Are teachers (inadvertently) helping drive the nails in their own coffins?

"They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data in their lists
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death"
                                      (Roger Waters, "Amused to Death")

I was reading Diane Ravitch’s blog this morning, and I came across a post from yesterday (5/30/13), in which Diane quoted a 4th grade teacher who pleaded “Where is the real support for our children?” I’m picturing this teacher with arms extended heavenward, head thrown back (I’m certain rain was pouring down as well, I’m thinking Andy Dufresne, after escaping from Shawshank). Or possibly James T. Kirk yelling “Khaaaaaan! Khaaaaan!”  Or, remember the old lady from the Wendy's commercial asking "Where's the beef?"

Or maybe Mel Gibson’s William Wallace yelling “Freedom!” in that brief moment between his evisceration and his execution.  Ah, yes, that’s the metaphor I was looking for…

Anyway, it’s a very important, very valid, question.  And upon first quick read, I nodded my head along with the 4th grade teacher's letter, saying, “Right on!”

But a very astute poster, writing under the screen name “Ms. Cartwheel Librarian” (there has got to be a story there…) made an observation, singling out one of the sentences in the teacher’s page long commentary, and in the process reminding me to always check the premises of an argument.  This teacher lamented the condition of modern public education, but in the process of doing so, de facto endorsed (or at least condoned) NCLB/RttT’s purported validity as a barometer of school success:

[The 4th grade teacher wrote:] “The principal is a competent and supportive school leader who is simply navigating the academic culture that has developed since NCLB and high stakes testing began.”

[Ms. Cartwheel Librarian commented, after citing the above sentence specifically:] I’m sorry, but we really need to dive in and face the cognitive dissonance inherent in that sentence before we can ever begin to dig out of this mess. Anyone who “simply navigates” their way through this – and moreover forces his underlings to do the same thing – is not “supportive” and not really even “competent”, except to the same extent Adolph Eichmann was “competent” in keeping the trains running on schedule. Every cog in the machine that participates rather than resisting is part of the problem, and the further up the food chain you are, the less excuse you have for “I was only following orders”. This principal needs to be supporting your right – in fact, your duty – to teach science and social studies – not undermining your efforts to do so.

This is a very unpopular sentiment, Ms. Librarian. You don’t blame the victims! You don’t fault teachers for helping to corrupt the system that they so desperately are trying to fix. Most teachers I know would be OUTRAGED at the very notion that they are part of the problem. But – and I hate to say it – Ms. Librarian may well have valid point.

An aside: I try to make it a point in my posts not to attack teachers; I love teachers, and feel that teachers are, more often than not, victims, almost as much as the students, even. However, part of me believes that when teachers participate in the evil without fighting it in an obvious, forceful and meaningful way, their inaction contributes to, and therefore makes them part of, the problem. Acquiescence is justified in many ways, but it is almost always, in my experience, achieved by administrators at the (proverbial) barrel of a (proverbial) gun. The threat of punitive action, that show of force, is usually enough to force teachers to fall in line. I cannot completely begrudge teachers their choice in that situation. Not many people sign up for martyrdom. This was the operating principle behind Nazi success as well, as Ms. Librarian suggests. But in my quieter moments (yes, I have those) it really pisses me off sometimes. This post is the closest I ever expect to get to attacking teachers, but I need to do it, lest my blog turn too partisan and my credibility be shot. In the words of the estimable poet Mr. Robert Zimmerman, "I would not feel so all alone / Everybody must get stoned!"

You’re thinking I’ve lost my mind. How dare I blame teachers for all of our schools’ ills?

Well, for one thing, I'm not.  It's not an all-or-nothing thing.  That's typical of the kind of extremist rhetoric that is part of the problem. It's a matter of degrees, shades of gray.  Maybe even more than 50 of them.

I understand the resistance to the idea. The last half of my 19 years teaching secondary school I felt like that, like I could make a difference, fix the system, shield my students from the coming sh*tstorm, and truth be told, if I could find a system that would pay me what I’m worth (nobody’s hiring above step 3-5 these days, it seems… see my essay on the “Golden Handcuffs” for more on that) I might still be in the game. It’s hard when they literally dangle your livelihood in front of you… “Stay with us and make $60, $70, $80K, plus benefits; or go out there and try your luck as an adjunct college professor, making $20K, $30K if you’re lucky, with no benefits…” A lot of teachers, most I’d guess, would stay put and keep their mouths shut, “play the game.”

I’ve had many teachers tell me that they know what’s going on, but what can they do but focus on “their own four classroom walls?” Comes a time for some people when that’s just not good enough, the crimes are too atrocious to be a part of. Guess what happens if all teachers retreat to their own four walls? The top-down, test-driven, corporate-governmental bureaucracy is given free rein to run roughshod over all, with no resistance. What was it that Martin Niemöller wrote about German intellectuals during the Nazi rise to power? Remember that poem?

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

The simple, sad fact is that teachers that stay, even if they think they’re doing good, even if in their hearts they remain true, even if they think they’re fighting the system in their own little way, MANY (if not MOST) are at least in SOME small way allowing the system to continue as it is simply by continuing to participate in it, and therefore contribute, in however small a way to the problem. Their continued participation confers validity.  And it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Something has to change. It’s not a question of “giving up,” it’s an issue of taking the battle to the next level.

Also, in regards to the desire for teachers to stay and “do the very best [they] can,” consider the words of Gandalf the Grey (think of the "ring" as the NCLB/RttT mandates) to Frodo about trying to best an enemy with his own weapon:

Frodo: Take it!
Gandalf: No, Frodo.
Frodo: You must take it!
Gandalf: You cannot offer me this ring!
Frodo: I’m giving it to you!
Gandalf: Don’t… tempt me Frodo! I dare not take it. Not even to keep it safe. Understand, Frodo. I would use this ring from a desire to do good… But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine.

I’m not saying it can’t be done… but I think we’ve gotten to a point where a principled and public walkout will be more effective and proactive than teachers soldiering on as always… that’s what teachers have been doing for the last generation, soldiering on nobly, and it certainly has not halted the top-down bureaucratic madness, has not made teachers’ lives better, has not made students’ lives better; why assume that it will stop anytime soon without more drastic action?

Lastly, consider this: I don’t know if you’ve read Atlas Shrugged (it is a bit of a hyperbolic commentary on America, but if you suspend your disbelief for 1,100 pages, and endure a lot of long speeches, there is a takeaway that’s worth the effort) — the sentiment of wanting to hang in there, the inner conflict, the mixed feelings, the desire to stay, to do good: these are exactly what drove Dagny Taggart (the main character) to stay as long in her job as she did. Consider her personal journey, and see if it doesn’t map neatly onto that of every frustrated teacher who has watched corporate and governmental interests appropriate all that used to be educator-driven in education. I don’t begrudge ANY teacher his or her sentiments, because they were once mine, and to a certain extent, still are. I’m just presenting an alternative.  A noble alternative, I feel.

I will say that it's a terrible dilemma that teachers get caught in... to a certain very small extent I do grudgingly agree with the "teachers are part of the problem" argument; after all, when it comes down to it, they are the footsoldiers in the very war against them. But I also believe that many teachers stay in the game, like Dagny Taggart, becuase they think they can fight the Powers That Be. And some can, and do, I guess. New teachers who act independently are denied tenure (been there, done that), and often by the time they've made it through 2 or 3 or 5 years, to get their tenure, they've drunk enough of the Kool-Aid to be complacent de facto conspirators, even if in their own hearts and in behind-closed-doors gripe sessions with other educators (whose words and "true" feelings never see the light of day, of course) they claim to maintain their ideals. Experienced teachers are disciplined, receive forced transfers, and are otherwise shamed into compliance.  Frankly, I'm seeing a lot more positive political movement courtesy of the ones who have left the game, the ones who are making a stink, the ones who are opening - not closing - their mouths.

The public, viral, resignations of the last month or two are very Atlas Shrugged (and I'm not a Rand mouthpiece per se, just a reader who calls I like I see it; I just think it's an extremely apt good metaphor) in a good way:

Ellie Rubenstein: read here;
Julie Brissette:  read here;
Kathleen Knauth: read here;
Gerald Conti: read here.

We need more, and higher profile, and more than just New York State (which is corrupt as hell anyway) and Chicagoland (ditto, from what I hear tell).

Teachers of the world, I share your feelings. I really do…I am SOOOOOOOOOO conflicted about this. And I would not ask my former colleagues to lay down their livelihoods until and unless they were ready to make that investment. (I don’t call it a sacrifice. When you sacrifice, by definition, you lose value.) A former colleague of mine recently expressed to me exactly what I suspect most teachers are feeling in this regard:

“I completely agree that we need to take a united stand. However, we are nowhere NEAR united, and I am currently the sole breadwinner in my family of 5. So.....I'm not going to be the one leading this foray.”

I get it, I really do! And it tears me up inside.

My response, however, to those administrators, those bureaucrats, those THUGS, who would make me and my colleague feel that way, is that of Hank Rearden, another central character of Atlas, speaking to his would-be oppressors with the serenity of a Gandhi, and the steely purpose of a man who knows his mission:

Hank:  If you choose to deal with men by means of compulsion, do so. But you will discover that you need the voluntary co-operation of your victims, in many more ways than you can see at present. And your victims should discover that it is their own volition—which you cannot force—that makes you possible. I choose to be consistent and I will obey you in the manner you demand. Whatever you wish me to do, I will do it at the point of a gun. If you sentence me to jail, you will have to send armed men to carry me there—I will not volunteer to move. If you fine me, you will have to seize my property to collect the fine—I will not volunteer to pay it. If you believe that you have the right to force me—use your guns openly. I will not help you to disguise the nature of your action.

And this exchange, between Dagny Taggart, who finally is moved to victoriously quit her post (a. Pardon the split infinitive, and b. No, it's not an oxymoron), and Francisco D'Anconia, a friend who helps her see the light:

Dagny:  It seems monstrously wrong to surrender the world to the looters, and monstrously wrong to live under their rule. I can neither give up nor go back. I can neither exist without work nor work as a serf. I had always thought that any sort of battle was proper, anything, except renunciation. I'm not sure we're right to quit, you and I, when we should have fought them. But there is no way to fight. It's surrender, if we leave—and surrender, if we remain. I don't know what is right any longer.

Francisco:  Check your premises, Dagny. Contradictions don't exist. 

I think Francisco is right, as was dear Ms. Librarian.  Deep within all of our conflicts there is a premise that needs checking, an unfounded assumption that by definition, by deduction, must be wrong.  Ms. Cartwheel librarian called it "cognitive dissonance."  Call it what you want.  Are we brave enough to check ourselves (before we wreck ourselves)?

Or maybe I just like to stir up sh*t more than most people do.

What do you think? I’m just A.S.K.ing…

“Open hailing frequencies, Mr. Worf.”

A year or so ago, I applied for a job, an administrative position, at a nearby private school.  This was a position I really wanted;  it wasn’t just a job for the purpose of receiving a salary and benefits (though the benefits – including tuition waivers for my children – were a major inducement).  My two decades of professional preparation in education seemed to have prepared me for this exact position, almost as if its appearance in the online want ads was preordained.

Does anybody still call them “want ads” anymore?  But I digress…

I submitted my vita, cover letter and a number of references.  And I was quite gratified when, from what I can only imagine must have been a national pool of candidates, I was contacted about setting up an interview.  This was good news, though it was not without its special set of stressors.  As a “corpulent American” (are we a protected class of citizen?) I am incredibly aware of the fact that clothing, even proper, businesslike formalwear, does not sit on me the way it does on, say, George Clooney.  My body makes the fabric do things it normally wouldn’t, and probably, if you asked it, would not wish to.  That, plus, men are generally expected to wear ties.

Oh, dear.

I love ties.  Every time I’m in Macy’s (which happens often, as I have to walk through it to get to the stores in the mall that I actually shop at), I hover droolingly over the Jerry Garcia ties, wishing: a.) that I could afford them; and, b.) that my neck were more human-sized.  For even if I spent $200 on eight gorgeous Garcias, I would not have the shirts to wear them with.  Oh, I have plenty of shirts; all of my shirts have 18-½ or 19 inch necks.  And the shirts fit me fine, relatively speaking.  Except up there.  For me to wear a tie requires a shirt with a 20-inch neck, and that means specialty stores, and that means $50-60 for a shirt, and those are the sale prices.

To put this in perspective, an adjunct college instructor in upstate New York who teaches a full load – three classes in the fall, three in the spring – grosses, if he or she is lucky enough to land at a better-paying institution, around $23,000.  Extra-duty assignments (tutoring, paid exam grading, etc…) can bump that up to around $30,000.  There are no benefits.  Adjuncts do not get asked to teach summer sessions.  Sixty-dollar shirts ain’t gonna happen.  Ixnay on the Arciasgay.
 
But then, on top of that, I found out that the interview was going to be a Skype interview.  My first.

The concept is simple enough.  Every Star Trek episode ever, where captain Kirk, or Picard, or whoever the spin-off shows’ captains were (I gave up after a while) barks “On screen!” to have a video chat with some alien life form aboard another ship – that’s Skype.  It’s a pretty simple principle.  And aside from the fact that the starship U.S.S. Enterprise was never cursed with Windows Vista, it should work pretty much the same – smooth, seamless and natural, like talking to a person sitting across the table from you.

Not so much.  Webcams are small, with a very limited field of vision. I was interviewed by a committee, which meant that they had to, whenever a different person wanted to question me, physically lift and re-orient the webcam so that I could see that person.  It’s also unusual to have such artificially limited feedback; not only is the field of vision limited, but the resolution, both audio and video, is less than optimal.  There is a lot of subtle information, signals and other cues –subvocalizations, body language, proxemics, not to mention whatever may be going on off-webcam – that gets missed on Skype.
 
But the worst part is that humans, when speaking with other humans, like to look each other in the eye, and it seems that no matter what you do with Skype, you can never actually achieve this.  If you look straight into the webcam, you cannot track the facial expressions of the person to whom you are speaking.  If you look straight into the monitor, you are looking the person in the (virtual) face, yes, but your own face will show up as looking somewhat askew or aslant.  (When I catch my own image in the inset picture myself and see that, I tend to subconsciously make a slight corrections to “straighten myself out,” and this of course has the effect of making it even worse.)

For me, it all heightened the anxiety of the experience.  And I hate most interviews, even on a good day.  I find them trite and formulaic. Even interviewers I’ve spoken with hate the generic boilerplate questions that they are directed to ask.  The format itself is in no way an organic conversation, and is of limited value in assessing the worth of a candidate.  Skype makes this even worse, for me anyway, and I think in my case, it shows.  This does not bode well for my prospects with any would-be employer that wishes to interview me via Skype.  (If you are a would-be employer, please disregard this paragraph.  These aren't the sentences you're looking for.)

I get it. I know why employers do this.  It’s not to be trendy for the sake of trendiness; let’s leave that to grade-school educators and their stupid keep-up-with-the-Joneses mentality towards tech adoption.  In a national search, you simply have to extend the same privileges to all of your applicants equally.  I lived only 20 miles away from the school, but other applicants may well have been in other states, or even other countries.  It would not have been fair to offer me a face-to-face interview, and not offer it the other candidates.  And these days, in this economy, I suspect only schools with 9+-figure endowments are willing to pay to fly in interview candidates.  No hard feelings.  "Bygones," as Ally McBeal's  Richard Fish would have said.

I did not get the job.  Was it because there was a more qualified candidate?  Sure, that’s a possibility.  I’m good, but I’m not so hubristic as to think that I de facto trump anyone that a national search would turn up.  (Yeah, I kind of am.)  All I’m saying is that the interview didn’t help.

Maybe Q (of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame) had a point:

"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

Fast forward to this year.  One of my colleges announced openings for two tenure-track positions in my department.  I love this particular school (anybody on the Committee reading this?) and am desperately hoping I get one of the two positions.  I left teaching in secondary schools two years ago, and if I can afford it, I do not expect to go back.  (Click and read here for more on that choice.)  English, however, is a nasty discipline in which to try to find full-time work.  In the nine or so years that I have been teaching and applying for college English positions, I have learned that it is perhaps the most competitive of the disciplines, often with well over 100 CVs submitted for each tenure-track position at the community college level.  Time for that hubris to kick in.

When I was informed that I had been selected for a first-stage interview, I was ecstatic. (I had applied last year, and the year before, and not even been granted a preliminary interview!)  I have no numbers, but I’m guessing they would have whittled down 200 applicants to perhaps 20-30 for that first round.  Then I got the email:  “Please send the Committee your Skype contact information and select one of the available time slots.”

To quote “Ashes to Ashes” by David Bowie, “Oh no, not again.”

The interview was, in my opinion anyway, a train wreck.  For all of the reasons I mentioned above, and more.  However, I made it through to the next round, a fact I credit to the various Jedi mind tricks I surreptitiously employed to bolster my chances.  (Yes, I know, I pulled an Obama, crossing over between Star Trek and Star Wars.  What of it?  While I'm on the subject, however, do any Star Wars geeks out there know if Jedi are able to use their mind-control techniques over electronic communications media?)

The second round was a teaching demo.  I would imagine that perhaps half, or slightly fewer, of the Skype interviewees landed teaching demos, I’ll guess 8-12.  This is more my element.  I think I performed pretty well in the sample lesson, though I had to wait a week to find out I had made it through to the next round, which was a references check.  I was pretty sure that no one on my references list had any grudges or vendettas to fulfill against me, so I thought that would go well.  It took nine or ten days for me to for me to come home from work and find this message on my machine:  “Hi, Andrew, this is so-and-so from the Provost’s office.  We’d like you to contact us to set up an interview for the English position.”

Woo-hoo! Hot damn!

I just got off the phone with the Provost’s executive assistant a couple of hours ago. She tells me that it’s going to be a Skype interview.

*facepalm*  Damn you, Q.

Oh, Those Golden Handcuffs

When I left my last school district, making well over $70,000 (those of you in California reading this will say “so what,” but in upstate New York, a house that would cost $500,000-$600,000 in the suburban San Francisco Bay Area where I used to live and teach only costs $125,000-$225,000), I found it nigh impossible to reestablish with a school district.

My resume looked pretty good – 18 years teaching secondary school and college, three teaching credentials (English, Spanish, ESL), experience being  a department chair (three times), a program manager (twice), and a curriculum designer (twice), oodles of experience with the school accreditation process (four cycles), a fair amount of committee work, and some educational technology experience to boot.  My references were excellent – a small stack of emphatically supportive letters from various people at different levels stretching back 24 months or so.

Then an interviewer in 2011 told me, mid-interview, that there was a problem with my experience.  They simply would not agree to pay anyone in accordance with their experience, citing the ample supply of eager teachers who would work for much, much less.  In my case, that meant that if they were going to offer me a job (which they did not, because I ended the interview) it would be at a salary of perhaps $43,000 instead of $73,000.

Vivek Wadhwa, a blogger and “top linkedin.com influencer,” also a Fellow at the Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, wrote an inspiring article just today (4/25/13) on how industry de-values experience and expertise at its own peril.  An excerpt:

True, some older workers become complacent as they age. They become set in their ways, stop learning new technologies, and believe they are entitled to the high wages they earned at their peak. Their careers stagnate for a valid reason. But these are the exception rather than the rule. Whether it is in computer programming or entrepreneurship, older workers have many advantages—they still are the guru’s [sic].

This entry immediately followed, and was a direct sequel to, a post Wadhwa had written on 4/22/13, on the rampant ageism in the tech industry.  An excerpt:

It may be wrong, but look at this from the point of view of the employer. Why would any company pay a computer programmer with out-of-date skills a salary of say $150,000, when it can hire a fresh graduate — who has no skills — for around $60,000? Even if it spends a month training the younger worker, the company is still far ahead. The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are like a clean slate: They will rapidly learn the latest coding methods and techniques, and they don’t carry any “technology baggage.” The older worker likely has a family and needs to leave the office by 6 p.m. The young can easily pull all-nighters.

What the tech industry often forgets is that with age comes wisdom. Older workers are usually better at following direction, mentoring, and leading. They tend to be more pragmatic and loyal...

The two essays, both absolute must-reads, are two sides of the coin of the realm in the modern world of work – expediency over expertise; malleability over maturity; deference over dynamism.  Employers want people cheap, who will do the job, loyally and faithfully even to a fault, and not get in the way of management’s mission.  And the fact is (and we can admit this as an empirical truth) older folks are less likely to have the kinds of flexibility required of that type of management style.

The redactio ad absurdum at the end of this slippery slope is a scene right out of Ayn Rand’s Anthem:

You shall do that which the Council of Vocations shall prescribe for you. For the Council of Vocations knows in its great wisdom where you are needed by your brother men, better than you can know it in your unworthy little minds. And if you are not needed by your brother men, there is no reason for you to burden the earth with your bodies…

...Thus must all men live until they are forty. At forty, they are worn out. At forty, they are sent to the Home of the Useless, where the Old Ones live. The Old Ones do not work, for the State takes care of them. They sit in the sun in summer and they sit by the fire in winter. They do not speak often, for they are weary. The Old Ones know that they are soon to die. When a miracle happens and some live to be forty-five, they are the Ancient Ones, and children stare at them when passing by the Home of the Useless.  (ch. 1)

Hyperbole? Perhaps.  But bit by bit, older teachers are being forced out in a war of attrition, either for financial reasons, philosophical reasons, or a combination of the two – refer to the saga of Gerald Conti for a refresher course on how principles (as well as principals!) are driving many teachers to abandon the career that many have lovingly dedicated their lives to – and once forced out, it is increasingly difficult for them to find purchase in another teaching position.  They’re just too expensive, and expertise has so little value anymore.

Not only do older teachers cost more (most schools use a salary schedule), but instead of being respected, the changing climate of America public education puts modern progressive mores in direct conflict with the values of most teachers 45+, which has the net effect of stigmatizing older teachers and their experience. I have had numerous hiring committees and district administrators tell me that it's simply not worth it to hire an experienced teacher, unless s/he can be paid a starting teacher price. Younger teachers are more malleable, more eager to please, and more willing to drink the Kool-Aid. There also seems to be a pervasive feeling that older, more experienced teachers, when they try to share their experiences with younger faculty – especially when and if their views diverge, as is more and more the case these days – are somehow hegemonic in asserting their wisdom and experience, as if that somehow invalidates the energy and youthful missionary zeal of younger teachers. It is incredibly divisive, and there seems to be an us vs. them, at least in public school systems I've looked at lately, especially in the current educational climate.

I used to mock professional athletes when they would “hold out,” demanding to be paid “what they’re worth.”  Now I kind of get it.

But here’s a final thought, a sort of counterpoint:  I’m teaching college now, as an adjunct on two campuses.  I’m waiting to hear if I made it through to the third round of interviews for a tenure-track position at one of them.  If I get the job, I will be ecstatic.  It does not bother me that the salary will likely be $20,000-$25,000 less than I would get as a high school teacher.  This is not all about money… there are more ways than just money to value an employee, and to demonstrate that value through a supportive and collegial environment and a teacher-friendly atmosphere.  More and more, public schools have neither.  (My college is, thankfully, an embarrassment of riches in this regard.)  At this point, I don’t know if an offer of $75,000 would be sufficient to bring me back, even though my family desperately needs the benefits, the health care, and the stability.
 
Gerald Conti is leaving the career that he loves after 28 years; I’m guessing his salary is far more than mine was when I left my last school district on "Salary Step 19."  He could hang on for two more years and become more fully vested in his retirement plan, netting him a significant bump in future disbursements.  He is choosing not to.  He is lucky to have the financial stability to be able to make that principled decision.  A lot of veteran teachers do not – they are chained to their job by the very real threat of not being able to find another one, at least not one that pays anything close to what they’re worth, locked in place by the Golden Handcuffs.

What is the key to unlock the Golden Handcuffs?  I dunno.  I’m just A.S.K.ing…