Education/teacher

Facebook Groups: Protesting for the Lazy


So, I probably haven’t brought it up but my old school district sent out prelim lay-off notices last Friday. 300 teachers received letters informing them that their positions were being cut. These aren’t “pink slips”. Schools aren’t required by state law to issue those until April 30th. The letters are a heads up. In twenty years, I don’t recall the district tipping its hand in writing or on such a scale.

I went through two “reductions” personally and I was also informed in person and then reassigned once the state legislature approved the education budget – something they typically do in March or early April.

These letters then are the district’s way of saying – don’t hold your breath because the state will not be relenting on the cuts. There’s no money and none is on the way.

One of the easy fixes to budget dilemmas is to cut from the outside in which means get rid of everything that is considered “extra” to save the core subject areas. Stuff like music, art, PE, school nurses, after school activities, sports, field trips though not in that order.

Here in Canada a lot of what is being cut now in Des Moines doesn’t exist. Dee’s school doesn’t have a lunch program, school nurse, counselor, PE or art teacher. That’s standard for elementary and with the exception of the last three – it applies to junior/senior high too. In addition, kids who open enroll to schools outside their designated areas have to pay for busing or find their own transportation. Sports are largely outside school as is music where learning to play instruments are concerned though there is band and whatnot at the upper levels. Canadians fund the core first and expect parents to pick up a lot of slack.

But here’s what struck me, the days following the cuts, I see all these Facebook statements decrying the lay-offs and bemoaning the fact that music in particular will cease to exist in the form of a designated teacher at the elementary and middle schools. I see people starting Facebook “protest” groups – probably to “raise awareness” among the choir folk but I don’t see anyone offering a solution or organizing real life protests or even rationally dealing with the fact that – there really is NO money.

And then by last night, Facebook statuses are back to gushing about Survivor or the Bachelor because …?

The second time I was reduced it was because I stuck my neck out and to save the librarian – who never thanked me but she’s welcome anyway.

It was after Will had been diagnosed and I knew he was going to die. I’d put him in the nursing home that fall. I was in grad school. I was insanely strapped for cash most of the time and by this time, Will had been dying for so long that most people had forgotten that my life was not “back to normal” though I am sure it appeared so on the surface to most of the people I worked with.

Zee, our principal, announced that he had x number of staff to cut and that one of the positions would be the librarian and the rest of the folk would just be assignment shuffles because there were retiring folk to make up the remainder of the body count.

The librarian was distraught, but no one really liked her. Her personality precluded any great out-pouring of support beyond – “well that’s going suck for us because we use the library a lot”.

The nature of what we were doing at the time in terms of instruction meant the library was in use constantly. It was not a little thing to give up. No librarian would mean chaos in terms of scheduling and checking materials in/out. We needed the librarian.

So I wrote an email stating the case for keeping her and cutting somewhere (one) else. I hit send. I campaigned door to door  – really. The admin relented and decided to cut my position instead. I knew that this would probably happen when I wrote the email. I also knew it was logical and in the best interests of the students.

But I needed that job in that building. Going to another school, which I would have been easily reassigned with my seniority, would have broken me. I didn’t have the reserves to start fresh or to cajole new co-workers and admin into assisting me prop up my precariously arranged existence. Fortunately, Zee knew this to and juggled things so I would simply be moved to another position. He had to inconvenience a few teachers to do it. I am grateful still for what he did for me.

I am not advocating for anyone to offer themselves up in the present scenario. There will be no transfers and the vast majority of the 300 will not be working next fall. But it seems to me that Facebook groups and indignation are pointless in the face of reality. The whole “no money” thing. The state doesn’t have it and the Feds are not likely to supply it without strings.*

It’s easy to start a Facebook protest – or even organize a march on the state legislature with signs and speeches and the local media (they generally do that over the up-coming Spring Break which means that only those without vacation plans will attend – if the weather isn’t too cold or rainy).

What’s harder is facing reality and deciding what kids really need in the long-term and what is just extra and can be shouldered by families. Families can actually shoulder quite a bit, but American society is not in the habit of ponying up anymore.

My siblings and I walked to music lessons every Wednesday afternoon for a couple of years. My father paid for it and we were by no stretch well-off. Our sports were largely league and hot lunch was a twice a year treat sponsored by the women’s prayer society. We walked to school. We didn’t have a librarian, shop teacher, art teacher and we only had a music teacher when the sisters happened to have someone to spare for the duty. After the last music teacher died, in the middle of my 8th grade year, there wasn’t another one for years.

What’s important? What are you willing to personally sacrifice – a step raise? insurance? take a pay cut? go to a shorter school week or have regular furloughs like they’re doing in Hawaii? Will you give up contracts and go to salary or hourly wages? There are fixes. There are always fixes. But they will require some kind of sacrifice.

No one makes sacrifices anymore. They start Facebook groups.

*The strings are closing “failing” schools and firing “ineffective” teachers. No mention is made of what is to be done with the poor quality raw material or their parents.

Two Teachers, One Chair


This is Canadian education at it’s finest?

By the way, this could be ANY high school in North America. We have a value system that can’t differentiate soft porn from entertainment and we teach it to our kids early and often.

I witnessed cheer squads gyrating at pep/spirit rallies that, if the lights had been lowered, could have easily passed for a girly show. The music: raunchy. The girls, too young and not so much dressed. The men and boys and girls who like girls – which in most every school I ever taught in including staff too – interested.

It’s no small wonder that kids smash their privates together when they dance then, is it?

Most days – okay, all days – I have no trouble remembering why I don’t teach for a living anymore.

Hate Groups on Facebook


One of the side effects of friending your friends, family and semi-random strangers on Facebook are the things they post on your wall or feed. Too much information is a given and I am certainly guilty of this myself. And not just on Facebook.

Around Family Day (that’s Presidents’ Day to you Americans – our holiday being apolitical and applicable to more than simply government employees) I began to notice that many of my teacher friends from my Iowa days of yore were joining a Facebook group called “Keep Legend’s American Grill Teacher (and Customer) Free”.

I am familiar with the restaurant. It’s part of a chain that is locally owned. I used to eat at its Firecreek off-shoot when I lived in the Jordan Creek area of West Des Moines. They are customers, in fact, of my BFF’s husband. He supplies them with paper products, glass ware and such. I think they are one of his biggest accounts, so a boycott movement would have a direct impact on my BFF and her family in a negative way that no one needs during a recession.

But I didn’t know specifics and didn’t really look into it. Iowa is far away from my life, and Facebook groups are white noise on my home page.

Sunday, I was glancing through the Des Moines Register’s op-ed’s and stumbled upon a piece about this boycott group and discovered that the idea for the boycott began with a teacher who found a hair in her salad.

Yeah. I was a little under-whelmed in the outrage department too.

Who HASN’T found a hair when eating out at some point?

It turns out that a group of teachers chose Legend’s for their lunch break during a recent DMPS teacher conference held at the city’s convention centre. One of them, Marsha Richards, who teaches at one of the high schools, found a hair in her salad and reported said hair to their waitress. In typical American service sector style the waitress said,

“Well I didn’t put it there.”

Again, where’s the outrage? This idea that wait staff, salespeople, housekeepers, and other minimally paid people are servants is widespread in my native land and that when they slip out of character (yes’um, dat’s a hair alright. I is mighty sorry I didn’t ‘spect the greens afore I served ’em) then … well …. middle class entitlement has a fury that hell flinches away from.

Perhaps that isn’t fair? Maybe. I don’t really expect much from service workers in terms of subservience and I am not at all surprised anymore when I ran across those who are having horrid days. Customers seem to think that the little bit of cash they are throwing around should buy them sniveling bootlickers.

The salad, by the way, was comped, but the request for the manager never produced one. Apparently, the restaurant was unaware of the conference and the fact that they were going to be mobbed for lunch. Normally, the downtown is quiet. Dead in fact. Legend’s was understaffed and if I know teachers let loose for lunch on a “school day” – and I do – they’d had their fill of picky, loud, taking up space forever and insisting on separate checks all day.

Unable to let it go, the group of teachers stalked the bar and plagued an overworked bartender until she was forced to drop everything and summon the owner. The owner, incidentally, is not known for his charming personality.

Words were exchanged as Ms.Richards appeared bent on schooling the owner in how to train his wait staff. He went off and told the women to “get out” and that he didn’t want any more teachers coming into his place. Period.

And so they left and one would think that aside from the wonderfully gossipy story this made for the rest of the afternoon – because teachers love to tell tales – that the matter was at an end.

But that would have only happened if Richards didn’t have email and a public school mailing list at her disposal.

The email, which is contained in the link above, called for teachers and those who love and support them to boycott not just the outlet where she was so poorly treated but all the affiliated eateries.

Because of a hair and a frazzled waitress multiple places of business should be avoided in the hopes of ….what? Putting them out of business? According to a response by someone with more people savvy than the Legend’s owner, about 500 people are employed between all the outlets. This doesn’t include those businesses that contract with the restaurants like my BFF’s husband.

So, let’s shit on hundreds of people because one woman has some sort of issue that involved a tremendous need for her hurt, embarrassed feelings to be publicly validated.

Good move.

And of course, because it’s Facebook and – unfortunately – teachers (who can be like lemmings – follow first/think for yourself later) thousands of people joined the Facebook group. Thousands.

I expressed dismay about the group on my FB page and a teacher friend who joined the group disagreed with my assessment. She saw it as discrimination and a civil rights issue as though teachers were some sort of socially cast aside minority which, as I recall, isn’t true. It’s not like teachers in the U.S. are being forced to wear gold stars or are shunted off to “separate but equal” sections of theatres or public transit. We are reviled for our privileged employment status and perks but we aren’t being targeted for any sort of final solution.

As we were discussing Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras in yoga training Sunday evening, the topic of how to deal with “mean” people came up. I noted that the younger the respondent, the more likely “standing up for yourself” was the answer.

I was like that for a long time, and I won’t pretend that people and things don’t sometimes still get my back up, but as Pantanjali points out – and I concur – we have no control over anything but our own reactions and responses. Additionally, our perception of any event is coloured by our own personal stories and may not reflect at all what the event or other person is about in the least.

The harried waitress may well have been inclined to apologize once she was able to step back from a table of eight women passing judgement on her but Richards’ inability to not take the hair and the initial response personally may have made it too difficult. Who wants to be bullied into apologizing for something that wasn’t her fault? Or gloated over for that matter?

Not me and I am guessing not you or Marsha Richards. It’s just human nature.

In the end, all we can do is step back, breathe and walk away when life, and the people who populate it, are caught up in dramas that threaten our own karma. Karma has nothing to do with payback, positive or negative. It is an entirely individual thing that one must mind and guard for one’s own sake.

Oh, and I didn’t join the FB group.