Tag Archives: school

Most heterosexuals will never encounter the T in LGBT and that’s really the problem

Memoirs, Relationships, Writing, , , , , , ,

When I was very young, I remember my grandfather once telling me that the way to understand people I don’t understand is to actually interact with them. At that age, I remember him having me introduce myself to random strangers at the mall in Santa Monica, California. It didn’t really matter to him who the person was; he wanted me to approach and meet every person I could.

Now, today, that probably wouldn’t be the greatest approach when dealing with a kid because of how our society has changed to where people practically fear any stranger, but back in that day, it worked. And I learned a lot from it.

That approach carried me through most of my life, and I’m glad for it, but at the same time I understand that not everyone had that kind of upbringing. I was lucky to grow up in a diverse community where there were people from all walks of life. I wasn’t lucky to be born into poverty, but part of me thinks that there were some advantages to that situation, and one of those was the ability to exist with numerous groups of people who gravitated towards the lower end of the economic ladder. Having lived in both sides of the economic spectrum, I would like to think I’ve picked up some of the positive qualities of both. I probably also picked up some of the negative ones, too, but what is a life that doesn’t involve some bit of reflective wondering in hopes of living life to its fullest?

Growing up poor, I lived with those who were always on the edge of despair, if not deeply in the middle of it. Serving in the Army, I was exposed to all sorts of different races and ethnicities, not as separates but as comrades and allies. After the service, I traveled the country, living in numerous communities for months at a time and then moving on to find another. The people I met, and the stories they had to tell and share, filled my memories for the wonder that each and every one of them revealed. After my wanderings, I ended up back in San Francisco (kind of where I ran out of money and had to actually find a “real” job), and I was exposed to all sorts of new experiences.

I should probably mention one of the important aspects of my character, and that’s that people tend to share a lot of information about themselves to me. Partly because I’m receptive, partly because I’m easy to talk to, and mostly because I care about what people have to share with me. A friend once told me that I should have been a counselor or a psychiatrist because of how good I was with people, but I never went that direction because I always felt I was getting something great out of every encounter and taking money for it would have felt wrong.

So at some point I went back to school to get another degree. And this time around, it was different. Before, I went to West Point where my approach was a career in the Army. This time, I wanted to learn about things I missed the first time around. I didn’t even care what it was I was studying. I just wanted to know more abut things I didn’t know.

What kind of things did I learn? Well, aside from rote memorization of school material, I started to learn a lot more about the people who existed around me. I discovered there were people from all sorts of different walks of life. I befriended guys who were paying their way through school by waiting tables but intended to be investment bankers when they graduated, women who wanted to help people by becoming social workers yet funded their education by tying up men and spanking them in dark, air-conditioned lofts above laundromats, nervous English-Second-Language students who signed up for debate because they knew they were destined to be criminal attorneys, and so many others who were all individuals, each with his or her wonderful, personal story that was both unique and important.

One of those unique individuals I came across was someone I’ll refer to as Bobbi who was the person who lived next door to me in a really run-down, flea-infested flat I was living in when I first went back to school. Bobbi was one of those shy types of people who avoided others but always smiled when you said hi, even if the response was nothing more than somewhat of a grunt or nod of the head in recognition. What I found most interesting about Bobbi was that I could never tell what gender Bobbi was. On the surface, Bobbi appeared to be a man that was slowly turning into a female. The hair was blond and frilly, kind of later Farah Fawcett-like, but the mannerisms were quite often both male and female, almost as if they were still fighting their way towards the surface. I remember the apartment clerk once remarked: “She’s in that transition stage where she’s still trying to determine which way she’s going to go.” Future conversations with this clerk indicated that he thought the confusion wasn’t necessarily Bobbi’s but a struggle with how Bobbi wanted to be perceived by those around her (months later, Bobbi said she preferred the pronoun “she” and I’ve never given it another thought).

A few years later, I was working for a church that had a transgender member (for identification, I’ll call her Chris) who was having a very difficult time with those around her. She was very much in the same stage that Bobbi had been, but the struggle was much deeper as this person was scared to make changes because of how she perceived others might not accept her in that capacity. Unlike Bobbi, she quite often returned to her male “self” in the circles of others because of how she felt they might think about her. Years after I parted ways with that organization, I heard from a member of that group that someone had attacked Chris as she was walking home from the church, and she was seriously beaten, to the point that she has never actually recovered.

I’ve known a few more over the years, but to be honest, I don’t think of them as transgendered people I’ve known, but as people I’ve known that just so happened to be transgendered. And I think that’s where the problem stems for so many others who see people who are different as some kind of affront or challenge to them for reasons that make little sense when you spend any time thinking about it.

This is probably why I think being a writer is important. If I was a filmmaker, I think I would want to touch on these subjects as well because what I’ve started to learn is that not a whole lot of people have the life experiences that I’ve had. Instead, they’ve had more sheltered lives that create all sorts of barriers to thinking differently than anything they’ve personally experienced. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are things I’m still struggling with, simply because I’m not perfect, nor have I had every type of experience one can have to tackle so many of these issues. But I would like to think that having some of the experiences I’ve had, at least I’m willing to explore new ideas and opportunities.

And that’s what I fear for those close-minded individuals out there who see the world through a closed prism. And it’s probably why a common individual can have such hateful thoughts and still think he or she is a good person. I wish there was a way to expose everyone to a world of experiences so that they could reach that understanding that hating a person for being different is equal to hating one’s self for not being open enough to want to learn more about one’s fellow people. Because once you live with the people you might hate, chances are pretty good you’re going to be forever changed by the experience.

Some updates and current projects

Education, The Deck Const, Writing, , , , , , ,

caption134Well, the first semester at the new college in Texas is finally coming to a close, and let’s just say that things haven’t been all that great, but at the same time, I’m still here, and hopefully things will start to improve a bit. It’s honestly a struggle to teach at a college/university where students aren’t all that interested in doing the work, the institution isn’t all that interested in supporting its faculty and staff, and there’s just not a whole lot of money to pay debts that were actually promised.

Yeah, it’s been a bit of a struggle. We’re all being put on furlough, which means we’ll be losing 20 percent of our pay next semester, and it just makes it really difficult to want to continue coming to a place where you feel like you’re not really respected for the kind of work that you do. Oh well.

As for my writing projects, The Deck Const: Shadows & Rumors was published last month, so it’s now available on most e-readers and on paperback through Amazon.com. I was pretty happy with it.

My next project is a series of three books all involving the King Arthur legend. For years, I’ve been doing the background research for this novel, and now I’m finally ready to start putting it onto paper. The working title has been Return to Camelot, but I can’t promise that’s the name it’s going to end up having.

Not much else going on. The Christmas season is about to come upon us, so I’m hoping that means a few weeks of rest and relaxation. But, of course, I intend to write during that time, so we all know how that whole rest thing goes under such circumstances.

Still no such thing as a free lunch

Economics, News, Politics, , , , , , , , , ,

Some moron running for senate in Georgia thinks he has a great idea to, well, I don’t really know what it would solve, but like usual, a House Representative in Georgia, who wants to rise in power, thinks it’s a really good idea to put school children to work to earn their “free lunches.” Basically, U.S.Representative Jack Kingston thinks it would be really nifty for the poor to put them to work sweeping up cafeterias for their lunch money, because somehow this would instill in them the idea that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. If you think about it, he’s advocating a legal fix to an old adage that doesn’t actually have a lot of connection to anyone’s reality.

The obvious counter to this whole situation is this belief that somehow this is going to make poor kids feel like they’ve “earned” their lunch. No kid pays for his or her own lunch at that age, or at least very few do, because no kids have their own money at that age. Their parents give them money, so they aren’t learning money management skills. They’re learning that their parents have money, or they’re learning that their parents have no money. That’s really the lesson that gets taught here no matter how some Republican Neanderthal wants to spin it.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Well, it’s not really a secret, but I grew up dirt poor. My mom was uneducated and my dad split when I was too young to ever know him. So my mom worked crap jobs and was basically too uneducated (and proud) to take government handouts. She probably should have. It didn’t help that she was sick and then went blind in one eye. She tried and that’s really all that’s important.

So, at one point I was put on discount lunches. Somehow, even though our apartment was overrun with cockroaches on a daily basis and our neighbors were crack addicts and prostitutes, we were too well off to get full free lunches. So, my mom had to pay a certain amount of money and then got discounted lunches for me when I went to school.

Let me tell you about those discounts. They gave you a special paper card that you had to present each and every time you presented for lunch, and the system was so obviously designed to point out that you were using this card, which meant that every other kid looked at you when you were presenting it, and I can’t tell you how bad kids are at making someone feel like shit in some weird process of making themselves feel better about themselves. It was humiliating every time I had to present that card and then pay my token of the discount I was allowed to pay. There were many times when I skipped lunch because it was easier to not eat than to have to go through that process each and every time at lunch.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that Representative Kingston never had to go through that experience when he was growing up. And I’ll bet that not once has one of his children ever had to go through such a thing just to get a stupid lunch meal. That sort of thing scars you for a long time, and even in my middle age these days, I have never forgot how it felt to have to present that stupid card when I was at that age.

And that’s the problem with a lot of our representatives who think they actually represent people they serve. Edmund Burke argued a long time ago that he could “represent” miners in his district even though he’s never been a miner because he knows what’s best for them. He was wrong then, and Kingston is wrong today. I’m sure there’s a special place in Goddess Hell where Kingston has to ask for a school lunch each and every day and is told that no, he must starve because there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Whether or not there are children who are unteachable

Uncategorized, , , , ,

Dave Murray of MLive published an interesting commentary on Are there Children Who Are Unteachable? What’s most interesting about the post is the commentaries from mostly Michigan readers of MLive (which is the online presence of the Grand Rapids Press). After you get beyond the knee-jerk reaction responses of people who post to every article with diatribes against whatever spot issue they have, some of the responses actually become quite interesting. I’ll let you read through all of that on your own and save my personal views on the issue, mainly because unlike the majority of the responders, I realize that I’ve never been a grade school teacher, so I’m not going to truly understand how difficult (or easy) it might be.

However, I thought I would share one somewhat similar story because it involved one of the first classes I was teacing. It was about a decade or so ago when I was teaching political science at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. I was really new, and I’d be shocked if I wasn’t making numerous mistakes in my attempt to use my doctorate knowledge in political science to teach others. However, one thing that remains in my memory was one student I had who was struggling throughout the entire semester.

He was a quiet Hispanic younger man who rarely chimed in during class, and we were nearly halfway through the course when he remained after class and wanted to speak to me. He said he was having trouble with some of the information and wondered if there was anything he could do to bring himself up to speed. Now, over the years, a lot of us teachers have a similar kind of story where some student, who is failing the course, suddenly realizes he’s failing out and tries to salvage his grade. He’ll promise all sorts of thing, but usually not deliver. Generally, this really burns out a lot of teachers because this happens so many times.

However, I offered him the chance to stop by my office hours, and I’d look deeper into his situation (as it wasn’t something we could solve in the few minutes after a lecture). To my surprise, he showed up the next day for my office hours.

We sat down for about an hour, and he told me what was giving him problems. Our subject at the moment in class was about Congress and the committee structure. His question, when he asked it, opened me up to realizing something that really impacted me. He wasn’t confused about Congress and the committee structure. He had no idea what Congress was.

During all of my lectures about Congress, I just sort of assumed that most young college students at least knew what Congress was, so that it was an easy jumping off point. My conversation with him made me realize that he had no idea what the concept of the legislature branch was and was listening during all of the classes, unsure of how to place it in greater context with the things he did know. And shortly after he started communicating, I began to realize what his context was: He knew nothing but street life, violence and family that threw him out of their home when he was only a teenager. He was working a crappy job, and someone told him the only path to any future success for him was either joining a gang (something he was considering) or school. So he decided to try school first.

Still not convinced he was on the level (as to his desire to actually pass this course), I gave him the opportunity to visit me during my office hours each time I held them, and I said I would try to help him figure out what he didn’t know. I figured he’d be like most students who would act really interested and then I’d never see him again. But he showed up each office hour, and he brought his book, opening it up each time and pointing out the things that didn’t make sense to him.

At this time, I was talking to a college colleague, who saw this student in my office one day and then pulled me aside, indicating that the majority of the instructors knew who he was and gave up on him a long time ago because “he is lazy”. Not convinced, I then offered my student the opportunity to visit my office for more periods beyond my office hours, just to see if he was serious.

And he was. After a few weeks, he started to actually do much better on quizzes and examinations. And his questions were always very well thought out. By the time we reached the final examination, he was earning a solid B in the class.

He passed my class, and he then stopped in one day a few semesters later, saying that he was transferring to a local university, having been accepted under a special program for indigent students. Where he is this day, I don’t know, but I can only hope he managed to finish and made a better life for himself.

However, I did want to point out a couple of things. I really felt ill about my fellow colleagues at that time, because they gave up on this student long before they ever should have. He wasn’t lazy. He was just lost. The other thing is that I also realize that my experience doesn’t prepare me to comment on K-12 education as I have never taught in those arenas. It also doesn’t talk to the realization that if I had been confronted by a classroom full of this same type of student, I might not have reacted the same way, having been so overwhelmed, there’s no telling what mechanism I might have used to keep myself from being overcome by such problems. This is the fact that a lot of teachers have to face on a daily basis with entire classrooms of struggling students, and it doesn’t surprise me that so many good teachers probably burn out and never continue.

So, if I was to comment at all, I’d think that what’s needed is administrative attention to detail on how to best support those teachers out there who want to do more but are overwhelmed. Just blaming teachers for not doing enough is often a very weak approach, quite often enough to push even more teachers out of the business. I read through all of the comments that come from MLive, and I’m often saddened to the point where I realize that I’d never be a grade school teacher with such hostility pointed at that discipline.

I think I’m going back to school

Education, Memoirs, , , , , , , ,

Well, I’ve been mulling this decision over for some time now, and I’ve finally come to a conclusion: I’m going to go back to school. Even though I have enough degrees as it is, this isn’t about getting a new degree, but it’s much more about trying to find a purpose in life. Unfortunately, my current trajectory is taking me in directions that are suck in mud, and it’s been driving me nuts lately.

Unfortunately, all of my graduate degrees in social science have led me to absolutely nothing. I can’t get a job. At all. I’m qualified to teach political science and communication, and no one hires. I mean, NO ONE HIRES. Currently, I”m working as an adjunct, and I’ve been offered other “adjunct” positions in both fields, but finding a full time teaching job is not even possible. Most of the time, I’m lucky to get a form letter rejection thanking me and informing me they’ll keep my application on file. This has convinced me that the only way to actually get a college teaching job is to know someone in the school already, and unfortunately, I don’t know anyone in the school already. This means, I’m doomed to a lifestyle of submitting applications that will be circular filed and nothing else.

So, I started spending some time analyzing what it is I actually want to do. My forte is mathematics and hard-based science. It’s something I actually enjoy. It causes me to think. Right now, I hardly think at all. There’s no need for it. Political science requires no thinking. You either know it, or you don’t. Communication doesn’t involve that much more, other than a need to read more material. But in the end, the same ideas that were espoused in the 1950s, are the ideas that are ground-breaking today. Daniel Goldman just reiterated Sarni’s work, while practically every identity scholar reinvents Black. I tried to develop something completely new, designing an additive theory linking both political science and communication to produce a brand new strategy of international negotations. Was I successful? I think so. The result: No one cares. Diplomats are only interested in doing what they’ve been doing since Napoleon discovered he had a short person complex. Social science is a path to obscurity and reinvention (with a new paint finish!).

So, I’ve decided to pursue the biological sciences. My immediate goal right now is something involving forensic science, possibly leading to medical school (but not being a practicing doctor but more of a research-type professional). It was a direction I was going before, so at least now I’ll try taking it seriously.

What I have discovered is that I’m doing absolutely nothing with my life. I have a job where I do not feel respected as a professional in any way whatsoever. I’m literally a glorified editor (without the glory). During the year, I’m told I’m doing an “adequate” job, but whenever it comes time for the yearly performance review, I’m “just not doing enough”. But the job isn’t designed to give the opportunity to do anything, which precludes the possibility of “enough” in all cases. I don’t think I’ve really stretched my brain more than two times that I’ve been here. There will never be opportunities for advancement, as I’m not a medical professional, so I’m going to be stuck in the same job, same pay grade just shy of achieving the yearly cost of living percentage increase.

Therefore, I have to create my own opportunities, and that’s what I’m going to be doing.

So my quandary, or struggle, right now is trying to figure out exactly how to do it. I really don’t want to spend years and years starting over with school when I’m sure I shouldn’t have to. I tried contacting Western Michigan University (as their close to local) to inquire about their biology program, and basically the “counselor” responded by throwing the ball back in my court, as administrative types tend to do a lot. I asked specific questions, and not a single one of them was actually answered. I got a “send us all of your transcripts and we’ll see where you stand” response. My question was: “Does the local campus for WMU actually offer biology courses?” Anway, you’d think by now I’d be used to these types of responses from people.

So, that’s where I am right now. My life isn’t working as planned, mainly because I haven’t realy planned it out that well. So I have to find something else.

Arbitrary Observations on a Thursday Afternoon

Education, Memoirs, Relationships, Social Networking, , , , , , ,

I was walking from one building where I work to another one, which involves a couple of doors that need to be opened. As there was a bit of pedestrian traffic in the area, at one point I found myself holding the door open for other people. At the time, I ended up holding the door open for four different people at different times (not one right after the other), and the one thing that struck me as odd was that each person reached for the wide open door I was holding, almost as if I was going to shut it in their face. If it would have happened once, it would have just been one of those things, but four different people all reached for the opened door, almost as if they had bad experiences with other people holding open the door for them. Kind of strange. At least they said thank you, even though they seemed to suspect I was going to rescind my offer to keep the door open for them.

Another observation: When teaching at a community college, I’ve discovered that the axiom once taught to me by Professor Ashlyn Kuerstin was that you should always explain on the first day of class that attendance is mandatory AND that the death of your grandmother doesn’t affect attendance. I forgot to give her spiel this time around. Two students have now reported ill or dead grandmothers. Kind of strange, but strangely enough, expected.

One of my colleagues was let go today by the company for not meeting expectations. I walked by her desk today and noticed her half filled (or half empty, depending on psychological disposition) cup of water is still on her desk, the straw in it, as if ready to continue drinking. I guess someone will eventually clean it up and throw it out. I often wonder what that person must think to himself as he or she cleans up after someone’s now empty desk. Probably just glad it was someone else. Or not. Who knows what people think?

I have tomorrow off from work. I have a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon, and I need to get to the Secretary of State’s office to renew my auto registration, which means I have to find my current insurance card (for some reason I never replaced my old one, even though I have the same insurance and the same policy number). I’ll probably have to sit in that place for a few hours because it’s always slow no matter when you go there. I guess that’s why I put off these sorts of things. I hate bureaucracy, almost as much as Kafka.

I kind of wish I had some kind of social life these day, but I don’t. I don’t even really have close friends anymore, other than a few close colleagues who I basically only ever get to see at work (one of whom I consider a friend, even though we don’t really spend any time together outside of work). I’m at that age where I don’t really feel comfortable going to bars (I don’t drink), especially alone, and I don’t really have any other options to meet people. E-dating never works, at least not for me. I sometimes suspect that the same people doing well at e-dating are the same people who do well at regular dating; they’re usually players who lie to women and get away with it. I’ve never been good at that sort of thing, and because of it, I’m probably never going to meet anyone. Women talk about liking nice guys and all that, but they lie, and everyone knows it. Eventually, they might settle for a nice guy after they’re done playing their own games, but by then, we’re off the market, playing World of Warcraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic, because at least there we have something that makes a bit of sense, even if it means no real social interaction.

Anyway, that’s my Thursday. I teach my class tonight at the college, and then I go grocery shopping before heading home to a house full of friendly stuffed animals. Well, mostly friendly. Some of them can get a bit roudy. But they mean well.

When You First Begin to Realize You’re Never Going to Change the World

Memoirs, Writing, , , , , , , ,

I was one of those little precocious kids who grew up, convinced that he was one day going to change the world. At first, it was going to be through science, as I studied physics, sure that I was able to see the world in ways that no one else possibly could. I had my ground-breaking theory that re-explained the universe’s creation through a process called neutra-matter (my own invention) that was the embodiment of light, and thus, the separation particle that kept the barrier between matter and anti-matter. It all made sense to me, and actually still does. I worked through college to become a physicist, and throughout my education, I devoted a great deal of time just trying to disprove the theory so I could move onto something better. And I never did. So it might be true. Or not. We’ll never know because I didn’t remain in physics, and even if I did, I hit a point where I started to realize that no one really cared.

Yeah, that was true. No one cared. I had this great idea, and I was convinced it could change science. But again, no one cared. So I moved onto a different field. Genetics.

In genetics, I was quickly invigorated with a new idea that consumed my every scientific thought. I now had a convincing argument as to how the AIDS/HIV strain first emerged, and coordinating this theory with the concepts of archaeology (which I was also studying at the time), I realized that there was a way to use my theory to trace down Patient Zero, and possibly erect a cure for AIDS by creating a genetic suppressor from the origin rather than from the current variation of the virus. And it made a lot of sense to me.

So, as this was during the dawn of the AIDS era, I managed to convince a coordinator of the first AIDS conference to listen to my theory, and she was so intrigued by it that she arranged a meeting with me and a group of scientists who were all part of the first conference. They read my report, called me in and then in a round table discussion, asked me all sorts of questions about my theory. And they were intrigued. And then one of them asked me where I got my medical degree, and I revealed that my education was in physics, and that I did not have a medical degree. Essentially, the discussion was over, and no one was really interested in hearing anything else I had to say. In the end, my theory was shelved, and I went on with my life. Decades later, AIDS is still out there, and unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to be cured any time soon. Of course, I can’t say my theory would have done it, but it bothers me that it was never followed up.

Many years later, I was in graduate school after doing the whole Ph.d thing in political science. This time, however, I was pursuing communication. And suddenly it dawned on me that our usual process for conducting diplomacy was wrong. In the middle of the night, I woke up with an additive theory, utilizing political science international theory, interpersonal communication theories, a communication rhetoric theory and a mathematical model I designed in my head that would eventually be completed through computer modeling. This new theory, I predicted, would lead to a brand new way of conducting negotiations and diplomacy. Latching onto one of my fellow grad students with a background in history, we wrote up a theoretical paper on this and then presented it at communication conference. After that, a few people from different organizations contacted me by email asking me more questions, but over time, I starrted to realize that it also required people to really think differently than what they were used to. When I tried to present it to the Obama Administration, I realized no one was really interested in learning. People were pretty satisfied with doing things the way they had been doing them since the days of Caesar, so very quickly I got the impression that I was barking up trees that no one wanted me barking near. So I gave up on that as well.

The point is: At some point, you start to realize that no matter how many great ideas you have, eventually you’re probably going to hit the point where you realize that most people generally don’t care. The status quo is so much easier to stick with, so the amount of work involved in getting anyone interested in change is practically at a ridiculous premium. It’s a lot like the Occupy Wall Street movement that’s going on right now. I mean, they have great ideas and the best intentions at heart. But the reality is that no one is going to listen to them, and mostly what they will receive for their efforts is ridicule and pepper spray. You can’t convince people to change their ways, even if the change is in their own best interests.

So, at some point, you have to realize that as much as you like, you can have all of the greatest intentions in the world, but at some point you need to do the proverbial growing up of reality and settle for mediocrity and, if lucky, a small step after a period of anarchical punctuated equilibrium.

That’s where I am now. There are so many things I wanted to do with my life, so many things I thought I would do with my life, but in the end, I realize that it really didn’t amount to much. No fame. No fortune. No changing of the minds of the masses or even a few leaders. Not even a really cool career or a stable girlfriend (or an unstable one for that matter). At some point, you begin to realize that all you really have is an apartment full of friendly stuffed animals, a shelf of unpublished, or crappily published, novels, reruns of Star Trek and a World of Warcraft account. Had I known that a long time ago, I probably would have chosen a much easier route to get here.

Reviewing “That Used to Be Us” by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum

Books, Business, Economics, Education, News, Politics, , , , , , ,

I picked up this book on whim, not sure if it would end up being partisan drivel, interesting or just a waste of time. Well, halfway through it, I decided on “interesting”. While reading it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my experience when I was reading the book “Teachers Have It Easy” (don’t remember the three authors), a book that tells the brutal truth of what it’s like to be a teacher. I remember at the time of reading that book how some of their stories rivaled my own, and there were times when I just shook my  head because I knew that other people needed to be reading the book, but they never would (or will). So, I’d end up reading a book that reinforced what I already knew, and I’d constantly be berated by people who knew nothing of teaching, but would act like they knew everything because “my mom was a teacher” or “I know a teacher” or my favorite: “I don’t have to be a teacher to know how easy they have it.”

“That Used to Be Us” also talks about one of the platforms that needs to be embraced in order to make things better, and one of those platforms involves teachers. In order to make America strong again, we need to empower teachers, and that means asking a lot of people to do something that definitely won’t be in their best interest, and that’s the part their book never really addresses. You see, the majority of the critics against teachers outright hate teachers. They don’t know enough about them, but they know that they hate them, and they take every opportunity to cast ridicule upon them. I see it on message boards and newspaper letter sites all of the time. MLive.com is one of those that excels in this. What happens is a bunch of “good ole’ boys” start posting about how teachers have it so easy with their big paychecks, their miniscule hours and the fact that they get these HUGE vacations every year. And then they’ll drone on about unions and how teachers are lazy, overpaid, quite often stupid, and more often than not, the problem. Try to talk to them politely, and they flame you left and right. Try to engage them in argumentation, and they start making personal attacks that have no actual basis in reality, but are designed to hurt and throw mud all over the walls.

Friedman and Mandelbaum rightly believe that the solution needs to start with an empowering of teachers who will then embrace a Colorado style of educational reform, but at the same time don’t seem to offer any way of getting everyone else on the side of teachers to make it happen. What ends up happening almost every time that standards are increased is that they become punitive so that unions become defensive, and then you end up with no one actually trying to improve things for children but people are seen as targets rather than part of the solution. For most people, educational reform is a zero sum game where one side has to lose for the other side to win, rather than their approach which is for all sides to win. Unfortunately, that’s what always makes it completely incapable of achieving success.

Part of the solution would be a simple paradigm shift in respect towards educators, which doesn’t happen too often in this country. I saw it when I went to Korea and was traveling home through China. I was stopped at the Beijing Airport, and I was being questioned about the medication that I was carrying with me (I had stupidly forgot to pack the prescription information with it, and Korean pharmacies have a tendency to just package pharmaceuticals in individual bags with no markings on them). I was in a seven hour layover, so I wasn’t in any hurry, but it didn’t look like I was going to be getting through customs any time soon. However, about fifteen minutes or so into it, one of the customs guards asked me my occupation, and I said I was a teacher, that I taught little kids (which is what I had done in Korea). His eyes opened, and he immediately took off to track down his supervisor, who had been in and out of dealing with me about the whole “drug” issue. The supervisor came back with another customs guard, a young woman. They both stood there for a second and just stared at me. Then the first guard started talking to them with animation, pantomiming the whole “little kids” action I had done when describing my job. Then both the supervisor and the other customs woman smiled, thanked me for my time and packed up all of my Korean bags of pharmaceuticals into my bag and released me to the waiting area untl my plane arrived.

Right then and there, you could see how much respect they had for someone who actually taught children. It didn’t matter that I was an American, and that the children I taught were Korean. I was a teacher, and it mattered to them.

We don’t get that sense of pride in this country. Ever. And that’s why it is so hard to find quality teachers who really care about their job. It obviously isn’t the money that keeps them in the profession, no matter how much political spin people want to put into it. For someone who has a master’s degree, the pay for the work isn’t worth it. The drama, the politics, the hassles and the unrealistic expectations with the lack of care of parents for the proficiency of their children…just doesn’t make it worth it. So it has to be something that keeps teachers in the business, and quite often it’s the few successes they do get from the struggles we go through.

Unfortunately, as long as the people in this country treat teachers as they always treat teachers, don’t expect things to get any better. And as for the book, much like the previous book I mentioned, I don’t expect anyone to read it who needs to read it. It will be read by people who already have an idea of what the book is expected to say, and only by them. I’ve actually be surprised at a lot of the information contained in the book, and I am one of the people who tends to read this kind of book. Unfortunately, the people who need to read it…well, they won’t.

Chicago, Moving, and the Process of Reinventing Writing

Books, Memoirs, Relationships, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , ,

Not much going on, so I thought I would do another recap of what might actually be going on. So, here goes:

1. Took a trip to Chicago this weekend.

I have to admit that I’ve never really given Chicago a fair shake. One of my friends, Kevin, is from Chicago and always talked up the place in a positive way. Having been there a few times, I never really found myself enamored with the place. So, I went there specifically to meet up with someone, and while I had a good time meeting her, the place itself met the expectations I had going into it. I found the place to be mostly dirty, kind of like you’d expect from any large downtown city. I was in the Chinatown area of the city (or at least one of them), so the people were generally friendly, but there wasn’t really that much more to say about it.

Getting to Chicago kind of sucked, and it wasn’t really the fault of Chicago itself. It was the fault of Indiana. And then Chicago. At one point, I went through what seemed like an endless series of toll booths. I’m not kidding. I drove less than a half a mile after a toll booth, and I was driving up to another one. It’s like the government workers had their hands out nonstop while traveling through their mecca. And the first toll booth person I dealt with was one of the more rude ones you come across. She was hostile, scowling, and she held her hand so far back in her booth (to provide change for the bills I gave her) that I had to open my car door and practically walk over to her to get her to give me my money back. I noticed that she didn’t have a problem taking my money; she just wasn’t all that excited about having to stretch her hand out to give any back. That’s HORRIBLE customer service, and obviously she doesn’t care, which means her bosses don’t care, and thus, neither does its government. I started to immediately hate Chicago, and I wasn’t even ten feet into the city.

Leaving Chicago was a lot easier. And a relief. Did I mention I don’t really like Chicago? I guess you have to have been born there, or really like big cities with rude people in them. I guess a New Yorker would love Chicago. A San Franciscan? Not so much.

2. School is back in swing.

I’m starting the third week of school, and everything seems to be going well. I’m kind of apprehensive about continuing this job in the future (after this semester) as I really feel like I’m being taken advantage of. The place they have me teaching is in Lowell, which is pretty far away (another city), and the main point they made is they don’t pick up mileage for having to drive my car twice a week twenty minutes to half an hour. You’d think if they really wanted someone to fill this type of position, they’d be somewhat responsive to the fact that it’s costing me money to actually make it to this place twice a week. This school has a tendency to be pretty cheap when it comes to covering certain things, and sometimes I wonder if it’s really worth it. I mean, the pay isn’t stellar, and it does take a great deal of chunk of time out of my normal schedule. Again, this is one of those cases where a teacher is kind of left with a thought of how much do I really want to teach versus how much I’m willing to sacrifice with getting very little in return. I’m already at a loss from a simple economic perspective as my text book for one of my classes went missing after the very first day (when I know I had it in class with me); that never makes one feel really good about things.

3. Moving.

I’ve been trying to find a larger place for myself within my own housing complex, and I’ve been disappointed at the experience. On Friday, I spoke with the woman at Wyndham Hill, and she told me that a two bedroom apartment (pretty close to where I wanted to move to) would be available at the end of October, but that the people were still in the apartment, so I couldn’t lay any claim to it until they vacated. Today, I called to verify the time frame, and she told me that the apartment was already given to someone else over the weekend. Which, if you think about it, means that someone else came along and picked up the apartment, EVEN THOUGH she told me that there was no way to ask for it until the other family vacated, which they have not. In other words, I got screwed, and there was no way I could have done anything about it. One of the problems with the place where I live is that no matter what I try to ask for, something always seems to prevent me from getting it. A garage opened up closer to my apartment (I’ve seen it open and empty) but when I asked if I could switch to it, I was told no garage was available. It’s still empty. I kept asking for a den apartment, but was told it was a hard commodity to get, so I asked to be put on the waiting list for when it became available. Each time it became available, it turned into a first come, first serve situation where no one let me know it was available, and obviously there was no list or line. I just got ignored yet again.

So I may just move out completely. I hate moving over stupid shit, but what can you do? I’m currently looking at a series of apartments near 28th Street, which would put me in walking distance to shops and a potential social night life. Where I live now is conducive to feeding ducks, and that’s about it.

4. Writing

I haven’t been doing much writing lately, mainly because I’ve been completely discouraged by the whole writing industry. I had an agent at one point who just kind of disappeared, had another agent after her who sort of just, well, disappeared, and getting a new one after him has been a continuous series of failures. And no, they didn’t disappear because of anything I did. Honestly. I have an alibi. Really.

Part of the problem for me is that I have such grandiose projects I’m working on with my writing that no longer consist of “Get an idea, tell a story and then revamp it.” Instead, I’m focused on analyzing a genre, trying to turn it on its head completely and do something that seems almost impossible for me to do, and every writing project has felt that way, until I finish it, and then I feel as if I’ve learned a whole new chapter in my writing, so I have to go out and break new ground for the next one. I’m not sure anyone understands what I’m saying here because most people when I tell them I’m a writer, still think that I’m referring to sitting down and writing a cute story. I’ve even stopped telling people what I’m writing because they tend to stare at me blank-faced and, if I’m lucky, they’ll ask, “Okay, but what’s the story about?” In other words, there’s a miscommunication thing going on, and a lot of it is due to my impatience with explaining the process of writing something from a completely different perspective of normal literature. I’d say that someday people will understand what I’ve been trying to do (as they analyze it in post-modern literature analysis courses), but part of me (a large part of me) suspects that most people will never hear of me because I’m doomed to writing for myself, having given up on the publishing world already as too sporadic and celebrity centered for someone like me to ever make it. Yeah, I know there’s the cynic out there thinking, “Or maybe you just suck, Duane.” And the part of me that’s most concerned is the part that thinks that cynic may be right, and I’ve been wasting my time and energy when I could have been a lot more productive if I would have focused all of my energy on getting my mage to level 85 in World of Warcraft.

5. Dating.

What’s that?

That’s all for today. I keep plugging forward, thinking that Einstein’s theoretic is wrong, and that perhaps if you do continue to do the same stupid thing over and over again, you WILL get different, better results.

I is a teacher

Education, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , , , ,

A new semester is finally about to begin. Again, I will be teaching college political science and interpersonal communication, two separate disciplines, but two fields I am qualified to teach). Strangely enough, the two disciplines really aren’t that different from each other.

While I’m looking forward to a new semester of new young (and some older) minds to educate, I’m also feeling a bit apprehensive, and it’s mainly because our country is so negative towards teachers that I’m tempted to tell America to go screw itself and stop educating anyone on anything. The money isn’t all that great, so that’s not the only reason anyone would ever teach. But whenever I read about some critic of education going all half cocked about how teachers are lazy, how they only work a short period of time and get great pay (which they rarely do), and all sorts of other insults, I want to just say screw it. It’s not worth it. If America sees education as less important than business than let’s let the market figure it all out (which to make a long story short, the market is completely incapable of handling altruistic disciplines, like education, because there is no profit in doing the right thing to make your country benefit in the long run). Altruism, which is quite often the only reason to teach, is very difficult to maintain, especially when society goes out of its way to ridicule your field and everyone who has ever gone to school is convinced he or she is an expert on teaching, even though they have absolutely no experience at teaching, or so little that they have nothing solid to contribute.

When I first started teaching years ago, I remember being bogged down by the fact that I was overly concerned that a few of my students were struggling and no one else seemed to care. Other colleagues would tell me they were lazy, so forget about them, but I didn’t feel that way, and by getting closer to them, I discovered that there was more going on with their personal lives that was actually interfering with their learning. I realized then and there that they were going to fail because everyone else gave up on them because it was too much work to care, not because it was the right or wrong thing to do. What I discovered then and there is that educators who care are quickly discouraged from caring and working harder, quite often by the system, and sometimes by the same people they educate. Yet, I was convinced that this was important to overcome, or our very reason for teaching was gone.

Years later, I found myself in the same situation with a few students just last semester. It was so difficult to try to be more available than the system allowed, yet I tried, and in the end all you get is sometimes a belated thank you from someone who may or may not have saw you as their ally rather than the person who was making their education “more difficult” by forcing them to jump through hoops no one forced them to do so in the past. A couple of students out of the blue contacted me and thanked me, which may not have been the reward that completely paid back the efforts, but it helped, and that sort of thing is the item that keeps a teacher going. However, when attacked by so many other who really don’t care and see you as the enemy (for bizarre reasons that make no logical sense), it becomes less and less likely that you’ll continue trying.

So, I go into a new semester, thinking that maybe this will be the time when I find that one struggling student who needs that certain nudge forward, and hopefully I won’t be discouraged, rejected and forsaken at the time that one person needs a little more from an educator who is doing everything possible just to make sure the trains run on time (for the sake of an Italian historical reference of competent leadership).

When you’re standing up in front of a class of students and explaining the virtues of the governmental system, as proposed by Adams and Madison, you have to bite your lip after that young student in the back row raises her hand and asks: “Do we have to know that for the test?” I remember once responding to that exact question with a ten minute lecture on the importance of knowing information, history and relevance to all sorts of connective synapses of knowledge. How Caesar understood that Alexander’s charge into India incorporated phalanx technology with the scattering of forces or how Patton understood that Caesar’s understanding of Alexander showed him how a faster tank can be stopped by a barrage of spread ammunition. To them, nuance was more important than specific knowledge, but they came to specific knowledge through understanding of nuance. Even when explaining such things, you’ll still have one student sitting there wondering, “is this going to be on the test?”

Unfortunately, teaching can be a lot like that.