Sweeter than music

This is the plane Karen hoped to buy. It was very light, and that and its crispness made it feel like a pair of wings to her, I think.

Karen B. Hunter, November 23, 1951 - Sept. 2, 2005

Goodnight, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to they rest.

At 4:57 pm on November 18, 2010, Michael Renchiwich, once Art Editor of National Lampoon and Circus magazines, passed away. He was 53. About two weeks earlier, he had come into the hospital with swollen legs and having fallen several times. Classic signs of a blood clot in his legs. He was sent home. Three days later, he came back into the hospital, was conscious for a time, then went into cardiac arrest. After 13 minutes of resuscitation, his heart began to beat. To prevent his brain from swelling, he was placed in a medically induced coma from which he would never emerge.
Michael could be a very quiet man, and he certainly never wanted to impose on anyone. Yet, he was a funny, intelligent, rebellious and tender person. I once asked him how he would most like to spend his life, if he could. He said he would like to have lunch with his friends every day. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Save me a table.

It's been almost a month

I'd like to say, "since my last confession," but it's since my last blog post and I am making myself write. Two doctors appointments in the next two days, maybe another pursuit of the sabbatical. Depends on my orthopedic surgeon and how much longer he thinks I can literally stand up. I'm not sure I'm standing up now, but there is still some distance for me to come down to sit, so maybe I am least standing sideways....

School is intense and so much better with high school students. The school in which I have been placed does nothing to offend anyone and the children are very happy, if only because they are very loved by the faculty, administration and staff. They are fighting the good fight, and it shows in their exhaustion and in the kids general coherence as an academic entity. It's a good place and I'm lucky to be there. I've applied here twice before in younger incarnations and not been considered, so I know I'm not going to be, but I'm respected and I respect them back. That's plenty. Where will go after here? Let's see if I can stand up in February, first. Let's see how I do tomorrow. For now, I pray this school is allowed to grow in peace. All they want to do is teach the kids. Let them.

What is Superman?

1) An idea in an essay by Nietzche.
2) Part of the title of a play by George Bernard Shaw actually about Don Juan.
3) A comic book character that more than one writer has suggested was an expression of Jewish angst against the Nazis.
4) The prototypical dream of the prototypical geek.
5)A role in a movie portrayed by, among others, the late actor Christopher Reeve and first played on television by George Reeves (no relation.)
6) The fictive construct who is the boyfriend of fictive construct Lois Lane.
7) Whatever the big "S" symbol conjures up in the 3-46 year olds who wear it on a t-shirt.
8)The title of a Barbara Streisand album.
9) Probably as many things as there are meanings to the number "3" in Mozart's The Magic Flute.

None of these qualifies him to save our educational system. In fact, the metaphor behind the title of the new documentary, Waiting for Superman suggests we give the schools over to Disney. Then we can REALLY LIE to the children.

I'm 42 and I've seen more movies about educational saviors than I can count -- most of whom taught or served as a school leader for not much more than a year (Look up how long the real life model for Dangerous Minds taught.) None of them had much longevity. The saddest to me will always be Frank Mickens who was the big hero at Boys and Girls High School when I was just beginning to teach. Mickens left and...the school as a 37 percent graduation rate despite the fact that it's motto is "Failure is not an option." Thomas Jefferson had a flash in the pan as a military style academy. Gone. Brooklyn Comprehensive had a formidable leader and it died shortly after she did. Institutions are not built by personalities nor are they rescued by them, though they can make them famous. Maybe it is the constant influx of personality that keeps The Metropolitan Opera going...but people don't fork over three figures for tickets unless the show is something to see and hear. And the place has survived geniuses and idiots at the helm. I think it requires a commitment to work to go beyond the ugly, but not to let the mistakes define you. Our Dept. of Ed. does nothing but let the mistakes change their minds -- they continue what is an American tradition.

Our Secretary of Education says that the new documentary Waiting for Superman does the equivalent of "calling a baby ugly." The underlying reference to the youth of public education in the US, I think is not really at the core of his response, though I wish it were so. I wish he could look at the historical approach to public education in this country and set his work in context of it, building upon progressive ideas which have often been quickly abandoned when other ideas became fashionable. That's my prejudice. Accepting that, as the students say, "all he's trying to say is," is that there are some ugly parts of our school system, then this movie does nothing new. When a country cannot even decide WHY it's educating it's children, you can't expect it to know WHAT to do. Ask our secretary why I have colleagues working in schools that have no gyms, no computers and in some cases not even a basketball. IN 2010. In, what my grandmother called, "America." This at the same time as students who just happen to score better on some tests than others have brand new equipment of all kinds and a pool. Yet, Stuyvesant students can no longer be called an elite group because that would mean that we understood them to be part of some larger whole. What goes on in Stuyvesant (Class of 85, here) is NOTHING like what my colleagues and I are allowed to do with or without equipment. Students are driven to meet expectations because they have an understanding of the pressures of the world and because...they JUST LIKE TO LEARN. Every kid just likes to learn, but only at some schools do they have the equipment and the CARE and I do mean "TLC" to be able to do it. Most NY students have one guidance counselor to 500 kids. I saw a counselor, a SPARK officer, a psychiatrist and had therapy at Beth Israel hospital when my family experienced an enormous crisis. Do you know any student in NYC anywhere else who would be granted that attention? Spark offices get cut routinely AT THE MIDDLE SCHOOL LEVEL. Who doesn't need counseling more than a middle school student?

It's not any one ugly decision that makes our schools the way they are. It's that we make NO DECISIONS at all. We refuse outright to commit to anything for our children. If I had a child and then left him/her outdoors to fen for himself/herself from infancy, it would be the same crime. We ask students who have difficulty reading to choose into a Pre-Law, Pre-Med or Pre-Nothing program. But, we will not give them Special Education services. God forbid we stigmatize them with the possibility of what amounts to healthcare. For free? The fact that students in some suburbs get as much assistance as they need and their parents are willing to cough up the funds in taxes eludes most of the public. Even our President, who went to Columbia and Harvard and spends private school money on his kids PRETENDS he doesn't know what the cost of a good education is. EVERYONE deserves a private school education. Taking on the commitment and the flexibility of mind of private schools requires crediting teachers and administrators with an ability to define what learning is. We'd also have to make some serious investments in technology, buildings, counseling, etc.

Ah, but we'd have to pay for it. And we'd have to support it as a culture.

What we have done instead is placed the UFT/AFT at the new forefront of the attack against unions which has been progressively seething in this country, with its signal moment being President Reagan's firing of the Patco workers. Teachers have become thrust into a stereotype of civil servants which was never really true. When you decide to become a civil servant (which as Mario Cuomo would point out, includes politicians) you exchange a long-term commitment to a job for a less competitive payscale. You also wed yourself to the way that institution works. It's not like a Senator could walk into the Israeli Knesset or British Parliament and just pick up where he left off. While institutions don't survive on the back of one person alone, they do develop their own methodologies unique to their own surroundings. Anyway, because I have insurance and my summer's off I am now the poster-child for American Sloth. Why aren't all of my students getting 90's? Did all students ever get 90's. At schools where the competition is very still, an artificial curve is built in to insure that NOT EVERYONE gets 90's. This is unfair because some of these students could get 100's at easier places. But, there is an inherent value to the 85 which isn't there in the 100 somewhere else. And, besides, you know, you get a better education, or one more suited to a pace you enjoy. On the Yankees, does everyone hit 300? How many times do the Angels have to beat the Yankees to prove that excellence comes in many forms? You send your child to a school because their way of doing things seems like it would work best for him/her. My mother scored right on the money and she barely made more than minimum wage. She asked people she knew who graduated from the school and she made a few visits. I could have survived nowhere else the way I did at that small, idiosyncratic Hebrew school which then lead me to Stuyvesant. My mother is seriously ill and yet, the fine education she received back in the dark ages when people didn't take as many Regents, etc. prepared her to do this for me. That, and a mother who brought with her a European devotion to learning for its own sake. (What other person would still know her Latin in her 60's.) What makes education good is a willingness to be open-minded, to be dedicated, to be unique to the needs of your students and to care. If Randi Weingarten or any other UFT/AFT person seems to froth at the mouth (as she is described doing in this upcoming documentary) it is because no one should have to spend so much time proving the value of something which is done entirely in support of children. If I choose not to work summer school, it isn't because I'm a lazy sloth -- it's because I've broken my back and I need rest for the next round. Most teachers I know are broke most of the time, supplementing their classrooms with what is not there. The computers, the media projectors, the memberships in educational groups which share information, etc. And we don't have credit cards supplied by our company. It's not even easy to deduct this stuff. Not that it pays to think about it. You do your best, you give everything you can. Or, why stand up at all. Especially, when you are vilified just for having a pension. More teachers go on disability than any other group of workers. The statistics are too broad and consistent for all of these people to have genetic predilections to breaking down.

I have an acquaintance who gathers all the discarded math textbooks from our schools and sends them to Kenya where they are SAVORED and used again and again. But, no one should ever have to be so hungry in the first place to have to be given a discarded textbook. The fact that people in other countries know the value of an education and we do not, is a testimony to one of the greatest American products: Ignorance. The idea that a cartoon character can save the world is as naive and pathetic as the terrified young men and women who had to look to the funny papers when the world turned its face on the crushing of 11 million people, 6 million of them Jews. Who would want to watch the news when Roosevelt turned away boats of Jews, even as he slowly began to concede that we would have to enter the war. I don't hate Roosevelt. He wasn't a cartoon character. He was a human. When he died, he left enough in place so that the very capable Harry Truman could make a decision no one should ever have to make again. He said he never lost a night's sleep over it. I don't believe him, but I understand that sometimes one must stand by one's decisions, especially ones that hard. At the end of the war, a number of veterans got together and founded The International Baccalaureate so that there would be a curriculum that would bring humanity together. The trouble is, you have to be able to read to use it. And you have to be of liberal enough mind to see the value of a project over a standardized test. You have to test the project and the performer in real terms -- in context of the world around it, both local and global. That's a lot of work. And very little of it is QUANTIFIABLE. But to admit that good work cannot always be measured in an exact rubric and has to be valued with intelligence and compassion, would be to admit that comprehension involves not just the ability to read the text but the subtext and what it might foreshadow. All of that takes time, experience and care. It's not the job of one person, but the effort of the whole. And, it's ain't cheap. Some people look at children in uniforms and see students ready to learn. I see children being primed to serve. I want my children to have TASTE. Now, that alone, giving the student the time and energy to learn to choose his clothes, is something we won't commit to anymore.

If they can't choose their clothes, and they all are following Superman, they will do very well working in retail. I'm afraid most of the students I have met would do better than I would in that field, already. They know how to sell and wear someone else's name on their backs. What I want is to teach them to stand on their own, follow their conscience, and read the fine print.

Perhpas, "I love the Funnies" should be the theme song for our school system. Never heard of it? Well, look it up.

Famous mom? Have a baby out wedlock? No prob.

Gee, when my students have a baby out of wedlock, they don't get put on "Dancing With the Stars." Maybe they don't try hard enough? See link for details about Bristol Palin's new makeover for the show..... This is like that show that takes people who need help and re-makes their home, only better! Those people should go out and have babies out of wedlock and they'd get to be stars with star salaries....Then they could pay for their own makeovers and join the economy.

http://tv.yahoo.com/falltv/photos/dancing-with-the-stars-season-11-cast/608

For Karen B. Hunter, my light

Dinah Washington, I could write a book, for Karen always

This song is dedicated to Karen B. Hunter, Nov. 23, 1951 - Sept. 2, 2005

Rogers and Hart, "I could write a book."


If they asked me, I could write a book
about the way you walk and whisper and look.
I could write a preface on how we met
so the world would never forget.
And the simple secret of the plot
is just to tell them that I love you a lot.
Then the world discovers as my book ends
how to make two lovers a friends.

Grynberg has a note

Dear Teacher, Friend, Relative, Larry and Bernie,
Wednesday, 18 August 2010 at 08:13

After I came home from last night's Yankees game (they won), I found I couldn't sleep a wink. This happened the night before, too, but I was sure the game would wear me out. It didn't. I got a headache listening to a bunch of wise-guys behind me trying to predict the Yankees team for next year and a bunch of reckless 30 somethings drinking beer and making inside jokes loudly and nearly pissing themselves. On the two hour ride home (the "N" is local after 10pm.) I was able to "blitz out" a little. God bless Mr. Bloomberg. Now I have so many more chances to be mugged and assaulted by homeless people who get on at stations like "City Hall." Why we are stopping in non-residential neighborhoods and going under the fetid tunnel to do it, I don't know. I thought you saved energy when you went directly from point to point, not stopped and started. Fortunately, there were lots of people on my train discussing sales loudly and keeping their children under the age of one up late on the ride home from grandma. The kinds of noises babies can make never cease to amaze me. This one sounded like an electric toothbrush running backwards. My poor mother kept me off the subways until I was 7 so that I might have normal hearing. Alas, it was all for nought.

There doesn't seem to be a week in my life in which there is not some major catastrophe about to befall me or my friends. This summer brought eviction notices (to friends), the threat of jail for missing jury duty too many times (friends), and the tenderhooks which come from caring for a cat who is sensitive to all kinds of stress and who resists by not eating. (Friend's cat. Larry and Bernie eat.) So, even when you jump away to the Church of Overpaid Athletes and surround yourself in the photos and memories of successes which make your parents, uncles -- all of your forebears -- dreamy-eyed, you can't really escape the tension. Then, of course, I forgot that I moved my medication schedule way up, so that it starts at 10pm. Completely impractical, but some of this tension contributed to this foolish decision. So, just as the game ended, the withdrawal started to kick in. The buzzing in the ears. The inability to complete a thought. The rage at my own stupidity. And for some reason, I get very thirsty.

I got a real deal on a huge bottle of water for one dollar.

But, then my friend wanted to explore for a while and my mind was turning into rabbit food, my feet beginning to swell and my back bend toward the ground. For some reason, I think people can see these symptoms, but since I'm already so short, have huge feet and bad posture, I guess it's only a matter of degrees. I had to insist we go home. Then I had to remember which train to take -- which stairs to go up or down on. There were a lot of MTA people in the station telling us what we already knew. I thought I heard the MTA person tell my friend to just go upstairs and take the four. I got confused and angry and my friend, rightly told me to back off. When we finally reached the train, our place in Yankees mythology now torn away from us, the grimness set back in. Medicine had to be got at the pharmacy. Inadequacies of the Vet bothered my friend and this brought back memories of the loss of my first godson-cat. An afternoon in which he was screaming for attention and it was hard to get it. I wasn't there because I was somewhere with Karen. If I'd've been there I could've kicked up a scene. I'm good at that. That was my job. Instead, my friend was trying to bridge the line between Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi Driver that is the Animal Medical Center and my godson cat collapsed in the process. We lost him the next morning.

I went home angry at myself, my friend, at the doctors and ugly with the feeling that I had let down my dearest friend -- and he was. My own cat Fred, I fear I over-reacted to so many times that it had much the same effect. I am much calmer with Larry and Bernie but they are brimming with health and stamina and curiosity. Where and who I will be when they are frail and desperate I don't know. I promise them the world, but I mean the Disney one. The real one is the color of breath on a late night in the subway. A faint grey, tinged with sweat and impropriety. After all, who cares what happens to the 40 or so people on the "N" after 10pm? If you run a train, slowly, through the ghost stops of the workday, clicking into the routines of the homeless, the desperate and the lonely, what kind of protection can you offer the few people coming home from a sale or a baseball game? If that baby were screaming for attention and the parents got out at Court Street, there would be hardly anyone on the street until they reached the small newsstand down Montague. If they called 911, they'd be taken to over-crowded and under-funded Brooklyn Hospital or to the smaller, but no less crowded Long Island College Hospital. Would the baby have collapsed by then?

All of this does not deflect from my role in the death of my godson-cat. No one can handle anyone's failing health alone. I should never have let his mother go alone without me. But I was on my way somewhere with Karen or was I on my way to work? Work at a school closed in directly inverse proportion to the amount of care that the staff put into it -- it was done quickly and silently with barely a trace. The school that replaced it is a land-mine, out of control and dangerous. The first day they opened a girl brought a knife. But the principal is married to someone involved in the creation of Transfer High Schools. So, despite the fact that there is shouting in the halls and souls are collapsing, it will keep going. I'm told a lot of the new schools are in this kind of disrepair. So everyday, some parent goes home on the subways, clammy with the knowledge that he/she was powerless to save his own child.

So, please forgive me. I didn't sleep last night. I would like to have done things today, but I have to try to sleep. On a night in 2007, after four nights of not sleeping too well, I made a very poor judgement call which nearly put my cats and me in jeopardy. I yelled at someone. I tried to cross through that chaotic barrier of unwillingness and resignation to certain death and say something. But, I was rude, and I was tired and I was crying. So I spent a year and three months in the DOE's Rubber Rooms deciding whether or not I was civilized enough to ever work with people again. I did this, knowing full-well that it was illegal to put a person with Aspeger's Syndrome in the Rubber Room on his/her first offense. As a disabled person, I was entitled to the least restrictive environment. But, I was hoping that the many people who were speaking up for me would make the case. At least, in the end, it got me out sooner and helped me negotiate a settlement. Because no successful person in this country has ever lost his/her temper in public. Not George Steinbrenner, not Billy Martin, not Thurmon Munson, not Lou Piniella, not Michael Bloomberg, not Bill or Hillary Clinton, not Ronald Reagan ("tear down that wall" is a polite request), not MacArthur and not Barack Obama. Never. Curt statements about human rights don't count -- they were done in the proper form. You can't have everyone over for beers. So long as you don't shout, don't cry or show emotions, you’re fine. There are no mediators in most places. And what we need most are mediators, especially if we are going to bridge political, social, emotional gaps and reach across the table between the neurotypical and non. They say Einstein probably had Asperger's Syndrome. He was given a lot of room for eccentricity and assisted in bringing his ideas to the world. If that hadn't happened, well, he'd of been the janitor in "Good Will Hunting," if he were so lucky. Probably not with that hair.

What about the founding fathers, the “Give me liberty or give me death," people, the notion of resisting oppression especially when it’s life threatening. “You gotta do what you gotta do.” You can’t run a country with everyone resisting every five minutes. Well, you could, actually, if people would just be open about what their agenda were from the start. Then you’d know either not to take your cats to that Vet or you could stage a more formal protest against decisions made for reasons. Arbitrariness invites secrets and the theories of luck and favor. Someone once told me it was a particular politician’s “time.” Jesse Jackson used to preach sermons about it being “Morning Time” – time for the country to wake up.
The reality is that time is on a 24 hour clock and it’s either time to go to work or it isn’t. There is no particular “time for a change.” There is a necessity for a change. If you tell someone at a job, “it’s time for a change” and walk away, they might just change the music or ignore you and wait for more specific instruction. If you say, “it’s necessary to make a change,” they can immediately ask of what and why? If you believe it’s “necessary,” you’ll be more convincing and more likely to succeed. No one is going to take care of that cat or baby because it’s time to do so – Mussolini ran the trains on schedule and it helped no one, plus, his example has caused most people to go the other way. Time is now, later or yesterday. And it’s in the moment. No need to call attention to it. People make “To do” lists not “To Time” lists. I’m belaboring the point. We create fake measurements of efficiency in this country by doing so in terms of time, which we then say equals money. In that case, we have no control over either. Time is just a way we refer to something out of our hands. The question is: “How well is this country taking care of its people?” That answer comes in how many are living, how they are living and how many are not living. It is reflected in the number of prescriptions for sleeping pills, tranquilizers and sales of alcohol. A generation Martini’d, tranquilized and otherwise drugged itself through the day. My generation has advanced to variations on our parent’s methods, including more intricate and varied drugs as well as Yoga, etc. It’s all not a very efficient way of trying to do one thing: get attention for a sick child, a sick cat or a loved one. We attenuate our feelings so that we can, as politely and non-offensively as possible, ask for what we think is very necessary and some people are gifted at mediating through this, some people are lucky enough to be provided with mediation. For the rest of, there are the hours of lurking in the slow moving train home, blocking out the noise and the knowledge that should anything happen to us, there’d be nothing we could do about it. And you wonder why Ipods sell so well?

Meanwhile cats and babies pass out everywhere.

I will find sleep eventually. I hope there is time later in the week for the things I have promised today. I am genuinely sorry.

It's Bernie's Third Anniversary

Around this time of year, three years ago, Bernie came to live with us. I believe it was August 8, but I'm not sure so we're celebrating the whole week. As you may or may not know Bernie is our three year old mix of Siberian Forest Cat, Tabby and some other wonderful cats, found on the street by our veterinarian's assistant. Specifically, it was Henry's cardiologist's assistant who found him. So, it was as meant to be as one could say, since we had lost Henry almost a month before. We never admit, or we rarely do, that Henry has left us, since he was so impossibly wonderful that he was almost mythological even as a full-blooded, pink-eared, white and grey furred litter-mate of Larry.



Bernie, like Larry and all of his forebears, has become the hero of his own epic. Bernillius, Bernoolius, BERNSTEIN (when he's engaged in mischief), Purrnee, etc. is called "The Master of Joy" around here. Recently, he and Larry went to the vet. It was Larry's first time at Bernie's vet and he had a panic attack. So Larry jumped into Bernie's carrier. At first, I separated them, thinking that would be too close for comfort (it's the largest carrier Sherpa makes and it held Fred who neared 25 pounds so it was just big enough for two). Then Larry threw up on his own carrier and I put him back in with Bernie and he absolutely calmed down. Bernie turned to his side and cradled Larry. It wasn't the first mensch-like act of Bernie's, but the one that confirmed that our cherry-nosed wonder is also a full-blown MENSCH. He held Larry the whole ride home and Larry didn't let out a peep. When I lowered the carrier onto the living room floor and unzipped it, they took their time coming out. The two were snuggling comfortably and they peered out of the carrier and slowly emerged. Bernie had infused Larry with warmth, calm and love, and when he calmed down,he returned it. They stayed very close for a while, Bernie making sure Larry was okay even out of the carrier before they returned to their normal routine of bouncing and leaping and teasing and the occasional play-fight. He also, as the SECOND PICTURE shows, is a staunch advocate for all good things (like playing with the cat dancer and cuddling) and that is the look he gives me when he feels I am not listening.

We begin what will probably turn into a two-week celebration (to allow me to take care of some other things which have come up and give Bernie the attention he deserves). He has just had the inaugural meal -- a small plate of steamed broccoli, his favorite food.

Happy Bernie Weeks! We couldn't be doing anything without you, you little miracle, you!

(To see Bernie's first intro on this blog, go to
http://saddleshoe.blogspot.com/2007/08/meet-cousin-bernie.html)

Can you figure out which picture was Bernie THREE YEARS AGO?

Massachusets deploys National Guard overseas. Reconsidered.

(With apologies for the digressions in the initial version....)

About six years ago, I was walking down the streets of Provincetown, Mass, thinking, "I wonder if the Taliban is going to come down here and do a raid on a gay bar?" Maybe THAT's why that woman sitting next to us in the audience in which we were watching the comic Leah DeLaria had such a long skirt on?

When I wrote about the loss of Michael Gonzales (INNOCENT BYSTANDERS), I shielded myself from thinking about another kind of loss familiar to probably every New York City public school teacher: the loss of students who are in the armed forces. Just in the past year, one of my first students, by now a 41 year old father of three, signed up for his National Guard in Utah. I expect, like those men and women from Massachusets who were deployed today to Afghanistan, he will be sent off to "do construction projects and bolster our nation's security around the world," as the reporter said at the end of the feature story which popped up after the one about the "yellow lobster" which was actually what had brought me to the Yahoo News site.

It kind of reminded me of my last visit to Provincetown during which my friend Karen did have lobster and during which I did not once think about terrorists of any kind. It's funny. We were actually pushed out of New York airspace that night because then President Bush was leaving New York just after his speech to the Republican convention. If he, or anyone had really thought there were terrorists en route to or from Massachusets, we shouldn't have been able to hear Air Force One ask for permission for take off. Let's see, he wasn't leaving JFK...probably he was leaving from White Plains and anyone with a friend who had a plane and was in the air at that moment knew exactly when. But, I digress...kind of. It's a great party story. Losing my students has become too popular a blog story.

It's not just the possibility of their deaths which upsets me and my own feelings about the futility of this war, but the cycle which lead them to choose the armed forces as a career. NOT ONE had ever told me that he/she dreamed about being a soldier. Serving your country is an honor which I do not mean to denigrate. The fact is that our economy has driven some of my smartest students to do tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. They tell me they are okay and they are proud of their work. First and foremost, they wanted to be working in challenging professions. They wanted to be in positions of leadership. Trying to balance college and supporting their families wasn't the only deterrent which kept them from making alternative choices. The reality that they could turn around after all that hard academic work and find an economy poised on grinding down their bodies and spirits without even benefits was a risk they found to profoundly painful to accept. It's a fate worse than death. Literally.

For all the time we spend debating the morality of the works of literature they read, whether children can read about gay parents when they probably watch them on TV anyway, we don't spend enough time arguing about what vocational skills we are giving our students. The liberal education was intended to free the mind. When it was conceived, it presumed a life in scholarship, law or the priesthood. Of those three professions, only the last offers any security and ladder of promotion. I'm not being facetious; I mean to speak in the plainest terms possible. No matter how much reading, writing and arithmetic are essential to survival, they are not enough. No matter how beautifully conceived a research project is for an honors class, it is not enough. Getting a 5 on the AP of anything, is not enough. Very few doctors and lawyers today can break out into practices of their own. And if they do, who helps them when, in their first years, they can't afford to fix things or can't afford classes which will help them compete in the marketplace. But these are, by far, not the weakest members of our economy. Take the "A" student with an MA and PhD in Comparative Literature. Who knew that he/she would likely teach classes the way women and men in sweatshops sewed garments -- both groups would be paid for "piecework." Most scholars have to teach and get paid by the class -- 3000 a pop. So, if you could teach ten classes a term, you could earn, before taxes, about 30,000. There are some people who are lucky enough to find tenure track jobs which often start at salaries in the 20 and 30 thousand dollar range. I hear that outside of New York, you can possibly survive on that, but that's not equitable payment for someone who has spent 8 years after high school dedicated to any field.

I'm not worried JUST about those kids who fail their exams. What I'm worried about is that BOTH the kids who do well and those who don't will be joining the National Guard whether they like it or not because they won't have many options.


When my doctor asks me if the book I am reading, Simon Schama's AMERICA'S FUTURE tells if we are going to become "The United States of China," I'm a bit embarrassed. Schama is tracing our ideas of what an American is -- but is that question even in the "bottom line" anymore? Goldman Sachs isn't treasonous when it makes choices which destroy the power of our economy and our government. But, when we bargain for fair treatment as teachers --whether it be for money or respect--we are vilified in the press. We rarely get to argue whether we WANT to be the United States of China. Besides our loss of money and power, what else do we care about in that equation? How can we care, for example, about our potential job losses to new immigrants and to our growing bad credit, when we haven't even faced the fact that Americans lose these jobs because they no longer pay a fair wage and that we keep borrowing money to fix an economy which needs serious re-envisioning? What do we want our children to be? What choices are we creating now for them to consider in the future?


I'm sure some of my students clicked on the story about the Yellow lobster and then went on to the story about the National Guard. Do you think they wondered why so many young and not-so-young people had joined a part of our military which people don't usually hear about? Do you think they wondered why many of them were people of color?

But, it doesn't get so far in the minds of a ten year old and maybe not always in a that of a tenth grader, who may, instead be wondering how you fish for lobster, why are yellow lobsters rare and can we go to Red Lobster tomorrow? And the practical questions of the trade as well as the marine biology are things they should understand. When they fight us off so hard, they do so both because they sometimes find us too hard and too irrelevant. They believe we are supposed to be training them for the hard work and all the possibilities of adulthood? We are supposed to be helping them find life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

Are we?

My neighborhood

An absolutely irrelevant note about foreign policy

Last night, a cab driver assaulted me.

No, it wasn't the usual, "You nice lady. You married, Miss?"

It was about healthcare. I spent about 15 minutes (the entire ride) trying to explain to a man to whom I just explained the word "breathing," why our country didn't have national healthcare already.

"Germany, England, France, you pay nothing. Obama say in 2014 we pay a little bit. This good plan, Miss?"

He was a leaden pipe full of hot water, and if his long beard weren't black, I'd've thought it was steam. Here we were, Jew and Muslim driving toward the neighborhood we both live in (Bensonhurst/Dyker Heights), and we weren't talking about "loneliness" or Israel.

In the past, drivers, and in fact, people in cafes, my left-wing psychiatrist -- a fair number of people have engaged me on foreign policy early in conversations. I learned about Israel's latest controversy while sitting in the waiting room of my psychiatrist's office --reading TIME magazine. Yet, we didn't get into it at all in session. We were both more concerned about our pets and about the obvious necessity to increase my anti-anxiety medication. The latter has become a staple of how I "deal with" the state of our economy and my job. In fact, economics has ruled most of my social and medical life since Bloomberg took office.

Yesterday afternoon, at a cafe, no one even bothered to put the closed captioning on when our Secretary of State Hlilary Clinton was on CNN. Perhaps she is aware of her own place as a kind of throwback to another time. I was shocked to find she has now grown her hair long and set it in the "Upsweet" popular in the 1960's. Will the Jackie-O make-up follow?

I still have no idea what announcement the former-First Lady/Presidential Candidate and powerfully staunch hawk was making. At a time when world economies continue to be in need of serious vision, hardly anyone cares about what we hope to be our foreign policy. Excepting of course those unfortunate people whom we might be bombing, boycotting or bungling attempts to provide humanitarian aid. Sadly, most of those people are really facing the results of our economic policy which has remained stagnant since we voted in resounding force for change back in 2008. Take those receiving the humanitarian aid known as unemployment. --I know they're not the same, but de facto, they are. In a WORLD which lives on credit and in which money is no longer measured by the gold standard, the question of what we pay and what we afford has to do with psychology and not finance. If that weren't true, everyone would've pulled their money out of the stock market years ago as very few sectors of any economy are truly flourishing. Unregulated capitalism leads to a lot of cheap goods, bankruptcies and reorganizations as well as monopolies. None of this provides much entry-way for the average citizen to benefit. No Milton Friedman fan can defend/explain or fix what happened in Russia if you want proof on a smaller scale than our worldwide dilemmas.--

What I did know this week was that President Obama said it was important for Congress to "do the right thing" and extend unemployment. That's about as strong and open-hearted a phrase he has used in some time on a liberal cause and it made me hopeful. Our President doesn't want to see people suffering. That's important.

It did not give me an answer for what to tell my driver. In the end, we haggled about his tip, which I had mistakenly not added using the new touchscreens mandated by our lovely Mayor. This is perhaps because I pushed the button to turn the screen OFF very hard possibly damaging it., so that I would not have to watch the especially bad and tourist-driven television it will proffer it I did not. In the end, I reviewed the receipt multiple times and handed the driver much less than the percentage I would've tapped in had the machine been working properly. I resented the argument, though I knew it was his right to make it. I wasn't about to NOT tip him, but there were more polite ways to raise the issue that the tip did not seem to be calculated. For someone who had been fervent, but open to my opinions in an overall discussion of economics, the push and shove on dollars was a little unsettling. If I hadn't been so tired and were generally a more confident person, I might've used it as what we is called a "teachable moment." The same tension with which he fought over three versus five dollars is what drives the argument against healthcare. It is also what some people call, "bad business" as it's not the kind of behavior that makes someone want to step into your cab again. Since it is truly random whether or not a driver sees a passenger again, I guess it doesn't matter. It is an industry, then, which can be used as a microcosm for examining our economy. Essentially, it is driven by an exchange between two people and the value of the service fluctuates depending on individual moods and the weather. Like a magnate, a cab company survives by having so many cabs that they can cover their losses. There is very little ability to control quality beyond a minimum. (I get out of cars that don't have air conditioning or heat and I suspect that's where most people draw a line if they have made the decision that they need to pay the fare.) It is a mobile marketplace complete with haggling salespeople.

If he was asked, I am sure the driver would prefer not to have to raise the issue of a tip. I'd certainly prefer that the agreed upon price somehow provided him with adequate sustenance. But, that would require a decision by producer and consumer on what the set value of the entire service IS. What does the driver deserve to make? What does a human being require for healthcare?

Of course, most of the time, I take the subway or bus, but I was trying to avoid the death-claw of the humidity on the platform last night. I was able to do so, in no small part, owing to the long history of labor bargaining for a fair wage and benefits. But, someone who isn't so lucky, who might take the train and find breathing suddenly difficult might then be rushed to the ER. There, he or she would receive services which, if he/she is uninsured, for which he/she won't be able to pay. Because we are not as cold-hearted a people in New York as people think, our hospitals don't push people toward their deaths and refuse them treatment. Yet, we don't just agree to provide all members of our city with insurance because we would rather engage in daily bargaining than commit our wallets. (What is a healthcare plan which will be implemented in 2014 but conjecture -- at most, a gauntlet on a bargaining table.) I wonder at how much this would really cost us if we sat down and considered:
1) What REALLY is a fair amount of profit? Yes, there is unfair profit. Maybe we should call it unreasonable profit -- a profit margin which will ultimately make it impossible for any consumer to afford the product. That requires a certain honesty on everyone's part. For example: No one needs a 150 dollars sneaker which is not orthopedic and no one should be making 140 times what it cost to make the sneaker, assuming that it took some Indonesian woman at Nike one whole day to make that pair for her wage of one dollar.
2) What is the REAL COST of our treatment? The price of the 15 minute glance-over and routine blood tests most people get, at best? Is that the treatment which our doctors really think is enough if they were being paid adequately? Not being as liquid as my mother was, I go see doctors who take my insurance. Even when they are good, they are still overworked and behind schedule.
3) Do you find it unpleasant to step over homeless and sick people on your way to work, or do you just consider this some reaffirmation of Calvinism, Fascism -- or do you just enjoy the feeling of being inside a painting by Francis Bacon?

If we thought about all of this, we might then turn up the volume on Mrs. Clinton, as, I am sure something she was talking about had to do with paying for bombs or humanitarian aid. For the value of the former, see question 3 again

Cheer

Making lists of lists

I still haven't gotten to the place where I find writing down a list acceptable.

However, I am constantly revising ones in my memory. Today there wre the many forms to print. 2010 and some offices actually still want you to print and mail forms. Why is that?

Time is absolutely no balm to wounds. What it is, is a tyrant to the memory. All sorts of things from the remote past become clear and where you left your cell phone a minute ago is a mystery.

Two years ago, I remember being chided for seeming to have a good time while working. What's the point in having an awful time? But this is the result of being in a world in which we are being evaluated for perceived productivity. I suppose I couldn't be effective and be laughing? One of the many things I've liked about working with high school students is that they are interesting. They are especially so as I never was the kind of teenager they are. I wore my backpack on both shoulders, sat outside classrooms and gave up my lunch period to add another class to my schedule. So, the world of the teenager amuses me. It seems much more like the world of Shakespeare than anything I've ever known.

Writing this blogpost was not on my list. Defiance never is, but I am always trying to practice it. Since, like laughter, it is nearly gone from my professional life, it must live on in my personal one.

How do you set priorities in the middle of an avalance?

I made several decisions in the past few months: what career I want to pursue next, what I would do about my health, what I would do about the state of my apartment.

Here's the problem: I don't believe I can do any of them.

When I was in graduate school, I always knew I could teach. So, I never worried about having an income. It's impossible to believe you can do anything if you feel that your day-to-day life is endangered. I try to act calm about being an ATR again. I try to take things day-to-day.

I'm a lousy poker player.

Oh Hennybee....

We know you are with us always. Bernie acts more and more like you every day... PLEASE STOP ENCOURAGING HIM TO HIDE UNDER THINGS....

We lost our Hennybee (fellow in white) four years ago. He was the definition of love itself. One time, I was losing consciousness so I called 911. He hid under the refrigerator and he stayed there until I came home. He just couldn't handle my not being there. As soon as I got home, I picked him up right away and, as usual, he purred like a tractor.

When does something constitute torture?

A man makes a promise to another man. You work for me, you work consistently, and you will always have a job. Twenty years later, the man says, "Sorry. I can't afford your salary. You have to go out and compete against people younger and cheaper. If not, you'll still have a job, but you will have no control over the circumstances. You will be unable to be consistent." If this were an agreement between one small employer and employee, it might be easy enough to see that there would be a case for "breach of contract." The day-to-day changes in the employees job description might constitute some kind of torture. But, when you're working for a large system like the DOE, it's harder to make the argument. First of all, you have an unsympathetic taxpayer base which does not imagine what your or your school day are like on a day-to-day basis. Since most of these taxpayers traded competition and bonuses for job security, they can't possibly see why other people who didn't sign on for that career path can't hack it. Finally, we are living in "the age of the bully." Supervisors are being praised for finding as much fault with workers as possible. Much of the steps the UFT has set to protect people from getting "U" ratings without due process are being ignored. Not because the UFT isn't trying. Ultimately, it's up to your principal and a DOE evaluator to decide if you deserved that "U." There's not a lot of incentive to defend people who are experienced and highly paid but who are having trouble making the transition backwards in their careers. What I mean by this is, some teachers have worked 20 years or more in one school and one population and have become finely attuned to their needs. Throw them into a whole new ballgame and they are not likely to be as immediately effective. Imagine you were a doctor working with people with chronic depression. You are then moved to work with a group of people who engage in emotional and physical violence, have ADHD, and you have no MSW or Psychologist to help you navigate the waters. The difference in the kind of aggression is impossible to explain. Plus, you are constantly being expected to instantly transform into someone new. You spent your career as a combination Corrections Officer/Counselor/Troubleshooter and now you are being asked to be Mr. Rogers for a group of students who don't respond to him. Your principal wants to create a "warm and friendly" environment, but he hasn't done anything to teach the students what this means in practical terms. They haven't practiced kindness, patience, respect. It reminds me of Ismael Beah's A Long Way Gone. When he and other child soldiers in Sierra Leone were brought to rehabilitation centers, they started fights and killed a few other new residents. The staff just kept saying, "It's not your fault," that this is happening to you. They took many months to try to settle into some normalcy. Meanwhile, a student body accustomed to punishment is being given the same room to rebel. Except that the speed with which they recover is YOUR FAULT. And you can't go back to methods which you've used before because they are considered too cruel or to blunt.

It's double-think, squared. That has to be a violation of human rights.

The Innocent Bystanders

This year, I lost more students and colleagues to violence and illness than I have in all the years I have been teaching. I've lost close family, too, particularly my godmother Mary Pearce, and I've written about her elsewhere on this blog. This is the first time I've been so inundated by unexpected and accidental deaths of people younger than I am. The most recent student, Michael Gonzales of Tilden HS, was a sweet kid -- a true teenager in the best of senses. He liked to skateboard, dance and he mostly had his head on his shoulders. He was not an academically aggressive student, but when pushed, he tried. He was navigating the academic world better than his skills might've allowed.

Tomorrow there is a candlelight service for Michael. I don't know if I will go because I sometimes feel as if I join in grief almost to prove my own life was important. I was at Tilden for one year. In that time, I must've talked to Michael almost every day. But, I never had him for a class -- I subbed for his advisory teacher a few times. I spent a lot of time convincing him to GO to class, and he mostly did. Like a lot of kids, he rode the limits of how far he could stay out of class without pushing it to the point of not graduating. He graduated last week. He died July 4, 2010. A bullet meant for somebody else hit him in the chest.

So many of the students' postings on Facebook ask the familiar question -- Why Mike? And some speak of wisdom far beyond their years and experience. Some students talked about how this taught them not to hold onto anger -- whatever fights they might've had with Mike paled now in perspective. Some wrote the equivalent of W.H. Auden's haunting warning, "We must all love one another or die."

If I were to try to explain to those students (and to myself) why so many "good die young" it might be an extension of Auden's warning adapted to 2010. We must all remember, whenever we bring violence into the environment, whether it be gun violence, whether it be the violence that propels us not to get people appropriate health insurance or just anger, we ENDANGER everyone in our environment. (I lost a student to Ketoacidosis. I have a friend who has survived that many times: the difference is education about Diabetes and insurance.) Our "beefs" are minimal -- the world, and life are not just about us. Whether we foolishly build a post office near a runway because it seems convenient, or, as I did a few years ago, we let off steam out of hubris, we inevitably endanger someone who will come into contact with our work who does not see our mistake coming. As a colleague once said to me when I faced punishment for my mistake, "You weren't thinking about the students who would need you the next day." Whoever brought that gun on July 4th, wasn't counting on missing. That's hubris, too. Not to be callous, but if you think you're going to be perfect at taking revenge, and then you hurt someone completely innocent, not only did you not get your desired goal, but you are now going to be punished for something you didn't want to do. So, even if you "made peace with the consequences" of hurting your intended victim, you royally miscalculated and now two people will have their lives cut short -- you and the innocent bystander. Even if you got your revenge, you weren't thinking about the people around you who need you -- maybe people you haven't even met yet but whom you could have/were intended to meet. If you say to yourself that you don't care, that G-D lets the violence happen in other places and doesn't stop it, you are just fulfilling a cycle of violence which inevitably hurts people whom you or someone you had no intention of hurting loved and helps no one. Do something positive and watch -- people you care about and people you didn't even know will benefit. And the energy will come back to you.

So, why does G-D let this happen to innocent bystanders: to remind us that we are responsible for everyone we come into contact with. That every decision we make, especially one involving violence, includes everyone in our immediate world. As people often say these days, "It's not about YOU." It's about everyone around you.

If I could give Michael's friends advice tomorrow, I would say to remember a time in which they had pure fun, whether it was with Michael or someone else. Hold that moment. The next time you feel angry in any way, reach for that moment. And remember that you don't want to deprive more people like Michael, like Terrance Wright, like Nakemia Riley...like Karen Hunter, of that moment. Give more when the instinct is to pull away. Be extra careful when you feel like you can "let something go." Have no hubris. And recognize that the people you care about do need you. The world needs more of the good people I have lost.

Hold tight to those memories of fun. Be generous -- let the world have the care it needs. No one should die because of something which can be prevented. We should never let our prejudices get in the way of medical research as we have with so many diseases. When in doubt, give. If you're a doctor, take on the extra patient. My uncle is very lucky. His friends gathered around him when he was diagnosed with cancer and his network got him to the best of care quickly. People put him at top priority. A veteran, a father and a good man, he deserved that treatment. But so does everyone.

This country could feed the world if everyone donated 15 dollars a day. There are limits to how much profit anyone needs to make. Anyone who has been in an emergency room knows that good, smart doctors know how to find a way to get people the priority of care they need. It can be done. It is done. And I can list tons of airports with grass alongside their runways -- room for error. Because none of us are perfect, and its hubris to think we can be.

I am lucky for the good memories I have of those I have lost. I will try to hold onto them when I feel angry, stingy, lazy or "above it all." I will try.

Mike's friends have put together a really thoughtful site on Facebook.: RIP White Mike http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=137750112917814

Bill Clinton Explains Robert Byrd's Membership In KKK

Writing in relative oblivion

The internet hasn't necessarily increased communication. Perhaps it's shed light on how many people are willing to write without ever being read, or just on the chance that they might be. For some of us, the blogosphere is the equivalent of Emily Dickinson's dresser drawers. Who has space for all that paper, these days. Even if you do, who wants to go to the Container Store and organize it.

I'm always surprised when someone knows of my blog, or just knows of it as part of a sector of 'x' kinds of blogs. Used to be, this was an angry anti-establishment blog. Now this is meant to be just a chronicle.

This past year was, perhaps the first time, that I had to actively speak with colleagues about what was "official" or "unofficial" and about actively playing the polarizations in action throughout the DOE. For many years, I've been aware of the politics. This year was the first time I actually had to try to "play" it. Usually, I go about my business in earnest and that makes me too risky for either side to try to use. This year, the winds shifted so many times, that just to phrase a sentence, required sliding my words through the unseen lights of multiple alarm systems.

The kind of political shapeshifting required by the DOE, I think demands several years of training. It's a combination of diplomacy and intelligence work. You never insult anyone, but you try desperately to understand his/her agenda and its roots. While you do this, your administrators switch agenda. Finally, I found myself doing what people have told me to do for years -- DOCUMENT EVERYTHING. By the end of the year, I found myself with, at least, ten written reports on student behavior a day. This doesn't count the numerous emails on various topics, some meant to clarify the ones just before them. Pressure just to prove what was going on where forced all the teachers I knew to write down practically everything they saw. And then at PD, the discussion was about moving away from this kind of practice. Since I'm not part of the school's future, for me it was just interesting how the thought processes in one part of the school were so different from the practice in another. I myself don't like writing down everything I see in this way, although the sheer volume of reporting began to have an effect, if only that the people enforcing consequences had bodies of information to support them. If you were to place your heart in any one method, you'd've earned yourself a metaphorical heart attack this year, anyway. Policies do need to evolve, though you hope to stay in the same philosophical place in which you began. I don't know, truthfully, what I can say about the latter as I found it bet just to roll with things. I think we all learned to distance ourselves from decisions, processes, anything but the students' work on paper and how the students could improve. We only began possibly to distance ourselves from the latter in those last minutes when it was clear that some studens weren't going to submit work no matter how much they didn't want to go to summer school. Worse, that many students hadn't really changed their patterns over the year. We had, in our many shifts of shape, adjusted to them.

The pressure to shift comes from the pressure to produce -- which comes from our Mayor and his Dept. of Education. If you were training a team of competitive athletes, you could never do what the DOE asked. You can't do "muscle and skill recovery" in the last two weeks before the playoffs. That's why you just put kids on the disabled list or take them off the team when they aren't able to meet the standards of competition.

But, I'm not a person concerned so much with the "competitiveness" of our students as I am their interest and investment in their own learning. It's possible to be competitive, but narrowly trained. I don't think we can produce schools and schools of "Closers." What I'm concerned about is that students see school as a kind of meeting place. Some of the people they meet are caring, adult and students alike. They don't see it as a place of learning -- not the learning they recognize. They learn more by doing at home and even watching tv -- at least, according to them. Nor do they often take pride in what they do. I have seen students who recognize their work as part of the development of their minds, ideas and creativity. That still doesn't mean they take care when they do all of it.

If there is one pressure perhaps we can "push back" at the DOE, it should be the pressure to differentiate instruction and outcomes. Since we know we are going to have to make adjustments based on the needs of our students, why don't we argue for multiple ways of testing and more curricular choices. We always know we are going to find students whose written work may excel even their ability to answer canny reading comprehension questions. The kind of literary/critical thinking which goes into exams is not necessarily that of most writers' processes. Couldn't students submit creative work which presented skills in craftsmanship and in using language?

Many private schools provide independent reports on students and some provide only these as their evaluations. I think we force ourselves into a continual shell game every year, the more we demand students excel in one way on a "shared set of standards and curriculum." We all know you can hand two teachers one set of guidelines and that they will be interpreted slightly differently. It's the ability to be different than someone else which does give us an advantage in a capitalist economy. Half the country pays twice as much for an MP3 player than it needs to, not completely acknowledging the monopoly that company has on music sales, because that company claims it is "different" than the company which usually has the monopoly on other areas of the market. It's true that there are certain "uniforms" and dress codes for business. Isn't the person we admire most the one who makes the best of the restrictions? We put a tremendous premium on conformity in a way which I think only serves to sell the items we label as "standard." How many people have spent more time thinking about "the right interview suit" vs. the right "fit" for the job and later, the right, "life plan."

Perhaps one benefit of the internet is that it is a testimony to how much people want to express their individual ideas. If we thought of our students as people who probably have and read blogs, who communicate via social networks, and take the time to, at least, organize their music so that it will support their days, we might view them more as differentiated pre-adults than clans of age groups to train. Whole markets are geared to them, and they know it -- and they use them. But, we offer them perhaps a small percentage of what they could be learning and an even smaller one of ways to show this. Then, we wonder why they find school boring.

They wonder, too, why we look so tired. The gap between what we are asked and how we work and the way they live the rest of their lives is too wide to begin to explain it.

Bullies

Used to be, anyway, that you became a teacher because you didn't want to engage in something competitive. You wanted to engage in something giving, something elastic, something which had very little to do with the marketplace per se. Now the mood in schools is one which encourages teachers to try to best each other on their classroom decorations. (My favorite English teacher in HS had a flag and a poster of the girl with the earring way before it was a book/movie attitude. That was it.) I will never get used to decorating -- not in HS, anyway. But, I can understand it with younger kids. And I can make something sensible usually for older kids. This just wasn't what I imagined when I made my little lesson on describing a fire truck over 20 years ago in a Methods class.

This wasn't supposed to be a profession in which someone checked your product results. How can you control a child? You can teach a kid all year and he/she can throw up the day of the test? A kid can know something last night, but lose it out of fear this morning. And some kid who is good at picking out patterns can get a higher grade than he/she deserves. It wasn't supposed to be about ego. A good teacher knew his/her students were improving both through tests, through his/her writing, through his/her questions and behavior, etc. Now a kid can be a rotten snot all year, get a 4 and suddenly THAT kid is the emblem of your prowess. Nevermind he didn't do any homework and he hit several kids over the course of the month. He got a 4. He was yours and he got a 4. As many teachers have already noted, who will WILLINGLY want to teach kids who are not likely to be 4's? What better way than to get rid of the teacher you least like than to hand him/her a class of 2's. Unless all serendipity is at play and you are a genius and at your best, it could be a really hard luck year. So 70 percent of them get high 3's, 15 get 4's and the other 15 high 2's. Of the last group, there are issues with attendance, homework, deaths in the family. You did a yeoman's job, but you failed. Gee, if I had a cookie that sold a bit better in 85 more places I think I'd get a raise....

Used to be, you might want a class of "2's". You might really like to take these kids on and get them into reading and writing. A lot of people did. They didn't think of the kids as "2's," but just slower starters who got infinitely better.

And if they didn't get infinitely better, you kept at it. You looked for the student's strengths, too. We aren't honestly going to tell every student that there is a job out there for him/her related to/requiring advanced academic degrees. I wish I could say that. I'd be posting the statistics everywhere. Do we realize we are pushing ourselves into two crises: one which has to do with anchoring ourselves to what may be misleading exams; the second has to do with misleading ourselves that this is our greatest crisis.

Our economy is still in a coma and in need of revision if it's going to allow for a greater distribution of wealth through capitalism. That and cleaning up oil spills alone could be the substance of a curriculum for juniors, high school and college.

Worst of all, none of our kids BELIEVE. I don't mean in supernatural beings. I mean, they don't hope. They don't trust. They hit back because no one is going to take them for a sucker. Even when they say they won't, they still do. Or they cry.
They cry without consolation. See clips from the in-progress documentary THE BULLY PROJECT if you want to see it up close. http://www.thebullyproject.com/_/Bully_Project_home.html

There but for you go I

All right, it's a song from Brigadoon.

It's more than that. It's a lesson that took me a long time to learn.

When I was a young teacher, I was pretty judgmental. It's easy when you're new and self-assured because you haven't had your ideas shaken yet, to look askance at others. In fact, it was not until I was punished myself, that I fully understood the folly of even pretending to know what another person's classroom is like, what his/her intentions are, and finally, what level of effectiveness he/she reaches.

This year I have found myself much on the other end of things, so much so that I am incapable of fighting back because I have no idea what ground I stand on. If there is one word of wisdom I could give to any young teacher is to avoid judging others, at all costs, if only because of how much bad Karma it has brought me.

Memorial Day

My uncle is a Vietnam vet. The way he ended up in Vietnam is actually ironic. He was stationed by the Air Force in Las Vegas, and had applied to leave the country (because he was bored) thinking they would send him to Germany or Italy. The Air Force HAD NEVER sent second-year dentists to Vietnam before. He and a friend were the first two to go. He worked in a MASH unit behind the front lines.

Cassie Gets Her Carrot

Is she droll and confident, or what?

I am not grateful enough.

I am not grateful enough for my beautiful cats, friends and the good fortune that I have had despite myself.

Today's opera photos

It was a well-sung Magic Flute, except for the Queen and Sarastro. The boys found it romantic, but silly, hence their poses. Half way through, they went birdwatching in the kitchen window. They could still hear the broadcast, but it didn't command them the way AIDA did. Larry is Papageno, here and Bernie in his best, serious ROMANTIC Tamino.

The Cathills

A Passover and Easter Prayer

During this time in which we remember the sufferings of the past, let us look to alleviate the pain and eliminate the discrimination which people face at this moment in all parts of the globe. Next year, let there be no martyrs in Jerusalem, Beijing, Sierra Leone or in any great city or tiny hamlet this world over. In the names of the millions of people of all races and creeds who have died for what they have believed in over the centuries.

Emergency Room Holiday

I spent my first vacation day in the Emergency Room at Maimonedes Hospital. My stomach felt as if someone had stuck a balloon inside it and was blowing it up at will, and nothing was working (not water, not pepto, no food going down), so I found myself moaning in a bed next to a man who couldn't breathe, at about 12:30pm. The doctors were pretty swift with me and decided pretty early that I had one of the many viruses going around, and once my bloodwork proved mostly normal (my white count was up, of course), I was handed an elixir of phenobarbytol and maalox which knocked out the pain and sent me a-slumbering for about an hour. When I awoke, the guy next to me sounded like he was breathing under-water, and the amazing nurse who was working on him noticed quickly that there was no suction device near his bed. She called for one and a chaotic group of nurses and doctors surrounded her while the device was set up (no more than an ordinary suction bag and a plastic jar). She had to ask the guy questions and get him to move while she did some of this -- and I heard her call out, "Not yet!" Then a voice behind her said, "He's got a DNR." The nurse said crisply, "I don't think we're at that point," and proceeded to suction out fluid from the guy's lungs. Fifteen minutes later, he was talking to his teenage son.

When I was preparing to leave, about 45 minutes later, the doctors -- most of the respiratory team available on a Saturday -- were deciding how to replace the man's trachial tube -- what size to use, what to do about a blood clot which seemed to be at the bottom of the one he was currently using, and questions were repeated over and over by each group that was added to the case. "Did we put this in? Has he been x-rayed?" In a lot of the questions, you could hear the underlying wonder of how much should be done. I wanted the people with questions to go away and simply let the smart-mouthed, but excellent respiratory doctor who was at the center of the circle and now testing a smaller sized tube, do his work. He was explaining everything non-chalantly and then deciding what size to go with. "I understand," he said to the man as he worked on him, "It feels like the tumor is bumping up against the tube." The doctor didn't say if it was or wasn't -- I don't think he knew. He was certain about the clot. He continued to work. I couldn't see him, but I felt as if I could picture what he was doing. "You see, I just put this [smaller tube] down and he says he feels better so we must've moved the clot or whatever was at the base of the other one." "This is a size..." His words became muffled by the movement -- he was getting ready to replace the tube and he swiftly left the circle to get what he needed.

My nurse took my blood pressure just before I signed my paperwork, and it was 139/90 -- higher than it had ever been in my life, but we took this to be from my involvement in the drama next to me. I was telling her about how frustrating it was to hear the same questions repeated while this guy is getting uncomfortable and that I wished people would let the respiratory doctor work. She said, "You're going home today. This is a good day." Then she left. I grabbed my prescription for pain medicine from the cheerful doctor who had worked on me seemingly obliviously to the pain of the man next to me (She wasn't on his team, at all. No one who worked with me was.)
And I went home.

There is JUSTICE in our courts and our UFT.

http://www.uft.org/news/judge_voids_city_school_closings/

It's a beginning and I think one of a long road of victories to come.

An old essay topic

For years, I used to give my students the question, "Does punishment work?" as an essay topic. Usually, I got about a 50/50 response, with it coming down to, "it depends on the kid." Most often, they gave examples of how punishments worked on their younger siblings. Whether they were being honest or not, my students usually felt that punishments had stopped working on them -- not because they didn't feel the pain they caused, but because their actions were decisions based on what they thought were rational ideas. Since I've spent the majority of my career working with the overage and under-credited, I'm biased in favor of the latter set of arguments. I've met students who didn't succeed in school because they were busy trying to survive on a much more fundamental level. Yes, I know, there have been homeless kids who get perfect SAT scores. I'd argue that those kids are very talented to begin with. Having gone to Stuyvesant High School, I can also tell you that a lot of very talented kids have trouble succeeding academically when their basic needs are not being met. Exceptions never prove rules.

I think the same formula can be used for adults.

Call me a child of the 70's, but I believe the only way people learn is through forgiveness. Yes, I think wrong behavior should be addressed. But, no teacher or student wants to do harm or to fail. People make mistakes out of frustration, whether they are very young or not so young.

I put this note out there for everyone to consider. You don't need to write five paragraphs in response. Just let me know what you think.

Teacher Isolation

At the end of the day, for about five minutes, I sat with a colleague while he played Pink Floyd's The Wall on his personal laptop. We talked about it -- the themes, where we were when it came out -- I was graduating from 8th grade, he saw the movie with a group of friends. The movie had gotten to me later, in high school, along with Tommy. I always want to go right home after school, which is a new feeling for me. I used to sit with kids for hours or just work with a colleague. But now I wondered why I wasn't right out the door. I needed those five minutes. And then I pushed myself out the door.

Last week someone stole my cell phone and I lost all of my contacts -- it's easy to erase your identity when a person has your handset. There are so many people whom I will never see again, whose phone numbers kept me connected to them. It gave me the semblance of a community. Now, I'm a pushy person. There are colleagues I know who have probably never asked for the phone numbers of colleagues with whom they have worked for years. While people worked closely together, they were much more conscious of their privacy in the generations before me. There was no Facebook to casually sign up on, and they probably wouldn't have, anyway. Perhaps they might have shared their "Linked-In" pages. I doubt it. A recent study of new teachers found that many of them are leaving the profession because they feel isolated, too -- although mentoring programs have helped to reduce some attrition. (How Mentoring Programs Can Reduce Teacher Isolation http://cie.asu.edu/volume8/number14/) There's been a lot of writing on the plight of new teachers, on the need for teachers to collaborate, to communicate with the outside world -- but little on what is happening to the school community itself which makes these, and just connecting with long-time colleagues, near impossible.

With all the closings of schools and the shiftings of personnel, there must be scores of teachers who have lost their communities, and some of their only long-term friends. Working together means you talk to each other every day. But without that ritual, you don't have a way to continue the intimacy. Some people will call each other for a while, perhaps. Juxtaposing the feelings you have for the colleagues with whom you were close and trusting and that of terror which has come with this new era of instability makes it harder to talk to anyone, though. You don't know if your friends have changed. Are they still for real? Are you for real?

In the coming weeks I want to look at studies on teacher loneliness and see if anyone is looking at what is happening to the population of teachers in NYC who are being continually displaced. Are they socializing anywhere? Are they eating alone? Sure a lot of teachers have joined the blogosphere. What about those who haven't. What does it mean to all of us that we have lost direct human contact with so many, so instantly.

Anyone who wants to write in, please do.

Being Positive

I was on the phone with a former student, now a mother of two in her thirties. She kept telling me to "be positive." I explained that being positive scares me. To me, it implies that there's no concrete evidence of the possibility of success.

...When my mother was in college, her Intro to Psychology professor told his class to "Feel free to ask any questions." My mother raised her hand and said that she no longer felt free because his invitation had made her feel self-conscious. If she were really free, why would anyone need to mention it.

So often, palliative phrases reveal the problems beneath the surface.

Re-invention

Practically every night, before I finally make the climb up to my cave in Bensonhurst (in Brooklyn, caves have staircases), I stop at the local supermarket to pick up groceries. Once upon a time, I was organized and bought a month's worth of groceries on a Sunday and had everything delivered. Now, I plan my meals in a pay-as-you-go fashion.

My supermarket is staffed by a steady crew of male and female teenagers and middle-aged women, all of whom are thoughtful and smarter than their jobs. I wish I were better at easy conversation and that my life weren't constantly paper-clipped with explanations. It's too difficult to keep explaining, so I don't anymore. We still say, "Hello," but there's not much eye contact.

Tonight, I took a deep breath and mentioned I was tired. The very polite young woman who is one of the few left who still tries to tease a smile from my jowls, answered, rather darkly, "at least you're working."

This is technically my 18th year of teaching. And I'm very tired. I'm in a situation to which I am totally unaccustomed and which keeps adding new variables. Yesterday, during a faculty meeting, we watched the short video, "Shift Happens," which makes projections about computers who will be able to outsmart all humans by 2049 and my students needing to work 14 different jobs in their lifetimes. It also talks about the need for students to problem solve. Of late, I've found students unwilling to take on that challenge. Whereas they once seemed interested in being involved in their community, they've grown apathetic. Some of that has to do with being 10-12 and not really knowing how to begin. They still ask how they should begin their essays, sometimes.

When I was their age, I already took ownership of my writing and you COULDN'T tell me how to begin an essay. Yet, I can be as dumbfounded as they are when it comes to problem solving in my own life. At 42, our economy, American greed and Puritanism be damned, is asking me to re-think how to think about myself. I'm not the kind of person to respond well to books about the subject and I intuitively loathe the genre of self-help. I've always found it amusing that Tony Roberts discovered his calling as a guru in that field after failing in others. What I'd rather do is imagine bringing a case to the Supreme Court proving that we are denying our children equal protection of the law by not equalizing the funding of education throughout the country. Do I go to law school? My track record for winning battles is very poor. I can create the argument, but I can't speak it. More often than not, I can't speak, these days.

My own trepidation and my exhaustion necessitates a process of re-invention that is careful and which can be done with some solitude. Of course, my biggest enemy is time.

Larry tells Bernie a Secret

Don't just stand there, listen!

It was a pleasant lunch of rubbery spaghetti and lightly bruised steamed vegetables. "I can't believe the educational system has gone down so much. I see kids coming to school and they don't look like they want to go." I chewed steadily. "Where is the money going?" I nodded. "And how can you be paying for materials?" "What do you mean you have no books?" My eyes widen. "I know you're telling the truth. What do the other teachers do?" I make a rolling motion with my hands. "You all do this?" I cough. "I thought you were going to the doctor." I cross my eyebrows. "I know it's been a busy week." "Did you take a cab here, by the way?" My face doesn't move. "Why can't you walk?" My eyebrows lower and my skin feels yellow. "I know you're in pain. I know you're out of shape. You're letting yourself fall apart." "For what? I mean you collect a salary, but you spend most of it on the job." I drink my water. "It never changes. But, it's got to change if you're going to go on with your life. Can't you just explain your situation: it's too far, they need too much..." I press my hand down lightly on the table. "You're telling me they don't care. Doesn't the UFT care?" I shrug my shoulders and put my palms up. "It's not their decision, I know." (Pause)
"Let's get the check."
I thanked him for lunch.

Larry Wondering

In the middle of his birthday catnip feast, Larry takes a moment to wonder. What's he thinking about?

Larry turns seven tomorrow.

Here he is dreaming of all the catnip...a lot of which he got tonight....

The only comfort I take in more school closings

There really is no comfort to be taken in school closings. All I can think, however, is that will leave so many, many more ATR's that it will be impossible for them to be fired -- the sheer number of people and the tactic would make the union busting of the Bloomberg administration obvious. Why they think they will get away with displacing all these people and then trying to fire them is beyond me. It's not good politics. It would show off too obviously how bad off the middle class of the city is. I don't think he can even open new schools fast enough to absorb all the kids who are going to need them -- at some point this ponzi scheme has to fall in on him. There will be no place for the kids to go. He doesn't get that this isn't like a re-org in business. The fall-out is much greater per school and per person. Eventually, there have to be whole sectors in which kids are not being served at all. I'm sure it's happening already. Someone has to find a good hard luck story -- a family with no place to send their kids in the fall which can service their kids properly. When Tilden closes, for example, there probably won't be enough high schools in the area to absorb the ELL population. This has to be happening in more places across the city.