We still miss you Henry

We lost Larry's twin brother, the Hennybee, July 17, but were lucky that the Bernilius came to comfort us that same year and be Larry's little brother. But life would never have been the same had we not been graced by a fleetfooted creature with pink ears, a white body and a mark of god on his back. We loved him so.

Waiting for Superman TRUTH: The documentary

Place this link in your browser and see the real story

http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org/?page_id=316

Old, familiar faces

In 2008, Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School closed.

It is 2011 and the same dignitaries from what is now called the Department of Education arrived at my current school's graduation. They said the same words at this graduation as they said at BCNHS' graduations. This graduating class has "heart." For, at least, twelve years, BCNHS' June ceremony was one dignitary's "favorite graduation," because of how hard our students had fought to get to that moment. I sat there, and for the first time in years, I felt completely out of place.

There stood an individual who had voted to close my school. I wasn't angry. I was stunned. For years, we had received similar support. The same words, the same...except now we were all a little older and thicker in the waist.

I was very honored by my colleagues' work, by the true emotions of the students and the principal. But the ghosts were there. I felt like a ghost, as well.I felt as if I should leave the building. My world had been torn asunder by the same people staring down at my former students now. Now an alternate universe existed in which it was all happening again, but if it does exist, how can I also be part of it. One dignitary looked at me and then spoke to another person in hushed tones. I was, once more, an alien. In my heart it hit me that it would be nearly impossible for me to be accepted in my old district. I would have to look somewhere else, someplace where we were not all "old, familiar faces" to each other, and I did not know that the platitudes are spoken without true grace and in which I could be offered no grace to return, to try to become part of something new, to participate in the rituals of growth. Not here. Not in the old, familiar places. Not with the old, familiar faces.

What's ironic, of course, is Brooklyn Comprehensive was a small school before there was the first round of "New Small Schools" in the 1990's. So, what does this say about the current batch -- are these dignitaries going grant them the 19 years we had?

I suppose this is how people handle being involved in "Re-org's" in business, etc. But, like O'Brien in Orwell's 1984, the same person was the director of the new system as was the old. There isn't even the gesture of the glasses as a false comfort.

The Communists are Coming!

I got a text message on the bus on the way home. My eyes were on my phone because I left my e-reader at home. Consequently, I cradled my elephantine, non-smart phone in my lap,looking at it so as to dodge eye contact. The screen went white and I clicked the round "OK" button in order to read the new message from a colleague. "My doctor was shocked that teachers are allowed to grade Regents exams." I went livid. Of course, I have complained about differences with colleagues over how to interpret the rubric for the ELA Regents. That is the nature of language, however, and it wouldn't be fair if we didn't question each other and dialogue with the grading system foisted upon us. The Board of Regents itself concedes that there is more than one way to obtain the same grade -- there are "4" level essays which are more than thoughtful, but stray somewhat from their objectives, though they ultimately defend their original argument sufficiently. There are those which hit the mark, provide sufficient development -- all "no more, no less," than very good, but not excellent. We are given more than one "Anchor paper" (model papers) to judge our own by. The more you work with language, the more shades you can see to it. People will always have stylistic differences. Not every English teacher is interested in pretty prose -- some are in it for the bold themes or the heroic stories. However, we balance each other in the end as no one person determines a student's final score. Papers are always marked in teams. In the end, we always agree that the tasks themselves aren't rigorous enough, and the rubrics are equally shallow.

I go into this explanation because I was so affronted by my colleague's physician's response. She had related some of my feelings about the debates which ensue over work sometimes. Instead of seeing the complexity of the task, or perhaps, wondering why the State bothers to insist on "standardized" exams when its own rubrics are not stringent enough to satisfy the ideals of good teachers, he just questioned teachers' abilities to judge. Why not just let teachers create better, harder tests? The largest complaint in our grading room was about the fact that papers were going to pass State standards despite the fact that we would've failed those same papers if they were submitted to us in our courses. It would be unfair, however, not to give the student the State exam grade he/she deserves. In this case, the teacher is punished twice. First, we have to give an exam which doesn't live up to our own standards. Then, we have to pass kids on this exam whom we failed regularly during the year. But, all my colleague's physician could think of was the possible inadequacy of the teachers grading the exam, not that the whole exercise is flawed. It's natural for people to argue about language. What's sad is when the language isn't worth our breath. Or, in my case, my thumb movements.

After sending upwards of 15 texts back, many asking questions about whether doctors could be trusted to treat their patients properly given all the incentives from insurance companies to cut corners, I grabbed the handles of the backdoor with both hands and slowly pulled myself down onto the wet pavement. Without even waiting for me to turn around, one of the local car service drivers pulled up and I got in. First, he rebuffs my exhaustion with "well, just one more day." "No. There's Monday and I have Professional Development before summer school." "Well, at least you are working," says the upbeat driver. I let the "at least" comment go. I've never been fond of cherishing the "At least." It brings to mind my forebears in Nazi Germany thinking, "At least, they haven't..." Until they had. I make some passing remark about the heat and the lack of A/C in my classroom. He is seemingly, sincerely up-in-arms. "What about portable air conditioners?" "We would need three per room." I know this because the computer room has three air conditioners to insure that, even if the students fail, the equipment doesn't. Finally, he says to me, "Well, this is all because the communists are coming." I'm livid again. For one thing, education in the Soviet Union was, arguably, better than ours is here. For another, it's American cheapness that is keeping us from providing proper treatment to our students. If we were any cheaper, we'd be anarchists. I say something like, "but we're not spending any money on schools." "You will see. Little by little they will take over." What this has to do with anything I have said, I don't know, but this man is convinced of this. Like my colleague's doctor, he lives in the golden world of rumor which is fueled by anger and ignorance. Of course, this is part of the new/old list of Republican talking points against Obama, recycled from the start of the Cold War. Standardized tests were created out of distrust for teachers when, in fact, they undermine our efforts to be rigorous and rely on our best abilities to interpret their "standards" in order to be clear and fair with our students. I suppose that my driver was picking up on the buzz from our "fair and balanced" media, but does not understand that it is the rumor mongers who are denying my students decent learning conditions and giving weak students the impression they have achieved something by passing easy exams.

Of course, if education were a world priority, none of this would be happening. But, never fear. Companies are in no danger of losing their right to create and sell standardized exams, and drivers are in no danger of losing their opportunity to make cash they don't declare on their taxes. The classrooms are still boiling hot, the students are definitely "first" to be given an easy way out, and the teachers can't do anything to stop it. If we do, the media will say we aren't teaching because scores are too low. If scores are too high, they'll complain about why we are allowed to grade the exams. Has anyone bothered to look at the tests, the rubrics for grading, the anchor papers, etc.? Too busy looking for those Communists/Weapons of Mass Destruction/Communists/Evil Teachers.

Wish List

A few months ago, while opening up a letter regarding the pension fund, I read the blurb which came with it. I don't remember if it was on a separate insert or on the letter, but it said that the pension fund had been started when a social worker discovered a retired teacher living in a chicken coupe. For the past several weeks, I've been obsessively scouring web pages about "Tiny Houses." As you'll see from the picture in this posting, some tiny houses are, perhaps, smaller than a place one would house fowl. From my research, it looks as if now, should I want to retire in a 96 square foot house, it will cost me something like 55,000 dollars. I hope that original teacher's family kept the coupe! I understand that I would have far more amenities than an ordinary shed, and that I can even get a small house I can pull by car. The prospect of several tens of thousands of people in their sixties driving tiny houses all over the country and, eventually, fighting it out for who gets the best wi-fi and is closest to the water source, doesn't do much to calm my nerves.

This afternoon, after watching a PBS NOW documentary on Child Marriages, I noticed a story about allowing homeless people to live in foreclosed homes. The could lead to a paradoxical situation: imagine being kicked out of your foreclosed home and then being moved into another one after you've been living on the street! However, two similar practices in NYC called, "Squatting" and "Homesteading" allowed some fortunate groups of people to eventually buy abandoned buildings from the city and renovate them. The practice was illegal, but for a few lucky groups, it became a means by which they were able to own their own apartments. I remember being just out of college in the early 90's and contemplating joining a Squat or Homestead, but I didn't have the courage. I don't know if I wish I had as it would have changed the course of my life. Literally taking over and renovating an abandoned building while living in it is very much a way of life. Even if I could've mustered the courage, I'm awful with my hands. Had I somehow managed, I don't know if I could've begun my teaching career. Ironically, I might have an apartment of my own right now. Sure, I could've saved enough to have one either way. Let's just say I am about as good at saving money as I am with my hands. Don't think I've spent my life vacationing in the South of France. I've spent a good many years in which I've supplemented my classroom with the rent money. I'm not the only teacher I know who has lived his/her life in the ironic cycle of spending the paycheck to keep earning it. This is what leads me to scour the internet looking at tiny houses in the first place.

So, the first thing on my wish list is the time to think through...how to think this through.

The Best of Times

How do you explain to anyone who wasn't there what it was like to hear George Hearn sing, "The Best of Times (is now)" from La Cage Aux Folles in the 1980's -- when it really was "as for tomorrow, well, who knows?" for so many people. We were thick in the beginning of the AIDS crisis and there were already so many people gone. Gone. They're still gone, of course. I'm not begrudging anyone who enjoys the revival of the show -- it looks great from what I've seen. There's just no way to imagine and no way to replicate, probably, that feeling, being in a vast audience of people, all of whom were somewhere between crying and...well, crying, when they heard the song. I read some nitwit's comment on Youtube regarding Hearn's rendition that he was too masculine. First of all, that's shows a very narrow view of what masculinity is and how its performed. But, that wasn't the point. It was the timbre. It was the breath before "who knows?" that was what most of us heard first.

I don't know why I keep coming back to the song and to the moment, but I have been for a while. So much of history is pressed in books like dried flowers. There is a part of me that would love to begin a unit on the 80's with this song. It encapsulates so much. Reagan not saying the word AIDS until he was almost out of office. The Civil Disobedience of Act Up. The loss of so many important figures to what felt like a plague. The world before the personal computer was ubiquitous. The end of the Cold War -- the mythology of Reagan's role and the real poverty which drove it. The world in which baseball players were skinny guys with shaggy hair. Before George Steinbrenner was an icon, but just a corrupt and bloated owner of a baseball team. Would La Cage Aux Folles have been turned into a musical in 2011? It needed to be in the 80's. It wasn't just gay people who needed it -- my mother needed it. Everybody had lost somebody -- if only Michael Bennett. Plus, we needed a good, corny love story about, more or less, every day folks. And we could admit it.

I don't know what it's like in the audience of the revival because, well, for one thing, I can't afford to see it. I've seen lots of clips on Youtube. (Douglas Hodge is straight. Who knew? Everybody, thanks to some goofey fan interview. I'm still not taking bets of Kelsey Grammar.) It looks campy, which the original show wasn't really. It was about camp, which is different. (It may be different with Fierstein in the show replacing Hodge who seemed coy to me from clips, and not so much heroic.) Of course, it also looks great - the music, the dance -- it's an incredible show sans context. I guess now I know what it's like for people who see Fiddler on the Roof but have no idea what a pogrom was. (Oh, those neat Russian dancers! Why is it they have to move again? What's a Czar?)

But, for now, it is my memory. And my blog post. And that's all.

Tightening those salaries

According to this Sunday, March 6, 2011, NY Times

The average salary for New York’s full-time state employees in 2009 (even before the last round of raises) was $63,382, well above the state’s average personal income that year of $46,957. Mr. Cuomo’s proposed salary freeze for many of the state’s 236,000 employees is an important step to rein in New York’s out-of-control payroll. It could save between $200 million and $400 million.

According to Executive Paywatch, the average CEO makes 263 times the salary of the average worker. Furthermore, Executive Paywatch charts the following

2009 Average CEO Pay at S&P 500 Companies
Salary $1,041,012
Bonus $203,714
Stock Awards $2,630,574
Option Awards $2,284,595
Non-Equity Incentive Plan Compensation $1,790,703
Pension and Deferred Compensation Earnings $1,060,867
All Other Compensation $235,232
Total $9,246,697

(Both stats can be found at http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/pay/index.cfm).

So, whose salaries need to be hemmed in?

Song for Karen B. Hunter, by her brother Chaim Bezalel-Levy

Karen Hunter's brother and his folkband, Chaim and the Essentials play a song he wrote for her, here: http://www.folkalley.com/openmic/song.php?id=15963 There is also a link on the right side of this page. It is incredibly moving. I thank him for sharing it with me. Coincidentally, he posted it, after four years of working on it, on my 43rd birthday. I can understand how it would take him so long to produce something so beautiful and also so painful.

And not coincidentally, I post notice about the song on Valentine's Day.

Happy Valentine's Day, KBH.

Eight, really 4 times 2

Well extended-family,

It's almost February 8th, which will be my 8th birthday. By now, my mommy and I are very accomplished at making blog postings together. I can just think them and send them to her.

Being 8 really feels like being 4 times 2. My brother Bernie is 4 and I feel like he and I are a team -- so really we are both 8 and 4 at the same time. Since we do so much together, I run as much a 4 year old and he sleeps as much as an 8 year old. We consult with each other on everything except the catnip toys and strawberry ice cream. I don't know why, but those are always mine first. Otherwise, we share. Of course, I give him back his catnip toys...and he gives me back my fuzzy carrots, etc. Frankly, we have the same of everything, so it's hard to tell whose is whose, except that I don't dunk the fuzzy carrots in food. If it smells like food, it's his carrot. I've never understood that, but he doesn't understand why I sweep up AFTER he sweeps up around his bowl. It's a Larry thing.

I would like to thank all of my family for their love this year, for the new nicknames, (Sarastro, The LUVBUG, Leering Larry, etc.), and for looking at all those fabulous pictures of Bernie and me that my mother sends around. (It's not our idea, though we hear it brightens peoples days.) Above is one of me being my "smooth" self in the early am.

Cheers and Happy Love Forever Day!
Larry

Pavarotti/Ghiaurov- Verdi Requiem 1967

Oh what a beautiful snow day

After two days of Regents exams, I am very grateful for today's snow day. Waiting around in the hallway to 1)escort students to the bathroom; 2)be on hand to get more pencils; and 3) be of use in potential disasters, usually makes me a little too talkative afterwards. Think of it: I spend most of my days being pounced on to communicate and explain things. It's addictive. Then I have to play Monk with Pencils during Regents' Week. The first person who says hello to me on my break is in for an earful! At least, when I am proctoring, I am forcefully engaging students with my eyes and footsteps. But, I wasn't selected to proctor until tomorrow. Proctoring isn't my favorite duty either, as I am always afraid of losing important papers/messing up the order of things.

It's also just these kind of activities which bring out the worst in the nicest of people. All of us were grumpy. If someone was five minutes late, administrators were called. Keeping an entire group of people in a silent world in which their job is to maintain silence can cause them to be irritated by the smallest sounds. I instinctively bark if I hear a student's mouth begin to open. I mean literally bark. "Woof!" I also hiss. I feel like a predator, alert to sound as if it is my nemesis and my prey. The students are completely used to this and it doesn't even generate a giggle.

My colleagues have begun the customary increase in the number of sentences which begin with "What am I supposed to....." It's the silence and the stakes of it. We still have grading to do. We have planning to do. There is nothing more disabling than hours of staring and snarling. You can't read papers as you have to keep your eyes on the kids. You can't look at anything but the kids for the time you are with them. If you are in the hall, you scout not just for the teacher calling you to escort a kid, but for any stray people who might be coming the wrong way. In a building with two other schools, this can happen. Even in those patches in the hallway in which you have nothing to do and feel like you are being lazy, you can't leave because something is going to happen soon and you will be needed. Grrrrrr. There are no words for it.

There's also a great deal of politesse which emerges from being busy and separated for a good part of your day. You simply don't see people enough to get angry.
At meetings, you collectively decry meetings. You collectively swallow your feelings and volunteer for more such assemblies. Then you go back to your intensive universe for a while. Even when you collaborate on curricula, you are all quarterbacks executing huge plays across a large field. The kids become quarterbacks, too. We are all together, but alone with the process of creation, as well. It's like working on sculptures. So, take us out of that and our hands and feet and teeth all chatter. It's much better to shiver silently in the snow.

Charlie Brown Christmas Segment - Snoopy Dancing

Truthout gets it right on Obama and Education

Note that the author says that most people in DC don't agree with Rhee's/Obama's policies.


Read it here
http://www.truth-out.org/mr-president-we-want-your-childrens-education-too66425

CODA: Founder of Brooklyn Bridge Academy Replaced As Principal

Three years since the close of Brooklyn Comprehensive, our replacement, Brooklyn Bridge Academy has already replaced its founding principal. A major issue was violence. Never once did BCNHS has a violence problem. Oh and Inside Schools notes that "Attendance is always an issue" at the school. So, they added violence and they did nothing to increase attendance.

I hope the new principal can re-direct the school. It will be interesting to see how he handles the attendance issue and the fact that the school's four year graduation rate is 13 percent. Most of our students didn't graduate in four years...and that ended up being a reason to close us. The fact that these kids DID eventually graduate didn't matter.

Good luck. "To the stars despite the difficulties."

Sweeter than music

This is the plane Karen hoped to buy. It was very light, and that and its crispness made it feel like a pair of wings to her, I think.

Karen B. Hunter, November 23, 1951 - Sept. 2, 2005

Goodnight, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to they rest.

At 4:57 pm on November 18, 2010, Michael Renchiwich, once Art Editor of National Lampoon and Circus magazines, passed away. He was 53. About two weeks earlier, he had come into the hospital with swollen legs and having fallen several times. Classic signs of a blood clot in his legs. He was sent home. Three days later, he came back into the hospital, was conscious for a time, then went into cardiac arrest. After 13 minutes of resuscitation, his heart began to beat. To prevent his brain from swelling, he was placed in a medically induced coma from which he would never emerge.
Michael could be a very quiet man, and he certainly never wanted to impose on anyone. Yet, he was a funny, intelligent, rebellious and tender person. I once asked him how he would most like to spend his life, if he could. He said he would like to have lunch with his friends every day. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Save me a table.

It's been almost a month

I'd like to say, "since my last confession," but it's since my last blog post and I am making myself write. Two doctors appointments in the next two days, maybe another pursuit of the sabbatical. Depends on my orthopedic surgeon and how much longer he thinks I can literally stand up. I'm not sure I'm standing up now, but there is still some distance for me to come down to sit, so maybe I am least standing sideways....

School is intense and so much better with high school students. The school in which I have been placed does nothing to offend anyone and the children are very happy, if only because they are very loved by the faculty, administration and staff. They are fighting the good fight, and it shows in their exhaustion and in the kids general coherence as an academic entity. It's a good place and I'm lucky to be there. I've applied here twice before in younger incarnations and not been considered, so I know I'm not going to be, but I'm respected and I respect them back. That's plenty. Where will go after here? Let's see if I can stand up in February, first. Let's see how I do tomorrow. For now, I pray this school is allowed to grow in peace. All they want to do is teach the kids. Let them.

What is Superman?

1) An idea in an essay by Nietzche.
2) Part of the title of a play by George Bernard Shaw actually about Don Juan.
3) A comic book character that more than one writer has suggested was an expression of Jewish angst against the Nazis.
4) The prototypical dream of the prototypical geek.
5)A role in a movie portrayed by, among others, the late actor Christopher Reeve and first played on television by George Reeves (no relation.)
6) The fictive construct who is the boyfriend of fictive construct Lois Lane.
7) Whatever the big "S" symbol conjures up in the 3-46 year olds who wear it on a t-shirt.
8)The title of a Barbara Streisand album.
9) Probably as many things as there are meanings to the number "3" in Mozart's The Magic Flute.

None of these qualifies him to save our educational system. In fact, the metaphor behind the title of the new documentary, Waiting for Superman suggests we give the schools over to Disney. Then we can REALLY LIE to the children.

I'm 42 and I've seen more movies about educational saviors than I can count -- most of whom taught or served as a school leader for not much more than a year (Look up how long the real life model for Dangerous Minds taught.) None of them had much longevity. The saddest to me will always be Frank Mickens who was the big hero at Boys and Girls High School when I was just beginning to teach. Mickens left and...the school as a 37 percent graduation rate despite the fact that it's motto is "Failure is not an option." Thomas Jefferson had a flash in the pan as a military style academy. Gone. Brooklyn Comprehensive had a formidable leader and it died shortly after she did. Institutions are not built by personalities nor are they rescued by them, though they can make them famous. Maybe it is the constant influx of personality that keeps The Metropolitan Opera going...but people don't fork over three figures for tickets unless the show is something to see and hear. And the place has survived geniuses and idiots at the helm. I think it requires a commitment to work to go beyond the ugly, but not to let the mistakes define you. Our Dept. of Ed. does nothing but let the mistakes change their minds -- they continue what is an American tradition.

Our Secretary of Education says that the new documentary Waiting for Superman does the equivalent of "calling a baby ugly." The underlying reference to the youth of public education in the US, I think is not really at the core of his response, though I wish it were so. I wish he could look at the historical approach to public education in this country and set his work in context of it, building upon progressive ideas which have often been quickly abandoned when other ideas became fashionable. That's my prejudice. Accepting that, as the students say, "all he's trying to say is," is that there are some ugly parts of our school system, then this movie does nothing new. When a country cannot even decide WHY it's educating it's children, you can't expect it to know WHAT to do. Ask our secretary why I have colleagues working in schools that have no gyms, no computers and in some cases not even a basketball. IN 2010. In, what my grandmother called, "America." This at the same time as students who just happen to score better on some tests than others have brand new equipment of all kinds and a pool. Yet, Stuyvesant students can no longer be called an elite group because that would mean that we understood them to be part of some larger whole. What goes on in Stuyvesant (Class of 85, here) is NOTHING like what my colleagues and I are allowed to do with or without equipment. Students are driven to meet expectations because they have an understanding of the pressures of the world and because...they JUST LIKE TO LEARN. Every kid just likes to learn, but only at some schools do they have the equipment and the CARE and I do mean "TLC" to be able to do it. Most NY students have one guidance counselor to 500 kids. I saw a counselor, a SPARK officer, a psychiatrist and had therapy at Beth Israel hospital when my family experienced an enormous crisis. Do you know any student in NYC anywhere else who would be granted that attention? Spark offices get cut routinely AT THE MIDDLE SCHOOL LEVEL. Who doesn't need counseling more than a middle school student?

It's not any one ugly decision that makes our schools the way they are. It's that we make NO DECISIONS at all. We refuse outright to commit to anything for our children. If I had a child and then left him/her outdoors to fen for himself/herself from infancy, it would be the same crime. We ask students who have difficulty reading to choose into a Pre-Law, Pre-Med or Pre-Nothing program. But, we will not give them Special Education services. God forbid we stigmatize them with the possibility of what amounts to healthcare. For free? The fact that students in some suburbs get as much assistance as they need and their parents are willing to cough up the funds in taxes eludes most of the public. Even our President, who went to Columbia and Harvard and spends private school money on his kids PRETENDS he doesn't know what the cost of a good education is. EVERYONE deserves a private school education. Taking on the commitment and the flexibility of mind of private schools requires crediting teachers and administrators with an ability to define what learning is. We'd also have to make some serious investments in technology, buildings, counseling, etc.

Ah, but we'd have to pay for it. And we'd have to support it as a culture.

What we have done instead is placed the UFT/AFT at the new forefront of the attack against unions which has been progressively seething in this country, with its signal moment being President Reagan's firing of the Patco workers. Teachers have become thrust into a stereotype of civil servants which was never really true. When you decide to become a civil servant (which as Mario Cuomo would point out, includes politicians) you exchange a long-term commitment to a job for a less competitive payscale. You also wed yourself to the way that institution works. It's not like a Senator could walk into the Israeli Knesset or British Parliament and just pick up where he left off. While institutions don't survive on the back of one person alone, they do develop their own methodologies unique to their own surroundings. Anyway, because I have insurance and my summer's off I am now the poster-child for American Sloth. Why aren't all of my students getting 90's? Did all students ever get 90's. At schools where the competition is very still, an artificial curve is built in to insure that NOT EVERYONE gets 90's. This is unfair because some of these students could get 100's at easier places. But, there is an inherent value to the 85 which isn't there in the 100 somewhere else. And, besides, you know, you get a better education, or one more suited to a pace you enjoy. On the Yankees, does everyone hit 300? How many times do the Angels have to beat the Yankees to prove that excellence comes in many forms? You send your child to a school because their way of doing things seems like it would work best for him/her. My mother scored right on the money and she barely made more than minimum wage. She asked people she knew who graduated from the school and she made a few visits. I could have survived nowhere else the way I did at that small, idiosyncratic Hebrew school which then lead me to Stuyvesant. My mother is seriously ill and yet, the fine education she received back in the dark ages when people didn't take as many Regents, etc. prepared her to do this for me. That, and a mother who brought with her a European devotion to learning for its own sake. (What other person would still know her Latin in her 60's.) What makes education good is a willingness to be open-minded, to be dedicated, to be unique to the needs of your students and to care. If Randi Weingarten or any other UFT/AFT person seems to froth at the mouth (as she is described doing in this upcoming documentary) it is because no one should have to spend so much time proving the value of something which is done entirely in support of children. If I choose not to work summer school, it isn't because I'm a lazy sloth -- it's because I've broken my back and I need rest for the next round. Most teachers I know are broke most of the time, supplementing their classrooms with what is not there. The computers, the media projectors, the memberships in educational groups which share information, etc. And we don't have credit cards supplied by our company. It's not even easy to deduct this stuff. Not that it pays to think about it. You do your best, you give everything you can. Or, why stand up at all. Especially, when you are vilified just for having a pension. More teachers go on disability than any other group of workers. The statistics are too broad and consistent for all of these people to have genetic predilections to breaking down.

I have an acquaintance who gathers all the discarded math textbooks from our schools and sends them to Kenya where they are SAVORED and used again and again. But, no one should ever have to be so hungry in the first place to have to be given a discarded textbook. The fact that people in other countries know the value of an education and we do not, is a testimony to one of the greatest American products: Ignorance. The idea that a cartoon character can save the world is as naive and pathetic as the terrified young men and women who had to look to the funny papers when the world turned its face on the crushing of 11 million people, 6 million of them Jews. Who would want to watch the news when Roosevelt turned away boats of Jews, even as he slowly began to concede that we would have to enter the war. I don't hate Roosevelt. He wasn't a cartoon character. He was a human. When he died, he left enough in place so that the very capable Harry Truman could make a decision no one should ever have to make again. He said he never lost a night's sleep over it. I don't believe him, but I understand that sometimes one must stand by one's decisions, especially ones that hard. At the end of the war, a number of veterans got together and founded The International Baccalaureate so that there would be a curriculum that would bring humanity together. The trouble is, you have to be able to read to use it. And you have to be of liberal enough mind to see the value of a project over a standardized test. You have to test the project and the performer in real terms -- in context of the world around it, both local and global. That's a lot of work. And very little of it is QUANTIFIABLE. But to admit that good work cannot always be measured in an exact rubric and has to be valued with intelligence and compassion, would be to admit that comprehension involves not just the ability to read the text but the subtext and what it might foreshadow. All of that takes time, experience and care. It's not the job of one person, but the effort of the whole. And, it's ain't cheap. Some people look at children in uniforms and see students ready to learn. I see children being primed to serve. I want my children to have TASTE. Now, that alone, giving the student the time and energy to learn to choose his clothes, is something we won't commit to anymore.

If they can't choose their clothes, and they all are following Superman, they will do very well working in retail. I'm afraid most of the students I have met would do better than I would in that field, already. They know how to sell and wear someone else's name on their backs. What I want is to teach them to stand on their own, follow their conscience, and read the fine print.

Perhpas, "I love the Funnies" should be the theme song for our school system. Never heard of it? Well, look it up.

Famous mom? Have a baby out wedlock? No prob.

Gee, when my students have a baby out of wedlock, they don't get put on "Dancing With the Stars." Maybe they don't try hard enough? See link for details about Bristol Palin's new makeover for the show..... This is like that show that takes people who need help and re-makes their home, only better! Those people should go out and have babies out of wedlock and they'd get to be stars with star salaries....Then they could pay for their own makeovers and join the economy.

http://tv.yahoo.com/falltv/photos/dancing-with-the-stars-season-11-cast/608

For Karen B. Hunter, my light