Just for the record

This economic crisis was created by businessmen like Bloomberg and not civil servants.

Even as a hunter, he is a philosopher

Dar Williams - When I Was A Boy FRFF 2008

This song reminds me of Karen

The all around talented...

Happy Holidays

Things are okay. My principal and AP have been very supportive and my two babies have been cuddling me round the clock.

So, here are some warm and fuzzy pictures of my warm and furry guys.

When there is no redemption

Last Thursday, I was asked to stay late to keep the boundary between two of the schools in our building secure. It wasn't very difficult and I found most of the students understanding -- one even told me that he knew that our students created too much noise when they got out of gym and that was why we were trying to re-route them out of the other school's territory. One student slightly pushed me out of the way, but then he apologized. He didn't quite understand the rule itself, but he knew he handled himself incorrectly.

Then I got on the bus going home.


There's a wonderful little middle school a block away from my high school and I wait for my bus at its entrance. The girls were yelling at a boy who had broken up nastily with a girl. I joked with a stranger about how seriously these little kids took their relationships. Thinking back now, I actually DIVORCED my first boyfriend in the fourth grade. I got on the school bus and said that everyone who was my friend had to sit on one side of the bus, and his friends had to sit on the other. Most of the bus crammed into my side and my former boyfriend was nearly alone on his side. I remember him, all swallowed up by the green vinyl seats, crying.

The boy, in the middle school drama I witnessed also fled the scene and the B8 bus arrived, crammed with passengers, to my dismay. For the first two minutes of the bus ride things were fine. Then we stopped in front of my high school. I avoid getting the bus there because most of the seats get taken at the middle school. As it turned out, on this night I was standing anyway. A group of MY students got on the bus and I smiled at them and even joked that I had the "enemy" cap on (I was wearing a baseball cap with the initials of one of the other schools in the building.)

One very tall girl with a space between her front teeth began the chanting of "BAT, BAT, BAT, BAT." Then I was called a "snitch" and my every move was commented on. "You get people suspended," said the tall girl. I tried to explain that I don't -- but I stopped. It seemed, perhaps, not a good idea to dispel the belief that I had the power to do something I can't actually do. Truthfully, I only document student behavior and reach out to parents. Once or twice I have recommended someone be suspended, but my suggestions weren't taken. The chanting of "Bat, Bat, Bat, Bat" and the comments continued. I stood still, reading my book and at the next stop, I got a seat and continued to read. A student asked if I was reading the Bible. Several students said that I was "tight" (which means tense). This continued until the students got off of the bus. This was about twenty minutes.

At one point, I did say that I could call the police but that the students were "just not that important." I wanted them to understand that my life would go on despite their escapades and, sadly, that I didn't care about them as much as they thought. They didn't get it.

The next day my class went miserably. (I only have one on Fridays. The rest of the day I am a dean.) The subtitles on West Side Story didn't work and my students couldn't follow the language without them. I tried fast forwarding between active scenes -- the big fight, etc. Nothing. Students were talking and talking. Then a security guard knocked and asked me if I would take in a student kicked out of another class. This was a student who had harassed me weeks ago, but with whom I no longer had problems. So, I said, "okay." She joined in the talking with her group of friends and they became more vociferous and aggressive. One of them accused me of being "in love" with a female student because I had laughingly commented on her goofy outfit. (Friday was also "wacky tacky" day.) When they left, the girl I admitted called me "Ms. Dyke" and when I went after her in the hallway to tell her that she had just committed a hate crime, she said she didn't care about my "gay ass."

The girl was suspended. I wanted her arrested but was discouraged from doing so.
I've never been gaybashed verbally before. Sure, the same girl used to call me "Mr. Kay" but I never took that in the same way.

When friends of the same girl came into the Dean's Office for something and I asked them what they wanted, I heard one girl outside yell, "Oh no, no!" and the girls left. They weren't embarassed; they were indicating that they would take no help from me.

My first instinct was to asked to be transferred -- which won't happen. I have never felt unsafe before in my career -- not this way. I might have felt that one student was aggressive toward me, but for academic reasons. No one ever really showed me complete and utter hatred.

not another website...

Recently, I've heard that the UFT is trying to put together a kind of website for teacher resumes. First, I think that this action misses the point:
TEACHER RESUMES ARE OUT THERE. PEOPLE SEND THEM OUT. PEOPLE AREN'T READING THEM. PUTTING MORE OUT WON'T HELP.

Second, I think this wastes resources which need to go elsewhere:
TEACHERS NEED TO LEARN HOW TO HANDLE THE LEADERSHIP ACADEMY PRINCIPALS AND THEIR INTERVIEW STYLE.

TEACHERS NEED TO PUT MORE PRESSURE ON THE UFT TO PRESSURE KLEIN INTO HIRING US.

OR, we had all better brace ourselves for careers as ATR's -- at best.....

College Preparatory

Today I interviewed for a position at a Charter School which aims to be College Preparatory. When I stated that all high schools are college preparatory -- or aim to be -- I was told that it is a "communications issue" -- that the school will have to find a way to say it is academically rigorous/competitive without being selective. Perhaps, the school would like people to self-select out who aren't interested in going Ivy League and would like to find a way to present this while still being politically correct. I mean, they could just call themselves "the middle class alternative to Horace Mann." That might backfire however.

I've never met a kid in my life who wasn't interested in the opportunity to train to become Ivy League Material. Nor have I ever met a parent who didn't believe his/her kid deserved the chance.

What I wanted to say, but of course didn't right then (they can certainly read this blog posting) is: whom do you expect to be teaching? It's not as though I don't believe the average kid off the street couldn't be prepared for Princeton. To the contrary, I think you can build a student if you have the time, resources and commitment from the student and parents. However, the organizers of this school don't seem to be aware that the students whom they reach will not have much of a foundation when they arrive at their doorstep. Their reading and math skills are going to be poor, or mostly so. Their behavior will be challenging, and as their frustrations grow, it will get worse. A strong system has to be in place to reinforce the culture and methods of the school. There will also need to be strong incentives for the students and parents to buy into the school philosophy.

They won't just be able to hold up the flags of Harvard, Yale and Columbia and expect students to go hopping. Students need tangible reasons to believe these names still matter, and who could blame them. Eight years of Yale and Harvard educated "Nucular" Bush, and our students have had a very concrete lesson in what happens when you know the right people and you don't know anything else. I hardly think that people who apply to Yale do so with the Shrub in mind -- and those who are applying generally have a sense of tradition which goes with the school and reaches beyond the past eight years. That, however, is a small section of the population and not necessarily a part of the public school population. Even of the elitist public school population.

Many of my friends have students in the public schools because they can't afford private schools. They don't anticipate being able to send their kids to private colleges either. For them, SUNY Binghamton, Buffalo, Albany, Queens, Hunter and Brooklyn are going to have to suffice -- as the latter three once did in the 50's and 60's when people usually only attended private schools when they couldn't get into the best CUNY's. When someone who went to school in that era mentioned going to NYU, they didn't usually do so with pride -- it was testimony to their failure to get into Queens, Brooklyn or Hunter. Without the major financial aid which exists now, few people could afford Columbia, Barnard and Cornell. This held true even for graduate school. My uncle won the Regents Scholarship in Dentistry and wanted to go to Harvard's Dental School but they couldn't match the financial aid, so he went to NYU.

I remember, back in 1985, how many of my fellow graduates from Stuyvesant went to Binghamton. Most of them got into Ivy League schools but couldn't afford to go. Believe me, if there is any student who wants to go to an Ivy League school, it is a graduate of Stuyvesant. People were already practical by then and realized what was affordable and what was not. I was lucky that I grew up so poor that I knew I would get an enormous financial aid package from Barnard.

The guidelines for that kind of financial aid are very strict and many struggling middle class families live well above them.

So, I guess I hope that the planners of the school I spoke with today are ready to meet the needs of their students and to help them to compete for the best education available --- knowing they will start with disadvantages and that they may have to make compromises along the way.

Most importantly, though, they will need to find a reason for students to want this education. Some of my brightest students have chosen technical educations or to go into the military because they don't see a connection between an Ivy League quality education and a steady job. They've met too many teachers from such schools who are constantly worried about their positions, even after years of service. They have brothers and sisters who went to respectable schools and are out of work. Meanwhile, their mechanic friends, their friends in the armed forces and their cab driver friends are still managing.

I'll be curious to see how it works out.

Now you see it, now you don't

I've been a dean for a total of three months. In that time, I have had my, "let me help you change" days and my "get off my planet" days. I've found that being somewhat unpredictable can be useful because students are less inclined to test you if they are concerned you might do something insane. I guess the same rationale motivates a lot of people.

For the past few days, I've submitted paperwork on students only to find that the students weren't punished. I mean, they were ALMOST punished -- parents were called and some came up. Those who didn't come up didn't miss anything as their children were let back in the building with a slap on the wrist. In one case, a student was actually suspended....and then the suspension was taken back. What'd'ya know?

In all cases, I had been in my "heavier" moods on the theory that these were repeat offenders who needed to be taught a lesson. I guess the lesson was really being taught to me.

Perhaps what has to happen in a school is for everyone to feel as if they cannot tell what will happen no matter what they do. In the case of those of us writing up students, we might consider how we might best meet the needs of the student in the IMMEDIATE action. Will the act of writing the student up, calling a parent, etc. be enough -- will it make a difference in the student's life. We can't expect anything else will happen because that's not in our control. So, we have to best utilize what is in our control.

As a teacher, I rarely called for help from others and I mostly relied on the interaction between the students and me in the moment to maintain order. Even when I called parents, I placed little expectation on the result. There were some terrific parents. No parent, no matter how great, can be there at the moment the student decides to throw an orange across a room or pull a knife on someone. At that moment, the student is his/her own judge and jury.

What I've learned in my three months as a dean, therefore, is that my most important decisions will also come in the moment. What is done after will have limited effect and I have no control over what it will be. It could be that the student will be reprimanded by a parent or suspended for 90 days. There's no way of knowing. The only one I can depend upon is me.

And that's a lesson I learned as a teacher long, long ago.

Razzle Dazzle

We sat in our balcony seats for ten minutes after the show ended, just talking to the people next to us. For some reason, I remember there being sparkle dust all over the stage. I guess they were cleaning up.

Nobody lets you stay that late at the theater anymore. You're ushered out immediately and you don't get to see the stagehands do their work.

I was seven years old and it was my second musical - Chicago - with the original cast Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera. My mother kept telling me to watch the dancers' feet -- how swiftly and quickly they moved. But, I was enraptured in the satire of the show and, though I appreciated how good the women were, I was glued to Jerry Orbach. I remember what he looked like when he came onstage and I never took my eyes off of him. He was all stage presence and sharp moves. He couldn't really sing in the conventional sense, but the man could move in a commanding and lightning-like fashion and he radiated an understanding of the show itself. The Razzle Dazzle that was a comment on the Razzle Dazzle of the 1920's that often obscured reality and justice. Unlike now, when things are clear and justice is swift and squeaky clean as the window on a washed car.

I had some trouble, as I still do, getting the story itself. But, I got the characters and the games they were playing.

Here's a troubling fact: I've been showing the film version to my students these past days and they don't get it, at all. I mean, they follow the story and they remember the songs. But, they don't understand the comments the show makes and they can't keep up with the pace of Fosse's dancing. It's a blur of nakedness and heels to them. Even the second time we watched "Cell Block Tango" it took a while for the meaning of the choreography to become clear. I made the simple point that the women dominate the men and one of my students asked me what "dominate" means.

For the first time in my life, and I can honestly say it is the first time, I am on a completely different planet from my students. A different planet. I'm bouncing eagerly to what I think is the simplest and probably the most obvious music in the American Musical Theater -- this has to be sharper hitting than "Some Enchanted Evening" -- and my students don't have a clue what's going on. They know some chick murdered a guy and it looks like she might get off, but they don't know why this could be interesting and they don't instinctively lift off to Bob Fosse's footstrokes. They have no instincts for this. One of my students didn't realize this was a musical -- granted, she came in for the last twenty minutes only and what could she tell?

Two women get away with murder by manipulating the press and public. What could be more contemporary?

Of course, my students also don't know who Rush Limbaugh is or what the difference is between Fox and CNN. Not that they watch the news. They watch BET even though I've tried to explain to them that the network is owned by ClearChannel, a company not particularly interested in the real needs of urban youth. They don't care. They have the right to consume.

And that right has taken away their ability to distinguish between what is worth consuming and what is garbage.

I'm not for a minute saying that anything by Ebb and Kandor is better than South Pacific or, for that matter, anything by Rogers and Hammerstein (except maybe Oklahoma!). I see Ebb and Kandor as the "ABC" of Musical Theater -- ordinary voices do extraordinary dancing (sometimes) about urbane topics. The stuff of Saturday Nigh Live. Pop. Accessible, I thought.

Probably, my students would be better off with the fairy tale narrative of South Pacific or The Sound of Music neither of which they have seen.

Before coming to Tilden, I had no idea there was a world in which people had not seen The Sound of Music. My Brooklyn Comprehensive students had seen it. Maybe they stay up late or are more adventurous in checking out cable. Or, more likely, they rented these films for their kid or kid sister whom they babysit.

Meanwhile, we finish Chicago tomorrow and then move on to...I don't know yet, though I have many choices.

Where do you go when Razzle Dazzle needs translation?

Bernie is two! Happy Birthday Bernie!

Here's a picture of the Birthday boy after finishing some broccoli -- his favorite vegetable and with Larry, snuggling, this weekend.