "Who knows?" better than "So what."? I hope so.
And before I forget, I know how completely and brazenly I steal from Jonathan Levy's rhythms when I speak and write. The only person I know who has ever explained why I so inhaled them is Michael Chabon in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh where the central character talks about stealing other people's characteristics so that you would never really lose them. Even before this onslaught of things that don't make sense, people had tended to disappear on me and me from them for a lot of different reasons. Unfortunately, this theft is not for me, like it is for Chabon's character, a substitute for being more around the person I've stolen from or being more in whatever my own voice is. It's a comfort and it has become what I call it to people who don't know who I'm really referring to -- my self-adopted step-father's voice. Getting to feel like you had a father when you didn't is an amazing gift and, in this case, it also came with a very late and necessary shot of morality. At around 26. Truthfully, what is "me" is mostly a punk-kid. I do try to let the punk out in an effort to not steal so much. And that's why this is probably not such a great piece of writing....but I am and have been carving my own voice somewhat more and more with a better model than I had before 26. I'm still a lucky kid, in many respects, and I know that, too. I just don't get it -- I have luck where I haven't earned it and disaster where I thought I had been more careful. So, here are "the books."
Sometimes, lately, I have absolutely no interest in having any will over things. I forget appointments, I sleep through things I have been looking forward to for weeks. I can't remember where I put anything. Worse than usual on the latter.
I have tried to do what you are supposed to do, say what you are supposed to say, be where you are supposed to be for most of my life after the age of 26. In graduate school, the reality that what I did was not being filmed for play on prime time or in independent movie houses was brought home to me. Students are who I was when I wanted to be all the things I wanted to be and expected that I could be. It's my job to make that closer to reality. And, people really have schedules, responsibilities and their own tragedies. It was time to say what I meant. To "be the thing" as another friend says.
So I mostly did. And there was a grand logic to things for once. I went to bed at 11, got up at 6, was at my office by 7am. I became what a friend called, "dutiful". Whenever I was needed to be there, that's when I was going to be there...mostly. I took on too much, got lost in a lot of dreaming and didn't often know how much work I really needed to do to accomplish what I had just said I would. But, there was going to be a will for most of the ways I felt I had to create. If I had to write and print out letters at 2am, then that's when it had to be done. I made it work.
But my "tin tooth" to steal from Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift was an innate need for there to be some sort of reciprocal feeling in exchange for this. I was good many, many times to try to win affections of many different kinds. I wanted to be good because I loved and wanted to be loved.
The kid my grandmother said "would have a dirty end" had been banished because I was devoted...I was there. I loved somebody and stood behind them, in front of them, next to them --was as near as I thought I could be, let someone amazing "get close" to me. I told the truth, but I tried very much not to hurt anyone. I got better at that. At first, I cared more about being truthful, about the sense something made in my head, than being careful about how and why and when I said things but by the time I was 36 or so I was better at it.
My grandmother cursed me because I fought for my freedom to leave home and not be the appendage of my mother's perversity. She thought I was born to sustain my mother the way she died to do that very thing. On my watch, the new "kid," the girl who found a way to work three jobs to loan people money, the girl who went back and forth and back and forth to help a friend go forward, the girl who said, "you're right, I'm an idea. The word needs to become flesh" and finally made a move...BAD THINGS JUST DIDN'T HAPPEN ON MY WATCH. I got the job, got the extension, got the cash, got whatever, somehow, someway, I always pulled out of trouble. If nothing else, the girl in me surfaced and just pleaded and I got the special paper, the copies in miraculous time, the award for a friend, that piece of research that was elusive, the phone call with the right person. I even found THE PERFECT SCHOOL for the over-aged, under-credited and sometimes zealously overwrought or just over-tired. God laughed at me, but she didn't hurt me. She seemed to be even deciding that, like for Frank O'Hara, the sun would finally talk to me -- I had a love, a soulmate. And then it all ... the mistakes of the toothfilled grinning kid hung like a chain around my neck. Bad mixed metaphor, but that's what it felt/feels like. Like the mark of Cain. It's not "why me?" It's "why now?" It's "why?" And it's still, "You can't be serious, I'm going to wake up, right." But, I can't sleep much to begin with. When I walk into Tilden, gloriously nice as most of the people are, I know it is 2009 and something terrible has happened. It's backwards. I had a soulmate I could talk to, friends I could talk to and a principal who knew me like a mother is supposed to. We didn't buy into bullshit -- collectively. We spoke freely and we acted freely. We. "We". I don't include the last two years of Brooklyn Comprehensive -- or the times I was more of a blithering idiot than usual, generally. Remarkably, for a set of human beings on task to help kids, and in Karen's and my case as two people trying to love, destruction of the individual was very minimal overall. Which is why it absolutely irks me that Karen and the school and my principal -- they all died ON MY WATCH. As an inspired friend said about our school, "Malaika gave us the gift of letting us be ourselves." And Karen gave me that gift at home. I thought being truthful and being loyal meant these things weren't supposed to happen. I'm not being foolish -- it's common sense.
Let me give that some perspective:
I have spent almost 17 years walking through dangerous neighborhoods at dangerous times on dangerous subway lines. Karen worried about this a lot, and sometimes she went to pick me up because of it. But, nevertheless, I sometimes walked through places I'd rather not admit to at 2am, got off at even worse places than where I started, while being short, fat, white, female and obviously carrying an expensive backpack with a laptop in it.
I also believed that, if you really could die just because your engine couldn't get gas at the moment from a clog or you mis-calculated by a gallon because you had a really good dinner and you didn't give this the normal second-thought you would have or you had what you thought you needed and it was wrong -- if a half gallon of gas can be the measure of a person's life-- I never would've believed that letting these confounded cessnas in the air would've been allowed. Period. Think about it. Karen had to wear, and did, a helmet while riding a street-worthy bike through NYC. No one in their right minds would ride a bike whose tires could give out on the drop of a dime for no apparent reason, or could give out for good reason and throw you into the nearest building. No one would buy that bike and ride it through a park. But,we let people go up thousands of feet without airbags and without the contraption that makes the plane into a veritable parachute -- breaking the plane, but saving your life. That makes no sense. Less sense than the fact that I have ridden trains home at 2am from Brooklyn's version of Gaza and lived.
Only in that awful movie, The Unbearable Lightness of Being do people die at a height -- in a moment of true happiness. I'm sorry, I hate that kind of mystical bullshit, too. When you're happy and you know it, you aren't supposed to let the f'ing car flip over. You're supposed to be a little bit more careful about the f'ing gas tank. And for god's sake, people are supposed to rally around a place that helped them when no one else would. They are supposed to say SOMETHING. And we weren't supposed to turn into vile animals -- all of us -- in those last two years, all out of fear and a need to prove points. Everything was still in our hands, all we had to do was say what we meant, tell the truth, "be the thing". And we slipped. I slipped, anyway. That makes me the most reprehensible person in Karen's life and I know it. I know it now because of how badly I have slipped also since she died into a bilious sloth. Not the most profound of the type, but nevertheless, not even remotely close to who I was before Sept 2, 2005. Two different people. And even the better one was, it turns out, awful.
I failed. I failed as a guardian of love, honor and respect. There is no way to deny that. I had a sense something bad was going to happen that night and I didn't say anything. I let the vinegar of a bit of anger and fear of being thought possessive settle onto what I had refined into a pretty good nervous system. I let myself nearly get my FRIENDS in trouble, people I knew since before I was 26, out of reckless despair. How can so much horror creep into something beautiful in a moment? I know, I know, they were having so much fun and so into the event that they missed the bump. That's idiotic. That's irresponsible. And I let it happen. All that night that Karen died Michael and Sharon kept asking me if I wasn't afraid of her crashing. They wouldn't stop. And I thought, "of course she won't crash. She told me the plane can glide for miles. People land planes in baseball fields if they need to...for god's sake she's KAREN. I have loved her too much for anything to possibly happen. " I know. I really DID THINK it could NEVER happen to us because we were too good, too nice and what was it? A little f'ing flight to nowhere.
F-- Kundera and his damned book and the movie. That's what I abhorred, I thought. I was supposed to be way too grounded and practical for that kind of B.S. and it walked right in and stole everything. "Unbearable" is definitely the right word. "Unfathomable." "Vicious."
Precocious, precious, stupid. That's what I was. With the most valuable things in the world. The only reason I am good at keeping my cats alive is that my mother was good at crisis healthcare. Not the everyday living -- she took overall terrible care of maintaining me, but it's little work to do that for Larry and Bernie and they are, in my mind, children to be watched over. My mother was excellent, however, when I was violently ill. She knew how to push through the crowd to get the right doctor then and so, so do I. It's maybe my one skill. How to plead for my cats and my life. Good one. Really useful. So long as my life hinges on a dime like it does nowadays, I guess that's important. I am incapable of being good, perhaps because I haven't got all the skills for it. I MISS THE BUMP. I have Asperger's Syndrome. I get lost in dreams. Maybe I can never love any human at all. My love turned out to be the most worthless thing and I dedicated most of my energies to living by that feeling and being loyal to it. And I was worthless, nonetheless. Worthless.
All of us -- Karen, me, the faculty and students at Brooklyn Comprehensive -- we were good. We had all made mistakes, but we were all making amends. Nothing made sense, nothing has made complete sense since Sept 2, 2005 and, doubly so, since Feb. 2006 when it was announced that Brooklyn Comprehensive would close. You decide to fund a school, you foster it, and when it's clear what needs to be done to take it to greatness, you close it and make a commitment to another school which opens with a violent incident, has a student and faculty strike and will take years to learn what we already knew. I'll take the bet -- in less than 17 years, the DOE will close the school which succeeded us. I give them ten years. By then, the argument will have been made that ALL overage and under-credited students should be doing GED programs virtually through the public libraries. And why not? Once you argue that you shouldn't be offering HS diplomas to the 18-21 year olds, it follows that soon the 16 year olds will also be asked to consider the virtues of just taking a test and saving the DOE the cost of actually re-teaching them.
The faculty at Tilden also have every right to feel outraged about their closing, the ridiculousness of it perhaps, epitomized by my being placed there out of nowhere, from my closing madness into theirs. They were another kind of good school -- they took the stand that the kids they sent to us needed more time. If they hadn't been so bold and stuck to their standards, they would've pushed those kids through without their ever having had the chance BCNHS was able to give them to shape up and really understand their work. It's a good school which DOESN'T graduate kids before they're ready. They ran a good shop. Too good. You're not supposed to be that honest. We could be that honest because we were the MASH unit and the conditions of our patients were already deemed critical. But, like malevolent insurance adjusters, they were supposed to sign off that the half-dead were actually "mostly alive."
You can't get the job of teaching most of the disaffected youth of this city -- of bringing them to TRUE 12th grade reading level -- in four years. Like I said in a previous post, I've worked at schools with 99 percent graduation rates (which were not Specialized High Schools) and they had the same cruddy Regents scores and deplorable SAT scores of the kids that Tilden refused to graduate. Should any student graduate high school with only the skills to achieve 300's in all sections of the SAT? With the minimal passing rates on the Regents? Why? Why push those kids through -- what's the rush to send them out virtually ignorant into "the global marketplace." Remember, you get 200 points on the SAT just for writing your name.... The GED is a 9th grade level test. And it will be hard for these kids to pass that too, en masse.
It will take a Supreme Court case to change this, but it's not my point here. I'm much too sad for a point. My guess is Manhattan Comprehensive will take a case to the Supreme Court if they threaten to close it. God bless Howard Friedman's luck and give him more of it. The sad thing is, the case will be for a 19 year old girl from Chechnya who is sponsored by some major foundation and has been so physically and psychologically wounded in such obvious fashions that not even Clarence Thomas would deny she deserves extra time to finish her high school diploma. The kids we see are equally battered, just not in the language of international warfare. Though I wonder if you can argue that it IS international warfare when our economy is ravaged, our unions are decimated and whoever profits from wherever gets a major upper hand over the futures of kids from East Flatbush. I'm too tired to try to really make this point.
...So, when the things that didn't happen to the nice, lucky kid I had become at 26 started to happen, I started to slowly, well...disappear. Since Tilden's color is blue, lately that's the color I fade into. Only it's colorless -- I have all the blue oxford button down shirts a human being can have in all the shades, but they don't look any different, one from the other. Karen had blue eyes that lit up like lightning and I can see them. And then I close my eyes in total rage against everything, especially me.
Of all prosaic things, I'm angry and I hate...you name it, given the day of the week, the latest news, etc. I take Mike Malloy's "Have I told you how much I hate these people" which he says with gusto about Republicans, to a universal level.
For a while I was listening over and over again to Sweeney Todd. Prosaic, formulaic, but honest -- "so what" creeped right back into my vocabulary the way my favorite English Teacher warned me it would. I am one of those "so what people," Mr. Wozniak. It happened. I had no idea what you meant, but I do now. I warn my students not to be and it's not all the time.
Oh, and by the way, nice, dedicated teachers with a love of beautiful language and music are not supposed to feel they have to kill themselves and then actually do it because they have a horrible disease that was then being ignored by a maniac Republican White House. Whether I was good or not, that was not supposed to happen. Mr. Wozniak was good enough on his own. Do you know what it means to let a fatherless kid follow you around desperately every day, to read the idiot kid's work no matter how stupid, and to call the idiot kid when she's in college and has this sixth sense feeling of being really worried about you and LIE successfully so she only sees later that IT WAS SO OBVIOUS you were saying goodbye in the last letter and postcard? He watched for every bump, except the wall that the plane was about to hit. Like Karen, he just turned the plane to try to get away or, at least, get the passenger away. And I flew out onto the ground, shaken to the brain, but salvageable. It took someone to tell me he committed suicide. I did a good job of fooling myself for about a month. Karen did not commit suicide, but she also missed the bump that affected HER. That one last bump. What is it, hubris? This vicious "lightness of being" crap. Mr. Wozniak needed more of it, we -- Karen and I -- needed a lot less.
I will never believe suicide is painless. How the heck can it be -- your brain is on. I don't blame him. I can't stand a kidney stone let alone what AIDS did before the wonderful world of cocktails to control it. But, what kind of nutty drive was I and the rest of the country on....? That is not a rhetorical question because we're doing it again. And we know it. We're not solving anything...
And what kind of an idiotic country, as it nears the twentieth century, had fools at the helm. Ronald Reagan was a professional fool. A court jester. Literally -- that's what a "B Movie" actor is.
We failed a generation of gay men, but that story has long been told...
What is it I feel...It's just there, like a literal grey film, a residue. The distrust and the destruction of what is hopeful. It lingers. My job this week is to exorcise it. To find a way to live in which it doesn't settle. To begin to, anyway. I can feel it piling up on my nerves like dust, making it harder to feel anything.
As my therapist says, "Who knows" really what anyone or anything will be in the future. And since it's likely to come, best to try to work on making it happy.
I look at my cats who must find me a puzzle -- they understand me completely, but must wonder why I have no fur, why I am so vulnerably built. And I wonder if that is my relationship to god -- I understand some of what she might be, but cannot fully grasp her. There is hope in that. There is hope in the limits of my logic. And I remember Karen yelling at me in the car for having no faith.
If I can just feel it more. Who knows? Is "Who knows?" better than "So what."? I hope so.
Museums
In one day, I made a lot of mistakes. Yesterday. But, today, I am back in the museum.
The Museum is what happens to a school when it starts to die.
New things happen, but the feel that things aren't meant to be touched, that you should start memorizing people and places in your body. You steal a walk, a tilt of the head. You remember a vest.
And where you would once jump in and try to fix something, you pull back. The view has been selected. The process is going to continue as is. There is a meaning to it. It is not to be interrupted.
The students complete the exhibit carefully. They go to class, mostly, they participate in events. The memories are not settled yet. It won't hit them that it was over, and that the school has closed until much later. A year or two after the school has closed and they want to look at it. When they don't have any pictures of ____. When they realize that nobody is there anymore. None of the people you thought you would tell -- when. Sure, you will stay in touch with some people. But, there are people you didn't know you needed, and people whom you don't know are traveling on your road. And teachers you didn't realize you always meant to ask something.
Mostly, the students will forget about it as they enter new places that become their old places, meet new teachers, etc.
The teachers will feel alien as soon as they get to their new places. Some will lose that feeling and some will feel .... who knows yet.
At present, I am in the Museum. Hidden in an area completely unused. The library. In here no one can see me, which is what I want. I am here with other colleagues who have learned better than I how to function within their imaginary spaces. One whistles. It's very intriguing. Like he's in a shop, in the back room, preparing the shoes, the books -- whatever he's working to create. He is immensely busy on every select project. The whistling makes him seem like he's much slower than he is. His fingers are much more nimble as he shifts, and organizes and considers. Whatever he's making, it's delicate, but important. He has classes later. There is no nervousness, just planning, plotting. An extended rehearsal. His presentation is going to be masterful. He's in love with the smallest detail of it.
It is my fault that I have never loved the individual pieces, the hinges, the smallest items. Mine have been improvisations with notes and tons of props and materials to build it with. What I have loved has been the surprises. Over time, I have controlled the variables so that we are "on task" as precisely as possible. There is still a wild energy I try to maintain -- a tangential question or one at the center which is meant to set off fireworks. Not that it always does.
So, for me the act itself is how I prepare for the act itself. I write the sketch, I select everything,
but like writing, teaching is also about re-teaching. For me. Some people are directors and playwrights in their classes. The classroom is the one place where I like to be an actor among actors. Where I feel, oddly, neurotypical. It's also been my source of acceptance for going on 17 years. Maybe it's that we're having some degree of fun or that because we're all working on something...for whatever the reason, my oddnesses just blend in with the activity. No one who has been my student really ever asks me why I dress the way I do, or much about how I live my life. It's patently apparent to them, somehow.
In the Museum, improvisation is much harder and I am much more focused on steps. I'm teaching my students steps of a routine to get through a number. The number has been prescribed and will not change.
We are enacting our various kinds of endings. My job is to help the kids exit, anyway that's safe. The simplest way to pass the Regents, some quick rules for how to handle yourself in college and then they have to go out the door and, as I say to them every day, I can't save them anymore. I can't give them extra time.
I must admit it is equally devastating to both know you are powerless and to know your students are being sent in harm's way. It was my last "power" in the super-hero world that I live in sometimes. I could do something about one kind of mess. A little bit. I could protect one or two kids the way my teachers had protected and defended me. I could say, "No, you are not going to take this bright kid and tell him/her he's nothing just because he didn't follow all the rules. Some of the rules are actually worthless. He/she has his/her own system of measuring worth and he/she can defend it in writing like a budding thinker. Move out of the way."
Now, I give them the rules, teach them to follow and fight later. If there's time.
The Museum is what happens to a school when it starts to die.
New things happen, but the feel that things aren't meant to be touched, that you should start memorizing people and places in your body. You steal a walk, a tilt of the head. You remember a vest.
And where you would once jump in and try to fix something, you pull back. The view has been selected. The process is going to continue as is. There is a meaning to it. It is not to be interrupted.
The students complete the exhibit carefully. They go to class, mostly, they participate in events. The memories are not settled yet. It won't hit them that it was over, and that the school has closed until much later. A year or two after the school has closed and they want to look at it. When they don't have any pictures of ____. When they realize that nobody is there anymore. None of the people you thought you would tell -- when. Sure, you will stay in touch with some people. But, there are people you didn't know you needed, and people whom you don't know are traveling on your road. And teachers you didn't realize you always meant to ask something.
Mostly, the students will forget about it as they enter new places that become their old places, meet new teachers, etc.
The teachers will feel alien as soon as they get to their new places. Some will lose that feeling and some will feel .... who knows yet.
At present, I am in the Museum. Hidden in an area completely unused. The library. In here no one can see me, which is what I want. I am here with other colleagues who have learned better than I how to function within their imaginary spaces. One whistles. It's very intriguing. Like he's in a shop, in the back room, preparing the shoes, the books -- whatever he's working to create. He is immensely busy on every select project. The whistling makes him seem like he's much slower than he is. His fingers are much more nimble as he shifts, and organizes and considers. Whatever he's making, it's delicate, but important. He has classes later. There is no nervousness, just planning, plotting. An extended rehearsal. His presentation is going to be masterful. He's in love with the smallest detail of it.
It is my fault that I have never loved the individual pieces, the hinges, the smallest items. Mine have been improvisations with notes and tons of props and materials to build it with. What I have loved has been the surprises. Over time, I have controlled the variables so that we are "on task" as precisely as possible. There is still a wild energy I try to maintain -- a tangential question or one at the center which is meant to set off fireworks. Not that it always does.
So, for me the act itself is how I prepare for the act itself. I write the sketch, I select everything,
but like writing, teaching is also about re-teaching. For me. Some people are directors and playwrights in their classes. The classroom is the one place where I like to be an actor among actors. Where I feel, oddly, neurotypical. It's also been my source of acceptance for going on 17 years. Maybe it's that we're having some degree of fun or that because we're all working on something...for whatever the reason, my oddnesses just blend in with the activity. No one who has been my student really ever asks me why I dress the way I do, or much about how I live my life. It's patently apparent to them, somehow.
In the Museum, improvisation is much harder and I am much more focused on steps. I'm teaching my students steps of a routine to get through a number. The number has been prescribed and will not change.
We are enacting our various kinds of endings. My job is to help the kids exit, anyway that's safe. The simplest way to pass the Regents, some quick rules for how to handle yourself in college and then they have to go out the door and, as I say to them every day, I can't save them anymore. I can't give them extra time.
I must admit it is equally devastating to both know you are powerless and to know your students are being sent in harm's way. It was my last "power" in the super-hero world that I live in sometimes. I could do something about one kind of mess. A little bit. I could protect one or two kids the way my teachers had protected and defended me. I could say, "No, you are not going to take this bright kid and tell him/her he's nothing just because he didn't follow all the rules. Some of the rules are actually worthless. He/she has his/her own system of measuring worth and he/she can defend it in writing like a budding thinker. Move out of the way."
Now, I give them the rules, teach them to follow and fight later. If there's time.
12 February, 2009
Impossible Sleeplessness
From approximately 4pm until 8pm, I can sleep. I eat a heavy meal and I sleep quickly. After this, nothing.
08 February, 2009
Let Teachers Remain Blue Collar
I must confess Sharon Pearce mentioned this idea years ago and I didn't understand its significance. She said she wanted to be blue collar and I didn't get it. I do now.
The 100,000 dollar teacher is a bad idea.
It's not that teachers aren't worth that much, but the job is not, by its nature, one which provides monetary profit to anyone. We provide a free service. Traditionally, we have exchanged security for high wages, with both sides benefitting from the long-term commitment which resulted.
Teachers are artisans at least, artists at best. But, by the nature of my profession, I don't give concerts that sell for 150 dollars a ticket. I give my art in exchange for security, pension and benefits. I am part of a system which does not require those who receive my art to pay for it.
A doctor working in such a system would not make as much as one who decided to work in the free market. Nor would anyone who did.
Teachers shape their art to fit a particular system and place. If we were to travel around like salespeople and try to sell our art, some of us would make millions, others of us would die. Like with any group of artists, among those who could not be appreciated in their own time would be geniuses. Only they would have no students to leave behind to appreciate in value and pay royalties to their children.
In the spirit of a nation which wants an active citizenry, the teaching profession has shaped itself to serve and not to sell.
We should not, however, demand huge raises and definitely not exchange our benefits for them. We are artists who cannot exist without the system in which we work. In pulling ourselves out of "the market" we are allowed to present our lessons objectively and fairly. We are meant to be outside of the "professional" world. We are blue collar.
In tempting us with raises in exchange for giving up a part of our security, Mayor Bloomberg has threatened the very nature of the profession. What's to stop me from getting Apple or Pepsi to sponsor my work and to brand my lessons with their products? In proposing the idea of providing incentives to teachers whose students have the best scores, he encourages teachers to do what other professionals would do in the market place -- to limit their risk, to skew their work toward that which will provide them the most profit and to eliminate anything which might hinder them from succeeding. That kid in the back who just doesn't do well on tests, hmmmn..... Why don't I encourage his parents to put him in another school, to test him for special needs, and why don't I make him so miserable that he begs the program office to remove him from my class. Or, why don't I push harder on the special needs issue, get him more time, someone to read to him, etc. Anything that can get me the extra cash even if it's not right for the student.
Most teachers I know did not vote for this contract. People say that it was the younger teachers and the retiring teachers who pushed it through. I understand why both sides would want more money, but THAT is not in the best interest of kids. Frankly, I have colleagues who would NOT have retired had they been given positions through the seniority system. Instead, we are paying those people their pensions when they could be teaching our kids.
And anyone who enters the teaching profession expecting a lot of money should leave before they get tenured. I lived in shares in my first teaching years and another young colleague and I used to live on the 25 cent granola bars they sold at the local bodega. That's what you get for also having health insurance, a prescription plan, etc. If you wanted to make a lot of money in your twenties and early thirties you should've done something else.
Teachers should earn a fair and decent wage -- one which helps them to continue study and to survive in a way which does not leave them ragged. We should be solidly middle-class. And we should get overtime like members of other unions.
We are not professionals in the capitalist sense. I can't make any money for my school with the work I do. (Sure, I could write grant proposals, but that's not like earning a profit for selling Wi-Fi.) And I shouldn't. I should be allowed to stay out of the market so that I can teach my students honestly.
I shouldn't wear a suit. If I had wanted to wear a suit, I would've gone to law school.
I wanted to engage in the exchange of knowledge and to help my students develop as thinkers. That doesn't require that I wear Armani. I need to be clothed. As someone outside the market, I ought to be allowed to present a non-conformist image.
We did not form a union to make teachers able to compete with MBA's. We did so that teachers could earn a fair wage, have security and good benefits.
Let's return to the contract prior to this one. Let's give back the raises, get back seniority and everything else we gave up.
I would be giving up about 20,000 dollars. I am sure that if we all gave back the raises, the city would not need to lay people off.
I know. I don't have children, I don't own any property and I still dress like a college student. I eat like a high school student.
But, my classes run really well when I feel secure. The more worried I am about surviving, not buying new clothes, but paying the rent, the less I am able to function. This would be true of any sane person.
My last salary before this contract was a fair wage for me so long as I have seniority, tenure and all my health benefits.
Here you will argue that a lot of teachers were placed in positions through seniority which were not good fits. Bad fits happen even when you go through extensive hiring processes. In "the market" people work to make themselves fit. So do civil servants.
I was once bumped from a position which I thought was mine. A teacher from Brooklyn Tech took my position at Brooklyn Comprehensive. Therefore, I found myself working at The Choir Academy of Harlem -- a school in which students wore uniforms and which had a very conservative culture. My principal knew I wasn't exactly the right fit ideologically for the school, but he hired me because I was intelligent enough to, as he put it, "interview well". I spent four years at that school and learned a lot and the students were well served. I asked to leave so I could go to Brooklyn Comprehensive once the teacher who took my position retired, and had to strike a bargain in which I taught at Choir during the day and, per session, at Brooklyn Comprehensive at night in order to leave. That mean travelling from Harlem to the junction of Brooklyn every night for a term.
You see, however, that in striking that bargain I was able, even under the old system of seniority, to find the fit I wanted. Smart principals and teachers HAVE ALWAYS found ways to get the faculty whom they wanted. At one school, my principal excessed an art teacher she didn't like, then a few months later, "found the funds" to hire an art teacher she did like who has outlived her tenure. Even in the world of seniority, people have freedom and options. They also have the security to try to stay and grow into a position and to remain objective and true to the students throughout. Principals often traded teachers who were better fits for each others' school. We got a great teacher at Choir that way.
You think that doesn't happen "in the market". It happens in "Re-org's" all the time. Sure, some people are fired -- but this is not a for-profit profession. And incompetent teachers can be removed through the 3020a process. Meanwhile, teachers remain objective servants to their students. If the individuals who became principals really wanted to have the freedom of the marketplace they should've taken jobs which carried that risk. No company would accept 3 percent growth (which is what Bloomberg says has happened in our test results) over a two year period -- let alone this Mayor's term. Everyone is playing pretend financial genius in a world where that's the last thing that matters. The students matter, and therefore, so does making sure that we retain teachers who are experienced, highly skilled and who are not looking to make a profit off of the kids. Job security makes people objective and secure.
My mother was a dental assistant who workd for The Dept. of Health of New York City. She made very little money. Without my grandmother's and my uncle's assistance, I would never have had the life I did. However, my mother's benefits made it possible to get her hip surgery done at Lennox Hill Hospital. With a few exceptions, she can afford any medicine she needs. Had she worked in the private sector she would've made more money but not had these benefits. She also wouldn't have been able to complain when a dentist had treated a patient badly or done poor work. My mother is an annoying human being to know on many levels, but she was a very good patient advocate in her position. She got furious when shoddy work was done on the children she served and she raised hell about it. Once, a dentist held a kid's head still and was about to drill, which could've killed the child, who was pushing back as hard as a five year old could. First, my mother stopped the dentist. Then she reported that dentist. That dentist was fired. And yes, it was a new dentist at the clinic who had no experience with children who did this. Having an assistant with (at that time) over 15 years of experience was crucial in keeping that child from harm. But, that never should have happened. My mother still remembers how long it took to calm that child down, and that incident happened 25 years ago. My guess is the adult that child grew up to be also remembers it.
I don't want to make the low wages my mother did, and to be fair, I have more responsibilities and much more education.
My point is, though, that we are both civil servants, both blue collar.
We don't need to drive BMW's. We need security so that we can serve the city without prejudice. We not only need to be paid overtime, but we need to be reimbursed FULLY for the items we buy in order to do our jobs. If you look at my salary and divide it by the number of hours I really work, it comes down to something like 12 dollars an hour. I'm including time I grade, research, shop for my class, in addition to my classes and the times in which I have given up lunches and preps to work with students.
I don't want to be paid entirely per hour because that would cost the city much more money.
What I want is a decent, honorable wage. I do not want to make an extravagant living -- I just want security in exchange for not earning one.
I'll go back to my previous salary. It's a lot better than what I'll get if I lose my job and have to work for a private non-profit. I suggest my colleagues push our UFT president to return the mistake in funding allocation made in the last contract and return to us the seniority and security which we truly need.
Really, if this is about a funding crisis, the sensible thing to do is take a pay cut and get back the intangibles -- the seniority -- things that don't cost the city anything extra, but provide me with good faith from my employer. Cut my salary back to the last contract. You can still reform the schools -- there are systems in place for firing incompetent teachers and most of the new schools which have opened were around during the last contract. And, it stands to reason, if I give back salary you can open MORE new programs, not fewer. All I want is my seniority back. It's fair reward for the 16 years of service I have put in below market value, at the very least.
The city's roster of teachers is also bloated with new, untenured faculty who were mistakenly hired for positions which do not exist. We now have Teaching Fellows whose masters degrees were paid for by the city, but for whom there is no work. They were hired in the hopes that the new contract would push experienced teachers out. They were hired with the idea that they would take all of the new positions opening and the experienced teachers would hang in ATR limbo. They had no idea of this, I'm sure, although they were trained in a culture that was anti-teacher. Why anyone would take a job where you are taught that the older and more experienced you get, the less you are to be trusted is beyond me. In fairness, since they have not yet earned the right to security, if more cuts need to be made, untenured faculty ought to be cut. The Yankees couldn't keep Shelley Duncan on the roster once Giambi came back. And think about it, he didn't really make that consistent a contribution. Giambi often did and he had a huge salary to earn. Shelley Duncan was working much harder than his minor league contract paid for...and most of the time he was really only up to his contract. It was a surprise when he played well.
I am not Jason Giambi. I have to work WITH plantar fascitis. I also can't take sponsorships from companies and, if I could grow a moustache, absolutely no one would care.
So pay me blue collar rates and give me blue collar protection. It'll save us all a lot of misplaced energy.
OR, give me the same blue collar benefits Corrections Officers get. Let me retire at 20/40. A lot more people will retire at that deal than 25/55 because those of us in our 40's can find non-profit jobs to supplement our pensions and re-train a lot more easily than people 55 and over. Ironically, the more senior teachers are more likely to stay so that they can have the best pension they can added to social security. Offer a chance for those of us to leave with our pensions now who, under current conditions, see lack of job security and worse ahead of us, and we are bound to go. I'd rather not spend the next 15 years fighting for my life against market economics. My union ought to see the virtue of that, at the very least.
The 100,000 dollar teacher is a bad idea.
It's not that teachers aren't worth that much, but the job is not, by its nature, one which provides monetary profit to anyone. We provide a free service. Traditionally, we have exchanged security for high wages, with both sides benefitting from the long-term commitment which resulted.
Teachers are artisans at least, artists at best. But, by the nature of my profession, I don't give concerts that sell for 150 dollars a ticket. I give my art in exchange for security, pension and benefits. I am part of a system which does not require those who receive my art to pay for it.
A doctor working in such a system would not make as much as one who decided to work in the free market. Nor would anyone who did.
Teachers shape their art to fit a particular system and place. If we were to travel around like salespeople and try to sell our art, some of us would make millions, others of us would die. Like with any group of artists, among those who could not be appreciated in their own time would be geniuses. Only they would have no students to leave behind to appreciate in value and pay royalties to their children.
In the spirit of a nation which wants an active citizenry, the teaching profession has shaped itself to serve and not to sell.
We should not, however, demand huge raises and definitely not exchange our benefits for them. We are artists who cannot exist without the system in which we work. In pulling ourselves out of "the market" we are allowed to present our lessons objectively and fairly. We are meant to be outside of the "professional" world. We are blue collar.
In tempting us with raises in exchange for giving up a part of our security, Mayor Bloomberg has threatened the very nature of the profession. What's to stop me from getting Apple or Pepsi to sponsor my work and to brand my lessons with their products? In proposing the idea of providing incentives to teachers whose students have the best scores, he encourages teachers to do what other professionals would do in the market place -- to limit their risk, to skew their work toward that which will provide them the most profit and to eliminate anything which might hinder them from succeeding. That kid in the back who just doesn't do well on tests, hmmmn..... Why don't I encourage his parents to put him in another school, to test him for special needs, and why don't I make him so miserable that he begs the program office to remove him from my class. Or, why don't I push harder on the special needs issue, get him more time, someone to read to him, etc. Anything that can get me the extra cash even if it's not right for the student.
Most teachers I know did not vote for this contract. People say that it was the younger teachers and the retiring teachers who pushed it through. I understand why both sides would want more money, but THAT is not in the best interest of kids. Frankly, I have colleagues who would NOT have retired had they been given positions through the seniority system. Instead, we are paying those people their pensions when they could be teaching our kids.
And anyone who enters the teaching profession expecting a lot of money should leave before they get tenured. I lived in shares in my first teaching years and another young colleague and I used to live on the 25 cent granola bars they sold at the local bodega. That's what you get for also having health insurance, a prescription plan, etc. If you wanted to make a lot of money in your twenties and early thirties you should've done something else.
Teachers should earn a fair and decent wage -- one which helps them to continue study and to survive in a way which does not leave them ragged. We should be solidly middle-class. And we should get overtime like members of other unions.
We are not professionals in the capitalist sense. I can't make any money for my school with the work I do. (Sure, I could write grant proposals, but that's not like earning a profit for selling Wi-Fi.) And I shouldn't. I should be allowed to stay out of the market so that I can teach my students honestly.
I shouldn't wear a suit. If I had wanted to wear a suit, I would've gone to law school.
I wanted to engage in the exchange of knowledge and to help my students develop as thinkers. That doesn't require that I wear Armani. I need to be clothed. As someone outside the market, I ought to be allowed to present a non-conformist image.
We did not form a union to make teachers able to compete with MBA's. We did so that teachers could earn a fair wage, have security and good benefits.
Let's return to the contract prior to this one. Let's give back the raises, get back seniority and everything else we gave up.
I would be giving up about 20,000 dollars. I am sure that if we all gave back the raises, the city would not need to lay people off.
I know. I don't have children, I don't own any property and I still dress like a college student. I eat like a high school student.
But, my classes run really well when I feel secure. The more worried I am about surviving, not buying new clothes, but paying the rent, the less I am able to function. This would be true of any sane person.
My last salary before this contract was a fair wage for me so long as I have seniority, tenure and all my health benefits.
Here you will argue that a lot of teachers were placed in positions through seniority which were not good fits. Bad fits happen even when you go through extensive hiring processes. In "the market" people work to make themselves fit. So do civil servants.
I was once bumped from a position which I thought was mine. A teacher from Brooklyn Tech took my position at Brooklyn Comprehensive. Therefore, I found myself working at The Choir Academy of Harlem -- a school in which students wore uniforms and which had a very conservative culture. My principal knew I wasn't exactly the right fit ideologically for the school, but he hired me because I was intelligent enough to, as he put it, "interview well". I spent four years at that school and learned a lot and the students were well served. I asked to leave so I could go to Brooklyn Comprehensive once the teacher who took my position retired, and had to strike a bargain in which I taught at Choir during the day and, per session, at Brooklyn Comprehensive at night in order to leave. That mean travelling from Harlem to the junction of Brooklyn every night for a term.
You see, however, that in striking that bargain I was able, even under the old system of seniority, to find the fit I wanted. Smart principals and teachers HAVE ALWAYS found ways to get the faculty whom they wanted. At one school, my principal excessed an art teacher she didn't like, then a few months later, "found the funds" to hire an art teacher she did like who has outlived her tenure. Even in the world of seniority, people have freedom and options. They also have the security to try to stay and grow into a position and to remain objective and true to the students throughout. Principals often traded teachers who were better fits for each others' school. We got a great teacher at Choir that way.
You think that doesn't happen "in the market". It happens in "Re-org's" all the time. Sure, some people are fired -- but this is not a for-profit profession. And incompetent teachers can be removed through the 3020a process. Meanwhile, teachers remain objective servants to their students. If the individuals who became principals really wanted to have the freedom of the marketplace they should've taken jobs which carried that risk. No company would accept 3 percent growth (which is what Bloomberg says has happened in our test results) over a two year period -- let alone this Mayor's term. Everyone is playing pretend financial genius in a world where that's the last thing that matters. The students matter, and therefore, so does making sure that we retain teachers who are experienced, highly skilled and who are not looking to make a profit off of the kids. Job security makes people objective and secure.
My mother was a dental assistant who workd for The Dept. of Health of New York City. She made very little money. Without my grandmother's and my uncle's assistance, I would never have had the life I did. However, my mother's benefits made it possible to get her hip surgery done at Lennox Hill Hospital. With a few exceptions, she can afford any medicine she needs. Had she worked in the private sector she would've made more money but not had these benefits. She also wouldn't have been able to complain when a dentist had treated a patient badly or done poor work. My mother is an annoying human being to know on many levels, but she was a very good patient advocate in her position. She got furious when shoddy work was done on the children she served and she raised hell about it. Once, a dentist held a kid's head still and was about to drill, which could've killed the child, who was pushing back as hard as a five year old could. First, my mother stopped the dentist. Then she reported that dentist. That dentist was fired. And yes, it was a new dentist at the clinic who had no experience with children who did this. Having an assistant with (at that time) over 15 years of experience was crucial in keeping that child from harm. But, that never should have happened. My mother still remembers how long it took to calm that child down, and that incident happened 25 years ago. My guess is the adult that child grew up to be also remembers it.
I don't want to make the low wages my mother did, and to be fair, I have more responsibilities and much more education.
My point is, though, that we are both civil servants, both blue collar.
We don't need to drive BMW's. We need security so that we can serve the city without prejudice. We not only need to be paid overtime, but we need to be reimbursed FULLY for the items we buy in order to do our jobs. If you look at my salary and divide it by the number of hours I really work, it comes down to something like 12 dollars an hour. I'm including time I grade, research, shop for my class, in addition to my classes and the times in which I have given up lunches and preps to work with students.
I don't want to be paid entirely per hour because that would cost the city much more money.
What I want is a decent, honorable wage. I do not want to make an extravagant living -- I just want security in exchange for not earning one.
I'll go back to my previous salary. It's a lot better than what I'll get if I lose my job and have to work for a private non-profit. I suggest my colleagues push our UFT president to return the mistake in funding allocation made in the last contract and return to us the seniority and security which we truly need.
Really, if this is about a funding crisis, the sensible thing to do is take a pay cut and get back the intangibles -- the seniority -- things that don't cost the city anything extra, but provide me with good faith from my employer. Cut my salary back to the last contract. You can still reform the schools -- there are systems in place for firing incompetent teachers and most of the new schools which have opened were around during the last contract. And, it stands to reason, if I give back salary you can open MORE new programs, not fewer. All I want is my seniority back. It's fair reward for the 16 years of service I have put in below market value, at the very least.
The city's roster of teachers is also bloated with new, untenured faculty who were mistakenly hired for positions which do not exist. We now have Teaching Fellows whose masters degrees were paid for by the city, but for whom there is no work. They were hired in the hopes that the new contract would push experienced teachers out. They were hired with the idea that they would take all of the new positions opening and the experienced teachers would hang in ATR limbo. They had no idea of this, I'm sure, although they were trained in a culture that was anti-teacher. Why anyone would take a job where you are taught that the older and more experienced you get, the less you are to be trusted is beyond me. In fairness, since they have not yet earned the right to security, if more cuts need to be made, untenured faculty ought to be cut. The Yankees couldn't keep Shelley Duncan on the roster once Giambi came back. And think about it, he didn't really make that consistent a contribution. Giambi often did and he had a huge salary to earn. Shelley Duncan was working much harder than his minor league contract paid for...and most of the time he was really only up to his contract. It was a surprise when he played well.
I am not Jason Giambi. I have to work WITH plantar fascitis. I also can't take sponsorships from companies and, if I could grow a moustache, absolutely no one would care.
So pay me blue collar rates and give me blue collar protection. It'll save us all a lot of misplaced energy.
OR, give me the same blue collar benefits Corrections Officers get. Let me retire at 20/40. A lot more people will retire at that deal than 25/55 because those of us in our 40's can find non-profit jobs to supplement our pensions and re-train a lot more easily than people 55 and over. Ironically, the more senior teachers are more likely to stay so that they can have the best pension they can added to social security. Offer a chance for those of us to leave with our pensions now who, under current conditions, see lack of job security and worse ahead of us, and we are bound to go. I'd rather not spend the next 15 years fighting for my life against market economics. My union ought to see the virtue of that, at the very least.
Is this budget crisis being used to bust unions?
It's not just a blogger idea anymore....Rachel Maddow raised it on her recent show on MSNBC.
Six...is a little blurry as I rolled around on all my catnip toys at once
Three catnip mice, one cigar. And later, another cigar and I think there were a few fish...
I don't know why. I hogged them all. I let Bernie have one mouse. And he got two cigars of his own....
There was just something about the "Happy Birthday" feeling and the fact that I COULD hold two mice with my front paws and another with my feet while leaning on the cigar....
Happy Birthday to Brother Henry in the Sky, too! From Larry (Birthday Boy), Bernie (I had a birthday a little while ago) and mom.
Weeeeeeeeeeee!
07 February, 2009
Sunday is Six!
Is it so much different from five?
Leaping, loving, Larry Lightfoot. Larry Liebschen. Larry who makes us a family and teaches us every day.
You tell me, Larry how it feels to be SIX on Sunday.
The Myth of Graduation Rates
Dear Chancellor Klein,
I've had a very fortunate career in that I've taught predominantly at schools with high graduation rates. This has been a blessing because, in all except one very important instance, the schools' graduation rates helped secure their futures. I've also felt very good during one special night in June every year.
And I've also felt guilty.
The students I have taught, no matter whether they have been at schools with outstanding or deplorable graduation rates, have had exactly the same sets of skills. The ranges of SAT scores and Regents scores were not any better. The intensive need for remediation once New York City High School graduates reach the college level bares witness to this.
What helps a school to have a higher graduation rate with these same weak students is
a) if these students can come to school often enough to earn credit in their coursework
b) if these students will go to summer school and eek out a passing grade on the Regents
c) if there is an overall philosophy at the school which weighs effort as strongly as skill
d) if you praise and honor students with "A" averages, but SAT scores well below the national average. I never knew people scored in the 300's on sections until I worked at a school with an amazing graduation rate.
e) And this is not bad -- if you encourage all of your students to keep going in education and help show them that there is a future for them. This includes the ability to place them either in community colleges with welcoming atmospheres and/or one of the hundreds of four year colleges which accept students with score in the 300's.
I'm not ashamed of any of the work I've done, but what I'm trying to say is that students graduate because they believe in themselves and their schools accept that this self-confidence ad persistence will eventually help them to really have skills.
The schools which do not graduate students en masse are sometimes places where the teachers cannot accept that their students don't need MORE TIME to learn and are unwilling to pass them on and make them someone else's problem.
I wonder, if you asked someone teaching a Remedial English class in college how he/she felt having a dozen students from the same school who graduated on time. What would he/she think of the fact that getting the student out in four years was more important than getting them ready for college?
I've had a very fortunate career in that I've taught predominantly at schools with high graduation rates. This has been a blessing because, in all except one very important instance, the schools' graduation rates helped secure their futures. I've also felt very good during one special night in June every year.
And I've also felt guilty.
The students I have taught, no matter whether they have been at schools with outstanding or deplorable graduation rates, have had exactly the same sets of skills. The ranges of SAT scores and Regents scores were not any better. The intensive need for remediation once New York City High School graduates reach the college level bares witness to this.
What helps a school to have a higher graduation rate with these same weak students is
a) if these students can come to school often enough to earn credit in their coursework
b) if these students will go to summer school and eek out a passing grade on the Regents
c) if there is an overall philosophy at the school which weighs effort as strongly as skill
d) if you praise and honor students with "A" averages, but SAT scores well below the national average. I never knew people scored in the 300's on sections until I worked at a school with an amazing graduation rate.
e) And this is not bad -- if you encourage all of your students to keep going in education and help show them that there is a future for them. This includes the ability to place them either in community colleges with welcoming atmospheres and/or one of the hundreds of four year colleges which accept students with score in the 300's.
I'm not ashamed of any of the work I've done, but what I'm trying to say is that students graduate because they believe in themselves and their schools accept that this self-confidence ad persistence will eventually help them to really have skills.
The schools which do not graduate students en masse are sometimes places where the teachers cannot accept that their students don't need MORE TIME to learn and are unwilling to pass them on and make them someone else's problem.
I wonder, if you asked someone teaching a Remedial English class in college how he/she felt having a dozen students from the same school who graduated on time. What would he/she think of the fact that getting the student out in four years was more important than getting them ready for college?
05 February, 2009
Happy Birthday from Coney Island Hospital
I was sitting at my computer this evening when I got the above as a text message. The same person had called me early in the morning to wish me a happy birthday, but had indicated this was a rough patch --or that this was not going to be a good day on his/her end of the text.
What would you think when you got that message?
It turns out my friend was spending much of the evening at the side of a hurt student. A noble thing -- there's no pay in it, just the respect you get for being there when no one else would.
Still the friend didn't give me any details of WHY he/she was at the hospital. I got answers to "Where are you?" But not "Why?" I didn't find out until this friend got home what had happened.
So the last hours of my birthday from about 8:00 on were a mix of worry, anger and confusion. When I called the hospital, they had never heard of this friend. Now what? Still no answer to why. Only where.
Was I meant to spend the evening along side the student, as well?
Maybe I should have. Maybe there is something long lost in me, a part of me that no longer jumps to the side of nearly anyone which was meant to be revived here. Maybe my fate was meant to change, but I backed away from the moral impetus which had been given to me.
But, I got angry and I cursed and cursed in various codes of text. I felt like this was a game.
And it was, to some degree. The message was meant to tell me not to text, in a way. "I'm too busy". It was just the kind of busy that is supposed to be a friend's business.
It was a suitable ending to the day, I suppose. After at first, understanding that I could choose my classes in which to "push-in" (assist), I was summarily told that I should have been doing nothing of the sort this week and should've just taught the classes I was assigned on my own. It would have been a far easier week had I done so. But, I guess I couldn't believe that I was supposed to wait. I thought I was supposed to find places to be useful.
Perhaps the biggest frustration I have had in the Dept. of Education is that I can never find just the right place to be. I can see a problem, but I can't solve it. There isn't funding, things aren't done that way or someone else simply has what seems like a better idea and sometimes is one.
It's just now in two instances in which I had previously been staring the minutes in the face with some confidence and ease, that I again walk a tightrope. I'm accursed for my not just waiting to be assigned when I was unclear that was happening. So, too, I am at fault for wanting clarification where it wasn't necessitated. Someone is trying to tell you they're busy, you don't go further.
It is, by far, the worst lesson of my existence, that sometimes you are not only not the center of attention, but you don't even matter as an individual. You are to remain silent when silence is given.
It's counter-intuitive and somewhere, I believe it's wrong.
Maybe the text message wasn't a note, but a forecast of 42. 41 has already begun a spiral in directions unknown.
What would you think when you got that message?
It turns out my friend was spending much of the evening at the side of a hurt student. A noble thing -- there's no pay in it, just the respect you get for being there when no one else would.
Still the friend didn't give me any details of WHY he/she was at the hospital. I got answers to "Where are you?" But not "Why?" I didn't find out until this friend got home what had happened.
So the last hours of my birthday from about 8:00 on were a mix of worry, anger and confusion. When I called the hospital, they had never heard of this friend. Now what? Still no answer to why. Only where.
Was I meant to spend the evening along side the student, as well?
Maybe I should have. Maybe there is something long lost in me, a part of me that no longer jumps to the side of nearly anyone which was meant to be revived here. Maybe my fate was meant to change, but I backed away from the moral impetus which had been given to me.
But, I got angry and I cursed and cursed in various codes of text. I felt like this was a game.
And it was, to some degree. The message was meant to tell me not to text, in a way. "I'm too busy". It was just the kind of busy that is supposed to be a friend's business.
It was a suitable ending to the day, I suppose. After at first, understanding that I could choose my classes in which to "push-in" (assist), I was summarily told that I should have been doing nothing of the sort this week and should've just taught the classes I was assigned on my own. It would have been a far easier week had I done so. But, I guess I couldn't believe that I was supposed to wait. I thought I was supposed to find places to be useful.
Perhaps the biggest frustration I have had in the Dept. of Education is that I can never find just the right place to be. I can see a problem, but I can't solve it. There isn't funding, things aren't done that way or someone else simply has what seems like a better idea and sometimes is one.
It's just now in two instances in which I had previously been staring the minutes in the face with some confidence and ease, that I again walk a tightrope. I'm accursed for my not just waiting to be assigned when I was unclear that was happening. So, too, I am at fault for wanting clarification where it wasn't necessitated. Someone is trying to tell you they're busy, you don't go further.
It is, by far, the worst lesson of my existence, that sometimes you are not only not the center of attention, but you don't even matter as an individual. You are to remain silent when silence is given.
It's counter-intuitive and somewhere, I believe it's wrong.
Maybe the text message wasn't a note, but a forecast of 42. 41 has already begun a spiral in directions unknown.
04 February, 2009
Questions for "The Rally"
It's hard for me to get to rallies or anything much these days. This spring brings three preps -- granted, I wanted them -- and a need to try to get back into optimal physical health.
Therefore, in case I don't get there, here are some important questions:
1) I have heard from reliable sources who have been vigilant enough to find a problem that the Excessed Staffing System isn't quite "working". I mean, that principals don't check the mailboxes at all? Isn't that a violation somehow of this new agreement? What is the UFT doing to encourage them to do this? Putting our own system is not enough. Bluntly, I've gotten responses to jobs which are posted on the ESS when I write to them via Idealist or Craig's List -- places they post the same listing. Why do they avoid the ESS Mailbox?
2) I've heard also that our discounts are not in the system yet -- so a principal who does check on us to see how much we cost can't tell. Someone also said something to me about not all ATR's being discounted, but I couldn't catch the specifics. So, which one of us are Bargain, which are Clearance and which are Regular price? And when can they input this information into the system --- the Excessed Staffing System and generally -- so that principals don't still think I cost a quarter of their budget? Again, I heard it from folks who want this to change -- us pointing it out is to help keep it a UFT priority.
Not only should UFT be making sure this is fixed but GRANTING US A FOUR MONTH EXTENSION on the original year that it was going to take to see if this new discount was "good for children". Because Nov, Dec, Jan and soon February will have gone by with it being broken. There are people in the UFT who have been good enough to follow this and push on this, but we need to be vocal. Even if the system is a lark when it is operational, a broken lark is even more insulting to all of us and must have Klein laughing in his sleep.
I'll try to get there in blue and black -- blue for Tilden, black for Brooklyn Comprehensive. Or maybe I should just wear the suit I wear to interviews -- a light blue shirt underneath dark navy pinstripes. Maybe I should wear a sandwhich board over it for any principals who might be driving by. Or a big hat. Worked for Bella Abzug....
I do want to be hopeful. I don't have a lot of faith in general. The fact that the DOE might be able to get away with having made us an offer it not only didn't carry out, but sabotaged, just makes me feel very abused. We all should feel that way.
Therefore, in case I don't get there, here are some important questions:
1) I have heard from reliable sources who have been vigilant enough to find a problem that the Excessed Staffing System isn't quite "working". I mean, that principals don't check the mailboxes at all? Isn't that a violation somehow of this new agreement? What is the UFT doing to encourage them to do this? Putting our own system is not enough. Bluntly, I've gotten responses to jobs which are posted on the ESS when I write to them via Idealist or Craig's List -- places they post the same listing. Why do they avoid the ESS Mailbox?
2) I've heard also that our discounts are not in the system yet -- so a principal who does check on us to see how much we cost can't tell. Someone also said something to me about not all ATR's being discounted, but I couldn't catch the specifics. So, which one of us are Bargain, which are Clearance and which are Regular price? And when can they input this information into the system --- the Excessed Staffing System and generally -- so that principals don't still think I cost a quarter of their budget? Again, I heard it from folks who want this to change -- us pointing it out is to help keep it a UFT priority.
Not only should UFT be making sure this is fixed but GRANTING US A FOUR MONTH EXTENSION on the original year that it was going to take to see if this new discount was "good for children". Because Nov, Dec, Jan and soon February will have gone by with it being broken. There are people in the UFT who have been good enough to follow this and push on this, but we need to be vocal. Even if the system is a lark when it is operational, a broken lark is even more insulting to all of us and must have Klein laughing in his sleep.
I'll try to get there in blue and black -- blue for Tilden, black for Brooklyn Comprehensive. Or maybe I should just wear the suit I wear to interviews -- a light blue shirt underneath dark navy pinstripes. Maybe I should wear a sandwhich board over it for any principals who might be driving by. Or a big hat. Worked for Bella Abzug....
I do want to be hopeful. I don't have a lot of faith in general. The fact that the DOE might be able to get away with having made us an offer it not only didn't carry out, but sabotaged, just makes me feel very abused. We all should feel that way.
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