When does something constitute torture?

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

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

Re-invention

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

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

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

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

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

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