What do we do now? Not even called to sub

It is now the first week of October and after working for 15 years in the Chicago system, I have been fired from my regular job, hung out to dry as a substitute for two years, and finally, left in silence, not to get to work at ALL. I hear that now there are an average of 50-100 spots open each day. There are about 2500 substitutes -- AND 150 DISPLACED(FIRED) TEACHERS WHO MUST BE PLACED BEFORE THEY EVER GET AROUND TO CALLING US SUBS. And that doesn't count discouraged, early-retired, on-leave teachers who are not in the pool anymore.

How do we stop Duncan and Daley from privatizing/dismantling the urban school system?

Went to a great meeting of Chicago Teachers Union delegates who met anyway, after the CTU officers had cancelled the regular House of Delegates' meeting (October1) allegedly, because of Rosh Hashanah. Hah. First time they were so concerned. In fact, CTU officers did the math, realized they would lose votes ( as in, whether to reinstate expelled vice president Ted Dallas) and cancelled the meeting . Great discussion, maybe a beginning, but we are always stuck reacting to a reality which may not exist anymore. At the next House meeting... will there be one? How do you start to fight against an attack which is so enormous, so thorough, so undermining? How do you unite the new teachers, being taught they will fix everything because they're supermen/supergirls, the experienced teachers being sidelined, the parents who simply want a good, functioning school to send their kids too, the students bounced around, warehoused, not taught and lied to?

Good teaching conditions are good learning conditions.

Look at two things when you go to a school to find out what it's like.
1) What do the kids' bathrooms look like? Are they open, pleasant, supplied?
2) What do the teachers' non-teaching rooms look like? Ditto. Is there a place to eat, to read, to call, to talk with others, to be alone? Are there any teachers in it?
I want to put every CEO and every educational charletan in a classroom for a day, where they aren't allowed to go pee, where the room is dirty and too hot or too cold, where they have no phones or quiet or space, and then say,-- So, how's it working for ya, trying to get something done here? Hmmm.......?
I want to put every teacher in the robes of the medieval scholars we wear at graduation, or crowns or some other sign of office, and everyone should be obliged to salute us, or bow or something. Instead we are not even equal, in common experience but somehow less than... Kids don't learn this from parents -- they learn it from everywhere.

It has taken me three years to be able to get back to the idea that I am a teacher, an educator, not at the mercy of the Board of Ed, but because of what I do. I was in a school about to close, and continued insults and injuries taught me a condition of learned helplessness it has taken me a long time to unlearn. How dare they?
I'm less unnerved now, and wondering why I didn't cry out before, and why so few asked where I had gone. But I get my voice back little by little.

Teachers in our society are wildly undervalued because profit is the reason for organization, so self-discovery, enrichment, humanism have no intrinsic value. Teachers are useful if they produce the workers necessary at the time. Ask any student why you need to go to school, and it's the rarest one who will say, to learn about the world I live, to be a fully conscious actor in my life and in society (OK, this is a teacher answer), because I want to KNOW things.
Usually it's , 'to get a good job', to be turned into the kind of product, the producer of labor power that some capitalist wants to hire, somewhere. And the way things are, they're not wrong, they DO need to scramble to make sure they can market themselves.
Students hear how bad their schools are, either because they're bad students (read, stupid, ignorant, lazy) or we're bad (stupid, lazy, just interested in a paycheck, old). When Terrell, Dodge, and Williams were closed for poor performance (the first to go) students turned to a teacher there and asked, "Are are we closing because you're [bad,at fault], teacher, or are we?"

Where, in the 19th century two needs coincided -- people/workers/citizens needed an education to be citizens, and capital needed literate and numerate(numbers-literate) workers in their factories, people who could show up on time (bell-schedules?) and obey the boss (I decide when you eat, move, pee) -- So in the social contract that has existed at least since Horace Mann, a part of society's resources were designated for education -- public schools.
NOW there is less demand for workers, for labor. After downsizing and reframing WHAT schools will exist and WHO needs to go to them, capital (through its lieutenants in the government and a myriad of foundations and consultancies) is dismantling the public school system.
That is the only way you can understand how No Child Left Behind, charter schools, the 'crisis in education', etc. testing, Chicago's Ren2010, and other cities' dismantling of schools make sense. Privatization -- and dismantling what's left.
This is a two-tier workforce, like those in other industries. It's the elimination of seniority, a return to the suck-up system with a vengeance, it's age discrimination, it's devaluing teachers -- and we don't resist it as a whole because we experience it as individuals -- What did I do wrong to lose my assigned place? Why is MY school so awful? How can I keep my head down and get through the day?
With no work.
With 59 kids in my kindergarten class.
With 17 teaching positions cut, in one school in one week.
With sitting at the phone a 6:00 am every morning and never getting called.
What's your take?

A new start

After over a decade in the Chicago school system, I started teaching in an inner-city school -- Spanish to kids who didn't think they had ANY reason to learn Spanish.
I was in a school scheduled to close in two years-- and I had no idea what that meant when I started. All those years, and that last final kick in the teeth, managed to break something in me, to make it impossible to do something I loved.
This blog is a way of sorting out that experience, coning to grips with, what is going on in CPS and urban systems all over the country (and maybe the world, in terms of education) and pulling together political/personal/emotional insights, so that maybe they can help me and others.
What is a "failing" school? How can the wealthiest, most technologically advanced country in the world fail so many of its young people? How can a system survive which uses up its workers? Why. after a life of surviving spectacular dangers and risks, was I not able to get through, when clearly many teachers do find a way to work a whole career? Where was my purported defender, the union?
I still sub, as the title says, as an unembedded teacher, in high schools all over the north half and sometimes the south half of the city. Like the liminal persona that the anthropologist finds to be a confidante or informant, I feel like I've developed a sixth sense, being able 'read' a school, its students, and its workers, in the first ten minutes I am there.
And I still have no skin, no way to shield myself from the love/hate moments I experience.
Perhaps you will recognize something.
Last week I taught in a big school, in a business class, where all the kids could use computers. I spent maybe 15 minutes with students, encouraging one to go ahead and start the project that was due today. The student stared at me for a few minutes, trying to decide whether to ignore me, challenge me, or accept advice. Is she serious? Does she think I'm going to do what SHE tells me? A teacher observing asked me, You're a real teacher, aren't you, not just a sub?
Yes, I said, and told her my story. I don't know how to say what that felt like, just to be recognized, yes, I'm a real teacher. Yes, I'm being paid half a salary because no principal hired me when my school closed. I was in a "failing" school, you see, with "failing" teachers who didn't jump ship before it sank, still teaching "failing" students, the ones who stayed, stubbornly insisting that they still wanted to graduate, when their housing was torn down (Robert Taylor Homes) and they had to travel hours to get to school, and the classes they needed were cancelled, and their friends were "dropouted"* and the principal tried to throw out some, for complaining too loudly about the raw deal they got.
Theirs wasn't the only story, of course. There were teachers who'd given up, who learned how to get through the day to get a check, without disturbing themselves or the students. That's another story. For another day.

* Under NCLB every school is supposed to make Adequate Yearly Progress by raising attendance, graduation rate and test scores a certain percentage. One way of raising these percentages is by getting rid of students who are problems. Although each child is legally entitles to an education, the school can haul in a kid and his/her parent, and explain, they have this may absences, this may failing grades -- and this many suspensions or disciplinary actions. If they don't "voluntarily" drop out, the school can make the student's life unpleasant, with more discipline, etc. Even if the kid is one with behavior problems, this often arises from frustration with their own learning, or lack of it. These are often the kids whoneed the most help. They drop out, the schools scores go up. See also, the movie, "Pump Up the Volume".