respect

“YOU DON’T FEEL MY PAIN?”

/ janpriddyoregon / 3 Comments
lincoln-memorial

“Dozens of National Guard troops were positioned on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday night . . . The appearance of a band of troops at one of the nation’s most iconic monuments came as protests escalated throughout the nation in response to the police killing of Floyd, an African American man who died in police custody in Minneapolis.”

 

In the video I watched this morning, a man on his knees before armed and shielded guards asked for reform. “I just want reform. Reform. . . . Will you shoot me?”

In what world does a man have to get down on his knees to beg for simple respect, for fairness, for justice? For all.

In what reality, other than a YA dystopian nightmare, does the Lincoln Memorial resemble Tiananmen Square?

Maybe some are too young to remember that such visions were once something white Americans thought only happened in Other Countries, dangerous autocratic countries ruled by bullying dictators and communist regimes gone vile.

Maybe, some actually think that man who defied Chinese tanks was asking for it?

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“Set off by the death of pro-reform Communist general secretary Hu Yaobang in April 1989, amid the backdrop of rapid economic development and social changes in post-Mao China, the protests reflected anxieties about the country’s future in the popular consciousness and among the political elite. . . . On June 5, the suppression of the protest was immortalized outside of China via video footage and photographs of a lone man standing in front of a column of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square via Chang’an Avenue. The ‘Tank Man’, as it became known, became one of the most iconic photographs in the 20th century. As the tank driver tried to go around him, the ‘Tank Man’ moved into the tank’s path. He continued to stand defiantly in front of the tanks for some time, then climbed up onto the turret of the lead tank to speak to the soldiers inside. After returning to his position in front of the tanks, the man was pulled aside by a group of people.
Although the [identity and] fate of ‘Tank Man’ following the demonstration is not known, then-paramount Chinese leader Jiang Zemin stated in 1990 that he did not think the man was killed. Time later named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.”—Wikipedia

I am going to try very hard not to look at the news today. The coastal parks are being reopened tomorrow and we are hoping for rain. We are alarmed by license plates from Texas and California and Georgia, and especially the many from Washington state which has a much higher rate of infection. We are trying to be safe. We would like a vacation from taking care. We would like to see our sons and daughters-in-law and grandchildren in person. We would like to attend a birthday party, even outdoors on a deck. We would like to observe the precautions that are convenient and ignore the ones that interfere with our lives. But my husband and I have tried to follow the rules exactly.

I could, and do blame a national failure to prepare and national irresponsible and careless and largely absent leadership. I acknowledge that those in the White House have interfered with progress rather than led the way, but surviving this pandemic is also about us all. It’s not enough to blame Trump for his failures if we fail to do what little we can to ensure we and our nation survive. It is not enough to assume a vaccine will solve the problem—it certainly is not a time to pretend the pandemic does not exist.

If everyone, absolutely everyone, did what they were supposed to have been doing during the past couple of months, the United States would be like New Zealand, which had zero new cases in the last ten days. Instead, most people cheat a little bit or a lot. Too many Americans think the rules do not apply to them personally. We like to brag about our “rugged individualism” and claim we have the best of everything. In truth, this is is our entitlement speaking. A month of rigor and we might be clean. Instead as a result of carelessness, we live in the United States, where despite a call for people to stay home and maintain social distancing for the past ten or twelve weeks, over two hundred thousand (200,000) Americans were diagnosed in the past ten days, and over nine thousand died. Many of them were health care workers, grocers, and meat plant workers because of lack of proper protective gear, unmasked customers, and unsafe working conditions. People of all ages, ethnicities and in every state have died in the United States at the rate of about five in one hundred cases. The relative death rate is much higher for people of my age, for poor people, for people of color, but no one is immune.

Armed men invaded state capitals to demand their right to move freely despite the pandemic, and they were encouraged to do so by man incapable of leadership. Contrast that with unarmed citizens using the First Amendment rights to assemble, demand redress, and report on these events are tear-gassed and clubbed. Both risk their lives. I know which group earns my sympathy and respect.

“Where’s the bottom?” cries Beneatha in A Raisin in the Sun. (She is the younger sister of Walter Lee Younger, hoping to defy her tenement upbringing and her sharecropper grandparents and become a doctor.) Where, indeed, if we fail in our civic duty? What can it mean to be patriotic if citizenship demands sacrifice we are unwilling to honor? Some have given their lives for our country, yet we are unwilling to stay safely at home? We choose to attack those who merely want justice, those who look like they might expect fairness?

It is more than our bodies that wander while seeking the promised land.

A former student, recently become a doctor, admits “there has been a lot of hostility towards Asian-Americans and I am lucky that this has not affected me as much, but I fear for my family members and other members of the community. I aspire to be a positive representative for Asian-Americans and to help break down that hostility.”

She was an excellent student, and insisted, since before she even began her medical training, that she wanted to help those who struggle to find good care. She since recommitted to working with under-served populations. May she be granted the freedom to fulfill her goals.

Put a knee to the ground instead of on anyone’s neck.

TAKE A KNEE

/ janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments
Atlanta officers take a knee before protesters.

Atlanta officers take a knee before protesters.

(CNN) “Americans have been protesting the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police for days on end in dozens of cities throughout the United States.

“While tensions between police and demonstrators have heated up in many places, some officers have shown solidarity with the movement by hugging protesters, praying with them, mourning with them, and taking a knee to honor Floyd.” 

. . . and another: ” ‘In that moment, it wasn’t about kneeling to appease anybody,’ an officer said. ‘I was kneeling because I wanted to show my people I’m with them in solidarity. … It would have ate me up if those protesters were like, “Kneel with us, kneel with us,” and I said, “No.” It would have ate me up.’ ” They knelt in Santa Cruz, California and Portland, Oregon, in Des Moines, Iowa and Washington DC, in Flint, Michigan and Spokane, Washington, in Germantown, Maryland and Coral Gables, Florida. And protesters thanked them, blessed them because their mission is to protect and serve. “Walk with us!” the public said to police officers all over our nation. They bowed their heads in thanks and walked in pride.

Respect.

more . . .

The Washington Post Editorial: “Even amid the tear gas, the rubber bullets, the sirens, the fires, the standoffs, the looting, the “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons,” the best of America has been visible. People who were angry and scared have acted with peace and compassion, defusing situations by protecting and embracing — sometimes literally — those whom others in their position might have feared.”

And a voice of justice and compassion “Biden, in speech to the nation, denounces President Trump’s actions against protesters and vows to heal racial wounds” He reminded me what national leadership sounds like.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”—Abraham Lincoln

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/opinions/opinion–this-is-propaganda/2020/06/02/aa178cd0-875f-4f1f-9ced-ba1dee619078_video.html

 

 

 

 

IF YOU’RE SO SMART WHY ARE YOU STILL TEACHING?

/ janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

My first teaching job was at Forest Ridge a school of the Sacred Heart, an elite Catholic girls’ prep school in Bellevue, Washington. Sr. Bunny Flick hired me in 1976 to teach 6-12th grade Art part-time. She was eager to see her students both challenged and supported in their education. At the same time, she never seemed quite comfortable in her role as a school administrator, but she was kind to me. Midway through my time at the school, Bunny left for a new job and, though she might not even remember me, I still check in on her online from time to time. She is a generous, good-hearted woman committed to education. I wish I could let her know that I think of her patience and guidance, and I’ve continued to grow. I’m a better teacher now than when she hired me.

My last principal was also committed as an educator and as a supporter of educators. I mention this because I am about to criticize administrators, and I want to make clear that my concerns do not apply to all administrators and they certainly do not apply to my favorites.

I have written elsewhere defending teachers. I chose to become a teacher because I realized that I was good at it, and that teaching was a role I had been committing to at every opportunity since I was young. I have worked at the profession for a long time and I think I’m mostly a good teacher.

Bad teachers are rare, I contend, because they usually don’t last very long in the profession. Shortly after I posted an essay about this, a student came to me, having read it, and asked if I really believed bad teachers were rare. Well, yes, I do. I think most teachers are doing the best they can and most of them are doing a good job. There are exceptions, but here’s another problem: There are bad and indifferent administrators.

This matters to teaching because, other than the teachers themselves, only administrators have the position and power to improve teaching.

This is where I admit there are bad teachers, and it’s true that some teachers are mean and some have unrealistic expectations or absurdly high (or worse: pathetically low) standards. These aren’t necessarily the bad ones. Even mean teachers take the choir to State and prepare teenagers for independent thought and college. Students learn to let the meanness roll off their back. “Unrealistic” can become reality in about two flicks and then students are doing stuff no one else thought they were capable of. Students survive the high standards, and sometimes they even thrive because of them. So for now, let’s set aside the “mean” and expectant ones.

Let’s look at the teachers who wish they were doing something else—something else in particular or anything else. These are the teachers who really wanted to go on playing high school sports for the rest of their lives, or who thought teaching would be an easy job, or that working with children would be good practice for being a mom, or that they would have weekends and holidays off. There are teachers who don’t really care much about their subject. The ones who fell into the job and never really wanted to teach to begin with. The ones who think they have chosen a 40-hour-a-week job. The ones who don’t like students. The ones who don’t want to work that hard. And the ones who discover they simply don’t like teaching.

Most teachers who are unsuited to the profession don’t last. In fact, teaching has among the highest attrition rates of any profession in the United States. Studies find various results, but up to 50% of teachers leave the profession within five years. Imagine if, after five years of training and with less than five years of work, half the plumbers, electricians, and lawyers chose another profession. (That this is not true for teachers in some other countries might give us pause. In Finland, for example, teachers are not paid differently but the job has more respect and time. Top college students in Finland flock to teaching, and they stick.)

What do teachers who leave the profession do instead? Tend bar, start a small business, sell real estate, join the family business, study law. I’ve considered some of those jobs and others, but I am forever becoming a teacher.

Some teachers become administrators. My observations suggest that, like the reasons for entering education to begin with, there are a few less productive reasons for studying administration. Some would-be administrators are bad teachers who don’t want to choose another field. Some are looking for a job where they don’t have to work so closely with students. Some are looking for more money. Some want power. Status. Some see administration as a natural advancement, like becoming the manager of a retail store. Some want more respect from their community, more autonomy in how they spend their days, or less face time with children. These are all good reasons, I suppose, but not one of them concerns wanting a meaningful roll in improving education and in supporting the educational process with teachers, students, families, and communities, which are better reasons for becoming an administrator.

Administrators work hard. Most of them work hours as long as mine and for another month out of the year. They, like me, are never quite off the clock and always engaged with educational concerns, even during down time, though most have more flexibility.

But some administrators are not skilled at their jobs. Some can’t manage the thousand discrete and sometimes competing demands of community, teachers, students, and finances. Some were well-intentioned but bad teachers and perform no more effectively with peers than they did with students. Some cannot imagine how to get from where they are to where they need to go. They have no vision. Some see the world in black and white and cannot cope with an occupation that is many shadings. Some do not actually like or feel comfortable around students or their parents. Some do not even like children. Some do not respect the choice of others to continue teaching instead of seeking a “promotion” to administration. I’d like to believe these issues are all pretty rare. I see this in other occupations too—electricians, dentist, doctors, small business owners who wish they were doing something (anything) else.

Years ago The Oregonian published an Op-Ed about the disrespect that teachers face every day, including the disrespect from administrators with the attitude that if teachers were really smart, why are they still teaching? I get that a lot. Teachers are sometimes treated as if they were their students. For eleven years I was a substitute teacher in my district and there were principals who treated their teachers like the children they taught. This was especially grating when I subbed at an elementary school where the principal treated teachers like young children. (And if you’ve never worked all day with a room of 26 nine-year-olds, you really do not know what exhaustion is.) Because I teach children does not make me a child myself.

I’ve also been patronized and ignored by college professors, including people who teach Writing and Lit. at community colleges, who have never published anything of significance, and who have barely been alive as long as I have been teaching. I merely taught high school for close to 30 years. Now with a decade of college level teach, I suspect my experience, concerns, and observations still matter less than theirs. Perhaps I did not matter at all.

Elsewhere I have complained about the expectation of some people that everyone must commit to teaching as if it were a sacred vocation rather than a job. Sr. Bunny Flick is a nun. I am not even Catholic. I loved my job, though it is not a sacred obligation, it’s something I choose. But there is some whiff of truth in that expectation of commitment. No one does this job to get rich, but it is an occupation that should suit the practitioner, one they will do their best for even in the moments when it’s hard and unrewarding. They should be paid decently for their expertise and responsibility. (No teacher expects to get rich, but securely middle class is not an unreasonable expectation after a minimum of 5-6 years university education.) I also think it’s a reasonable expectation that if teachers do their job well they should be treated with the respect due to anyone in a skilled profession.

Teaching first graders is not easier than teaching college Physics.

Teaching is not easier than acting as an administrator.

We all work hard in education and administrators and the public can make things easier for everyone. Or not.

WHY YOU DON’T WANT TO BECOME A TEACHER

/ janpriddyoregon / 18 Comments

IMG_3874

Snow fell off and on a couple of weeks ago. On the coast we understand a few feet of rain better than a few inches of snow. On a Monday, school was closed.

read “Become a Teacher.”

This happened in 2011 too, but back then it was on a Thursday. I had stayed till 7pm the night before, watching the roads on the internet to ensure the snow didn’t start sticking before I got home. On Wednesday evenings I sat in the school Library (with a math teacher for a few months when we were both paid—I did it for 20 years without pay) to keep the workspace open for kids who needed help, were retaking tests, or who needed computer access. When I packed up for home I lugged the tests I needed to score home but left an eight-inch stack of essays in my room. I would get to them the following weekend and adjust the due date for the other essay that students were supposed to hand in the next day.

The 24th of February 2011 was a snow day, and I was loving it. I had a lot of work to get done but I was taking the day off. This is what I wrote because I could:

I love my job. I say that all the time and it’s true. I’m good at it and I still have a measure of autonomy in my classroom. I can be creative and innovative and my administration actually appreciates me for doing it (I think). I’ve gone gray in this profession. I love my job. I’m proud of the work I do.

Many of my former students have become teachers or are thinking of becoming teachers. And I love them for that too, but it also makes me want to cry, because teachers are not in the same position they were when I was young, or even when I entered the profession.

Ten reasons you don’t want to become a teacher:

  1. The pay is less than you think. I read on Facebook that if you want “abundant wealth” you should choose the private sector.
  2. There is no longer job security. My school lost ten teachers last year.
  3. Your pension isn’t safe—it looks like a pile of money to the public, waiting to be looted.
  4. Parents don’t trust you.
  5. The community thinks you have too much time off. They need to hire a sitter for those stupid planning days.
  6. Even if you teach that kid to read and get him off the streets and are answerable about whether he passes or does not pass all the new tests, you are not heroes like police officers and firefighters—who receive better pay and a sweeter pension package.
  7. If you have a personal blog, watch your words because freedom of speech doesn’t apply to teachers.
  8. Summers you will either be working a second job or going to school or both.
  9. For the same amount of education you could be a nurse with a specialty making twice as much money and no homework on the weekend. You could be a lawyer and work as hard for a lot more money, or a doctor, X-ray technician, plumber, electrician…

The number 10 reason not to become a teacher, the critical reason:

10. Everything is your fault.

  • You’re a lousy teacher. If students are unmotivated, tired, hungry, sleepy, sick, absent, homeless, or in jail, you should have motivated them to show up to school every day and complete their homework.
  • You make too much money. Compare your income with seven or more years of university education, Masters degree, and twenty years of experience to the wages of the drop-out pumping gas (who you should have motivated to stay in school) and you are paid way too much. You have all that time off and we don’t want to hear any whining about class planning and scoring papers and all that.
  • You cause social injustice. If you marry another teacher—surprise! you have an actual middle class income capable of paying for your own children’s college education. But wait! That’s okay for professionals. Everyone understands that if two doctors or lawyers marry they will have a double income. If teachers do that it’s simply unfair. Teachers should be paid less so that if they marry another of their kind they won’t be earning over a hundred thousand dollars between them… after a combined 14 years university education and 30 years of teaching experience. [Seriously, I’ve heard this argument.]
  • It’s your union’s fault the economy is a mess. That pension and all those great benefits like health coverage—all that stuff your union got for you—is just too much. You may have paid in, but if we could just take that money we promised you’d get back eventually and spend it on other stuff, we wouldn’t have to raise taxes.
  • And another thing, your union and tenure are allowing lousy teachers to ruin kids’ education. If it weren’t for unions and tenure there would be no bad teachers. Look how well that approach has worked for politicians, plumbers, and physicians.

[Trump just wants a profit and his Secretary of Education wants to entirely dismantle our education system and turn it into a money-making scheme.] Obama wanted the same thing Bush wanted, a better education system without having to pay more for it. “You can’t solve a problem by throwing money at it.” Right? “You get what you pay for” is another cliché. There’s truth in both, but diamonds cost more than glass. A couch from Ethan Allen is going to cost more than one left on the curb, and anyone who thinks they can rely on a junk store couch having the quality of the new custom-built model is deceiving themselves. Try sitting on them. If we want better schools and better teachers, we’re going to have to find a way to make working in schools more attractive. We could start by offering more money and security and respect.

Unions don’t protect bad teachers. Neither does tenure, assuming you have it in your state. (It’s long gone for K12 teachers in the State of Oregon.) I watched two teachers pushed out of the profession while we still had tenure and it wasn’t any harder than it would be to get rid of a factory worker management didn’t want, and it was a heck of a lot easier than getting rid of a bad doctor, and doctors technically don’t have a union. What doctors and lawyers have is the ability to command a professional salary and to move to another hospital or firm that offers them a better deal. Teachers can almost never do that.

Teachers are paid on a set scale that compensates their labor based on years of education and years of experience. However, no school district hires the best qualified teacher—they hire the one they can afford. That means they will start any new teacher at the lowest level they can get away with. Fresh out of college, inexperienced teachers are cheap hires and a cheap hire saves the school district money. Those new teachers last, on average four years, because the work is harder than they expected. A strong and experienced teacher, by contrast, would cost more, even though districts can almost never afford to pay them a wage that would coax them away from a current employer—and isn’t that how it’s done in professions? If a firm wants that better lawyer, they offer him or her more money. (The only education people who negotiate their pay is administrators. When my district insisted it was too broke to offer a raise, not even cost of living raises, administrators still received raises.) A great carpenter with a great reputation commands top dollar.

No one in another district would hire me for what I am paid in my current job. If I left for another district, a school in Portland for example, I would be credited with only 7 years of experience rather than the 24 I have and I would be paid less. They can’t afford to start a teacher on my pay. It’s not in their budget. And if I wanted to move, I couldn’t afford the pay cut. It would take me 8 years to recover my current salary. [Or actually something less than 8 years since my rural school district pays a lot less than Portland.]

What this means is that if school districts wanted to hire the best available teachers, they would have to revamp the way teachers are paid. I’m not talking about paying people for raising their students’ test scores—recent research shows this isn’t effective—it means we’d need some way to offer better teachers (“better” by some standard) higher wages. And, most critically, it would mean schools would have to have the extra money lying around to lure those “better teachers” away from their current employer. They don’t.

I am 66, and I’ve taught since completing 3 undergraduate degrees with honors and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Washington. I have a masters degree in my field and enough graduate hours for a masters in education too. Until I retired, I worked at least 50-60 hours a week (and all-too-often 70) and throughout the holidays and I STILL had to listen to complaints about my imaginary 3 months off every summer and how tenure protects bad teachers (remember, we have no tenure in Oregon public schools) and how my pension is breaking the state budget (I paid into my pension). I’m supposed to be better qualified, better trained, work harder, and do it all on less salary and with no guarantee that the terms under which I was hired will be honored. Those terms have not been not honored and what I was expecting upon retirement was halved.

…Speaking only for my frugal self, I had no complaints about my salary, but I would have to work full time through my 70s before my retirement income would come close enough to my salary after working in this profession since 1976. I took time out to stay home with my sons, but I had 25 years teaching in my district before a very bad year of stress-induced illness convinced me to retire. Teacher pensions had already been gutted in my state and the public seemed to want more from me for even less respect and autonomy, not to mention less security in my old age.

People who could barely tolerate being in the same room with their own sons and daughters while they were teenagers blame me when I can’t get them to do their homework. It wears me out.

A post on Facebook from a former teacher turned wealthy self-described “Capitalist” explained that if people want “abundant wealth” they will have to leave teaching. He illustrates this with an analogy: “Should trash collectors be paid more than the avg worker? Th…ink about it….Who would you miss more the garbage man, or some Nuclear Physicist?” [I’m not sure if teachers are the trash collectors or the scientists in this scenario.] “Bottom line is– tax payers pay the bill in the public sector… Therefore, it is expected to be a life of service for those who work in our communities…Not a life of abundant wealth…If one is concerned with earning top dollar, then they need to find a job in the ‘private sector,’ where one because of ‘Capitalism’ can earn as much as they desire. So either one should choose to serve the people, or take their talents elsewhere. Teachers work for the public and have to expect a life of service.”

More and more, the person some people seem to want in their schools is not a teacher, but a nun, someone to work purely out of the goodness of their heart. And it’s true that it takes a lot of heart to teach, but that doesn’t excuse blaming teachers for everything the public thinks is wrong with schools. It does not excuse paying teachers second rate wages just because they work in public schools. Second rate earns second rate.

If we are willing to settle for second rate teachers, we’ll have to expect second rate in all public sector jobs. And I do not want second rate air traffic controllers or safety inspectors or police officers or teachers. I don’t think we can expect anyone to work out of the goodness of their heart, as the Facebook poster above seems to expect. When I was a girl I had fantastic teachers… because they were women with limited opportunities and men on the GI bill and the first generation to climb out of hard blue collar jobs.

Today those people find work in other fields that pay better. I think we’re going to have to pay for what we get or we’re going to get what we pay for. That’s true whoever is doing the hiring.

If we want to improve teaching and teachers, it only makes sense that we expect to pay for it.

And it’s likely why excellent public school teachers are in short supply just now.