Let Teachers Remain Blue Collar

I must confess Sharon Pearce mentioned this idea years ago and I didn't understand its significance. She said she wanted to be blue collar and I didn't get it. I do now.

The 100,000 dollar teacher is a bad idea.

It's not that teachers aren't worth that much, but the job is not, by its nature, one which provides monetary profit to anyone. We provide a free service. Traditionally, we have exchanged security for high wages, with both sides benefitting from the long-term commitment which resulted.

Teachers are artisans at least, artists at best. But, by the nature of my profession, I don't give concerts that sell for 150 dollars a ticket. I give my art in exchange for security, pension and benefits. I am part of a system which does not require those who receive my art to pay for it.

A doctor working in such a system would not make as much as one who decided to work in the free market. Nor would anyone who did.

Teachers shape their art to fit a particular system and place. If we were to travel around like salespeople and try to sell our art, some of us would make millions, others of us would die. Like with any group of artists, among those who could not be appreciated in their own time would be geniuses. Only they would have no students to leave behind to appreciate in value and pay royalties to their children.

In the spirit of a nation which wants an active citizenry, the teaching profession has shaped itself to serve and not to sell.

We should not, however, demand huge raises and definitely not exchange our benefits for them. We are artists who cannot exist without the system in which we work. In pulling ourselves out of "the market" we are allowed to present our lessons objectively and fairly. We are meant to be outside of the "professional" world. We are blue collar.

In tempting us with raises in exchange for giving up a part of our security, Mayor Bloomberg has threatened the very nature of the profession. What's to stop me from getting Apple or Pepsi to sponsor my work and to brand my lessons with their products? In proposing the idea of providing incentives to teachers whose students have the best scores, he encourages teachers to do what other professionals would do in the market place -- to limit their risk, to skew their work toward that which will provide them the most profit and to eliminate anything which might hinder them from succeeding. That kid in the back who just doesn't do well on tests, hmmmn..... Why don't I encourage his parents to put him in another school, to test him for special needs, and why don't I make him so miserable that he begs the program office to remove him from my class. Or, why don't I push harder on the special needs issue, get him more time, someone to read to him, etc. Anything that can get me the extra cash even if it's not right for the student.

Most teachers I know did not vote for this contract. People say that it was the younger teachers and the retiring teachers who pushed it through. I understand why both sides would want more money, but THAT is not in the best interest of kids. Frankly, I have colleagues who would NOT have retired had they been given positions through the seniority system. Instead, we are paying those people their pensions when they could be teaching our kids.

And anyone who enters the teaching profession expecting a lot of money should leave before they get tenured. I lived in shares in my first teaching years and another young colleague and I used to live on the 25 cent granola bars they sold at the local bodega. That's what you get for also having health insurance, a prescription plan, etc. If you wanted to make a lot of money in your twenties and early thirties you should've done something else.

Teachers should earn a fair and decent wage -- one which helps them to continue study and to survive in a way which does not leave them ragged. We should be solidly middle-class. And we should get overtime like members of other unions.

We are not professionals in the capitalist sense. I can't make any money for my school with the work I do. (Sure, I could write grant proposals, but that's not like earning a profit for selling Wi-Fi.) And I shouldn't. I should be allowed to stay out of the market so that I can teach my students honestly.

I shouldn't wear a suit. If I had wanted to wear a suit, I would've gone to law school.

I wanted to engage in the exchange of knowledge and to help my students develop as thinkers. That doesn't require that I wear Armani. I need to be clothed. As someone outside the market, I ought to be allowed to present a non-conformist image.

We did not form a union to make teachers able to compete with MBA's. We did so that teachers could earn a fair wage, have security and good benefits.

Let's return to the contract prior to this one. Let's give back the raises, get back seniority and everything else we gave up.

I would be giving up about 20,000 dollars. I am sure that if we all gave back the raises, the city would not need to lay people off.

I know. I don't have children, I don't own any property and I still dress like a college student. I eat like a high school student.

But, my classes run really well when I feel secure. The more worried I am about surviving, not buying new clothes, but paying the rent, the less I am able to function. This would be true of any sane person.

My last salary before this contract was a fair wage for me so long as I have seniority, tenure and all my health benefits.

Here you will argue that a lot of teachers were placed in positions through seniority which were not good fits. Bad fits happen even when you go through extensive hiring processes. In "the market" people work to make themselves fit. So do civil servants.

I was once bumped from a position which I thought was mine. A teacher from Brooklyn Tech took my position at Brooklyn Comprehensive. Therefore, I found myself working at The Choir Academy of Harlem -- a school in which students wore uniforms and which had a very conservative culture. My principal knew I wasn't exactly the right fit ideologically for the school, but he hired me because I was intelligent enough to, as he put it, "interview well". I spent four years at that school and learned a lot and the students were well served. I asked to leave so I could go to Brooklyn Comprehensive once the teacher who took my position retired, and had to strike a bargain in which I taught at Choir during the day and, per session, at Brooklyn Comprehensive at night in order to leave. That mean travelling from Harlem to the junction of Brooklyn every night for a term.

You see, however, that in striking that bargain I was able, even under the old system of seniority, to find the fit I wanted. Smart principals and teachers HAVE ALWAYS found ways to get the faculty whom they wanted. At one school, my principal excessed an art teacher she didn't like, then a few months later, "found the funds" to hire an art teacher she did like who has outlived her tenure. Even in the world of seniority, people have freedom and options. They also have the security to try to stay and grow into a position and to remain objective and true to the students throughout. Principals often traded teachers who were better fits for each others' school. We got a great teacher at Choir that way.

You think that doesn't happen "in the market". It happens in "Re-org's" all the time. Sure, some people are fired -- but this is not a for-profit profession. And incompetent teachers can be removed through the 3020a process. Meanwhile, teachers remain objective servants to their students. If the individuals who became principals really wanted to have the freedom of the marketplace they should've taken jobs which carried that risk. No company would accept 3 percent growth (which is what Bloomberg says has happened in our test results) over a two year period -- let alone this Mayor's term. Everyone is playing pretend financial genius in a world where that's the last thing that matters. The students matter, and therefore, so does making sure that we retain teachers who are experienced, highly skilled and who are not looking to make a profit off of the kids. Job security makes people objective and secure.

My mother was a dental assistant who workd for The Dept. of Health of New York City. She made very little money. Without my grandmother's and my uncle's assistance, I would never have had the life I did. However, my mother's benefits made it possible to get her hip surgery done at Lennox Hill Hospital. With a few exceptions, she can afford any medicine she needs. Had she worked in the private sector she would've made more money but not had these benefits. She also wouldn't have been able to complain when a dentist had treated a patient badly or done poor work. My mother is an annoying human being to know on many levels, but she was a very good patient advocate in her position. She got furious when shoddy work was done on the children she served and she raised hell about it. Once, a dentist held a kid's head still and was about to drill, which could've killed the child, who was pushing back as hard as a five year old could. First, my mother stopped the dentist. Then she reported that dentist. That dentist was fired. And yes, it was a new dentist at the clinic who had no experience with children who did this. Having an assistant with (at that time) over 15 years of experience was crucial in keeping that child from harm. But, that never should have happened. My mother still remembers how long it took to calm that child down, and that incident happened 25 years ago. My guess is the adult that child grew up to be also remembers it.

I don't want to make the low wages my mother did, and to be fair, I have more responsibilities and much more education.

My point is, though, that we are both civil servants, both blue collar.

We don't need to drive BMW's. We need security so that we can serve the city without prejudice. We not only need to be paid overtime, but we need to be reimbursed FULLY for the items we buy in order to do our jobs. If you look at my salary and divide it by the number of hours I really work, it comes down to something like 12 dollars an hour. I'm including time I grade, research, shop for my class, in addition to my classes and the times in which I have given up lunches and preps to work with students.

I don't want to be paid entirely per hour because that would cost the city much more money.

What I want is a decent, honorable wage. I do not want to make an extravagant living -- I just want security in exchange for not earning one.

I'll go back to my previous salary. It's a lot better than what I'll get if I lose my job and have to work for a private non-profit. I suggest my colleagues push our UFT president to return the mistake in funding allocation made in the last contract and return to us the seniority and security which we truly need.

Really, if this is about a funding crisis, the sensible thing to do is take a pay cut and get back the intangibles -- the seniority -- things that don't cost the city anything extra, but provide me with good faith from my employer. Cut my salary back to the last contract. You can still reform the schools -- there are systems in place for firing incompetent teachers and most of the new schools which have opened were around during the last contract. And, it stands to reason, if I give back salary you can open MORE new programs, not fewer. All I want is my seniority back. It's fair reward for the 16 years of service I have put in below market value, at the very least.

The city's roster of teachers is also bloated with new, untenured faculty who were mistakenly hired for positions which do not exist. We now have Teaching Fellows whose masters degrees were paid for by the city, but for whom there is no work. They were hired in the hopes that the new contract would push experienced teachers out. They were hired with the idea that they would take all of the new positions opening and the experienced teachers would hang in ATR limbo. They had no idea of this, I'm sure, although they were trained in a culture that was anti-teacher. Why anyone would take a job where you are taught that the older and more experienced you get, the less you are to be trusted is beyond me. In fairness, since they have not yet earned the right to security, if more cuts need to be made, untenured faculty ought to be cut. The Yankees couldn't keep Shelley Duncan on the roster once Giambi came back. And think about it, he didn't really make that consistent a contribution. Giambi often did and he had a huge salary to earn. Shelley Duncan was working much harder than his minor league contract paid for...and most of the time he was really only up to his contract. It was a surprise when he played well.

I am not Jason Giambi. I have to work WITH plantar fascitis. I also can't take sponsorships from companies and, if I could grow a moustache, absolutely no one would care.

So pay me blue collar rates and give me blue collar protection. It'll save us all a lot of misplaced energy.

OR, give me the same blue collar benefits Corrections Officers get. Let me retire at 20/40. A lot more people will retire at that deal than 25/55 because those of us in our 40's can find non-profit jobs to supplement our pensions and re-train a lot more easily than people 55 and over. Ironically, the more senior teachers are more likely to stay so that they can have the best pension they can added to social security. Offer a chance for those of us to leave with our pensions now who, under current conditions, see lack of job security and worse ahead of us, and we are bound to go. I'd rather not spend the next 15 years fighting for my life against market economics. My union ought to see the virtue of that, at the very least.

The Loss of Teachers' Voices

When was the last time you heard an interview with a teacher about education on a major radio or television station -- I mean an active teacher, not someone who used to be one.

Whenever discussions of education are held, it's the voice of politicians or businessmen. You rarely hear any statement with that heartening introduction, "I've been teaching on the same street to the children of ... for 36 years."

Those people do exist and I work with some one them. And they are fantastic teachers. But, these days they spend their days leaning against windows in quiet moments, afraid of what is going to happen next. Administrators come and go, and with them changes in policy, but in the process they wear on the nervous systems of dedicated professionals who really care about your kids. I say, your kids, because I don't have any children in the school system, but some of you reading this, do.

There is nothing fair about seeing people who have worked arduously with kids for almost as long as I've been alive finding themselves in fear of what they KNOW will be disaster.

A new program gets introduced to the school -- well -- new to this administrations. The faculty has tried it before and it didn't work. And they're demanding that teachers do it again. The kind of insanity -- of doing what fails over and over, is not unique to schools. But teachers find themselves alone when they are forced to do it. When a company does this and fails, they are publicly scorned. When a teacher does this, no one takes the time to ask how the failure happened. They just blame the teacher, who knew it wouldn't work all along.

Why didn't the teacher protest? There is no forum for protest in the Dept. of Education. None. You don't like it -- you're insubordinate.

And you can be fired for being insubordinate.

So, colleagues I deeply respect, bite their nails after over 20 or 30 years of knowing how to teach, facing the reality that they will not be able to do what they most want to and are best at doing. They will work within an insanity for which only they will be blamed.

Shuffling off to Buffalo

They were joking that soon the place would be a Dunkin' Donuts. "That's a pretty big Dunkin' Donuts," said the cashier, a young woman maybe 22 years old, trying to project confidence that her store was not closing -- yet, anyway. As I walked through the glass doors of Virgin Records on Fourteenth and Fourth avenue, a junkie, his wool hat taped to his skin by sweat, balanced on one foot, haggling with the security guard. I couldn't hear what he was saying. No one could -- he was just mouthing words with no sound. People shifted, weaving a bit. "Where to go?" "Another store full of sales? To the movies?"

On line at Thirteenth street and Third avenue, the face on the man directly in front of me was raging. "Come on, already," he mumbled, but he knew not to scoff too loudly at the customer currently at the window because the crowd on line was with the guy. You could feel the sympathy in the quiet way we all listened. "I'm sorry, but those passes are only good on Mondays." "You mean they're not for weekends?" "No. They are only for Mondays." "Where does it say that?" "It does not say that, but that is the rule. We only honor those passes on Mondays." "So, I can't use this?" "It is only good on Mondays." Three couples ahead of me, the negotiator pressed his head against the air and gave the cashier one last look. "Okay, so let me have two regular tickets." He pushed his eyes downward into his wallet. The frustrated gentleman ahead of me sighed. Meanwhile, in back of me, a couple discretely put their passes away and left the line. I decided I didn't want to sit for two hours and continued ambling along, feeling for the lift that used to come from walking through Manhattan at night.

I had decided not to just take a walk in my sluggish Brooklyn neighborhood because it makes me claustrophobic. There are only a few people out after dark, stores are mostly closed, and walking by rows and rows of houses just makes me feel alone. So, I got on the subway and got off at Union Square hoping to join in the energy of people hustling, drinking coffee, shopping, looking for movies, plays, music and chatting. People on their way to have fun are very easy about letting others brush in and out of their conversations. If they're confused about which way to go, I often just jump in with directions. The other night a group of teenage boys wanted to go to Chinatown, but also seemed to want to stay put in Greenwich Village. "What do you want to go for?" It turned out they were looking for some cheap jewelry. Since they weren't looking for brand name knockoffs, I directed them to the many sidewalk shops on eighth street and to K-Mart. "If you just want anything, you don't have to go to Chinatown." Frankly, they could've gone to their local store, but the purchase had given them an excuse for to get away from their suburb and themselves. They were extremely gracious and they smiled from the bottom of their hoodies until their noses. The boys had told me that they liked being on the street in which we stood because there were so many young people. "NYU," I said, but no flash of recognition shone through their pupils. They went off speedily after thanking me, bouncing in their sneakers toward a troop of people in their teens and twenties hovering around Astor Place. As they left, I realized they had heard about bargains in Chinatown, but not one of the city's major universities. A party school, no less. Was my city better known as a discount warehouse than a place to get drunk and have sex?

Though I'd never gone to Chinatown to shop in my 40 years in New York, my friend Karen had gone with one of her friends and her pre-teen and teenage daughters to look for high fashion look-a-likes. I remember especially Karen telling the story of being whispered to by this ethereal Chinese woman while walking with her friends on Canal Street. "You looking for Prada?" After she nodded, the woman led the group down a staircase into a basement full of handbags. Karen enjoyed the fact that the woman had approached her and not the others because she seemed to delight in making her the offer -- like it was a special gift. However rehearsed her manner may have been, the moment of connection between the two had been giggly and sweet. This was the kind of experience that made Karen feel happily like she was visiting from another planet and she should be alert to silly and striking possibilities.

My trip into Manhattan on Friday was torridly grey, in stark contrast to that memory, and to my encounter a few days before with those kids. I'd met those boys in the afternoon and there were students and people on their lunch milling in a quick pulse. The scant crew walking around as the sky became a thick, drab navy, were mostly just watching each other, not out of fear, but restlessness. Like me, no one seemed to have a particular destination in mind and the stores stood helplessly--every window was full of signs announcing huge sales and muzak bounced like a wave of tennis balls into the crowd slowing it down. For some reason, the soundtrack to Mamma Mia was being played and replayed without a break -- as if a back up sound system kicked in as soon as the other stopped so that there would be no silence.

When stores in New York go out of business or have huge sales to raise cash, usually, they get very loud. They blast their sound systems so that their announcements can be heard for miles and husky men with red faces are hired to call to passersby whatever phrases they think will get people into the store. "Cheap lingerie, Mama. Make your boyfriend happy tonight....Or your girlfriend. Whatever makes you happy. God loves everybody." The preacherly tone often builds. "Just trying to help my brothers and sisters out, now. Stop cursing and do something positive. Buy your mother and father something." And if you happen to lock eyes with the speaker in a pause, he will wish you a good night, a safe trip, or tell you that god blesses you. For some reason, it feels honest and warm even though he's said it to thousands of people and their dogs and he's shouted it a few times at passing cars. It's like listening to a false prophet -- the intensity with which he believes in the power and possibilities which could result from his ideas can shake you, even when you and he know the premises themselves are false.

But those men were nowhere this early evening. Paper signs hung like loose coats leaning over the ocean of glass while the relentless, cartoon-disco continued its manic bounce. There was no one trying to catch your eye and people were mostly talking about the fact that the Village was not very crowded for a Friday night. Only the teenagers felt comfortable just getting a drink somewhere. One or two restaurants were packed -- not the cafes -- but the macrobiotic places, the juice joints and The Dumpling Man. If you were going to spend your money, it was going to be on small, healthy-feeling items.

People were silently measuring the worth of the items at the stores, sale or no sale. "Will I really use this? Why? Sure, I've always wanted it, but I've spent a long time without it." I needed to buy something for my class and I picked up a cheap, literary-ish, former bestseller for the ride home. "I've got to get a new library card," I thought as I let myself soak in the bed of icy wind, soothing my joints. I could've walked for hours, but there was no life to look at and I was unwilling to carelessly stop somewhere for a coffee or to fake drinking a beer. (I can't drink, it makes my stomach dry and raw.) No one was interested in hanging out, and that, besides the funereal quality of the passion-free music, was what made the streets unsavory. We were all tourists and we were going home as soon as we hit our marks on the map. Only the journey was not novel, but completely without awe. I felt faceless, and I was because I had no sense of my own identity. My job is in limbo and everything is consciously day-to-day.

There was an empty row of seats on the "N" train, but I vaulted toward them anyway as there was no way I could've managed standing for even part of the way home. Walking down the stairs, I became dizzy from the unfulfilled need to get out of my own head for a few hours. When I leaned forward and lifted my book from my backpack, I saw the word "Pray," etched on the door. A few years ago, before they made it illegal to take pictures on the subway, I'd taken quite a few shots of similar carvings saying things like "Worship God" and "Go to Church." In Manhattan, they are etched on public phones, bathroom stalls, kiosks, ATM machines and traffic poles as well as train cars. Does this happen everywhere else?

But, I hadn't seen these messages for a long while. The aggressive attack on graffiti in New York had erased them along with the bubbled lettering of people's names which used to proliferate on the granite. So, I was suprised to be faced with this word, scratched into the metal, chastising me. I had a picture of the same message in ink in my collection at home, but the letters were longer and thinner in the one facing me.

Who does this? Who has the time to take a key (the usual implement) and dig into steel with enough power to create curves, not just lines up and down? The person who engraved the one I was looking at, unlike the one pictured, chose a spot about six feet from the floor. Someone tall whose hands had a wide and muscular wingspan.

Perhaps it was an out-of-work barker so disgruntled by the fact that business was so bad that it hadn't even created part-time work for extra gravediggers, he defaced the door with god-like rage.