Duncan OhNo

Arne will be the new Education Secretary for Obama, it was announced yesterday. So he can do for the country what he's done for Chicago? Front for the business/corporate community which wants to downsize public education?

Close schools, fire teachers, displace students, dismantle all the "underutilized" schools, siphon off public money for charter school showcases, to be closed quietly after a bit of fanfare and create a two-tier system, a whole set of second-class lower paid teachers, non-union unprotected, fired-at-will --

Think of the school system being run by Fedex -- or, doing for schools what HMO's and insurance companies have done for health care.

I knew this was coming and I KNOW you can only be disappointed if you expected something better.
AND my job is to get a job.

I do not have TIME or ENERGY to splutter about this and years of abuse. To me. There was a study on stress the CTU sponsored, but I can't get anyone to tell me about, where it is, or where I can read it. The study focused on, did teachers get harassed or abused by a)students b) other teachers, or c) administrators -- that is, physical or verbal abuse.

I flash quickly on, the talk in faculty meetings about, oh no Ms B, the students don't see me like YOU!, and hearing the most obstreperous students tell me, I HAD to pass them because I 'wasn't a real teacher'.

Thank you NCLB for sending to the students the information that I had not taken a Spanish competency test -- which I'd never been told was necessary. The req's were changed after I got an endorsement, and I found out about the change by the letters to students telling them I was not "not highly qualified". When I passed the test, no such school wide mailing was sent out correcting the undermining information.

Unraveling this little story, I do need to remember that I got into the mess by being assigned to teach off-certificate, a history position teaching Spanish 4 classes by my principal. and other things like it-- put in a classroom barely big enough for ten students, with a full class-load, no windows -- a room the previous teacher had died in, when he had a heart attack. All those changes I dealt with by..ignoring them until I left the school -- out of the frying pan into the fire.

Splutter, splutter.
I know ( all the paragraphs start with I today) there are teachers in schools where they feel supported. But even as I write, I realize, I'm never going to be one of those teachers, not in this system. It is so hard to let something go that I love. Can't let go of the anger or the fond memories,
like the moment the other day when the student made an ignorant comment about, it's okay if a gay gets attacked by a monster (Halloween stories) and I jumped up to say -- you know, one out of every ten people you KNOW are probably gay -- could be, your teacher! Really, another student asked, are you a lesbian? (Freeze, is it safe? Breathe caught in my throat) Yes. Cool, my mom is too! And she high-fives me. You, another says, are the coolest sub we ever had! I think they call that, a teachable moment.

So, there are moments which I use like a pro biotic, to reintroduce the living part I love.
And try to remember why it's necessary to do something else.

So many stories, so many details to the painful etchings I carry around with me, trying to find a place to lay them.

Factory occupations and school stories

It was really exciting to hear about the plant occupation by workers at Republic window-- it's hit the national press. Raises all kinds of ideas about what to do when the corporate interests that own factories --and run schools -- renege on their commitments. At Republic, they closed the plant from one day to the next -- and workers took over the factory, demanding they give 60 days' notice and pay the pension requirements and HEALTH CARE the company owes.
So, if the the Chicago School Board reneges on its commitment to public education, and closes more schools -- shouldn't we, as proposed at the union meeting, do an emergency picket the Monday after this is announced? Yah, yah, the union has AGREED not to take job actions while a contract in is force -- but what if the Board doesn't meet its commitments, and closes schools for factors teachers don't control... what are the options open to us? What would our fellow workers be willing to do? How would we get support from parents and community?

It's still pretty hard to get motivated to sub--especially since it takes so much more initiative than just, making myself available. I have to call schools to ASK if they have openings-- probably more likely to find individual schools who are willing to call than rely on the central call-center to call.

I write today to try to set up a pattern.
I am thinking of a book to be titled, "why I am a bad teacher ' the first impression is, WAY too self-deprecatory, but it's in the spirit of Linda Bubon's performance, 'Why I am a Danger to the community, " about a copper-miner's wife fighting the copper bosses in (Arizona? New Mexico?) a la Salt of the Earth. And Ray Hanania's, "I'm Glad I look Like a Terrorist". He wrote pre-9/11 I think, he's a liberal Palestinian writer who did talks for the Mayor's commission on human rights....
Of course I am a bad teacher. Too much going off on my own. I took my lead from my students, to organize the social justice club, to start the GSA, to organize a trip to Europe ( on Easter vacation to Rome, no less....).When the principal suggested I should organize a tour to take her and her favorite teachers to Europe as chaperones... I just faded into the woodwork. And got told no fundraising schemes were permitted because they weren't legal. Till they were done my another teacher, for another cause. What is that button, DOES NOT work well in groups-- at least in the scratch your back group that passes for taking a lead from the boss and delivering favors. I'll never forget the way one principal brought me into his office to show me how another student group showed their appreciation for him by bringing him flowers! This is how you kiss up, dear. And my colleague and I were spending 15 hours a week after school putting together plays. Amazing. That was NOT the way to get his attention. Takes my breath away to think about it.

I set up a website where students wrote their own poems ' Yo soy de...' a bilingual poem trying to get kids to talk about their own lives and learn the Spanish words for struggle, hood, fried chicken, basketball court (as opposed to where the law is decided).
And I fought, argued, STATED the teachers' side when I was the delegate and a High School vice president pf the CTU. I didn't 'get to yes. I have acquired more negotiating skills, on HOW to explain to the local manager ( as a principal is) how things would go better if they got teachers' support versus central office. But I knew how to convince teachers better than bosses. Not a bad thing, just, doesn't put you on the short list for darling of the school system.

And oh, did I want to be admired for my teaching! Oh, my. Still the student who wanted the A. They say most teachers are that kid who strains and strains for the teacher's praise -- for whom the model worked, in some way. Teachers are also the single occupational group most likely to have significantly changed their class position by going to school OF COURSE they love Horatio Alger!

While I found it harder and harder to say, you can be whatever you want. To tell kids in the inner city and children of two parents both working ten hours a day at less than living wages, you can be president.
Instead I fastened on, in your life, there are many in the society who are waiting for you to fail. They expect, and they teach you to expect it to. Conditions in the world (class dynamics, the controllers, whatever) have conspired to give you a narrow little space, thismuch room where your initiative matters. But this is the space -- use it, take it, push it to the limit. For all those who are waiting for you to fail, prove them wrong.

But I wasn't good at organizing a network of support for myself. I read too many superhero comics -- heroic knight in armor, Saving people?

I still like the quote, in the book Civics for Democracy (K. Isaac) where Ralph Nader says,

" a democracy is a society in which less and less courage is needed of more and more people to spread justice and the blessings of liberty throughout the land. "

I used it when got the school to let me teach political science at the high school level, NOT an AP class. Now, what if I had known how to do that, with other grownups?
I haven't found the voice yet, to tell the individual stories of just HOW I feel I was broken, traumatized, how I literally watched friends die (a teacher, in constant conflict with the principal over running the school and on the LSC, who dropped dead of a heart attack during a 'professional development' meeting where some overpaid expert nattered on at us about brain research and wasted our extremely precious free time Telling, not Asking. Anyone else get a Fry grant?)

So many wrongs in so many ways. So many stories of victories and defeats. I guess that's what this opens. I find a place to mention the stories and will go back here to tell each one. With details. And breaths. And complete sentences.
The definition of stress is, all responsibility and no power.

New teachers and old, a little history

Subj: RE: Teacher job retention? Toledo Plan Scam and stress -- notes I wrote to a listserve about the Toledo Plan -- and its effect on new teachers.

We (all teachers and teacher-advocates everywhere) need a discussion on this.

OF COURSE unions were established to defend teachers -- so teachers were not dismissed at the whim of their boss.

Chicago has tried a myriad of schemes to rid themselves of 'bad teachers' -- about which I can tell you plenty. They got rid of teacher seniority in 1995 with the School Amendatory Act, when every teacher had to reapply for a job if they were displaced. We have seen intervention, reengineering and now Renaissance 2010, the charter schools initiative.

The one that sounds MOST like Toledo was 're-engineering' -- teachers sit on the panel to decide who stays and who goes . The CTU Secretary at the time, Pam Massarsky, defended at a delegates meeting, thundering, but YOU know who the bad teachers are! Massarsky lost her job the next year, and reengineering got a new package.

But the 'reform', ' school improvement' has the same attraction as the old 'team concept' tactics used in auto and other industries. Who HASN'T had a basic need to have their work be valued? For team concept, they used workers' impulse to tell the boss how to run things better -- to shrink the workforce and destroy unions.

Same here. The elephant in the room is, EVERYONE has either HAD, KNOWN, or BEEN or been afraid of becoming that bad, burnt-out, defensive teacher, the alcoholic, the one on autopilot, the one who got off the line, or out of the classroom, because it was too hard, and had a cushy non-teaching job telling others what to do.

The question is not, how do you get rid of 'bad teachers.' The question is, what kind of institution is it that CREATES 'bad teachers', DESTROYS its workforce, UNDERMINES and demoralizes its workers, sets up the perfect laboratory conditions for stress -- all the responsibility, no power -- and then wonders, why can't we get, or keep, good teachers?

I worked at a Chicago school where my life was made hell because I served as school delegate. I jumped-- to a 'failing school' (low scores)which had two more years before it closed. I was 'displaced' along with the other 9 teachers still there, because I didn't have the savvy to QUIT on my kids working for graduation, and jump to a different school. I worked for a year as a reassigned teacher, getting my salary but tagged as a 'failing' teacher. I went to job fair after job fair, set up not to get teachers jobs, but as shapeups where the principals could look over the pool of available labor. When I didn't land a regular job I was " honorably discharged", too young to retire, but with no position. Day in and day out, when I work as a sub, a teacher or a student pulls me aside and says -- ' you're a real teacher, aren't you?" And after the demoralizing experience of being in a closing school, I get the even MORE fun experience of being a sub, where kids are in a dysfunctional school, and the one person it's ok to pick on is the sub.

We won't be able to deal with the ghost of 'bad teachers' until we start asking, Bad , how? You mean burnt out, exhausted, demoralized? And how, pray tell, did they get that way? Were they told, perhaps, that they could triumph if they were Supermen and -women? That they were Better than those other, older traditional, teachers? That the first thing they must do is disregard all but the Authorized Experienced teachers who were friends of the boss(Principal, Superintendent, overseers) and OF COURSE anti-union, because the union protected bad teachers..

I ramble, but you get the idea. Go try googling 'teacher stress' and you either get articles on 'bad' teachers' or one of those hints pages which say things like. ' don't overdo. Work smarter, not harder.' Uh huh.

Turnover? NCLB is the top pincer in a squeeze move. The steps are, add outside help and use the school budget to pay for it. Allow school choice, so the students with more clued-in parents transfer their student to other schools. Replace the principal. Replace the principal AND teachers. OR, close the school and open it under a new name -- new teachers, another four years time limit to show improvement, and one more shuffle to cut down the non-performing students - who just happen to be the ones with the hardest time jumping through bureaucratic hoops to stay in the new school. Result? Higher average scores.

If you are Chicago, you also manage to tear down public housing and gentrify the neighborhood. Magic -- new students, better scores. I cannot contain my disgust for this charade.