I have a really serious case of tartingles this morning. “Tartingles” – a term coined by a friend of mine – is embarrassment felt for another person. This morning that person is Dani, a well-dressed young woman from Kansas. She wears all black except for a green, blue, and purple scarf; her hair recalls the style of Uncle Jesse from Full House. She is dressed in her job interview best because no one has told her that, as a native English speaker, she could show up in ripped jeans with an exposed thong and a marijuana leaf t-shirt and still get the job. The fact that she speaks English and wears clothes makes this guest teaching a mere formality.
I sit in the back and watch her teach my fifth graders. As the person she will replace, I am ostensibly here to evaluate whether or not she is a capable, qualified candidate. It's a farce. I know that unless she kills a student – or I tell her the awful truth – she'll be doing my job on Monday. I wonder if I have a moral obligation to say to Dani, “Run for your life! Save yourself!” Do I run back into the burning building for her? I'm not a firefighter. If the school can't replace me by Monday, will they return my passport? (The school's lawyers have been in possession of my passport, visa, and birth certificate for over a month as they try to make me a legal resident.) Which one of us do I save?
Should I tell her that we have no text books, no paper, and no dry erase markers because doing without them means more profit for the owners? Errr... I mean because we're a “green” school. Should I tell her that, even though we are an environmentally and financially conscious school, the classrooms are encouraged to make their Halloween decorations as obscenely extravagant as possible because the owners have declared a contest and the best class wins a trip to Six Flags? Should I calculate how many dry erase markers could be purchased for the price of the brand new iPhone that will be given to the teacher who wins “best costume”?
Dani teaches her trial class on the “global village” and fills the students with facts and figures regarding the world's population. To check the students' English counting ability, she writes the number one on the white board and points to it. “One!” Cries the class. Dani writes a ten and the voices call “Ten!” She writes again. “One hundred!” And again. “One thousand!” The students count all the way to one hundred million, at which point Dani pauses. “Or” she explains, “another way to say that in English is one billion.” She writes “one billion” next to 100,000,000.
I try to catch the eye of one of the two other teachers in the room. Did they hear that? Do they see the board? Am I making this up? No one says anything. I feel the onset of tartingles. Dani asks the class if anyone knows the population of the world. No one does. The guesses range from a few thousand to incredible invented numbers. Then the boy who waits to be called on when he raises his hand – which is why I still don't know his name – guesses six hundred million. Dani looks amazed. “Yes! Six hundred million... or six billion. Wow! Did you know that or was it just a good guess?” Now I look amazed.
Six billion and six hundred million are not the same number! Are you sure? Completely, one hundred percent sure? Yes, of course I'm sure. She sounds so confident though. And she's said it twice. I can't believe I'm even thinking about this. Am I going crazy? Maybe this is an act. Maybe she's not a real teaching candidate. Maybe the school is trying to make me feel so badly about abandoning the students to this new teacher that I'll stay.
Six hundred million people in the world? I've seen six hundred million people since breakfast. That's like half the population of Mexico City, right? As if reading my mind, Dani asks the kids if they know the population of Mexico City. For eleven year olds estimating the population of their home town, the students make surprisingly poor guesses. None, however, miss the mark as badly as Dani, who responds, “Nope. Good guesses, but the population of Mexico City is actually twenty-five thousand.” Twenty-five thousand? Greenfield, Massachusetts has nearly twenty-five thousand people. Mexico city has twenty-five million. I am so embarrassed for her I feel myself blush.
Do I interrupt to correct her? She would be mortified. She already looks nervous. Her back is touching the white board; her hands move like babies' feet the first time they try to support weight. But what if the students are actually paying attention? They appear mildly alert. What if this is the one piece of information they remember from my class? I see Sebastian climbing into his Hummer this afternoon and proudly showing off his new knowledge, “Did you know that twenty-five thousand of the six hundred million people in the world live in Mexico City?!” The chauffeur laughs so hard that he loses control of the recreational tank and causes a sixteen car pile-up in the school's parking lot. Various children are killed, and when the chauffeur explains to the authorities what caused the accident, they release him and charge me with involuntary manslaughter. The schools' lawyers represent me and agree to a plea bargain of ten years house arrest and community service, which I will serve by working unpaid for the school.
Back in reality, the class is ending and I am standing up. There is Sebastian, obnoxious as ever and wonderfully alive. In the hallway, Mary Carmen – the supervisor of English instruction – touches my elbow to have a word with me. “What did you think? Do you think Dani can handle them?” No, of course not. Nobody can. But if she thinks she can, then hire her quickly before she knows any better. She might be the perfect person for this job. She seems to have some sort of delusional super power that allows her to magically reduce massive numbers by moving decimal points. Perhaps she looks at a classroom of twenty-five fifth graders and sees only two and a half. I respond to Mary Carmen with a question, “What does she think?” I think that the school will hire her no matter what I say and no matter what Dani says – as long as she says it in English.
viernes, 17 de octubre de 2008
lunes, 13 de octubre de 2008
Goodbye, Shepherd's Pie!
I hate shepherd's pie. I have always hated shepherd's pie. It's like the radio love songs say, “I've loved you forever. I loved you before I met you. I loved you before the beginning of time.” Just replace “loved” with “hated” and “you” with “shepherd's pie”. These pop music sentiments may seem impossible - outrageous hyperbole inspired by too many nights alone with too much to drink - but in the case of my aversion to shepherd's pie, I suspect there may be an actual genetic predisposition. They say that human beings crave sugar, salt, and fat because they have been scarce for much of our evolutionary history. Thus, in order to ensure that we eat them at every opportunity, our taste buds tell us that things like Ben & Jerry's, cheesecake, and chocolate covered pretzels are delicious. My forebears lived primarily in the British Isles, where shepherd's pie (at least the meat and potatoes part) was so abundant that my body weight is probably 75% water and 25% shepherd's pie. No wonder my taste buds tell me not to eat it. Given my genetic history, eating shepherd's pie in this lifetime would be like eating another turkey dinner the day after Thanksgiving.
Various people have tried to convince me that I should like shepherd's pie. Do you like ground beef? Yes. Do you like potatoes? Yes. Do you like corn? Yes. So what is there not to like? They're all things you eat. I like ground beef in hamburgers. I like potatoes as french fries. And I like corn on the cob. That doesn't mean that if you mix them all together I will like it. Give it a chance. Don't say you don't like it before you've even tried it. Of course you're going to hate it if you expect to hate it.
I wanted to give this beast a fair chance. I thought that if I scraped off one of the layers, the remaining two might taste better. Unfortunately, meat and potatoes taste like shepherd's pie without the corn. Meat and corn taste like shepherd's pie without the potatoes. And corn and potatoes taste like shepherd's pie without the meat. Trying to solve the problem of shepherd's pie with meat, potatoes, and corn does not work. As Einstein warned, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” The solution to shepherd's pie is not a little more meat, a little less corn, or a layer of ketchup. The solution might be shrimp, mushrooms, and tomatoes in a curry coconut milk sauce over pasta. The solution might be a salad of spinach leaves, walnuts, bits of apple, and dried cranberries.
The meat, corn, and potatoes all begged me to give their dish another chance. What if we make it with fresh corn instead of canned? We'll serve it with a “luna llena” stout from Beer Factory. It's delicious with a little bit of grated cheese sprinkled on top. Have you tried eating it with a spoon instead of a fork? What if you only had to eat it once a week? And what if you only had to eat half as much? And what if you ate it under a tent with fried dough for dessert? It would be like a carnival! You could wear a costume, whatever kind of costume you want. And we'll pay you to do all of this. How much do you want? We just want you to be happy and tell everyone how much you love shepherd's pie!
No, no, no! Don't you get it? I hate shepherd's pie. Call it whatever you want. Dress it up however you like. Tell me why I should like it, why I need to like it, why even if I don't like it that's actually a good thing because it will make me a stronger person. Give me less to make it more palatable and try to wash it down with beer and cash. It's still shepherd's pie. And I'm not eating another bite. I am old enough to know how to feed myself. I quit shepherd's pie.
Also, shepherd's pie = my job.
Various people have tried to convince me that I should like shepherd's pie. Do you like ground beef? Yes. Do you like potatoes? Yes. Do you like corn? Yes. So what is there not to like? They're all things you eat. I like ground beef in hamburgers. I like potatoes as french fries. And I like corn on the cob. That doesn't mean that if you mix them all together I will like it. Give it a chance. Don't say you don't like it before you've even tried it. Of course you're going to hate it if you expect to hate it.
I wanted to give this beast a fair chance. I thought that if I scraped off one of the layers, the remaining two might taste better. Unfortunately, meat and potatoes taste like shepherd's pie without the corn. Meat and corn taste like shepherd's pie without the potatoes. And corn and potatoes taste like shepherd's pie without the meat. Trying to solve the problem of shepherd's pie with meat, potatoes, and corn does not work. As Einstein warned, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” The solution to shepherd's pie is not a little more meat, a little less corn, or a layer of ketchup. The solution might be shrimp, mushrooms, and tomatoes in a curry coconut milk sauce over pasta. The solution might be a salad of spinach leaves, walnuts, bits of apple, and dried cranberries.
The meat, corn, and potatoes all begged me to give their dish another chance. What if we make it with fresh corn instead of canned? We'll serve it with a “luna llena” stout from Beer Factory. It's delicious with a little bit of grated cheese sprinkled on top. Have you tried eating it with a spoon instead of a fork? What if you only had to eat it once a week? And what if you only had to eat half as much? And what if you ate it under a tent with fried dough for dessert? It would be like a carnival! You could wear a costume, whatever kind of costume you want. And we'll pay you to do all of this. How much do you want? We just want you to be happy and tell everyone how much you love shepherd's pie!
No, no, no! Don't you get it? I hate shepherd's pie. Call it whatever you want. Dress it up however you like. Tell me why I should like it, why I need to like it, why even if I don't like it that's actually a good thing because it will make me a stronger person. Give me less to make it more palatable and try to wash it down with beer and cash. It's still shepherd's pie. And I'm not eating another bite. I am old enough to know how to feed myself. I quit shepherd's pie.
Also, shepherd's pie = my job.
domingo, 5 de octubre de 2008
The Circus
Hey, Michael, you wanna hear a joke? I don't know. Is it a good one? Are you asking whether or not I'm a funny guy? Yes, of course, it's a good one. Ok, then, I could definitely use a laugh. What do you call a place where wild animals are tamed under a tent? Oh, I should know this. I'm pretty sure I've heard this one before. The circus is the obvious answer but that wouldn't be funny. It's not the circus, is it? Is that your guess? No, that's not my guess. I was just asking. Well, what's your guess? A place where wild animals are tamed under a tent? I give up. What is it? English class. Oh, ha ha ha, I get it. Very funny. English class. Because I teach under a tent and the students are like wild animals. Good one. A joke is like a magic trick. Trying to explain it ruins it. That joke was not at all like a magic trick.
I do teach under a tent now. Or I will starting on Monday. This is the result of a failed attempt to quit my job. When I walked into Mary's office on Wednesday, it was to be for the last time. Had I needed any reminders of my dissatisfaction, they were all around me. The white office looked half-finished, half-moved-into, the hotel room equivalent of an office. An improv teacher once told me, “Never play in a white room. It's boring and lifeless. You have to create a space the audience can see.” In this case, the audience would have seen nothing but me and Mary squatting to create the illusion of chairs, whose white color – providing no contrast against the white floor, white walls, white desk between us, and white iMac upon the desk – rendered them invisible.
The only visible objects then were the tall case, like a grandfather clock with a glass door, which protects the Mexican flag within, and the school mascot – a stuffed, black Scottish terrier floating in midair. It was in this pretend office that I sat down to quit my pretend job. I had been hired to teach acting. I had assumed that meant drama, not teaching literature without books. I could not, however, accuse Mary of lying; my job was certainly acting. And I had grown tired of it.
Days before, in a full faculty meeting, Mary stood and announced that she did not intend to scold us – a clear sign that we were about to be scolded. “I am deeply concerned. We are only five weeks into the school year and we have already lost four students. This reflects poorly on our teachers. Your attitude, commitment, and professionalism are essential to our success. It is difficult to have parents come into my office and say I sold them a school that doesn't exist.” A school that doesn't exist. I had to wonder whether this was our fault for not living in her fantasy, or her fault for not living in reality. Who has the courage to tell the emperor that he is, in fact, naked?
The entire school is naked. And when the faculty gathered to watch the slideshow of a visit to another private school in Mexico City, I could clearly imagine the moment when Adam and Eve looked at themselves and realized, “Hey! We're not wearing anything!” This other school was the apple. Its beauty eclipsed and embarrassed us, made us suddenly self-conscious. Stunning artwork covered everything. An enormous purple dragon crept from the ceiling down one of the walls. And endless vine snaked its way across the halls, and from it sprang drawings of characters from the literature the students read in real books. The walls were hidden behind beautifully decorated bulletin boards. An awed teacher raised her hand and asked, “Can we have bulletin boards like that?” To which another – not at all under her breath – turned around and replied, “What would you put on it? We don't have any paper!”
In the center of the playground – a small, fenced-in square covered in astroturf – stood a tree. “Oh! The tree!” Someone gasped. The auditorium gilled with murmurs of wonder. “The tree!” It was the scene in “Wall-E” where the robot returns to the spaceship with a sprout growing in a boot that he discovered on the otherwise dead planet Earth. This is how disconnected my school is from the planet it aims to save. No wonder it's so hard to separate the recycling. It is fall in New England, and here I am working at a school where a photo of a tree that looks like a houseplant makes a room full of teachers gurgle and coo like babies. If only we had a tree!
This is the life I was more than ready to leave behind when I walked into the pretend office. “I don't want to do this,” I told Mary. I chose my language carefully – not “I can't do this” because I didn't want to be convinced otherwise. It's hard to argue with “I don't want to.” Not impossible, though, as Mary proved by interrupting me to ask, “What can we do? How can we make this work? Tell me what would make the situation better.” I had not even yet told her what was wrong with the situation. Mary's m.o. is to skip information gathering and go straight to problem solving – the old “measure once, cut twice” approach. This is perhaps why I found myself squatting over that imaginary chair for the second time in eight days. Solutions that don't bother to understand the problem tend to be short-lived and moving me from 8th grade to 2nd and 3rd (in addition to 4th, 5th, and 6th) had been one of those solutions.
“Please don't try to fix my problem before you understand it,” I said. Would I have spoken so boldly if I weren't so certain of my departure? “There's nothing wrong with what you're doing” – it's important to balance boldness with restraint – “but my vision and your vision...” I made that gesture of hands passing from opposite directions without meeting. “For me, relationship, knowing the kids, is fundamental to good education. I teach thirteen groups of twenty-five students once a week each. It'll be Christmas before I even know all their names.” This was only one of the many reasons I was quitting and I chose it as my opener because it seemed the least disputable. I had expressed a fact and my personal opinion. Mary's brow furrowed as much as possible given how taut the slick, black bun pulled it, and her eyes narrowed like bird of prey ready to dive. “Now wait a minute.” She said this is the voice that she calls “not scolding”. “There isn't any class larger than twenty-three.”
My piece of evidence had been defeated, invalidated, thrown out. The fact that trying to quit felt more like a legal proceeding than a conversation only strengthened my conviction to do so. Mary then used that most odious of all tactics; she played the “when I was your age”/“you don't know how good you've got it card” card. “I routinely taught classes of fifty or more students. So believe me when I say that these are small classes.” I told her of a school where I taught classes of ten to fifteen students – a school I love but never dreamed would attain the near-utopia status it now enjoys in my delusional reminiscing.
Then Mary did something I had thought impossible. She suggested that we split the classes in half. I could work with eleven or twelve students for forty minutes instead of twenty-five for eighty minutes. And I could do whatever I wanted. “It doesn't have to be literature,” she said. “What matters to me is that they speak English with a native speaker. That's it.” This change would drastically improve my life but win me no friends with the colleagues who would now be forced to do something with the other half of the class. “Don't worry,” Mary began with her favorite words. “We'll say it was my idea. We'll call it differentiation.”
“Differentiation” is the buzz word that permeates the school's pedagogical jargon. While it refers in theory to a complex educational model, it seems to function in practice as a convenient justification for any decision. And because “differentiation” is such a sacred cow, arguing against any decision based on it could be grounds for immediate dismissal.
It was at precisely this moment that I realized how badly Mary wanted or needed me to stay. And though there was a voice in my head, which I'll call “integrity”, that complained, I decided it was also in my best interest to stay. One problem remained: where to teach my class. There is not one empty classroom or space in the entire school. Mary suggested various hallways – the one outside her office, the one across from the art room. I refused. She suggested dividing the classes but keeping all the students in the same room. Again I refused.
For a moment it seemed that she was out of ideas and I would have to quit after-all. And then she suggested the tent. We could have class out in the playground under a tent to protect us from the sun. (Remember that there are no trees.) “I know just the corner,” she said. “No one ever goes there. And it's far enough away from the basketball courts that it should be pretty quiet.” She watched me expectantly. “If the owners don't approve the expense, I'll buy it myself this weekend. So what do you say?” I say when you're living in the circus, it makes sense to work under a tent.
I do teach under a tent now. Or I will starting on Monday. This is the result of a failed attempt to quit my job. When I walked into Mary's office on Wednesday, it was to be for the last time. Had I needed any reminders of my dissatisfaction, they were all around me. The white office looked half-finished, half-moved-into, the hotel room equivalent of an office. An improv teacher once told me, “Never play in a white room. It's boring and lifeless. You have to create a space the audience can see.” In this case, the audience would have seen nothing but me and Mary squatting to create the illusion of chairs, whose white color – providing no contrast against the white floor, white walls, white desk between us, and white iMac upon the desk – rendered them invisible.
The only visible objects then were the tall case, like a grandfather clock with a glass door, which protects the Mexican flag within, and the school mascot – a stuffed, black Scottish terrier floating in midair. It was in this pretend office that I sat down to quit my pretend job. I had been hired to teach acting. I had assumed that meant drama, not teaching literature without books. I could not, however, accuse Mary of lying; my job was certainly acting. And I had grown tired of it.
Days before, in a full faculty meeting, Mary stood and announced that she did not intend to scold us – a clear sign that we were about to be scolded. “I am deeply concerned. We are only five weeks into the school year and we have already lost four students. This reflects poorly on our teachers. Your attitude, commitment, and professionalism are essential to our success. It is difficult to have parents come into my office and say I sold them a school that doesn't exist.” A school that doesn't exist. I had to wonder whether this was our fault for not living in her fantasy, or her fault for not living in reality. Who has the courage to tell the emperor that he is, in fact, naked?
The entire school is naked. And when the faculty gathered to watch the slideshow of a visit to another private school in Mexico City, I could clearly imagine the moment when Adam and Eve looked at themselves and realized, “Hey! We're not wearing anything!” This other school was the apple. Its beauty eclipsed and embarrassed us, made us suddenly self-conscious. Stunning artwork covered everything. An enormous purple dragon crept from the ceiling down one of the walls. And endless vine snaked its way across the halls, and from it sprang drawings of characters from the literature the students read in real books. The walls were hidden behind beautifully decorated bulletin boards. An awed teacher raised her hand and asked, “Can we have bulletin boards like that?” To which another – not at all under her breath – turned around and replied, “What would you put on it? We don't have any paper!”
In the center of the playground – a small, fenced-in square covered in astroturf – stood a tree. “Oh! The tree!” Someone gasped. The auditorium gilled with murmurs of wonder. “The tree!” It was the scene in “Wall-E” where the robot returns to the spaceship with a sprout growing in a boot that he discovered on the otherwise dead planet Earth. This is how disconnected my school is from the planet it aims to save. No wonder it's so hard to separate the recycling. It is fall in New England, and here I am working at a school where a photo of a tree that looks like a houseplant makes a room full of teachers gurgle and coo like babies. If only we had a tree!
This is the life I was more than ready to leave behind when I walked into the pretend office. “I don't want to do this,” I told Mary. I chose my language carefully – not “I can't do this” because I didn't want to be convinced otherwise. It's hard to argue with “I don't want to.” Not impossible, though, as Mary proved by interrupting me to ask, “What can we do? How can we make this work? Tell me what would make the situation better.” I had not even yet told her what was wrong with the situation. Mary's m.o. is to skip information gathering and go straight to problem solving – the old “measure once, cut twice” approach. This is perhaps why I found myself squatting over that imaginary chair for the second time in eight days. Solutions that don't bother to understand the problem tend to be short-lived and moving me from 8th grade to 2nd and 3rd (in addition to 4th, 5th, and 6th) had been one of those solutions.
“Please don't try to fix my problem before you understand it,” I said. Would I have spoken so boldly if I weren't so certain of my departure? “There's nothing wrong with what you're doing” – it's important to balance boldness with restraint – “but my vision and your vision...” I made that gesture of hands passing from opposite directions without meeting. “For me, relationship, knowing the kids, is fundamental to good education. I teach thirteen groups of twenty-five students once a week each. It'll be Christmas before I even know all their names.” This was only one of the many reasons I was quitting and I chose it as my opener because it seemed the least disputable. I had expressed a fact and my personal opinion. Mary's brow furrowed as much as possible given how taut the slick, black bun pulled it, and her eyes narrowed like bird of prey ready to dive. “Now wait a minute.” She said this is the voice that she calls “not scolding”. “There isn't any class larger than twenty-three.”
My piece of evidence had been defeated, invalidated, thrown out. The fact that trying to quit felt more like a legal proceeding than a conversation only strengthened my conviction to do so. Mary then used that most odious of all tactics; she played the “when I was your age”/“you don't know how good you've got it card” card. “I routinely taught classes of fifty or more students. So believe me when I say that these are small classes.” I told her of a school where I taught classes of ten to fifteen students – a school I love but never dreamed would attain the near-utopia status it now enjoys in my delusional reminiscing.
Then Mary did something I had thought impossible. She suggested that we split the classes in half. I could work with eleven or twelve students for forty minutes instead of twenty-five for eighty minutes. And I could do whatever I wanted. “It doesn't have to be literature,” she said. “What matters to me is that they speak English with a native speaker. That's it.” This change would drastically improve my life but win me no friends with the colleagues who would now be forced to do something with the other half of the class. “Don't worry,” Mary began with her favorite words. “We'll say it was my idea. We'll call it differentiation.”
“Differentiation” is the buzz word that permeates the school's pedagogical jargon. While it refers in theory to a complex educational model, it seems to function in practice as a convenient justification for any decision. And because “differentiation” is such a sacred cow, arguing against any decision based on it could be grounds for immediate dismissal.
It was at precisely this moment that I realized how badly Mary wanted or needed me to stay. And though there was a voice in my head, which I'll call “integrity”, that complained, I decided it was also in my best interest to stay. One problem remained: where to teach my class. There is not one empty classroom or space in the entire school. Mary suggested various hallways – the one outside her office, the one across from the art room. I refused. She suggested dividing the classes but keeping all the students in the same room. Again I refused.
For a moment it seemed that she was out of ideas and I would have to quit after-all. And then she suggested the tent. We could have class out in the playground under a tent to protect us from the sun. (Remember that there are no trees.) “I know just the corner,” she said. “No one ever goes there. And it's far enough away from the basketball courts that it should be pretty quiet.” She watched me expectantly. “If the owners don't approve the expense, I'll buy it myself this weekend. So what do you say?” I say when you're living in the circus, it makes sense to work under a tent.
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