It’s 4:15 and I’ve got a 20 minute bike ride to consider but I’ve just finished my laundry and I need to lay out all the shirts on my bed or they’ll get so wrinkled I won’t be able to recognize them. Also I need to pick up my paycheck from work. I do all this and double-check the e-mail for the theatre address, then leave my house sometime around the half-hour mark with the Friday sun beaming down on the bustle of Midtown.
In twenty minutes I’m passing by the school where I tutor and making a wide left on Broadway, finding myself at the 40 Acres building where Old Soul’s third location co-exists with Kevin Johnson’s mother’s bookstore and the Guild Theatre. I’m sweating and hot and trying to find a place to park my bike while people in nice suits and high-heels gather around the theatre entrance and folks with press passes bother them for quotes. I slip inside among the beautiful people and jot my name down on some random mailing list—doing my part, one newsletter at a time—and then tell the front check-in girl my last name so she can check me off the RSVP list. I see Jill in the lobby and say hello and she says most of the bottom floor is VIP reserved seating, so I head upstairs to look for a spot and the whole theatre is packed with parents, teachers and education reformers of all shapes, colors and sizes. The energy is high. Everyone’s excited to see Michelle Rhee, our mayor’s girlfriend and education firecracker. I snatch a seat next to two charter school teachers. Carrie and Alana show up, these teacher-in-training customers from Old Soul, probably here for the same sort of reason I’m here. One, to see Michelle Rhee. Two, to hear about the problems with education that we’re getting ourselves into, and what we should be aiming to do to repair them when the time comes.
Then the crowd falls quiet and Andie Corso crosses the stage to give her introduction as the Deputy Director of Stand Up. She’s a funny looking woman with square shoulders and a short neck, almost like a Lego character, and with great enthusiasm she explains how tonight’s theme is “Saving Great Teachers,” and what a surprise she has in store for us. Cue the video, which is a little animated explanation of the Last-In First-Out policy that schools use when they fire teachers. LIFO, as it’s adorably referred to throughout the night, is the big enemy (a spin-off from the over-arching tenure debate), and basically says all the new teachers, skill and influence aside, will be pink-slipped before any of the senior teachers, no matter how good of a teacher they are.
As Andie steps down, Scott Newman, a 10th grader from McClatchy High School, comes up to give a little speech about his favorite teachers. I’m realizing as he’s talking that I hardly noticed any of my teachers growing up, and I wish now that I’d been more aware of their role in my life and given them a little more credit. I can remember a thousand different times when I didn’t study or copied a friend's homework or cheated on a test or bullshitted on an essay or procrastinated until the night before an assignment was due. Why? Because I was just trying to make it through. I wasn’t there to learn—I was there to get good enough grades to just get it over with. So Scott Newman comes up and explains how the best teachers are the ones who actually make students care about the subject, and although I know I had those teachers, I simply didn’t notice. What this means to me, I suppose, is that when I become a teacher, I’m going to make damn sure my students give a shit.
Next we have Dr. Kadhir Raja, the 2011 California Teacher of the Year. He hobbles up the steps on crutches and gives a speech on great teachers and the harm we’re causing our children by carelessly firing them. He, a new teacher, was given the TotY award the very same day that he was given a pink slip. Luckily that was overturned (the teacher next to me in the audience had a similar situation at a public school, but was not so lucky). My favorite part of his speech was when he compared the LIFO policy to homicide. Harsh words, yes, but the flinch we felt in the audience was memorable, and it got me thinking that maybe there’s no actual murder going on, but I can see how axing great teachers is really homicide of the mind for the students who are given lackluster education as a result. He hobbles off stage after introducing Michelle Rhee.
This lady has quite a reputation to live up to. No longer the chancellor of public schools in Washington DC, she’s started a program called Students First, which is set to be headquartered here in Sacramento, which is a grassroots (see: volunteers and interns) program aiming to make big changes with education across the country. She talks about how they’ve already revoked tenure in a few states back east. She talks about her experience as the chancellor, the results of her influence and the continuous heat she’s been given by the teacher’s union. She lays out the simple flaw in LIFO and says not a single teacher or parent disagrees with her, so it baffles her—and us—why so many people hold so tightly to an obviously flawed procedure. She plugs her new Students First location on K Street and we watch a little video about the building.
Corrupt power player or not, Rhee has a point: the LIFO thing is ridiculous, especially for someone like me hoping to become a teacher, facing a shitty economy that might just turn around and fire me right away because I’m a rookie, even if I am the most kick-ass teacher that school has ever seen.
Next we have Adrian Fenty, the former mayor of Washington DC, who comes on stage to talk about his education reform battle he fought with Rhee in the trenches of DC. He lists of a few statistics and highlights the test score improvements. I like the guy alright but I can’t help think he sounds kind of drunk, like a relative at a dinner party who’s been sneaking whiskey into their coffee under the table. He was, after all, not re-elected (because of his education reforms, apparently, and lack of union support), so I can understand why he’d have this fuck-off tone. He's probably pissed about not being the mayor anymore. I mean really, unless you're aiming for the White House, what are you supposed to follow that with?
I'll tell you what: the bottle.
Kevin Johnson comes up to be the Mayor and says a few big things about Sacramento, then segues into the panel discussion, which includes George Parker (former president of the teacher’s union) and Rhee and Fenty and Richard Whitmire, who wrote “The Bee Eater,” the story of Rhee’s experience as the chancellor. Here we listen to Whitmire ask questions and lead a discussion that sort of summarizes the past hour of speeches and tells the audience ways they can help create change.
George Parker is neat because he was once Rhee’s rival (as part of The Machine), but has since had a change of heart after looking at his grand-daughter and realizing that his impulse toward private school was unwarranted. Why should there be such a difference between private and public education? What can he do to bridge that gap? Eradicating LIFO and tenure aren’t the only answers, but they are a step forward, and his partnering with Rhee shows that stubborn minds can be changed.
What bugs me about Rhee and Fenty, I suppose, is that they lacked the human connection that Parker shared. The motivation I can relate to. I think it’s ridiculous that we encourage any form of K-12 education that charges tuition. I think it’s ridiculous that we have special privatized schools with better teachers, better funding and long wait-lists. Why not knock down all those walls and just make the free education the better education with better funding? Why’d we let it get so fucked and unbalanced in the first place? So Parker noticed that in his own bias when faced with the future of his grand-daughter. Did Rhee? Did Fenty? Do they have kids? If so, they didn’t share, and because of that they still seem like rich politicians playing chess games with American lives.
For good or bad, they're the players and we're the pawns.
I am convinced on this: get rid of LIFO. Please. I can’t say tenure wouldn’t be great for job security, but it’s really not a healthy procedure, and I’d rather just work my ass off to be a consistently great teacher than rely on some outdated privilege that keeps me there even if I suck.
After the event I wander over to Old Soul for a mocha from Max and bump into Jason, who tells me about the progress they’ve been making toward “adopting” a troubled school and getting involved with a reading program. At this point, I’d much rather get hooked up with that new facet of the Old Soul Empire, but alas I’m still just a barista, although the company’s ambition toward education reform is intriguing and almost (almost) worth sticking around for.
I head into Underground Books to pick up a copy of The Bee Eater for 27 bucks and then wait in line for autographs from the speakers. I shake Rhee’s hand, I shake Whitmire’s hand, I shake Fenty’s hand, I shake Parker’s hand. They’re just people and I’m still not prepared to converse with them, realizing as I’m in line that I have no idea what I’m supposed to say to them. I’m like a kid trying to figure out what to ask for from the Mall-Santa. In the end I tell them they’re all motivational figures. I tell them I’m on the path to becoming a teacher. They tell me to keep going. They need good teachers. Honestly all the while I’m wishing Jenny was here because I’d feel less alone and more inclined to connect with people. On my own, surrounded by teachers and students and reformers, I know I have the potential to talk to all of them, bump shoulders and get connected, but I don’t, and I feel the opportunity slide by and it sucks and when I leave with my autographed book, I don’t feel like I’ve gained much of anything.
Another thing that’s different and difficult to digest is the fact that I’m not a teacher yet. I’m just a barista aiming for a career. So going to these things and hearing about these issues, albeit important, is otherwise irrelevant. I’m not even getting a standard teaching credential. I’m going into the Peace Corps. Who knows if I’ll want to stick around when I get back? Who knows what the state of education will be in three years? So it sometimes feels like I’m jumping the gun, playing the role of an educator without the credentials. Other times, it’s reassuring to know what I’m getting myself into, because I am, very much so, getting myself into this. Sometimes it just feels good to support something.
My TESOL coordinator says I’ll be ready to leave on June 1, 2012.
On the bike-ride home, I rearrange plans with Jenny and Daniel for dinner. We meet up around 8:00 to get on the waiting list at Paesanos, which leaves us an hour to spend getting drinks at the Mercantile and lounging in my bedroom. The dinner, though it almost didn’t happen because the hostess misdialed my phone number, was delicious. Pastas, drinks and salads among us, capped with a fruit yogurt dish, and half the bill was paid for by the manager because she felt bad about our long wait for a table.
Then it’s Shaun’s show (H. Letham's show, to be precise) at Old Ironsides. He’s wasted and having a great time and the band, as always, rocks the house. Jenny and I are excited that they actually have t-shirts now and we each buy one in different colors, sporting them for the rest of the night, bobbing our heads in the audience with the rest of the Friday night crowd.
Afterward Jenny and I get a drink at Shady Lady before going home and I confess to feeling really cloud-headed and frustrated after attending the Stand Up event without gaining a whole lot. I confess to having been there with the selfish hope for a happenstance encounter that would lead me to a new job, but that didn't happen and I didn't talk to anyone or take advantage of the situation in the slightest. I confess to feeling like it was a cult meeting, that I was only hearing one side of an argument and surrounding myself with like-minded people who absorbed everything without question. Jenny says she feels the same way about being a journalist. We fall asleep on the floor and I feel better about getting stress off my chest and Jenny's glad that I've opened up to her and because of that I sleep soundly.
These photos were taken during my walk home from Jenny’s office building after walking her there for her last day with the Academic Senate. Long story short, she had a very strange and stressful final day and was more than happy to leave that place forever. Here’s to her new job at the Co-Op and the positive life changes she’s wholeheartedly embraced.
- Left to Fry
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