23 November, 2012
02 September, 2012
It's weird and terribly lonely to be writing on this blog today, the seventh anniversary of the death of my friend Karen Beth Hunter. Part of me wants to go out, part of me cannot go out. Over the years, my friends have forgotten. It's not their fault. Amazing though One waited until close to midnight to call me a few years ago. I have friends who can't stand the sound of my voice. Friends who have other things to do. This doesn't make them bad friends. Just emphasizes the loneliness of not having someone who wanted to talk to me first and foremost.
Larry and Bernie have been great.
I haven't read a book in a few weeks, haven't been interested in very much. There's fear, there's despair, there's a feeling of hopelessness.
It's one day. It was one horrible day.
I miss Karen. I miss being hopeful. I miss being loved.
I miss Karen.
Larry and Bernie have been great.
I haven't read a book in a few weeks, haven't been interested in very much. There's fear, there's despair, there's a feeling of hopelessness.
It's one day. It was one horrible day.
I miss Karen. I miss being hopeful. I miss being loved.
I miss Karen.
18 July, 2012
In honor of Henry
In honor of the anniversary of losing Henry, Larry ran around like a maniac chasing a feather and then started lifting the toy on his own and Bernie went after it.....
16 July, 2012
Floodlights
In the compressed, florescent light of the ambulance, Manuel thought the green bottle looked just like a toy lighter he had tried to purchase for 25 cents in a vending machine. The green plastic enticed him, itself a reminder of the bottom of the kitchen glasses which broke easily when he knocked them off the table when he was 2 and 3 years old. He squished the bottle and almost cracked it. “Young man, we need that.” The paramedic pulled her voice back a bit and rubbed the boy's shoulders. “We need to know what your mommy took, so we can help her.” The boy handed it over silently.
Destiny Torres-Shapiro was not an unfamiliar face to the nurses in the Shalom Aleichem Memorial Hospital Emergency Room. A year ago, her mother Stacey had found Destiny listless in the doorway to her apartment building. Six months later, Dmitri Shapiro, her ex-husband, drove Destiny from the restaurant bathroom where he found her attempting to throw up the overdose she had just taken. He waited with her until they found a nurse named Devon who watched over her until she was admitted. “What if my patients see me,” he explained as he wiped Destiny's forehead. Still, he was angry when she didn't call him to pick her up when she was released a week later. He hadn't intended his practical concerns to overshadow his desire to be her hero and her one true love. In his mind, he was sure Destiny knew how much he cared for her and that she could rely on him, always. He had left her in capable hands – and he had stayed for hours until she was properly supervised.
The nurses felt sorry for Destiny, and didn't think she was an incapable mother to her children. She obviously had some personal turmoil, and while they liked Dmitri, they referred to him as "the guy she hangs with" even when they were married. When he was a resident in Internal Medicine, he spent his time with a crew of young Russian doctors known for smoking outside of the ER and keeping two cell phones, one for their wives and one for their girlfriends. If he wasn't unfaithful (and they weren't sure) he enjoyed the ersatz Sinatra bad boy image of the others, and made no attempt to separate himself even from their notorious drinking escapades. He even wore the "bling" -- a pinky ring of diamonds, an opal and diamonds on another finger, and a gold chain bracelet, sometimes with diamonds, as well. The wedding band (and they were all married) was super-ornate, Dmitri's and Destiny's in carved, block Jewish letters (she converted for the marriage, officially at any rate.) So, if anything, they saw Dmitri as more suspect than Destiny.
No one, in fact, saw Destiny's employment for Child Protective Services as ironic. Her kids were well-fed and well-spoken. They dreaded more what would happen to them if they left a world which was unstable, but basically safe and which they understood well. Although Dmitri was a nice enough stepfather and they believed the grandmother helped with raising the children, they saw the children's characters as gentle replicas of their mothers, especially their manners, their natural curiosity about medicine and their above average compassion. They were thoroughly, "nice kids" and the thought of placing them into foster care was never considered. All of the ER staff had seen their share of incompetent parents and of parents who were basically good, but had personal traumas and they saw Destiny among the latter. Finally, the drugs that Destiny took weren't really lethal, but were overdoses of medications for pain and anxiety. The psychiatric teams themselves saw Destiny as someone who wasn't trying to kill herself, but needed better help managing. They only wished they had the time to be able to fully help her. However, no one felt tht she or the children should be uprooted, unless Destiny herself felt otherwise, or things deteriorated.
Destiny was not completely unhappy, either, and she still felt affection for her ex-husband. When she had come out of the hospital, six months ago, it was Dmitri whom Destiny called as soon as her mother had left after bringing her home. She took him to dinner in Chinatown, where they always went whenever they wanted to escape their identities. Then she gave him a massage and slept alongside him. But, she couldn't sustain the calm. Her rhythms were spun around Manuel and Damaris, children of her high school sweetheart and first husband. She loved them and had built a silent world in which they never had to explain anything to one another. She felt unfaithful to them – and she was – whenever she lived in the adult world of explanations and distinctions. There was nothing more satisfying than holding on to both of them after a day of playing at the beach or at home. She didn't know how to explain to them that the purity was sometimes too much and also too fragile. When she was with them too long, she lost her ability to defend herself, and thereby care for them. If she was to work in the world of adults, she needed practice. Dr. Dmitri Shapiro had wanted nothing more than to protect her when she met him, two years ago. He was ready to adopt her kids, create a home. Much as she held one foot in what her grandmother had called the “normal world,” Destiny was afraid she couldn't manage it full-time. Why had she had children, then? An insatiable need to love and nurture. She knew she could do this, if she could do so unnoticed, far away from crowds, especially of those who were familiar. Like everything else in Destiny's life, however, this certainty was undermined by an opposing truth. There was nowhere else besides the thirty blocks in which she had grown up in which she could survive most effectively. She didn't know how to drive and, taken out of context of the Hispanic and European immigrant neighborhoods of Brooklyn in which she grew up, people couldn't parse her fast speech or inexplicable fears of space, the dark and of being stranded without buses or trains.
Manuel already knew, if nothing else, how in danger his mother felt. She had stopped sleeping weeks ago and was living on the tablets in green bottles. The hall closet was full of bottles, some of which she pulled out and used for his sister and for him when they were ill. The hoarded medication was a safeguard against needing to go to the doctor. His mother had a gift for diagnosing her family's ills, and whenever they did go to the doctor, she demanded prescriptions with refill after refill, which she filled, noting their uses should similar illnesses appear in their house again. It mortified her when she found out it was Manuel who had to call 911 this time. She hadn't meant to kill herself, but was in the habit of overdosing on pain and anti-anxiety medications when she was frightened. Sometimes she slept it off without notice. Manuel had a system for how to tell if this was a dangerous moment. Whenever he saw his mother asleep, he breathed with her for about a minute. If the process wasn't smooth in any way, he picked up the phone. Even when another adult was making the decision, Manuel checked his mother's breathing, to be sure.
When Dmitri arrived at the ER, Manuel was riding on the shoulders of Patrick, a gregarious African-American male nurse with a surprisingly thick, Yiddish accent. Having grown up in the Hasidic area surrounding the hospital, Patrick absorbed the accents of his neighbors. His mother was also a nurse, and her familiarity with the elderly parents of her neighbors (who perforce she often cared for in the cardiology wing of Shalom Aleichem), made most of their families at ease with her zealously curious son, and he had grown up with the unusual privilege of visiting their schools and synagogues, as well as eating frequent meals at their tables. Only the children of the most severe sects did not acknowledge him, and Patrick was an expert at distinguishing by their clothes and the style of their side locks of hair who was Satmar and who was from the more-welcoming Lubavitch fiefdoms. He'd learned, too, the derogatory Yiddish slang that one group used about another and more generally upon anyone with whom they felt enmity. What she didn't pick up herself, Patrick eagerly taught his mother. Consequently, everyone regardless of sect, knew not to curse around Patrick or his mother because they could turn around and double the offense. Plus, they could find nearly everyone's addresses, schools and favorite places to shop. Patrick's mother was prized among the highest customers at the local butchers and fish markets because she not only had discriminating tastes, but she was far nicer to the servers and delivery people than most of her neighbors. Cross Amanda Davis, her son, or her quiet, Englsh teacher husband Tom and you might never get a good white fish or shoulder steak again. Even though Tom kept his distance from practically everyone, claiming the noise of his classroom made it impossible for him to listen to human speech after 3:25pm, he could sense if what was being said about him was disparaging from the tone, and he knew that anything ending with the word, “Yaaam” - river in Hebrew in Yiddish, could not be good.
“Gantz be'Seder?” asked Dmitri in his broken Yiddish, of Patrick. “Gantz is Meshugah!” responded Patrick, gently placing Manuel on the counter top of the large nurse's station at the center of ER. Unlike most hospitals, the ER at Sholom Aleichem moved slowly and carefully. Most of the patients were elderly people who came in because they hadn't seen a doctor in a long while. Urinary tract infections, chronic headaches and stomach problems. Some terminal patients who needed more home care than their insurance paid for would call when their pain was too severe or they're symptoms took a dramatic turn which they did not understand. Then there were people like Destiny and the patient in the bed next to hers. No one knew exactly how Herman Diamond had arrived in ER. He was a resident in a nearby nursing home. Had they just wheeled him in and left him? Someone early in the evening had been able to establish that he had throat cancer in the later stages (hence the breathing tube in his neck.) Periodically, he coughed loudly, but what exactly were they to do? Destiny reminded each new crew of nurses who looked in on Herman and began to ask him for basic information, “They already asked him that, it's all in his chart. They're trying to get his records from the nursing home.” It had quieted down around Herman when Manuel had jumped on Patrick's shoulders.
Just as Dmitri and Patrick had begun to go over the details of Destiny's episode, however, Herman started to wheeze. Bending forward as if for speed, a nurse bolted from across ER, pulling the curtain around Herman as she looked for the suction bag and found that Herman was in the one bed at which no such machine existed. She screamed this out and an older nurse moved seamlessly behind his bed and set the equipment up. “Don't move,” said the younger nurse as she began to pull the fluid from Herman's chest. The sound of gagging under-water peeled from behind the curtain. “Please, sir, don't move!” A teenage voiced female nurse shouted as she shifted the curtain to enter, “He has a DNR.” But, the other nurse insisted, “I don't think we're there, yet,” removing the last bit of phlegm and replacing the breathing tube gently in the space in Herman's neck. “Patrick, he needs a new tube. We need to fit him for a new one. Call Respiratory and ask for Holman,” beckoned the nurse who had done the suction. To Dmitri, this nurse appeared to be in her very early 30's, thinner than the rail which held the curtain-rod, with a wide-boned, smooth burnt yellow skin and face of the Mongol conquerors he had seen in the copies of the silk paintings by the thirteenth century artist Qian Xuan which hung in the coffee-stained dispatcher's office in which his father worked. Patrick grabbed the phone, and for the first time all night, Herman was heard speaking into his own cell phone. His voice was thin,sounding more like static on a soft radio. Ten minutes later, his 18 year old son Mohammed, dressed in a baseball cap, a bright red polo shirt, sagging jeans and squeaky new dunks, ran into the ER, and sat down next to Dmitri while Manuel slept in Destiny's arms.
Destiny Torres-Shapiro was not an unfamiliar face to the nurses in the Shalom Aleichem Memorial Hospital Emergency Room. A year ago, her mother Stacey had found Destiny listless in the doorway to her apartment building. Six months later, Dmitri Shapiro, her ex-husband, drove Destiny from the restaurant bathroom where he found her attempting to throw up the overdose she had just taken. He waited with her until they found a nurse named Devon who watched over her until she was admitted. “What if my patients see me,” he explained as he wiped Destiny's forehead. Still, he was angry when she didn't call him to pick her up when she was released a week later. He hadn't intended his practical concerns to overshadow his desire to be her hero and her one true love. In his mind, he was sure Destiny knew how much he cared for her and that she could rely on him, always. He had left her in capable hands – and he had stayed for hours until she was properly supervised.
The nurses felt sorry for Destiny, and didn't think she was an incapable mother to her children. She obviously had some personal turmoil, and while they liked Dmitri, they referred to him as "the guy she hangs with" even when they were married. When he was a resident in Internal Medicine, he spent his time with a crew of young Russian doctors known for smoking outside of the ER and keeping two cell phones, one for their wives and one for their girlfriends. If he wasn't unfaithful (and they weren't sure) he enjoyed the ersatz Sinatra bad boy image of the others, and made no attempt to separate himself even from their notorious drinking escapades. He even wore the "bling" -- a pinky ring of diamonds, an opal and diamonds on another finger, and a gold chain bracelet, sometimes with diamonds, as well. The wedding band (and they were all married) was super-ornate, Dmitri's and Destiny's in carved, block Jewish letters (she converted for the marriage, officially at any rate.) So, if anything, they saw Dmitri as more suspect than Destiny.
No one, in fact, saw Destiny's employment for Child Protective Services as ironic. Her kids were well-fed and well-spoken. They dreaded more what would happen to them if they left a world which was unstable, but basically safe and which they understood well. Although Dmitri was a nice enough stepfather and they believed the grandmother helped with raising the children, they saw the children's characters as gentle replicas of their mothers, especially their manners, their natural curiosity about medicine and their above average compassion. They were thoroughly, "nice kids" and the thought of placing them into foster care was never considered. All of the ER staff had seen their share of incompetent parents and of parents who were basically good, but had personal traumas and they saw Destiny among the latter. Finally, the drugs that Destiny took weren't really lethal, but were overdoses of medications for pain and anxiety. The psychiatric teams themselves saw Destiny as someone who wasn't trying to kill herself, but needed better help managing. They only wished they had the time to be able to fully help her. However, no one felt tht she or the children should be uprooted, unless Destiny herself felt otherwise, or things deteriorated.
Destiny was not completely unhappy, either, and she still felt affection for her ex-husband. When she had come out of the hospital, six months ago, it was Dmitri whom Destiny called as soon as her mother had left after bringing her home. She took him to dinner in Chinatown, where they always went whenever they wanted to escape their identities. Then she gave him a massage and slept alongside him. But, she couldn't sustain the calm. Her rhythms were spun around Manuel and Damaris, children of her high school sweetheart and first husband. She loved them and had built a silent world in which they never had to explain anything to one another. She felt unfaithful to them – and she was – whenever she lived in the adult world of explanations and distinctions. There was nothing more satisfying than holding on to both of them after a day of playing at the beach or at home. She didn't know how to explain to them that the purity was sometimes too much and also too fragile. When she was with them too long, she lost her ability to defend herself, and thereby care for them. If she was to work in the world of adults, she needed practice. Dr. Dmitri Shapiro had wanted nothing more than to protect her when she met him, two years ago. He was ready to adopt her kids, create a home. Much as she held one foot in what her grandmother had called the “normal world,” Destiny was afraid she couldn't manage it full-time. Why had she had children, then? An insatiable need to love and nurture. She knew she could do this, if she could do so unnoticed, far away from crowds, especially of those who were familiar. Like everything else in Destiny's life, however, this certainty was undermined by an opposing truth. There was nowhere else besides the thirty blocks in which she had grown up in which she could survive most effectively. She didn't know how to drive and, taken out of context of the Hispanic and European immigrant neighborhoods of Brooklyn in which she grew up, people couldn't parse her fast speech or inexplicable fears of space, the dark and of being stranded without buses or trains.
Manuel already knew, if nothing else, how in danger his mother felt. She had stopped sleeping weeks ago and was living on the tablets in green bottles. The hall closet was full of bottles, some of which she pulled out and used for his sister and for him when they were ill. The hoarded medication was a safeguard against needing to go to the doctor. His mother had a gift for diagnosing her family's ills, and whenever they did go to the doctor, she demanded prescriptions with refill after refill, which she filled, noting their uses should similar illnesses appear in their house again. It mortified her when she found out it was Manuel who had to call 911 this time. She hadn't meant to kill herself, but was in the habit of overdosing on pain and anti-anxiety medications when she was frightened. Sometimes she slept it off without notice. Manuel had a system for how to tell if this was a dangerous moment. Whenever he saw his mother asleep, he breathed with her for about a minute. If the process wasn't smooth in any way, he picked up the phone. Even when another adult was making the decision, Manuel checked his mother's breathing, to be sure.
When Dmitri arrived at the ER, Manuel was riding on the shoulders of Patrick, a gregarious African-American male nurse with a surprisingly thick, Yiddish accent. Having grown up in the Hasidic area surrounding the hospital, Patrick absorbed the accents of his neighbors. His mother was also a nurse, and her familiarity with the elderly parents of her neighbors (who perforce she often cared for in the cardiology wing of Shalom Aleichem), made most of their families at ease with her zealously curious son, and he had grown up with the unusual privilege of visiting their schools and synagogues, as well as eating frequent meals at their tables. Only the children of the most severe sects did not acknowledge him, and Patrick was an expert at distinguishing by their clothes and the style of their side locks of hair who was Satmar and who was from the more-welcoming Lubavitch fiefdoms. He'd learned, too, the derogatory Yiddish slang that one group used about another and more generally upon anyone with whom they felt enmity. What she didn't pick up herself, Patrick eagerly taught his mother. Consequently, everyone regardless of sect, knew not to curse around Patrick or his mother because they could turn around and double the offense. Plus, they could find nearly everyone's addresses, schools and favorite places to shop. Patrick's mother was prized among the highest customers at the local butchers and fish markets because she not only had discriminating tastes, but she was far nicer to the servers and delivery people than most of her neighbors. Cross Amanda Davis, her son, or her quiet, Englsh teacher husband Tom and you might never get a good white fish or shoulder steak again. Even though Tom kept his distance from practically everyone, claiming the noise of his classroom made it impossible for him to listen to human speech after 3:25pm, he could sense if what was being said about him was disparaging from the tone, and he knew that anything ending with the word, “Yaaam” - river in Hebrew in Yiddish, could not be good.
“Gantz be'Seder?” asked Dmitri in his broken Yiddish, of Patrick. “Gantz is Meshugah!” responded Patrick, gently placing Manuel on the counter top of the large nurse's station at the center of ER. Unlike most hospitals, the ER at Sholom Aleichem moved slowly and carefully. Most of the patients were elderly people who came in because they hadn't seen a doctor in a long while. Urinary tract infections, chronic headaches and stomach problems. Some terminal patients who needed more home care than their insurance paid for would call when their pain was too severe or they're symptoms took a dramatic turn which they did not understand. Then there were people like Destiny and the patient in the bed next to hers. No one knew exactly how Herman Diamond had arrived in ER. He was a resident in a nearby nursing home. Had they just wheeled him in and left him? Someone early in the evening had been able to establish that he had throat cancer in the later stages (hence the breathing tube in his neck.) Periodically, he coughed loudly, but what exactly were they to do? Destiny reminded each new crew of nurses who looked in on Herman and began to ask him for basic information, “They already asked him that, it's all in his chart. They're trying to get his records from the nursing home.” It had quieted down around Herman when Manuel had jumped on Patrick's shoulders.
Just as Dmitri and Patrick had begun to go over the details of Destiny's episode, however, Herman started to wheeze. Bending forward as if for speed, a nurse bolted from across ER, pulling the curtain around Herman as she looked for the suction bag and found that Herman was in the one bed at which no such machine existed. She screamed this out and an older nurse moved seamlessly behind his bed and set the equipment up. “Don't move,” said the younger nurse as she began to pull the fluid from Herman's chest. The sound of gagging under-water peeled from behind the curtain. “Please, sir, don't move!” A teenage voiced female nurse shouted as she shifted the curtain to enter, “He has a DNR.” But, the other nurse insisted, “I don't think we're there, yet,” removing the last bit of phlegm and replacing the breathing tube gently in the space in Herman's neck. “Patrick, he needs a new tube. We need to fit him for a new one. Call Respiratory and ask for Holman,” beckoned the nurse who had done the suction. To Dmitri, this nurse appeared to be in her very early 30's, thinner than the rail which held the curtain-rod, with a wide-boned, smooth burnt yellow skin and face of the Mongol conquerors he had seen in the copies of the silk paintings by the thirteenth century artist Qian Xuan which hung in the coffee-stained dispatcher's office in which his father worked. Patrick grabbed the phone, and for the first time all night, Herman was heard speaking into his own cell phone. His voice was thin,sounding more like static on a soft radio. Ten minutes later, his 18 year old son Mohammed, dressed in a baseball cap, a bright red polo shirt, sagging jeans and squeaky new dunks, ran into the ER, and sat down next to Dmitri while Manuel slept in Destiny's arms.
05 July, 2012
Voluntary Redundancy
As I was reading The Guardian this morning, I noticed reference to a very curious phrase called, "Voluntary Redundancy." This roughly translates to a buyout by a company of select workers -- with a generous severance pay offer. After a little research, I found The Guardian, had done a longer piece on the fact that companies were likely to offer many workers this option, given job projections in Britain. When faced with such an offer, a woman in publishing noted:
"It was a lot of money and could have nearly paid off my mortgage. I decided against in the end because I wasn't certain I would find other work, but I'm still not sure I made the right decision." ("What to do if you are offered Voluntary Redundancy," Jill Insley, The Guardian February 26, 2010.)
Typically, as with incentive packages offered in the private sector in the US, Voluntary Redundancy packages are 10 - 12 months pay. That doesn't sound anything like the buyout which was discussed (and seems to have disappeared) by the DOE. If we are to be expected to follow a more corporate model in education, why isn't the DOE acting more like a business and offering a reasonable incentive to those whom it wishes to take a buyout?
Not that a buyout would really help me, even if it were this generous.
There's nothing else I am qualified to do but teach, and I can't face the next eleven years on one year's salary. Nor can I use it to train to become something else -- it won't cover any private education tuition, and should I even get into a public school for re-training, what will I use to live on? However, such a buyout might be viable for people who are or five years away from retirement, if they can also start to receive their pensions. The small incentive numbers (Walcott said something about looking at what was offered in Dallas - 2 to 10,000 dollars, in that case) wouldn't really help anyone. If you are renting an apartment for, say, 1,500 a month, why would you take an offer that didn't even cover a year's rent? It's bizarre that a DOE working under a mayor who is a businessman would offer packages that would have no place in a corporate model. Often these packages include maintaining some of the benefits that the job offered, so no one can argue that any benefits UFT workers might get to keep from a buyout outweigh the small cash package. Corporations in Britain, anyway, also offer job re-training programs. Do you know how impossibly difficult it is to try to get a different job if you have spent your life teaching? Such programs might be very valuable to someone who can't quite manage to live on whatever his/her pension might be, but could supplement his/her income if he/she had new skills. Again, this wouldn't help me, and frankly, what I want is to continue to work in education because I actually like teaching.
However, if I were three years away from retirement and could start to collect my pension, I could take an offer of a year's salary and re-training. A big, "IF," but there are people out there for whom this might be a reality. People who take Voluntary Redundancy also have the option of returning to their companies -- in the same way, I guess as people can work F-Status, or just come out of retirement. If someone were to do this, he/she might also bring new skills and experience to his/her position. This would enrich the school environment. Now, this is all not viable for me, and not something I would would want "at this point in my career." Unlike the many interviewers whom I have faced who look at my years of experience and have used the latter phrase to imply my experience and age would make me unwilling to work hard, I WANT TO TAKE MY EXPERIENCE and really put it to work on the job. I feel frustrated that I can't do this. That I can't, finally, use what I know to improve a situation. Then, after being allowed to come close to completing my life's work, if the economy were still in bad shape - in about 8 -10 years, I might be ready for a buyout.
There's nothing else I am qualified to do but teach, and I can't face the next eleven years on one year's salary. Nor can I use it to train to become something else -- it won't cover any private education tuition, and should I even get into a public school for re-training, what will I use to live on? However, such a buyout might be viable for people who are or five years away from retirement, if they can also start to receive their pensions. The small incentive numbers (Walcott said something about looking at what was offered in Dallas - 2 to 10,000 dollars, in that case) wouldn't really help anyone. If you are renting an apartment for, say, 1,500 a month, why would you take an offer that didn't even cover a year's rent? It's bizarre that a DOE working under a mayor who is a businessman would offer packages that would have no place in a corporate model. Often these packages include maintaining some of the benefits that the job offered, so no one can argue that any benefits UFT workers might get to keep from a buyout outweigh the small cash package. Corporations in Britain, anyway, also offer job re-training programs. Do you know how impossibly difficult it is to try to get a different job if you have spent your life teaching? Such programs might be very valuable to someone who can't quite manage to live on whatever his/her pension might be, but could supplement his/her income if he/she had new skills. Again, this wouldn't help me, and frankly, what I want is to continue to work in education because I actually like teaching.
However, if I were three years away from retirement and could start to collect my pension, I could take an offer of a year's salary and re-training. A big, "IF," but there are people out there for whom this might be a reality. People who take Voluntary Redundancy also have the option of returning to their companies -- in the same way, I guess as people can work F-Status, or just come out of retirement. If someone were to do this, he/she might also bring new skills and experience to his/her position. This would enrich the school environment. Now, this is all not viable for me, and not something I would would want "at this point in my career." Unlike the many interviewers whom I have faced who look at my years of experience and have used the latter phrase to imply my experience and age would make me unwilling to work hard, I WANT TO TAKE MY EXPERIENCE and really put it to work on the job. I feel frustrated that I can't do this. That I can't, finally, use what I know to improve a situation. Then, after being allowed to come close to completing my life's work, if the economy were still in bad shape - in about 8 -10 years, I might be ready for a buyout.
20 May, 2012
Larry will be writing more in the summer
Larry wanted to take this opportunity to apologize for not keeping up with his part of the blog. He's been busy, but is quite well and eager to write. He's been doing a lot of important caring for the Bernster, me and others. Plus, he got his teeth cleaned and he's been turning down toothpaste commercials, left and right.
Soon...
What we talk about when we talk about the UFT
Forgive me, it's been a long time since I have posted, and I have to be brief.
It's popular for blogs written by and for teachers to be anti-UFT. Recently, some blogs even picked up on the heinous story by the NY Post about UFT president Michael Mulgrew's alleged affair. In doing this, all we are doing is picking up the public's gauntlet and using it to beat ourselves. This is exactly what people want to read. The anti-teacher sentiment which has been engendered by political figures at every government level thrives on the rhetoric and techniques of witch hunts.
When I have had complaints about the UFT, I have been pretty direct in making them -- to the UFT members in question. If I went unheard, I found a way to get the individual in question to hear me.
As I have said on other occasions, I have been helped a great deal both by Unity members of the UFT and members of alternative factions. What I like about both groups -- people like ICE, GEM, etc. is that they are actually trying to do something, not just complain. When we complain publicly about any group of teachers (or teacher) we reinforce stereotypes which are being capitalized upon in the current climate. More than this, we waste time. Don't stop questioning what anyone does, but do stop getting involved in tangents. Keep asking -- keep the dialogue going, if not in the forum in which you started, then in another, BETWEEN YOU AND SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
WASTING TIME JABBING AT ANYONE doesn't help. I'm "putting this out there" because this IS a general point.
When my mother was working for the city, she got enormous help both from her own union, and from advice of other unions, all of them for Blue Collar jobs. No matter what complaints she or others in her job title had, they didn't waste time complaining about other workers. My mother had meetings directly with the head of the Dept. of Health of NYC, she had meetings with leaders of her union and even asked for advice from leaders of other unions. That's how she managed for the over 30 years she worked.
If you are going to say times have changed, I'll say this: Willie Loman didn't have a union. Had he worked as a construction worker, he would have had a union.
22 February, 2012
Unchained Memory
November 23 went by and I forgot it was your birthday. I probably had no idea it was November 23rd. On Dec 1, I took a month leave to deal with my health. All I could do was find out what was wrong and it was time to go back. I'm trying to address things now. Karen, I miss you and I am more shaped by your loss than I want to be. I want to be shaped by what I found in you, not to seem trite and obvious. I still don't believe it.
22 January, 2012
The End of the Aspie Teacher
When I originally published this, I altered facts to protect my identity. I don't want to change it and it doesn't make a difference in the end.
Will there ever be more Aspie Teachers?
November 5, 2011
Teaching: A vanishing safe haven for people with Asperger’s Syndrome.
When I was emerging into what has passed for my adulthood, at the age of 25, I took a job as a teacher. To my friends, I said it was because I had a passion for kids and for writing. The truth was, it was something that I could imagine doing. Period.
My favorite teachers had been, what a friend of mine called, “extremely ugly people.” They didn’t pay any attention to conventional ideas about appearance. If they thought about what they wore at all, they conspired to find a compromise between clothing which was comfortable and which conformed to the norms of an intellectual/artistic or political aesthetic, however marginal. It wouldn’t have occurred to them that they were aligning themselves with “subcultures” – that they were weirdos. It was your loss if you didn’t know how comfortable Bierkenstocks were, or that Levis fit a man’s legs better than designer jeans or pressed slacks. If you prized variety over finding the perfect cotton shirt which you then bought en masse, that was your choice. I had a history teacher who might have stared at you for several minutes had you asked him why he always wore the same kind of white shirt. First, there would be the simple irrelevancy of the question. Then, the stupidity of it – why would you make something like dressing more complicated than it had to be when there was HISTORY to be studied.
So, yes, at 25, it seemed a safe bet that I could stand in front of a group of teenagers in black jeans and a distressed polo shirt. I took the leap that I might be able to make them laugh and then maybe teach them. What made any of it possible was that I didn’t have to put on the costuming of any particular social class. If you thought I looked like the janitor, well, maybe I did. So what? The difference between the janitor and me was supposed to be what we did, not what we wore. I also took for granted what I had since I was four years old; that my command of the English language would provide its own credibility. People could tell I was smart. They always had.
Surprising as it might sound, the bluff actually worked. My classes weren’t instant successes, but I got better at teaching. And I was funny. I was also close enough to the age of my students to find a common bond, and that rapport saw me through a lot of rocky lessons. Being in the classroom engendered the passion I pretended before I got there. In time, I became pretty good at helping my students jump through the necessary hoops ahead and to like writing in the process. They also learned that I really did care about them. Everyone continues to learn, and I hope to, but the changes in the teaching profession which have occurred in the past 6 years have increased the odds against me.
The new requirements that stand in my way have little to do with student performance, but now seem to have everything to do with my personal survival. If I can’t adapt, well: The work force has no place in which my skill sets or strengths will naturally assimilate. In my 50′s, it might be best if I were to go on disability because I’ve accrued some legitimate illnesses and injuries over the course of my almost-adulthood. Or, I could just go mad. Would it ronically, have been better if I had given up at 25, 26 or 27 rather than invest my energies in mastering a profession which would then invalidate the successes of my late twenties through the end of my forties?
You would think that the years of experience in the DOE would’ve have made me secure, or almost. The joke, however, was on me when in 2008, the Department of Education closed the school in which I had been working and producing excellent Regents exam results, as had the rest of my department. Nothing about my department’s results had anything to do with why we were closed. I didn’t want my school to close, but, at least, you’d think that my track record would still be valuable and my years of success would help me to find a new position. Actually, it’s the opposite.
Funny, right? But, the real punch line had already been written two years earlier, in the last contract negotiation between my union and the Dept. of Education. Traditionally, you joined the Dept of Education and spent the early 15 years of your career or more with little choice over where you taught. Schools with strong academic performances or special programs hired teachers with lots of experience, and those teachers were also able to transfer into those institutions by virtue of their seniority. So, not to worry, right? I should be able now to have some choices over where I will go next. But, enough of my fellow members accepted a contract with a fairly steep pay raise, in exchange for letting go of the seniority transfer. I can’t blame anyone for the choices they felt worked best for them. All I know is how this contract has affected me and other teachers I know with A.S. (I voted “No.”)
Wait, however. It gets better. After the contract was signed, the Dept of Ed decided it would no longer provide schools with the extra funds they had relied upon to allow them to hire experienced teachers REGARDLESS OF THEIR SALARIES. Meaning, now schools were stuck paying their teachers out of their own, soon to be further slashed, budgets. And here were a whole crew of teachers with fat salaries thanks to the new contract. Who can blame anyone for wanting a raise – and normally, who would argue with a union for getting them one. But, the DOE’s move put all teachers, especially those whose experience earned put them at the top of the salary scale, in an awkward position. Some of these folks were now looking for positions, their schools having closed. A few of them have a developmental disability that makes it harder for them to handle competition in a conventional market.
The reaction of school administrators was predictable: get rid of the fat salaries we have on board, and avoid adding new ones, at all costs. “Why hire you, when I can get those two teachers for the same, price?” That’s not an easy question to answer if you don’t have AS. If you do, you find yourself dumbfounded. We’re not a population that knows how to shmooze or to do our own public relations. I have a very flat affect. That means that my face seems almost expressionless (except when I am having a really good time, like teaching a lesson and fielding all sorts of questions.) So, not only am I not good at debating my merits, I’m not interesting to look at. My clothes are plain and designed to allow me to move. What are my odds against people at my own salary range, let alone someone cheaper, sexier and less discouraged?
Like the millions of workers over 40 in every other field in this country, I now find myself ready to collar the administrators who look at my resume with disinterest and say, “A man is not a piece of fruit.” Unfortunately, almost none of the new schools have Assistant Principals in charge of individual disciplines like English, so it’s more likely that I’ll be spitting through my teeth at a twenty-nine year old in charge of everything from ordering pens to designing the Curriculum Map for the entire school, and finally, rating all the staff. Even if he or she was an English teacher, there is no space in that circuitry for retrieving common literary allusions. The kid needs to get a slice of pizza, two liters of coke and five goddamned minutes to pick what gets done first while he/she’s busy doing what has to be done right now.
That may be how you run a corporation, but it doesn’t really leave room for managing the education of future voters or the voters who manage them. And being a principal is not the same as being a whiz kid CEO. It’s not like creating Facebook or designing the next cool APP. You can’t do it running on all-nighters while listening to techno and drinking coffee or beers or even organic juice. Even if you could, when are you going to do it and do all the other things which used to be done by a lot of other people?
Remember that the school closings, the budget shifts — all of these changes were made because theold system with all those unnecessary people wasn’t perceived to be working too well for the children. (Talk to any public official about education and count how many times they refer to “the children” as if they were Moses talking to Ramses. Or Charleton Heston as Moses, anyway.)The big schools were cut into many small schools, with fewer administrators and teachers per school, though there are probably MORE administrators in the building overall. Add to this that these new small schools are run by "Education Management Corporations" who are given hundreds of thousands of dollars to MANAGE the schools, but are not in the schools on a day to day basis to help out. So, a lot of money is being spent on a smaller school, with fewer people doing more work. Same class size as before. Smaller budgets. Therefore, to keep costs down, most of the people in the building are young and without much experience or lengthy track records. If you’re a parent, when your children aren’t doing well, do you give them less support while you try to do many more things – on purpose? Would you take your child to a doctor who suddenly took on two new specialties while working the same hours with no additional support or supplies?
Forgetting the altruistic arguments against the new budgetary constraints on our schools, there’s the basic question of survival of the employees. What are all these people supposed to do for work should they not be able to manage? Teaching is not like any other career in one very painful way. The skill sets do not translate to anything else. Yes, I can make arguments otherwise, but try that in an interview. “No, I’ve never managed an office, but I’ve managed 32 kids an hour, taught over 150 kids a year.” It’s sweet, charming, but incomprehensible to someone who is trying to understand if you can order the supplies for all the computers, manage appointments, run the website, etc. The fact is you haven’t done any of those things. It’s possible you could. However, the person who interviewed an hour before you has already proven he/she can. Which is what potential employer after employer said to me when I tried my hand at leaving teaching out of frustration with the changing political climate, years ago. In my mid-thirties. Younger, thinner, less gray and more hopeful.
The average teacher leaves the system in the first three years of his/her career. Does he/she even have anything more to show for it, besides interesting fodder for his/her Law School application essay? Suppose he/she doesn’t have the funds, energy or liberty to go on for more education. Start at the bottom of the salary ladder at something else, kid. It’s like you spent three years traveling through Europe. Worse, because you didn’t even learn a new language.
Where does that leave me? Now, I have never been good at mastering some of the major social skills of adulthood. I pay my rent and utility bills and I respect others’ space– that’s not what I mean. I mean, I don’t press my shirts and I am often rude when I am trying to get something done. If my students need something, I’m going to be pushy. I will apologize profusely, afterward. Years of teaching have also inured me to the expectations of “normal people.” Did I miss a button on my shirt? Should I care? I can teach someone to pass the English Regents from scratch. I can teach Othello off the top of my head. I can revise my lesson plan mid – air. My jokes aren’t funny anymore, but the slapstick of my hands and eyebrows helps me break up confrontations. My students have done well. I know what I’m doing, mostly, whether I “look smart” or not.
But, all proof of this has disappeared. My school closed. Many of my colleagues, retired, including two principals whom I served. Sure, I have had excellent results in my career, but who can verify my role in an overall school’s achievement, now? Even if I convert all of my records to data on a computer, who will believe me? And there is that, nagging reality that I don’t look like a corporate success and as soon as I start to boast of my work I become self-conscious. I don’t fit the “dress for success” themes of many small schools. My work used to speak for me. Now I just look like the common stereotype of the enemy: a slovenly, hippy-type academic, inefficient and laden with old-fashioned sentiment toward the students. No matter what I say, the principals who interview me don’t hear me. It’s the same rationale that used to make superintendents severely punish schools if they saw students wearing hats inside the building. “If you can’t get them to obey the ‘hat rule,’ what can you get them to do?” Sounds reasonable but the impulse to wear a hat isn’t driven by just one or the same reason in every kid. There is nothing which says a kid who wears a hat won’t study, be respectful, or enjoy learning. He/she just really likes hats. “Why you stressin’ it?” And I really, really don’t like my clothing to be tight, so they are looser than some might consider fashionable. That doesn’t mean that I can’t teach English.
Those questions aside, the reality of the thousands of displaced teachers like me begs the simple question of where are these people – we – supposed to go? Education reformers talk about experienced teachers like we are pariahs. All right, suppose we were all in need of re-tooling? If we were selling cell phones, we would be given training every year about each new batch. Suppose we all need new training. Isn’t it cheaper to do that than just fire all of us and start again with new teachers? A colleague once told me that a superintendent once responded to that very question with “it’s cheaper to buy a new car than fix an old one.”
Since that very superintendent was replaced a month later, I wonder if how he sees himself as a “lemon.” Where did he go? Another school district and another. When does he start building a learning curve? Or, is he just going to be passed from one unwitting owner after another, until they discover he doesn’t drive. Why not fix him? He isn’t a car, after all, which can be harvested for parts. Neither am I.
Undoubtedly, some of my readers might ask, “Why can’t you just learn to dress in a corporate manner and to be polite? Look in the mirror before you leave the house, at least.” Here’s my frightening response. I did. I tried. Before I continue, I want to ask you to think back to some of your best teachers. Wasn’t at least, one of them, slightly awkward, a miserable dresser, and, a bit brusque sometimes? I can’t believe that not one of them had all or some of these characteristics. Here’s an even harder one. Think back to some of the great teachers you had that you thought were “mostly normal” ? Like the fantastic geometry teacher who wore so much Bloomingdale’s Tea Rose perfume that the air was yellow and you felt surrounded by honey that was a little too sweet? She was so terrific that you got used to the smell, even cherished it. And you could tell that she couldn’t live with the air being one touch less fragrant. But, all right, she was a bit, eccentric in this regard. Why am I so touchy about this – couldn’t they, too, have been polished up? No. Because I’m guessing that the person who you remember was already doing his or her level best and that, like me, he/she had Asperger’s Syndrome. Teaching was one of the rare professions which offered to people with A.S., who are developmentally disabled in key areas of socialization but are often highly intelligent in many areas of academic/theoretical difficulty, the rare opportunity to utilize their minds without the intrusion of social norms they could not fulfill. I’m not talking about people who could hurt your children. I’m talking about people who, like Albert Einstein, couldn’t comb their hair to anyone’s satisfaction. People who didn’t notice the stain on their shirt until someone pointed it out. People who yelled at an adult for not helping a student enough. In general, Aspies don’t yell at kids. It doesn’t make any logical sense – it won’t help. And, Aspie’s are logical creatures to a fault. Part of what is mystifying about socialization is it’s lack of logic. (Does it really matter if I part my hair to the right?)
Where, especially, are these Aspies, who have a fairly high unemployment rate, supposed to go now? I’ll tell you where because it’s on my list: disability. Having a condition which makes it impossible for you to fulfill the requirements of almost any job is one criteria for qualification. And what are reinforced to me in all of the results of our most recent contract, are my inadequacies. It really could be possible that people like me, who once contributed meaningfully to the economy and society, could be rendered incapable by a culture which is unwilling to respect or pay for our experience and which attends more carefully to the loose cuffs on my shirt than to what I am saying. (Based on a true story: I had an interview with a principal who could not get his eyes off of the fact that my shirtsleeves were loose and a little to long for my jacket. Meanwhile, I was trying to engage him in a discussion about how to help the children at his school.
Never mind the reality that some of my colleagues look like movie stars, but if they have over ten years of experience, fat chance of anyone picking their fat salary up. Take a pay cut, you say. Sure – if you give me back my Seniority rights.
Meanwhile, there are many of us Aspies among the Absent Teacher Reserve. Meaning, they are floating around between schools, waiting for someone to take them on. Each week, we go to different schools. That wouldn’t be easy for anyone, but for someone who has difficulty adapting socially, it’s a nightmare. Forget what it feels like once we get to the school. The ANXIETY that knowing you will have to face different people every week can produce in a person with Asperger’s Syndrome would probably be unfathomable to most people. Imagine you were crippled by the realization that you had been misunderstood at a meeting – that you unintentionally insulted a colleague or friend. Think of what it would do to you to know that you will have the opportunity to make that mistake again and again and again. That you will feel like everyone is speaking on a slightly different radio wavelength from yours. And when you finally think you’ve just about got it, you have a whole new one to learn. That’s just the adults – what about all these new children.
This morning I go off to my weekly assignment. Each week I am moved to a different school in which I substitute for absent teachers, help new ones (ironically), team teach or all three. In any subject. Why? I’ve been given several reasons. None of them even pretends to ignore the reality of how difficult this practice is for the teachers, administrators and, of course, the children. You know how you might have bonded with someone and worked with them – especially if they were lucky enough to be in a room with another teacher so that they could give you more attention? Forget that. I’m leaving Friday. No risk of co-dependency. Or trust. Or of long-term intervention. Or being taken seriously. As one student said to me, candidly, “You don’t carry much weight.” I can cajole. If I’m lucky, I’ll be put in a room where I might actually get to teach something I know, English or a familiar part of another discipline. In the best of circumstances someone has left a lesson plan which is actually relevant to what the kids are doing. In the worst, there is nothing and no one. Twice, I have covered classes in other disciplines which are without teachers and have been since the first day of school. I’ve interviewed for English jobs at schools which still don’t have anyone. (Ok, they can’t afford me, but they can’t afford anyone? It is frigtening to think they might be waiting to see if someone cheap comes on the market, like a baseball team looking for an extra reliever who won’t cost too much if he doesn’t work out.) Let me tell you, the children are, understandably, not amused. For those of us 99 percenters who happen to be experienced teachers in the New York City public schools, we are not just prisoners of Wall Street, but prisoners of the children of Wall Street and its prisoners. And they are, in turn, prisoners of an educational system which is supposed to be preparing them for their right, as Americans, to have the opportunity to join the ranks of the 1 percent, should that be their dream. I think they know that there’s a punch line coming.
Will there ever be more Aspie Teachers?
November 5, 2011
Teaching: A vanishing safe haven for people with Asperger’s Syndrome.
When I was emerging into what has passed for my adulthood, at the age of 25, I took a job as a teacher. To my friends, I said it was because I had a passion for kids and for writing. The truth was, it was something that I could imagine doing. Period.
My favorite teachers had been, what a friend of mine called, “extremely ugly people.” They didn’t pay any attention to conventional ideas about appearance. If they thought about what they wore at all, they conspired to find a compromise between clothing which was comfortable and which conformed to the norms of an intellectual/artistic or political aesthetic, however marginal. It wouldn’t have occurred to them that they were aligning themselves with “subcultures” – that they were weirdos. It was your loss if you didn’t know how comfortable Bierkenstocks were, or that Levis fit a man’s legs better than designer jeans or pressed slacks. If you prized variety over finding the perfect cotton shirt which you then bought en masse, that was your choice. I had a history teacher who might have stared at you for several minutes had you asked him why he always wore the same kind of white shirt. First, there would be the simple irrelevancy of the question. Then, the stupidity of it – why would you make something like dressing more complicated than it had to be when there was HISTORY to be studied.
So, yes, at 25, it seemed a safe bet that I could stand in front of a group of teenagers in black jeans and a distressed polo shirt. I took the leap that I might be able to make them laugh and then maybe teach them. What made any of it possible was that I didn’t have to put on the costuming of any particular social class. If you thought I looked like the janitor, well, maybe I did. So what? The difference between the janitor and me was supposed to be what we did, not what we wore. I also took for granted what I had since I was four years old; that my command of the English language would provide its own credibility. People could tell I was smart. They always had.
Surprising as it might sound, the bluff actually worked. My classes weren’t instant successes, but I got better at teaching. And I was funny. I was also close enough to the age of my students to find a common bond, and that rapport saw me through a lot of rocky lessons. Being in the classroom engendered the passion I pretended before I got there. In time, I became pretty good at helping my students jump through the necessary hoops ahead and to like writing in the process. They also learned that I really did care about them. Everyone continues to learn, and I hope to, but the changes in the teaching profession which have occurred in the past 6 years have increased the odds against me.
The new requirements that stand in my way have little to do with student performance, but now seem to have everything to do with my personal survival. If I can’t adapt, well: The work force has no place in which my skill sets or strengths will naturally assimilate. In my 50′s, it might be best if I were to go on disability because I’ve accrued some legitimate illnesses and injuries over the course of my almost-adulthood. Or, I could just go mad. Would it ronically, have been better if I had given up at 25, 26 or 27 rather than invest my energies in mastering a profession which would then invalidate the successes of my late twenties through the end of my forties?
You would think that the years of experience in the DOE would’ve have made me secure, or almost. The joke, however, was on me when in 2008, the Department of Education closed the school in which I had been working and producing excellent Regents exam results, as had the rest of my department. Nothing about my department’s results had anything to do with why we were closed. I didn’t want my school to close, but, at least, you’d think that my track record would still be valuable and my years of success would help me to find a new position. Actually, it’s the opposite.
Funny, right? But, the real punch line had already been written two years earlier, in the last contract negotiation between my union and the Dept. of Education. Traditionally, you joined the Dept of Education and spent the early 15 years of your career or more with little choice over where you taught. Schools with strong academic performances or special programs hired teachers with lots of experience, and those teachers were also able to transfer into those institutions by virtue of their seniority. So, not to worry, right? I should be able now to have some choices over where I will go next. But, enough of my fellow members accepted a contract with a fairly steep pay raise, in exchange for letting go of the seniority transfer. I can’t blame anyone for the choices they felt worked best for them. All I know is how this contract has affected me and other teachers I know with A.S. (I voted “No.”)
Wait, however. It gets better. After the contract was signed, the Dept of Ed decided it would no longer provide schools with the extra funds they had relied upon to allow them to hire experienced teachers REGARDLESS OF THEIR SALARIES. Meaning, now schools were stuck paying their teachers out of their own, soon to be further slashed, budgets. And here were a whole crew of teachers with fat salaries thanks to the new contract. Who can blame anyone for wanting a raise – and normally, who would argue with a union for getting them one. But, the DOE’s move put all teachers, especially those whose experience earned put them at the top of the salary scale, in an awkward position. Some of these folks were now looking for positions, their schools having closed. A few of them have a developmental disability that makes it harder for them to handle competition in a conventional market.
The reaction of school administrators was predictable: get rid of the fat salaries we have on board, and avoid adding new ones, at all costs. “Why hire you, when I can get those two teachers for the same, price?” That’s not an easy question to answer if you don’t have AS. If you do, you find yourself dumbfounded. We’re not a population that knows how to shmooze or to do our own public relations. I have a very flat affect. That means that my face seems almost expressionless (except when I am having a really good time, like teaching a lesson and fielding all sorts of questions.) So, not only am I not good at debating my merits, I’m not interesting to look at. My clothes are plain and designed to allow me to move. What are my odds against people at my own salary range, let alone someone cheaper, sexier and less discouraged?
Like the millions of workers over 40 in every other field in this country, I now find myself ready to collar the administrators who look at my resume with disinterest and say, “A man is not a piece of fruit.” Unfortunately, almost none of the new schools have Assistant Principals in charge of individual disciplines like English, so it’s more likely that I’ll be spitting through my teeth at a twenty-nine year old in charge of everything from ordering pens to designing the Curriculum Map for the entire school, and finally, rating all the staff. Even if he or she was an English teacher, there is no space in that circuitry for retrieving common literary allusions. The kid needs to get a slice of pizza, two liters of coke and five goddamned minutes to pick what gets done first while he/she’s busy doing what has to be done right now.
That may be how you run a corporation, but it doesn’t really leave room for managing the education of future voters or the voters who manage them. And being a principal is not the same as being a whiz kid CEO. It’s not like creating Facebook or designing the next cool APP. You can’t do it running on all-nighters while listening to techno and drinking coffee or beers or even organic juice. Even if you could, when are you going to do it and do all the other things which used to be done by a lot of other people?
Remember that the school closings, the budget shifts — all of these changes were made because theold system with all those unnecessary people wasn’t perceived to be working too well for the children. (Talk to any public official about education and count how many times they refer to “the children” as if they were Moses talking to Ramses. Or Charleton Heston as Moses, anyway.)The big schools were cut into many small schools, with fewer administrators and teachers per school, though there are probably MORE administrators in the building overall. Add to this that these new small schools are run by "Education Management Corporations" who are given hundreds of thousands of dollars to MANAGE the schools, but are not in the schools on a day to day basis to help out. So, a lot of money is being spent on a smaller school, with fewer people doing more work. Same class size as before. Smaller budgets. Therefore, to keep costs down, most of the people in the building are young and without much experience or lengthy track records. If you’re a parent, when your children aren’t doing well, do you give them less support while you try to do many more things – on purpose? Would you take your child to a doctor who suddenly took on two new specialties while working the same hours with no additional support or supplies?
Forgetting the altruistic arguments against the new budgetary constraints on our schools, there’s the basic question of survival of the employees. What are all these people supposed to do for work should they not be able to manage? Teaching is not like any other career in one very painful way. The skill sets do not translate to anything else. Yes, I can make arguments otherwise, but try that in an interview. “No, I’ve never managed an office, but I’ve managed 32 kids an hour, taught over 150 kids a year.” It’s sweet, charming, but incomprehensible to someone who is trying to understand if you can order the supplies for all the computers, manage appointments, run the website, etc. The fact is you haven’t done any of those things. It’s possible you could. However, the person who interviewed an hour before you has already proven he/she can. Which is what potential employer after employer said to me when I tried my hand at leaving teaching out of frustration with the changing political climate, years ago. In my mid-thirties. Younger, thinner, less gray and more hopeful.
The average teacher leaves the system in the first three years of his/her career. Does he/she even have anything more to show for it, besides interesting fodder for his/her Law School application essay? Suppose he/she doesn’t have the funds, energy or liberty to go on for more education. Start at the bottom of the salary ladder at something else, kid. It’s like you spent three years traveling through Europe. Worse, because you didn’t even learn a new language.
Where does that leave me? Now, I have never been good at mastering some of the major social skills of adulthood. I pay my rent and utility bills and I respect others’ space– that’s not what I mean. I mean, I don’t press my shirts and I am often rude when I am trying to get something done. If my students need something, I’m going to be pushy. I will apologize profusely, afterward. Years of teaching have also inured me to the expectations of “normal people.” Did I miss a button on my shirt? Should I care? I can teach someone to pass the English Regents from scratch. I can teach Othello off the top of my head. I can revise my lesson plan mid – air. My jokes aren’t funny anymore, but the slapstick of my hands and eyebrows helps me break up confrontations. My students have done well. I know what I’m doing, mostly, whether I “look smart” or not.
But, all proof of this has disappeared. My school closed. Many of my colleagues, retired, including two principals whom I served. Sure, I have had excellent results in my career, but who can verify my role in an overall school’s achievement, now? Even if I convert all of my records to data on a computer, who will believe me? And there is that, nagging reality that I don’t look like a corporate success and as soon as I start to boast of my work I become self-conscious. I don’t fit the “dress for success” themes of many small schools. My work used to speak for me. Now I just look like the common stereotype of the enemy: a slovenly, hippy-type academic, inefficient and laden with old-fashioned sentiment toward the students. No matter what I say, the principals who interview me don’t hear me. It’s the same rationale that used to make superintendents severely punish schools if they saw students wearing hats inside the building. “If you can’t get them to obey the ‘hat rule,’ what can you get them to do?” Sounds reasonable but the impulse to wear a hat isn’t driven by just one or the same reason in every kid. There is nothing which says a kid who wears a hat won’t study, be respectful, or enjoy learning. He/she just really likes hats. “Why you stressin’ it?” And I really, really don’t like my clothing to be tight, so they are looser than some might consider fashionable. That doesn’t mean that I can’t teach English.
Those questions aside, the reality of the thousands of displaced teachers like me begs the simple question of where are these people – we – supposed to go? Education reformers talk about experienced teachers like we are pariahs. All right, suppose we were all in need of re-tooling? If we were selling cell phones, we would be given training every year about each new batch. Suppose we all need new training. Isn’t it cheaper to do that than just fire all of us and start again with new teachers? A colleague once told me that a superintendent once responded to that very question with “it’s cheaper to buy a new car than fix an old one.”
Since that very superintendent was replaced a month later, I wonder if how he sees himself as a “lemon.” Where did he go? Another school district and another. When does he start building a learning curve? Or, is he just going to be passed from one unwitting owner after another, until they discover he doesn’t drive. Why not fix him? He isn’t a car, after all, which can be harvested for parts. Neither am I.
Undoubtedly, some of my readers might ask, “Why can’t you just learn to dress in a corporate manner and to be polite? Look in the mirror before you leave the house, at least.” Here’s my frightening response. I did. I tried. Before I continue, I want to ask you to think back to some of your best teachers. Wasn’t at least, one of them, slightly awkward, a miserable dresser, and, a bit brusque sometimes? I can’t believe that not one of them had all or some of these characteristics. Here’s an even harder one. Think back to some of the great teachers you had that you thought were “mostly normal” ? Like the fantastic geometry teacher who wore so much Bloomingdale’s Tea Rose perfume that the air was yellow and you felt surrounded by honey that was a little too sweet? She was so terrific that you got used to the smell, even cherished it. And you could tell that she couldn’t live with the air being one touch less fragrant. But, all right, she was a bit, eccentric in this regard. Why am I so touchy about this – couldn’t they, too, have been polished up? No. Because I’m guessing that the person who you remember was already doing his or her level best and that, like me, he/she had Asperger’s Syndrome. Teaching was one of the rare professions which offered to people with A.S., who are developmentally disabled in key areas of socialization but are often highly intelligent in many areas of academic/theoretical difficulty, the rare opportunity to utilize their minds without the intrusion of social norms they could not fulfill. I’m not talking about people who could hurt your children. I’m talking about people who, like Albert Einstein, couldn’t comb their hair to anyone’s satisfaction. People who didn’t notice the stain on their shirt until someone pointed it out. People who yelled at an adult for not helping a student enough. In general, Aspies don’t yell at kids. It doesn’t make any logical sense – it won’t help. And, Aspie’s are logical creatures to a fault. Part of what is mystifying about socialization is it’s lack of logic. (Does it really matter if I part my hair to the right?)
Where, especially, are these Aspies, who have a fairly high unemployment rate, supposed to go now? I’ll tell you where because it’s on my list: disability. Having a condition which makes it impossible for you to fulfill the requirements of almost any job is one criteria for qualification. And what are reinforced to me in all of the results of our most recent contract, are my inadequacies. It really could be possible that people like me, who once contributed meaningfully to the economy and society, could be rendered incapable by a culture which is unwilling to respect or pay for our experience and which attends more carefully to the loose cuffs on my shirt than to what I am saying. (Based on a true story: I had an interview with a principal who could not get his eyes off of the fact that my shirtsleeves were loose and a little to long for my jacket. Meanwhile, I was trying to engage him in a discussion about how to help the children at his school.
Never mind the reality that some of my colleagues look like movie stars, but if they have over ten years of experience, fat chance of anyone picking their fat salary up. Take a pay cut, you say. Sure – if you give me back my Seniority rights.
Meanwhile, there are many of us Aspies among the Absent Teacher Reserve. Meaning, they are floating around between schools, waiting for someone to take them on. Each week, we go to different schools. That wouldn’t be easy for anyone, but for someone who has difficulty adapting socially, it’s a nightmare. Forget what it feels like once we get to the school. The ANXIETY that knowing you will have to face different people every week can produce in a person with Asperger’s Syndrome would probably be unfathomable to most people. Imagine you were crippled by the realization that you had been misunderstood at a meeting – that you unintentionally insulted a colleague or friend. Think of what it would do to you to know that you will have the opportunity to make that mistake again and again and again. That you will feel like everyone is speaking on a slightly different radio wavelength from yours. And when you finally think you’ve just about got it, you have a whole new one to learn. That’s just the adults – what about all these new children.
This morning I go off to my weekly assignment. Each week I am moved to a different school in which I substitute for absent teachers, help new ones (ironically), team teach or all three. In any subject. Why? I’ve been given several reasons. None of them even pretends to ignore the reality of how difficult this practice is for the teachers, administrators and, of course, the children. You know how you might have bonded with someone and worked with them – especially if they were lucky enough to be in a room with another teacher so that they could give you more attention? Forget that. I’m leaving Friday. No risk of co-dependency. Or trust. Or of long-term intervention. Or being taken seriously. As one student said to me, candidly, “You don’t carry much weight.” I can cajole. If I’m lucky, I’ll be put in a room where I might actually get to teach something I know, English or a familiar part of another discipline. In the best of circumstances someone has left a lesson plan which is actually relevant to what the kids are doing. In the worst, there is nothing and no one. Twice, I have covered classes in other disciplines which are without teachers and have been since the first day of school. I’ve interviewed for English jobs at schools which still don’t have anyone. (Ok, they can’t afford me, but they can’t afford anyone? It is frigtening to think they might be waiting to see if someone cheap comes on the market, like a baseball team looking for an extra reliever who won’t cost too much if he doesn’t work out.) Let me tell you, the children are, understandably, not amused. For those of us 99 percenters who happen to be experienced teachers in the New York City public schools, we are not just prisoners of Wall Street, but prisoners of the children of Wall Street and its prisoners. And they are, in turn, prisoners of an educational system which is supposed to be preparing them for their right, as Americans, to have the opportunity to join the ranks of the 1 percent, should that be their dream. I think they know that there’s a punch line coming.
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