Dear Newport Teachers,
Because politicians from time to time want to divert people's attention away from the pressing issues of the nation and the state, they focus on the educational system and do a lot of posturing about a subject about which they know very little and are not serious about helping or changing.
In the coming months and certainly years, you are going to hear a lot of criticism about tenure/seniority. The media will pepper everyone with stories about "bad" teachers who cannot be fired, and blame the sad state of education on more veteran teachers who ostensibly also cannot be fired.
We all know teachers can be fired if principals want to do the work to make it happen, but this myth is beginning to take on mammoth proportions.
Unions/teacher's organizations have and will be targeted in what will probably become a kind of witch hunt, the result of which will be an end to tenure/seniority.
Teachers who are new to teaching are vulnerable to this line of thinking because they have not yet experienced the politics of education. They don't know how fragile their jobs will be without tenure/seniority. They usually take the enthusiasm of the site administrator as a lock on their jobs and a feeling of security in perpetuity, without realizing that their pliability simply makes life easier for the administration. In addition, the district would rather have new teachers who cost the district less, and are far easier to manipulate.
This is educational politics. It's a very old story, this pitting of teacher against teacher, because that's the way it gets to be.
What veteran teachers need to realize is that they must understand where this is going and become an integral part of the teacher's organization in order to protect themselves and the teachers that are yet to come, and in a way, protect education itself.
What new teachers need to understand is that they will become veteran teachers soon, and putting your faith in the protection of an administrator who is likely to have another agenda is foolish misplaced faith.
To summarize:
"They came for tenure and seniority, and I did nothing because I was new and enthusiastic.
They came for the teacher's organization, and I did nothing because I didn't need them.
They came for Mrs. English, I did nothing because her being involuntarily transferred left an opening for me.
They came for my best friend who was more veteran than me, and I did nothing because I was beginning to be afraid.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."
A LETTER TO A PRINCIPAL FROM A "BAD" TEACHER
Dear Principal Weiner,
I just had to tell you thanks for making my years in Anywhere Middle School so enjoyable and in many ways so surprising. I really thought that in that first year that you were named principal (after 1/2 year of teaching) that you were really going to be tough, and that scared me. When you introduced all those programs that the district loved, I was worried! But happily, as it turns out, you had no intention of actually doing anything but looking good to the school board and the administration. I didn't do one of them, and after about 6 months no one else did either. I didn't do "Charms", or "Bold" or "Loveable" and never really understood what they all meant.
I didn't care. I simply went on doing what I usually did. I was absent every Friday and sometimes Monday (but gratefully, you were too...getting your faux doctorate, and taking trips paid for by the district to NYC to recruit teachers, when our district was letting teachers go). I showed many movies...some were R-rated and worse, but it didn't matter because all the other teachers gave me the worst kids, whose parents wouldn't care.
I was supposed to teach math I think, and somewhere in the room, there were some old math books, but I wasn't ever sure where they were. I gave some homework out of an old English book that I found. No one ever did it, and I wouldn't have known what to do with it anyway. When grades were due, I flipped coins and gave A's to almost everyone, and yeah, I occasionally had a little sip of something too.
But that's not the point Dr. Weiner (that Dr. seems to be important in this district). The point is that I had a great 20 years with you...although I'm not clear what you look like, as I almost never saw you on campus, and you never came in my room.
I was stunned about you not coming in my room after almost every teacher in the school begged you to, and once in a while even some parent who's kid got in my class by mistake, begged you to get rid of me. Once in a February, all the teachers even signed a petition to fire me. And then again every year for the next 10-15 years, petitions were signed, Superintendents were written to, (but as we all know, superintendents come and go and they never seem to leave notes about anything in the past), and once you even sent me an email....I didn't read it.
But nothing ever happened. You successfully avoided even coming down my hall, let alone to my classroom. Did you know where it was?
I just kept right on doing what I was doing and really not caring and frankly after the first year with you, I knew that I had nothing to fear, because you were as lazy as I was, but you were just better at looking good.
So Dr. Wiener, thank you so much for those excellent years of avoidance and denial by you. I've got to say that I WAS SURPRISED to hear you interviewed for the LA Times complaining about how hard it was to get rid of BAD teachers, but then again, you were always good at lying.
THE OBAMA INFLUENCE?
Could it be that we are changing...that the world is changing, just in the past three months? Without being too narcissistic, I notice that I no longer want to watch "The Family Guy" or "Two and a Half Men" (not that I ever did, really), am not glued to the news, or read my snarky political emails. Although I gave up Hannity, Limbaugh, and the rest of that group a long time ago, (even as black comedy), I now find that I'm having a hard time watching Olberman, Mathews, and listening to Air America.
It came to me the 10th time that I watched Susan Boyle sing, and teared up for the 10th time, it occured to me that the world might be sitting around waiting for kindness and hope to "come in on little cat feet".
Perhaps it has snuck in a little. It's not Obama really; it's the thought of Obama...what he says, what he stands for....the obligation that we have to help, to think of, to not hide from the rest of the world. Is it that he has pointed the way for us to follow, and we are "taking baby steps" in that direction?
Everyone is wondering why we all responded to Susan Boyle in that wonderful moment. The underdog syndrome, the surprise element and all those theories are no doubt true, but maybe, just maybe, we are growing up and putting away childish things. Maybe....
And maybe American Idol and Britains Got Talent could be the new fore-runners of this new attitude by forgetting about making fun of people and actually let talent speak for itself...even if it comes in the form of a plain woman with funny eybrows, unbelievable posture and a twinkle in her eye....
I , Too, Sing America by Langston Hughes
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--
I, too, am America.
A LETTER TO MY GRANDCHILDREN
NOVEMBER 4, 2008
Hi Kristin, Justin, Samantha, Mary, Patrick, and Peter, (and your parents)
Remember this day.
In 1937, the year that I was born, here is what black people COULD NOT DO:
Drink from the same fountain as white people
Sit in the front of the bus or train
Eat at the same restaurants Go to the same church
Sit in the front of the bus Sit in the front of the movie theater
Shop in some of the same stores Go to the same schools as white people
Live in the same neighborhood as white people
Have jobs that white people wanted
and had to get off the sidewalk if a white person was walking down in the opposite way.
In Maine where I grew up, there were almost no black people, and God love your great grandmother Hazel, who had NO prejudice at all. She taught me that everyone was absolutely equal; that no one person was better than another. Even so, for years I held my breath when a black person happened to be near me so I wouldn't breathe the same air. I actually suggested to a black woman. when I was about 3 years old that she needed to take a bath and get all that black off her. My mother was horrified. but I was a child. Some people did things like this but THEY WERE ADULTS.
One of the songs that my mother used to sing to me was confusing but made me feel close to black people. It went like this:
Now honey you stay in your own back yard,
Don't you mind what the white folks say,
Just go out and play as much as you like,
But stay in your own back yard.
And that was the message to black people (African Americans) "stay in your own back yard", but thank God, that didn't happen.
It's been a long hard fight to help people understand that EVERYONE REALLY IS EQUAL and should have equal rights
The heroes of the movement to make black people really equal are many:
Abraham Lincoln
Harriet Tubman
Sojourner Truth
Fredrick Douglas
Susan B. Anthony
Rosa Parks
Martin Luther King Jr
Eleanor Roosevelt
JFK
Lyndon Johnson
and many more...
In my lifetime, I have known about black people being hanged by men in white sheets (KKK), beaten, shot, and in the Civil Rights marches led by Martin Luther King Jr., beaten by hoses, attacked by dogs, dragged to jail, and killed in other more horrible ways.
It has never been safe to be black.
But today ...today on this very day, we will have a black president. Remember this day, it is amazing and just right.
Love,
Grammy
Just email....
sasper@aol.com
and I will send you a book ASAP.
All I ask is that:
1. You use it
2. If you like it, tell someone and refer them to www.sandyasper.com
THE STORY
In 1993, a friend of mine died and I didn't know there was a funeral, so I didn't go. That led me to thinking about how anyone would know about such an important event if they didn't live in the immediate area? How would anyone know enough to be able to write the obit? What kind of a funeral would they want? What words would they want to leave to friends and family? Who was going to pick up crazy Aunt Millie at the airport? What had been paid for? Who was going to get the watch and the ring? I always thought that someone should write something about it.
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1995, I found myself with time to write THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY THAT I MIGHT DIE...SOMEDAY( a Light-Hearted Workbook).
This book is really not for people who are dying; it's for those of us who think we're never going to die, and really don't want to think about it; so I decided to make it as funny as possible. It is a little corny, and a little funny, but also a very easy way to decide things that can only be decided by you.
Remember this is your book ...but always write in pencil because things change.
1. Send a check for $12 and I will email you a PDF file (so that you can read it online and just print the pages you want or the whole book).
OR
2. Send me a check for $27 and I will send you the book by snail-mail.
OR
3. Send me a check for $16 and I will send the CD by snail-mail.
Sandy Asper
1553 Miramar Dr.
Newport Beach, CA 92661
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