This was and still is honesty to me which is probably why I can talk less and less.
23 May, 2008
19 May, 2008
The Second Grade
The show I watched every day was Lost in Space in re-runs. I watched a parade of re-runs. Family Affair, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, The Addams Family, The Munsters, The Partridge Family, That Girl, Bewitched, I Dream of Genie, Green Acres. I had very little connection to the time in which I was in. That was okay because I hardly talked to anyone so I very rarely needed to make conversation or understand what anyone was talking about. It turned out that much of my generation was watching these programs too, as many of our recent movies have proven. In fact, the whole retro feeling that pervaded the 90's was very much the mid 60's and early 70's and had the goofyness of some of these shows. Some of what I was doing in my quiet was percolating. Thinking. Getting close to my own aesthetic.
I was also making my first trips to the Museum of Modern Art and talking to my mother about Marc Chagall and where poverty figured into his paintings.
Maybe everyone needs a period of silence. Maybe I am going back again because I have to re-discover my aesthetic. My ability to use my own is being run over by an administration that feels my job is expendible, the school at which I worked was not worth sustaining, and that I now much make the argument to principals for why I am valuable. Again and again. That's always very hard to me as I can see why many people are useful. I see myself as one of many choices and not the best of the lot. I am working because I am the right person for the kind of school at which I have worked for the past eight years. And now it is closing.
Danger, Will Robinson!
17 May, 2008
On a nice day when I should be cleaning the windows
and maybe I will, yet.
I was tempted to write a short story this morning about a woman who mostly communicates with an imagined community. She spends most of the day focused on what to say, how to say it and in anticipation of the responses of people with names that sound like they were meant for CB Radios-- "Bingo1," "FrenchFryeater25," "DRoberts9898" etc. That's what email addresses look like to me. Of course, it was very much autobiography. That is what I've become. I'm haunted by the possibility of reaching some mythical character behind the pseudonym. Often these folks were once, or are still people I see in flesh and blood. However, the internet communication is a thing in itself. It's like whispering in someone's ear or passing a note. It's several steps backwards for me, in a way. In the second grade, I didn't talk to anyone outside of my neighborhood. I just wrote. My writing was very good for my age. All of my verbal energy was focused on it. All of my shyness was indulged, which may or may not have been a good thing for a six year old. Both of my teachers --one for Hebrew studies and one for Secular -- learned to look for my written work and they always wrote back and we had a terrific correspondence. I was very lucky they were so attentive.
The folks out trucking in internet land are a mix of compulsions. Some stay away for days, some check every few minutes, some just don't know what to say even when they read your emails, so they just talk to you when they see you, whenever that might be. Some get back to you right away and engage in tennis volleys with you of email after email until you both tire. You feel like you've told them a lot and that they've told you a lot, and you have. Sometimes I've written as beautifully as I ever could about the most important things to me or to them. And then I don't see them, though they live just forty minutes away or so. The intimacy of the email becomes an excuse never to get together. It affords me a reason to remain shy and isolated like in the second grade.
I wasn't unhappy in the second grade. Actually, I was fairly thin, for me. I had steady routines -- programs I watched on TV, things I regularly talked about with my grandmother when I got home, a time I did my homework and I even limited what I ate. I'd spent a lot of time before this roaming around Israel trying out different places to live with my mother, both of us agreeing that none quite fit. So maybe I was desperate to lock in what I thought did fit and leave it there. There was no conscious decision, however. First grade had felt very noisy and muddled. Too much of everything and too public. So my personality became part of the ether for a year. In third grade it popped right out with a vengeance. I had a wonderfully warm teacher who just made silence seem stifling and made me want to be part of everything.
I'm back in the ether again. It's not painful or anything. I've lost the connection with what makes me want to be part of the everything outside -- and everything outside is shrinking. My school is closing. Randi Rhodes is on Nova M Radio and Air America seems strange to me now, though I still listen sometimes. I hardly see my friends as they are in all different directions. I have long conversations with cab drivers and the lady who takes my orders at the pet food store because they are the people I regularly have contact with. I've become chatty at the grocery store, too. We're all still anonymous with each other, but we share stories of our days just to let the tension out and it feels better. You don't get that on email or from a blog. Emails and blogs are about craft and information. There's hardly any emotion to them, except in the stories I write, I think.
I hope, like in the second grade, I begin to write like a demon.
I was tempted to write a short story this morning about a woman who mostly communicates with an imagined community. She spends most of the day focused on what to say, how to say it and in anticipation of the responses of people with names that sound like they were meant for CB Radios-- "Bingo1," "FrenchFryeater25," "DRoberts9898" etc. That's what email addresses look like to me. Of course, it was very much autobiography. That is what I've become. I'm haunted by the possibility of reaching some mythical character behind the pseudonym. Often these folks were once, or are still people I see in flesh and blood. However, the internet communication is a thing in itself. It's like whispering in someone's ear or passing a note. It's several steps backwards for me, in a way. In the second grade, I didn't talk to anyone outside of my neighborhood. I just wrote. My writing was very good for my age. All of my verbal energy was focused on it. All of my shyness was indulged, which may or may not have been a good thing for a six year old. Both of my teachers --one for Hebrew studies and one for Secular -- learned to look for my written work and they always wrote back and we had a terrific correspondence. I was very lucky they were so attentive.
The folks out trucking in internet land are a mix of compulsions. Some stay away for days, some check every few minutes, some just don't know what to say even when they read your emails, so they just talk to you when they see you, whenever that might be. Some get back to you right away and engage in tennis volleys with you of email after email until you both tire. You feel like you've told them a lot and that they've told you a lot, and you have. Sometimes I've written as beautifully as I ever could about the most important things to me or to them. And then I don't see them, though they live just forty minutes away or so. The intimacy of the email becomes an excuse never to get together. It affords me a reason to remain shy and isolated like in the second grade.
I wasn't unhappy in the second grade. Actually, I was fairly thin, for me. I had steady routines -- programs I watched on TV, things I regularly talked about with my grandmother when I got home, a time I did my homework and I even limited what I ate. I'd spent a lot of time before this roaming around Israel trying out different places to live with my mother, both of us agreeing that none quite fit. So maybe I was desperate to lock in what I thought did fit and leave it there. There was no conscious decision, however. First grade had felt very noisy and muddled. Too much of everything and too public. So my personality became part of the ether for a year. In third grade it popped right out with a vengeance. I had a wonderfully warm teacher who just made silence seem stifling and made me want to be part of everything.
I'm back in the ether again. It's not painful or anything. I've lost the connection with what makes me want to be part of the everything outside -- and everything outside is shrinking. My school is closing. Randi Rhodes is on Nova M Radio and Air America seems strange to me now, though I still listen sometimes. I hardly see my friends as they are in all different directions. I have long conversations with cab drivers and the lady who takes my orders at the pet food store because they are the people I regularly have contact with. I've become chatty at the grocery store, too. We're all still anonymous with each other, but we share stories of our days just to let the tension out and it feels better. You don't get that on email or from a blog. Emails and blogs are about craft and information. There's hardly any emotion to them, except in the stories I write, I think.
I hope, like in the second grade, I begin to write like a demon.
13 May, 2008
Return of The Bread Man
For the three of you and cat who follow this blog regularly, I have decided to bring back another story about "The Bread Man". I'll link to the first one at the end of this one, for those of you who have never met him before. My grandmother convinced me that this guy really lived, so I am going to take her word for it.
It was a cold day in April, windy from a rain that had fallen an hour ago. The Bread Man had closed the bakery early. Nobody shopped when it was raining. The mothers of the town bought their food supplies with an eye toward plenty and it would take a disaster (as it later did) to drive the families of the town to starvation. Certainly, they would not starve in one day. So there was never any need to shop in the rain.
Sophie had left school early, escaping through the window before geometry. She hated her teacher and her father had arranged for a math tutor at home, so she didn't worry about missing class. She bent down to clean off her scuff knees and also to pull out her journal. To the aggravation of nearly everyone, Sophie had a habit of stopping mid-walk to stare and then write slowly in her journal. Either that, or to take out a book of English poetry. She had just finished the poem, "Leaves of Grass" and she loved to copy down lines from the poem, especially the lists of kinds of people who existed in Walt Whitman's "America". Butchers, shopkeepers, boys who bagged groceries. In the tiny town she lived in, one thing was usually done by one person. Bread was baked by The Bread Man. There was no Bread Boy learning at his knee. It wasn't the proper time for it.
The air was beginning to dry as the light of the day settled down toward a bright grey. Sophie was turning the corner at which she knew he would be sitting. Always at this time of the day, if it rained, The Bread Man would be sitting on the corner eating a loaf of bread and a salami. One in each hand. He never made a sandwhich, except in his mouth, which he said was, "the best kind". Sophie sat next to him and took out her Walt Whitman, her high cotton socks catching a bit on the cleanly paved street. The Bread Man looked at her and said, "Are there any bakers in that poem, Sophie?" Sophie thought a minute and said, "If there aren't any, it sure feels like there are. He's got practically the whole country in it. He loves absolutely everybody." The Bread Man thought a bit and said, "That's why you like the poem?" Sophie's hair lifted a bit in the wind and she bolted forward, "No. Absolutely not. The truth is, I like the fact that he says that America is singing. I think that everybody sings in his own way and I've never met anyone who thought the same way. Even you sing." The Bread Man's eyes opened wide, "You've heard me?" "No, no, no," said Sophie. "It's in the way you move and walk around. It's very much like Lord Byron or Tennyson." "Byron?" said The Bread Man. "Byron wasn't such a nice man. He tried to make a show of himself, but he wasn't so nice. He talked too much about things. I make beautiful things." Sophie's eyes watered, "I didn't mean anything insulting by it. You just carry yourself like you are a big Romantic person. Like the singers at the opera when the story is about love or danger. It's very pleasant to watch you. You have a rhythm like the Polish folk songs do." At that, The Bread Man smiled. "People think I don't know anything. That's why I only talk to you. In fact, I always have a song in my head when I work. But, it is nothing big and phoney like those big poems of Byron. I do like the Polish folk songs. The woman who gave me my job used to sing them every day. Do you remember her?" Sophine looked down because she did not. "You were a baby when she left here. She left here for America, you know. Like you, she had a marvelous singing voice. Every time she sang, I felt like I turned into a big pearl." Sophie started to laugh. "It's true. I felt big and shiny and smooth. And like I would float into a cloud." Sophie's face filled with sun and softness. "You make me feel that way when you sing, too. And someday you'll go off to Hollywood and be a big star."
They sat together for a while, Sophie reading and The Bread Man finishing his food. Then, taking a deep breath, Sophie turned to The Bread Man and looked as straight into his eyes as she had ever looked at anyone. "Will you come with me when I go? You can protect me and you can make my meals. You would make me laugh, most of all." The Bread Man was very moved and his face turned the pink of a new rose and he wiped all of the crumbs off his hands and face. "Everyone in this town will go with you, and I will be first in line, Sophie. We will be in your heart. But, a person like me cannot go with you. My job is here. I am the only Bread Man here. In a big city, there are a million bread men, each singing louder than the next one. You cannot sit on an empty street and talk to a friend, either."
Before she could stop herself, her lungs heaved with tears and her body shook hard. "Then I don't want to go," she insisted again, and again. She knew that her parents had invested time, energy money and their hearts on the idea that she would leave her town. One sister and one brother had done so and they wrote about amazing things. Her brother Al fixed watches for a famous jeweler in New York City and studied law. Her sister Deborah planted trees and built houses in the middle of the desert in Palestine. But, Sophie loved her street and she loved things just as they were. Except when she started to sing. When she sang she saw nothing but the clouds and the trees and crowds and crowds of people as if she had turned into her Parakeet, Chipper, who loved to stand and sing at the top of her balcony.
They sat together that afternoon in silence. Just as he left, The Bread Man pulled a roll from his pocket and handed it to her. "You're not going so fast, little girl and you need to eat regardless." She took the roll and before she could ask he said "Yes, yes, I put raisins and honey in it and no, I won't tell your mother." She smiled as he walked away. Then, like him, she took a big bite out of the roll and concentrated closely on the sweetness and the falling of the night.
For the first Bread Man story go to
http://saddleshoe.blogspot.com/2006/10/bread-man.html
It was a cold day in April, windy from a rain that had fallen an hour ago. The Bread Man had closed the bakery early. Nobody shopped when it was raining. The mothers of the town bought their food supplies with an eye toward plenty and it would take a disaster (as it later did) to drive the families of the town to starvation. Certainly, they would not starve in one day. So there was never any need to shop in the rain.
Sophie had left school early, escaping through the window before geometry. She hated her teacher and her father had arranged for a math tutor at home, so she didn't worry about missing class. She bent down to clean off her scuff knees and also to pull out her journal. To the aggravation of nearly everyone, Sophie had a habit of stopping mid-walk to stare and then write slowly in her journal. Either that, or to take out a book of English poetry. She had just finished the poem, "Leaves of Grass" and she loved to copy down lines from the poem, especially the lists of kinds of people who existed in Walt Whitman's "America". Butchers, shopkeepers, boys who bagged groceries. In the tiny town she lived in, one thing was usually done by one person. Bread was baked by The Bread Man. There was no Bread Boy learning at his knee. It wasn't the proper time for it.
The air was beginning to dry as the light of the day settled down toward a bright grey. Sophie was turning the corner at which she knew he would be sitting. Always at this time of the day, if it rained, The Bread Man would be sitting on the corner eating a loaf of bread and a salami. One in each hand. He never made a sandwhich, except in his mouth, which he said was, "the best kind". Sophie sat next to him and took out her Walt Whitman, her high cotton socks catching a bit on the cleanly paved street. The Bread Man looked at her and said, "Are there any bakers in that poem, Sophie?" Sophie thought a minute and said, "If there aren't any, it sure feels like there are. He's got practically the whole country in it. He loves absolutely everybody." The Bread Man thought a bit and said, "That's why you like the poem?" Sophie's hair lifted a bit in the wind and she bolted forward, "No. Absolutely not. The truth is, I like the fact that he says that America is singing. I think that everybody sings in his own way and I've never met anyone who thought the same way. Even you sing." The Bread Man's eyes opened wide, "You've heard me?" "No, no, no," said Sophie. "It's in the way you move and walk around. It's very much like Lord Byron or Tennyson." "Byron?" said The Bread Man. "Byron wasn't such a nice man. He tried to make a show of himself, but he wasn't so nice. He talked too much about things. I make beautiful things." Sophie's eyes watered, "I didn't mean anything insulting by it. You just carry yourself like you are a big Romantic person. Like the singers at the opera when the story is about love or danger. It's very pleasant to watch you. You have a rhythm like the Polish folk songs do." At that, The Bread Man smiled. "People think I don't know anything. That's why I only talk to you. In fact, I always have a song in my head when I work. But, it is nothing big and phoney like those big poems of Byron. I do like the Polish folk songs. The woman who gave me my job used to sing them every day. Do you remember her?" Sophine looked down because she did not. "You were a baby when she left here. She left here for America, you know. Like you, she had a marvelous singing voice. Every time she sang, I felt like I turned into a big pearl." Sophie started to laugh. "It's true. I felt big and shiny and smooth. And like I would float into a cloud." Sophie's face filled with sun and softness. "You make me feel that way when you sing, too. And someday you'll go off to Hollywood and be a big star."
They sat together for a while, Sophie reading and The Bread Man finishing his food. Then, taking a deep breath, Sophie turned to The Bread Man and looked as straight into his eyes as she had ever looked at anyone. "Will you come with me when I go? You can protect me and you can make my meals. You would make me laugh, most of all." The Bread Man was very moved and his face turned the pink of a new rose and he wiped all of the crumbs off his hands and face. "Everyone in this town will go with you, and I will be first in line, Sophie. We will be in your heart. But, a person like me cannot go with you. My job is here. I am the only Bread Man here. In a big city, there are a million bread men, each singing louder than the next one. You cannot sit on an empty street and talk to a friend, either."
Before she could stop herself, her lungs heaved with tears and her body shook hard. "Then I don't want to go," she insisted again, and again. She knew that her parents had invested time, energy money and their hearts on the idea that she would leave her town. One sister and one brother had done so and they wrote about amazing things. Her brother Al fixed watches for a famous jeweler in New York City and studied law. Her sister Deborah planted trees and built houses in the middle of the desert in Palestine. But, Sophie loved her street and she loved things just as they were. Except when she started to sing. When she sang she saw nothing but the clouds and the trees and crowds and crowds of people as if she had turned into her Parakeet, Chipper, who loved to stand and sing at the top of her balcony.
They sat together that afternoon in silence. Just as he left, The Bread Man pulled a roll from his pocket and handed it to her. "You're not going so fast, little girl and you need to eat regardless." She took the roll and before she could ask he said "Yes, yes, I put raisins and honey in it and no, I won't tell your mother." She smiled as he walked away. Then, like him, she took a big bite out of the roll and concentrated closely on the sweetness and the falling of the night.
For the first Bread Man story go to
http://saddleshoe.blogspot.com/2006/10/bread-man.html
11 May, 2008
What is considered not-hireable
Here's an excerpt from a post on Education Notes.
....I'm a Music teacher.Masters plus 30 credits.20 years longevity in NYC school system.Biggest Chorus for about a decade in Manhattan middle schools.Full S ratings throughout career.Great letters of satisfaction, commendation, awe, and thanks through entire career.Full of energy, full of skills -- pianist, opera singer, know many languages, accomplished music historian, directed theater, playwright....Before teaching, was for years a Senior Staff Editor of the largest and most prestigious music encyclopedia in the world - 24 vols. Was responsible for some of the largest bibliographical articles in it, international reputation in music bibliography.Problem: Am 61 years old with relatively big salaryRepeat. Would you hire me? If so when?You're not the only one who wouldn't.Applied to 10 schools through the Open Market. Though clearly one of the most experienced, educated music teachers in the system, did not get called for a single interview....
The author also notes that he knows lots of Grad students without degrees who DID get interviewed and hired...
Read the full posting on Ednotes online http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2008/05/tim-daley-do-you-want-to-hire-me.html
....I'm a Music teacher.Masters plus 30 credits.20 years longevity in NYC school system.Biggest Chorus for about a decade in Manhattan middle schools.Full S ratings throughout career.Great letters of satisfaction, commendation, awe, and thanks through entire career.Full of energy, full of skills -- pianist, opera singer, know many languages, accomplished music historian, directed theater, playwright....Before teaching, was for years a Senior Staff Editor of the largest and most prestigious music encyclopedia in the world - 24 vols. Was responsible for some of the largest bibliographical articles in it, international reputation in music bibliography.Problem: Am 61 years old with relatively big salaryRepeat. Would you hire me? If so when?You're not the only one who wouldn't.Applied to 10 schools through the Open Market. Though clearly one of the most experienced, educated music teachers in the system, did not get called for a single interview....
The author also notes that he knows lots of Grad students without degrees who DID get interviewed and hired...
Read the full posting on Ednotes online http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2008/05/tim-daley-do-you-want-to-hire-me.html
08 May, 2008
What I think about while my city is thinking about firing teachers
The first time I heard the tenor Carlo Bergonzi was 1978. I was ten years old, and like now, thought I had the right to express a respected opinion about everything. Unlike now, when I know what a schmuck I am for thinking that (and how bad it is that this knowledge doesn't stop me), I had absolutely no idea how dumb I could really be.
In the honest part of me, which is in my silence and in my writing, I always knew that there's no reason at all to have any kind of judgemental opinion about a performance because any interpretation could be valid. Of course, I wasn't paying for the opera tickets that night. My mother was and she was furious and seeing death. Carlo Bergonzi was way past his prime and in the latter part of his career. Anyone could see and hear that, even people as new to opera as we were then. He had obviously been a great star because he got applause when he came on stage and because, no matter how forced he sounded, there was a steady stream of respectful applause. But, I knew that the train ride home was going to be murder. My mother was going to have absolutely nothing good to say, everything was going to be painted in bones and maggots and the number of hours it took her to earn the money for those tickets was going to be emblazoned on my forehead. Meanwhile, what did the two of us really know about the performance we were so condemning? We'd listened to a recording of the opera a couple of times and were in our first year of attending live performances.
In many respects, my mother was absolutely right. Carlo Bergonzi was not the best tenor in the world ever, and that The Metropolitan Opera was serving him up in a lead role for top dollar seemed shameful. Inasmuch as one believes that just being able to pay for the price of the ticket and cramming some listening in before the show made either of us an expert on what great or very good singing was, she was very right. If that were true and she was right then The Metropolitan Opera House and the Department of Education should let anyone with bus fare and a certificate from a three hour course decide how they do their business.
But, as I know now, she was absolutely wrong. And I knew it then, too. Without the pressure of my mother's sense of injustice to the American blue collar worker and her feeling that every attack was personal (and increasingly, that there was a team specifically assigned to torment her) --left to just breathe, I actually enjoyed hearing him. He still had a beautiful sound to his voice and he was artful. That he was a tremendously artful tenor is much clearer to me now and I have also heard recordings of him from 1960. But, really: who is to say that his performance was not world class and that it was not, worth far more than bringing out a younger, more robust but ordinary tenor. Listening to what I can remember of it now, and later recordings of his that I have also heard, there is a great deal of passion, art -- the latter of world class quality. And I can say that I heard Carlo Bergonzi live. The way I can say that I saw Lauren Bacall in "Waiting in the Wings." Yes, she missed lines and it was a boring play. She still had terrific charisma, a fabulous face and to see her and Rosemary Harris go at it was still wonderfully charming and sexy. I got the tickets to that one, so no, my mother didn't bleed iron. She scoured my skin in several repetitions of that half-Yiddish/half English "Ech..." which translates in my late grandmother's words into "I was not enthused." All I could think of was, "Why the F-- are you complaining? I got the tickets and you got to see, in at least Rosemary Harris, one of the best actresses to ever grace the stage and a pop culture icon in Lauren Bacall. And those women had incredible stage presences before they even opened their mouths."
Deep, deep down, my mother knows all this. In later performances at the Met, when we found ourselves without a choice but to see Bergonzi once again, my mother pointed out several moments of beauty. And, given the baritones of the period, we had already found ourselves indulging in the decent acting, half-baked imitation of Leonard Warren that was Sherrill Milnes. For those of you who don't know opera, think Robert Goulet. Or think Usher. He was handsome, he was a pretty decent actor with a lovely sounding voice and the brains to steal brilliant choices from the greater singers who came before him. To show just what I knew about opera then, I was a big fan of his. I still have umbilical chord ties to his recordings and keep a few arias of his on my Mp3 player. No, he's not magnificent as a button I have of him pronounces. He was smarter than he was good and he put together strong performances until 1981 when he became ill and probably should have retired. And yes, I was part of the respectful applause in the years that followed. Listening to Milnes had lead me to Leonard Warren -- think someone on the level of Domingo in baritones or Barbara Streisand or Celia Cruz or Sarah Vaughn, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Jay-Z or Nas. He was excellent enough to have taught me how to listen for more excellence. I had seen and heard all of Warren's phrasings before (because Milnes was, by his own admission in interviews, an excellent thief), so what might have been the initially jarring woody darkness of his voice, was easy for me to attend to, take in and enjoy beyond words. It was like having having seen the movie before reading the book. I could visualize and had a context for something otherwise difficult and alien to me which was better than anything I had ever seen.
I imagine that you heard the "bell" in that last sentence. You recognized the moment where the moral of the story is about to come in. It had the tone of your parents, which they stole from their parents or someone else's parents, or, in my case, a friend whose didactic skills and instincts are impeccable.
No one is impeccable. My friend is as close to the platonic form of the word as a human can be.
If I hadn't tried to imagine what it would be to be "impeccable" I wouldn't be able to recognize it in my friend. If I hadn't had so many friends and teachers who also aimed to be beyond reproach, I'd've never been able to see it in his every motion and to recognize how far above he is everyone else I've ever known.
So, this is what I think about as my city looks to fire teachers who have either been accused of everything from being late to being lecherous but have been convicted for nothing at all or who had the double misfortune, like I've had, of being at a school that is being closed and being 40 or over and making a salary that most principals find prohibitive -- they can get two young teachers for the price of me. And that given the angst that comes with not having enough money in your budget to hire all the teachers and guidance counselors you need, and the general feeling that you don't know what economy you're bringing your students into, I can almost see how my commanding the salary I do, which, by the way is much LESS than that of a close friend who sells phone services, seems daunting. Even if I am AS GOOD as Leonard Warren or Jay-Z, why is it necessary to have someone so good? Does a school necessarily need a fantastic teacher when it can have two serviceable ones? That's a real question, actually, and I'd also bet that thought is very much a part of the climate in which principals make their decisions. After all, they are coming to schools and finding their budgets continually slashed. The atmosphere is not one which encourages one to think about giving the best to your students. It's one where you think about being able to give, at all. In other words, if the Mayor and Governor and everyone involved in the Department of Education's budget doesn't want to fight hard enough to get public school kids in this city MORE THAN THE MINIMUM, what's a principal to do? In the principals' minds, anyway, even if they think about spending their pennies in my direction they'll pause thinking I'm more likely to be like Carlo Bergonzi in 1978 -- not in my prime, though very much a great artist. Or, I might be Sherrill Milnes -- a take-off of other great artists who was very durable, but then broke down.
First of all, anyone who has been in a NYC classroom knows that students do not supply the respectful applause of an opera audience. After 14 years, I had to be at least as good as a durable Sherrill Milnes. I had to be able to command students' attention and get decent test results. Or they would do worse than throw tomatoes at me. Plus, I have mostly good reviews, and most of my fellow colleagues who have lasted as long, have even better ones. Those who have some bad reviews also have excellent ones. Do you know how many sorely bad performances Luciano Pavarotti gave? Besides the times he was caught lip synching? I sat through, at least, five of them. Five out of thousands which were excellent, ten of which I heard. What is the balance of the careers of all of us ATR's -- Assigned Teacher Reserves? That's the important statistic? We have actual track records you can point to -- what are they? Do those teachers who have two U ratings have them in succession and are they both from the same principal -- and were there none from any other? And again, is it two U's against 13 S's. And are there letters of praise in the file?
We are in this position because we are teachers unlucky enough to be made full-time substitutes instantly when our schools closed or because their positions were cut, or because, perhaps, we had the misfortune of having a student accuse them of something they didn't do? Most, if not all of the teachers in the Rubber Rooms who are either NOT FOUND GUILTY or who were found to have done something worth punishing with something as small as a letter in their files, will return to work as ATR's. This is even true of individuals who have had their charges dismissed. It's just easier to pull the person out of their position rather than return him or her to a place where he or she was unwanted enough for someone to have told a lie about them or for them to have been a mild misunderstanding --say, a teacher thought he/she was doing something the principal agreed with and actually the principal NOW SAYS he/she did not.
So, the vast majority of ATR's are in that position through no fault of their own. I didn't say that ALL of them were. But, I'd take a bet that the percentage would be 80 or 90 percent, if only because so many are teachers whose schools just happened to close. The schools' closing does not indicate anything about their abilities. In the corporate world, if a project fails, you don't fire the individuals who carried it out -- or not just them. You fire the director or vice president who was in charge. Many principals have been fired for other reasons, but a great many of the principals of schools which are closing will go on to lead other schools. That doesn't trouble me because I know that you cannot place the blame for an entire school's failure on the back of any one person. I also know that many excellent performances in the arts and in schools have gone unappreciated. My school wasn't closed for poor results. We had especially poor attendance after we were moved to a dangerous neighborhood. Some years, we had poor attendance because the students who were coming to us had a history of poor attendance. They got better. That didn't count. When they graduated, we had to start again, sometimes with similarly bad attending groups. And they got better and it also didn't count.
In 1978, most of the audience applauded for Carlo Bergonzi. He gave a world class performance that showed artistry, knowledge of tradition and an ability to use his resources to their best use. It was far better than the early performances of the young, and later to be very interesting, Neil Shicoff. I learned a lot from it, and I always learn something when I listen to his recordings wherever they are in his career.
On that night, however, I sat enraged the way many people do now when they think about teachers making more money than they think they should, for whatever reason. I learned fairly quickly to think with my whole brain, not just the part of it that was responding to immediate anxieties, and to listen much more carefully. In my platonic ideal of a classroom, my students learn to listen, read and write as carefully as possible with all the knowledge which is required for them to take on the hardest and best literature in the deepest way.
Maybe that's not worth the price of admission to the vast majority in this city. Maybe they would rather my students met minimum competencies very well. Certainly, it is easier to count smaller accomplishments than larger ones.
So, now I know why so many of my students do poorly at math. They live in a city where a large percentage of people are counting in very small, digestible quantities.
In the honest part of me, which is in my silence and in my writing, I always knew that there's no reason at all to have any kind of judgemental opinion about a performance because any interpretation could be valid. Of course, I wasn't paying for the opera tickets that night. My mother was and she was furious and seeing death. Carlo Bergonzi was way past his prime and in the latter part of his career. Anyone could see and hear that, even people as new to opera as we were then. He had obviously been a great star because he got applause when he came on stage and because, no matter how forced he sounded, there was a steady stream of respectful applause. But, I knew that the train ride home was going to be murder. My mother was going to have absolutely nothing good to say, everything was going to be painted in bones and maggots and the number of hours it took her to earn the money for those tickets was going to be emblazoned on my forehead. Meanwhile, what did the two of us really know about the performance we were so condemning? We'd listened to a recording of the opera a couple of times and were in our first year of attending live performances.
In many respects, my mother was absolutely right. Carlo Bergonzi was not the best tenor in the world ever, and that The Metropolitan Opera was serving him up in a lead role for top dollar seemed shameful. Inasmuch as one believes that just being able to pay for the price of the ticket and cramming some listening in before the show made either of us an expert on what great or very good singing was, she was very right. If that were true and she was right then The Metropolitan Opera House and the Department of Education should let anyone with bus fare and a certificate from a three hour course decide how they do their business.
But, as I know now, she was absolutely wrong. And I knew it then, too. Without the pressure of my mother's sense of injustice to the American blue collar worker and her feeling that every attack was personal (and increasingly, that there was a team specifically assigned to torment her) --left to just breathe, I actually enjoyed hearing him. He still had a beautiful sound to his voice and he was artful. That he was a tremendously artful tenor is much clearer to me now and I have also heard recordings of him from 1960. But, really: who is to say that his performance was not world class and that it was not, worth far more than bringing out a younger, more robust but ordinary tenor. Listening to what I can remember of it now, and later recordings of his that I have also heard, there is a great deal of passion, art -- the latter of world class quality. And I can say that I heard Carlo Bergonzi live. The way I can say that I saw Lauren Bacall in "Waiting in the Wings." Yes, she missed lines and it was a boring play. She still had terrific charisma, a fabulous face and to see her and Rosemary Harris go at it was still wonderfully charming and sexy. I got the tickets to that one, so no, my mother didn't bleed iron. She scoured my skin in several repetitions of that half-Yiddish/half English "Ech..." which translates in my late grandmother's words into "I was not enthused." All I could think of was, "Why the F-- are you complaining? I got the tickets and you got to see, in at least Rosemary Harris, one of the best actresses to ever grace the stage and a pop culture icon in Lauren Bacall. And those women had incredible stage presences before they even opened their mouths."
Deep, deep down, my mother knows all this. In later performances at the Met, when we found ourselves without a choice but to see Bergonzi once again, my mother pointed out several moments of beauty. And, given the baritones of the period, we had already found ourselves indulging in the decent acting, half-baked imitation of Leonard Warren that was Sherrill Milnes. For those of you who don't know opera, think Robert Goulet. Or think Usher. He was handsome, he was a pretty decent actor with a lovely sounding voice and the brains to steal brilliant choices from the greater singers who came before him. To show just what I knew about opera then, I was a big fan of his. I still have umbilical chord ties to his recordings and keep a few arias of his on my Mp3 player. No, he's not magnificent as a button I have of him pronounces. He was smarter than he was good and he put together strong performances until 1981 when he became ill and probably should have retired. And yes, I was part of the respectful applause in the years that followed. Listening to Milnes had lead me to Leonard Warren -- think someone on the level of Domingo in baritones or Barbara Streisand or Celia Cruz or Sarah Vaughn, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Jay-Z or Nas. He was excellent enough to have taught me how to listen for more excellence. I had seen and heard all of Warren's phrasings before (because Milnes was, by his own admission in interviews, an excellent thief), so what might have been the initially jarring woody darkness of his voice, was easy for me to attend to, take in and enjoy beyond words. It was like having having seen the movie before reading the book. I could visualize and had a context for something otherwise difficult and alien to me which was better than anything I had ever seen.
I imagine that you heard the "bell" in that last sentence. You recognized the moment where the moral of the story is about to come in. It had the tone of your parents, which they stole from their parents or someone else's parents, or, in my case, a friend whose didactic skills and instincts are impeccable.
No one is impeccable. My friend is as close to the platonic form of the word as a human can be.
If I hadn't tried to imagine what it would be to be "impeccable" I wouldn't be able to recognize it in my friend. If I hadn't had so many friends and teachers who also aimed to be beyond reproach, I'd've never been able to see it in his every motion and to recognize how far above he is everyone else I've ever known.
So, this is what I think about as my city looks to fire teachers who have either been accused of everything from being late to being lecherous but have been convicted for nothing at all or who had the double misfortune, like I've had, of being at a school that is being closed and being 40 or over and making a salary that most principals find prohibitive -- they can get two young teachers for the price of me. And that given the angst that comes with not having enough money in your budget to hire all the teachers and guidance counselors you need, and the general feeling that you don't know what economy you're bringing your students into, I can almost see how my commanding the salary I do, which, by the way is much LESS than that of a close friend who sells phone services, seems daunting. Even if I am AS GOOD as Leonard Warren or Jay-Z, why is it necessary to have someone so good? Does a school necessarily need a fantastic teacher when it can have two serviceable ones? That's a real question, actually, and I'd also bet that thought is very much a part of the climate in which principals make their decisions. After all, they are coming to schools and finding their budgets continually slashed. The atmosphere is not one which encourages one to think about giving the best to your students. It's one where you think about being able to give, at all. In other words, if the Mayor and Governor and everyone involved in the Department of Education's budget doesn't want to fight hard enough to get public school kids in this city MORE THAN THE MINIMUM, what's a principal to do? In the principals' minds, anyway, even if they think about spending their pennies in my direction they'll pause thinking I'm more likely to be like Carlo Bergonzi in 1978 -- not in my prime, though very much a great artist. Or, I might be Sherrill Milnes -- a take-off of other great artists who was very durable, but then broke down.
First of all, anyone who has been in a NYC classroom knows that students do not supply the respectful applause of an opera audience. After 14 years, I had to be at least as good as a durable Sherrill Milnes. I had to be able to command students' attention and get decent test results. Or they would do worse than throw tomatoes at me. Plus, I have mostly good reviews, and most of my fellow colleagues who have lasted as long, have even better ones. Those who have some bad reviews also have excellent ones. Do you know how many sorely bad performances Luciano Pavarotti gave? Besides the times he was caught lip synching? I sat through, at least, five of them. Five out of thousands which were excellent, ten of which I heard. What is the balance of the careers of all of us ATR's -- Assigned Teacher Reserves? That's the important statistic? We have actual track records you can point to -- what are they? Do those teachers who have two U ratings have them in succession and are they both from the same principal -- and were there none from any other? And again, is it two U's against 13 S's. And are there letters of praise in the file?
We are in this position because we are teachers unlucky enough to be made full-time substitutes instantly when our schools closed or because their positions were cut, or because, perhaps, we had the misfortune of having a student accuse them of something they didn't do? Most, if not all of the teachers in the Rubber Rooms who are either NOT FOUND GUILTY or who were found to have done something worth punishing with something as small as a letter in their files, will return to work as ATR's. This is even true of individuals who have had their charges dismissed. It's just easier to pull the person out of their position rather than return him or her to a place where he or she was unwanted enough for someone to have told a lie about them or for them to have been a mild misunderstanding --say, a teacher thought he/she was doing something the principal agreed with and actually the principal NOW SAYS he/she did not.
So, the vast majority of ATR's are in that position through no fault of their own. I didn't say that ALL of them were. But, I'd take a bet that the percentage would be 80 or 90 percent, if only because so many are teachers whose schools just happened to close. The schools' closing does not indicate anything about their abilities. In the corporate world, if a project fails, you don't fire the individuals who carried it out -- or not just them. You fire the director or vice president who was in charge. Many principals have been fired for other reasons, but a great many of the principals of schools which are closing will go on to lead other schools. That doesn't trouble me because I know that you cannot place the blame for an entire school's failure on the back of any one person. I also know that many excellent performances in the arts and in schools have gone unappreciated. My school wasn't closed for poor results. We had especially poor attendance after we were moved to a dangerous neighborhood. Some years, we had poor attendance because the students who were coming to us had a history of poor attendance. They got better. That didn't count. When they graduated, we had to start again, sometimes with similarly bad attending groups. And they got better and it also didn't count.
In 1978, most of the audience applauded for Carlo Bergonzi. He gave a world class performance that showed artistry, knowledge of tradition and an ability to use his resources to their best use. It was far better than the early performances of the young, and later to be very interesting, Neil Shicoff. I learned a lot from it, and I always learn something when I listen to his recordings wherever they are in his career.
On that night, however, I sat enraged the way many people do now when they think about teachers making more money than they think they should, for whatever reason. I learned fairly quickly to think with my whole brain, not just the part of it that was responding to immediate anxieties, and to listen much more carefully. In my platonic ideal of a classroom, my students learn to listen, read and write as carefully as possible with all the knowledge which is required for them to take on the hardest and best literature in the deepest way.
Maybe that's not worth the price of admission to the vast majority in this city. Maybe they would rather my students met minimum competencies very well. Certainly, it is easier to count smaller accomplishments than larger ones.
So, now I know why so many of my students do poorly at math. They live in a city where a large percentage of people are counting in very small, digestible quantities.
I hope that most of them have better taste in music.
05 May, 2008
The Daily News and the Rubber Room
On May 4 and May 5, The New York Daily News printed two articles about NYC's Rubber Room. In brief, a "Rubber Room" is a holding pen in which teachers, paraprofessionals, school aides, secretaries -- almost all school related personnel -- who are accused of violations wait to be tried. They can wait there for months into years. Because the city claims they are dangerous to kids, the individuals accused aren't given anything to do. The punishment is a la Sartre's play No Exit in which individuals are trapped with nothing to do but be in close confines with other trapped people.
You can look up the articles. It's not that I don't want to give you the links, it's that I am so disgusted and so tired of hearing about this issue in the way that the Daily News presented it, that I don't want to look for the addresses again. They're not hard to find. Go to http://www.nydailynews.com/, type in "Rubber Room" and they come up.
They were yet, two MORE articles that talked about how much money this system cost. And, of course, the paper claims to have gotten volumes of emails which basically called for the teachers to be drawn and quartered.
What everyone forgets is, no one in that room is proven guilty. If you've been proven guilty, you've either received a fine, suspension or termination. If you've been proven innocent, you will be placed back in your school.
Suppose we applied this to our general legal system -- would we shoot all detainees? I realize that some of our prisons, like Abu Ghraib, make it seem that way. But, I thought the consensus in this country was not to destroy the Constitution entirely.
In my very, very nebbishy consternation, I wrote a letter to the author of both articles. Depending on what she does, I'll print it here in a few days.
At this moment, however, I wish to remind all who read this that
1) No teacher chooses to be accused of anything
2) An accusation does not equal guilt
and, a very sad
3) Many of the accusers -- students, parents and principals -- have motives for their actions which have little to do with what has actually occurred. I met a teacher who was accused by a parent of possibly giving an answer to a test to another student in that paren't class. Nobody corroborated the parent's story. The teacher spent the year in that confinement cell waiting for it to be determined that she could be released. What do you suppose the accusing parent got out of it? His/her son didn't have this tough teacher for the rest of the year. Now, there's an ugly way to keep your grades up.
Think back: imagine you were given the chance to get a teacher you hated pulled from the classroom in one, fell swoop. No more awful assignments. No more boredom. No more criticism. It's tempting, isn't it? Maybe you wouldn't do it, but you know someone who might. The way you might not destroy the teacher's desk, car or room, but students have done. And now they can take it one step further. They NEVER have to see that teacher again, if they plan it right....
Furthermore, it is a fact that our current DOE actively creates disincentives for keeping senior staff. Before this administration, the DOE supplemented school budgets so that they could retain older, more experienced and YES more costly teachers. Don't teachers have a right to be paid for their experience? Regardless of what you think on that question, with this administration the DOE no longer does this. So, you can get two younger teachers for the price of one older teacher. I don't know, Walmart is one of the most popular stores in this country. What do you think the principal's are shopping for in teachers these days, as a result? As you would expect, the average new teacher doesn't last three years -- just the way the average bottom priced item at Walmart doesn't.
Be well, everyone.
You can look up the articles. It's not that I don't want to give you the links, it's that I am so disgusted and so tired of hearing about this issue in the way that the Daily News presented it, that I don't want to look for the addresses again. They're not hard to find. Go to http://www.nydailynews.com/, type in "Rubber Room" and they come up.
They were yet, two MORE articles that talked about how much money this system cost. And, of course, the paper claims to have gotten volumes of emails which basically called for the teachers to be drawn and quartered.
What everyone forgets is, no one in that room is proven guilty. If you've been proven guilty, you've either received a fine, suspension or termination. If you've been proven innocent, you will be placed back in your school.
Suppose we applied this to our general legal system -- would we shoot all detainees? I realize that some of our prisons, like Abu Ghraib, make it seem that way. But, I thought the consensus in this country was not to destroy the Constitution entirely.
In my very, very nebbishy consternation, I wrote a letter to the author of both articles. Depending on what she does, I'll print it here in a few days.
At this moment, however, I wish to remind all who read this that
1) No teacher chooses to be accused of anything
2) An accusation does not equal guilt
and, a very sad
3) Many of the accusers -- students, parents and principals -- have motives for their actions which have little to do with what has actually occurred. I met a teacher who was accused by a parent of possibly giving an answer to a test to another student in that paren't class. Nobody corroborated the parent's story. The teacher spent the year in that confinement cell waiting for it to be determined that she could be released. What do you suppose the accusing parent got out of it? His/her son didn't have this tough teacher for the rest of the year. Now, there's an ugly way to keep your grades up.
Think back: imagine you were given the chance to get a teacher you hated pulled from the classroom in one, fell swoop. No more awful assignments. No more boredom. No more criticism. It's tempting, isn't it? Maybe you wouldn't do it, but you know someone who might. The way you might not destroy the teacher's desk, car or room, but students have done. And now they can take it one step further. They NEVER have to see that teacher again, if they plan it right....
Furthermore, it is a fact that our current DOE actively creates disincentives for keeping senior staff. Before this administration, the DOE supplemented school budgets so that they could retain older, more experienced and YES more costly teachers. Don't teachers have a right to be paid for their experience? Regardless of what you think on that question, with this administration the DOE no longer does this. So, you can get two younger teachers for the price of one older teacher. I don't know, Walmart is one of the most popular stores in this country. What do you think the principal's are shopping for in teachers these days, as a result? As you would expect, the average new teacher doesn't last three years -- just the way the average bottom priced item at Walmart doesn't.
Be well, everyone.
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