Day 20: Saturday, 30 December 2006
Another holiday weekend is here -- a new year on the way too soon. Fabulous response to the sale stuff -- a couple of the big items are sold -- the dryer -- for example. Still lots of 220 fans (I know, it's winter -- but as a metaphor to remember -- summer follows -- light follows dark, hope follows tragedy...) and other storage containers/devices like shelves and modular stacking systems that are perfect for kids' rooms. Several bikes too, sized for kids and teenagers.
You are probably interested in the games-man-ship update. There isn't much to report at this point other than Mr. Werner calling me yesterday and asking if I am still in the Vilseck area. I had the best intentions of being civil. I wasn't completely rude anyway. I really don't want him to call me again though. I don't work for him, I don't report to him, I don't answer to him, and I don't want to talk to him.
As this all drags on I know the drama is tiring. It certainly is for me. I have no real choice in this matter of course and it is a waste of time to wish it hadn't happened or will somehow be corrected. So I have started thinking a bit about some of the opportunity ahead. My dad used to say, "there is no such thing as a problem -- only opportunities in which to excell." That's probably not original to him and when I was a kid it was not as inspiring as I find it at the moment. But, anyone remember the movie White Squall? Kids, some troubled, some just adventurous, traveling on a square-rigger tall ship? The movie has a tragic climax with a storm and the ship foundering, death and mayhem and all the necessary Hollywood fillers, but anyway, those kinds of ship do still exist and have the "school at sea" life aboard. The companies running them need teachers and as I am secondary level qualified in all social studies, all English, and all sciences -- they'll have to hire a real math teacher -- I ought to have a competitive application. Wonder how many dogs they'll let me bring aboard?
I met four darling exchange students from China yesterday. They are studying in France and traveling for the holidays. I wouldn't mind a year in China either. I'd travel out to Xian to see the Terra Cotta Warriors and I'd go to the Gobi Desert to see those Viking (or Anglo Saxon, I can't remember which) mummies that were found there. Hong Kong is a great city. The shopping is amazing there. Haven't been there since I was 10 years old.
That is big-picture future stuff though and although I hope it comes true to the point that I look back at this and see it as just a bump in the road, well, that would be great. Right now I have to fight the sense that I have been badly abused by people who don't care what happens to me and that I am powerless to do anything about the abuse. I think both ends of that sentence are true too. I don't think the administration cared about how this would affect me -- and their disregard for my well-being is not based in the fact that I "deserved to be fired," or whatever they tell themselves to justify their actions in their own minds. I have considered a few other teachers on the staff and wondered -- if they were in my place, would the same thing have happened to them? The answer I come up with is YES. As I have said before, in my opinion this is not really about me -- it is about Mr. Werner carving out his power base.
I have heard about some other dredging into the past that Mr. Werner is busy with exploring. Students who have had "incidents" occur in the past two and three years are being called in and re-investigated. These "incidents" have either been disciplinary or behavioral issues which were settled long ago, but in the interest of bolstering his Bad Cop reputation, Mr. Werner pulls the old information out, bludgeons the hapless student with it and then beats his own gorilla-like chest in triumph. That mirrors what he did to me when, long after Mr. Sennett and I discussed and devised corrective strategies for my yearbook and journalism classes, Mr. Werner writes his memo-for-record noting the "serious flaws." Anybody-- students in particular -- who has ever had any kind of disciplinary or even grievable issue had best watch their back and their records because, from my experience and from my observations, the Deputy Principal has no ability to let an issue be addressed and dismissed.
That brings to mind a conversation I briefly had with Mr. Werner when the en-mass student expulsions happened in September/October. I asked Mr. Werner for a comment about the issue for the student newspaper. He told me he could not comment because he was on the verge of expelling more students for the same gang-related stuff. Only in retrospect now is it clear that what he meant was related to the dredging up of past-and-resolved events that I mentioned above. That same request for a comment, by the way, is what is referred to in the termination letter as the three of us meeting to discuss the spelling errors in the student newspaper -- a rather informal moment for what is now inferred as a corrective action meeting. And that is where the sense of powerlessness hits -- what really happened and what was really said becomes a victim of the official version -- my termination letter. That is one of the motivations that keeps me writing here. I don't expect my situation to turn around now, but I do want the community to hear my side of the story. The effort is feeble I realize and will be overwhelmed by the offical version when I am gone. People move on. I will have to as well.
Along those lines, let's talk about the profanity accusation. Have I talked about this before? I know I wrote about it in my request to Mr. Thompson to reconsider the actions of Mr. Sennett and Mr. Werner. Mr. Thompson never responded to that request -- and I guess he is still investigating whether or not there is any truth in Mr. Werner's empire-building campaign.
As most of you know, I teach Language Arts -- English -- for freshman and seniors. Ever read some of the required reading on the curriculum lists? But let's not even talk about Catcher in the Rye or The adventures of Huckelberry Finn, let's talk about Greek mythology -- Even the 12 Labors of Hercules has a quick trip into Hell written in -- only there it is called Hades. Hell/Hades is a physical place where the dead go for eternity in most mythological traditions. So how is using the word hell in reference to the literature consistant with "admitting to using profanity?" When Mr. Sennett and I had this very conversation, with Mr. Werner sitting in, Mr. Sennett acknowledged that there was a difference between directing profanity at students in fits of anger or some other unprofessional outburst, which I have never done, and the appropriate use of the words as applied in the classroom context. I was stunned when he read the termination letter to me and had queered my words into an admission of using profanity. Most of my students need at the very least an after-school detention in that case since, when they read aloud they quite likely say a few "profanities."
In any case, I believe words have real power -- or I wouldn't be spending so much time writing my thoughts and experiences here! And words have real definitions. Students need to know those definitions because holistically our language is a reflection of our culture and our history. Example? OK. That's a great one -- the word OK. It comes from the African creole word: Hokay. The word came into being during the earliest days of slave trading between African tribes who didn't speak each other's language and later, in trade with the Spanish, English, and French slave trading ships. The word shortened and changed a bit to what we are familiar with today -- Okay -- a form of agreement or understanding that is now globally recognized. But without this explanation if I told you the word "OK" was a slave-trading word you would probably wonder if I had racist issues. These are the kinds of things I teach my students. Their history and their view of the world is framed in language. I think it is best if they know what they are talking about! As for "profanity" all of those words have a history of development and use as well. Some of the world's best literature contains those words, if teaching literature requires me to avoid words like "hell" and "damn," let alone the many, much stronger words of upperclass literature, then perhaps I need to switch to teaching PE.
