You're Fired!

Before Donald Trump ultimately delivers his own coup de grace (surely some statement so outrageously stupid will finally sink his ship, although current polls and events offer depressing evidence to the contrary, despite his best efforts to live down to my expectations) and fades into (at least) political oblivion, I thought I’d share my story that ties into his (typically despicable) catch phrase. I am going to post it on both my Hancock and personal blog because, well, I can.

The setting: Year 5, which some of you might know as Tenure Year. Although tenure’s protections are vastly overrated, it does mean that administrators must at least follow procedural rules to fire you. (They do NOT need to actually prove their allegations.) Prior to that, it’s a simple, “Buh-Bye.”

I don’t claim that I had achieved anything close to Master Teacher status by this time in my career. In fact, I make no claim to have ever achieved that. But this was an especially tough year.

• A new principal, the late John Gibson, arrived. 

• I was the president of the teachers union and was a constant (and some would argue, perpetually obnoxious) PIA to administration. I was also effective.

• I had the worst class in my entire career (of course, I didn’t know it at the time; I probably DID intuitively know that if many more like that had followed I would have self-terminated, at least as a teacher): Freshman English, a class roster of 28 students, 24 boys and 4 girls, with family names that read like a Who’s Who of Lemay infamy (including a couple of the girls). Average reading level of 12^th percentile, with the highest at the 25^th percentile. 20% were off the chart at the bottom. (I know of only 3 from that group who graduated, although I may have missed 1 or 2.)

• I was naive, believing that I could change the world and them. I kept trying to actually teach instead of just retaining (some semblance of) control. I had yet to learn that you couldn’t actually teach unless you had control; I hadn’t needed to know that the previous four years. So at least I learned something that year.

• I was not a good teacher for those kids. Could someone else have done better? I don’t know, but they could hardly have been worse. (They DID provide me with some of my best stories, though.)

• Relatively new father, with new responsibilities in that area and resultant marital stresses did not help.

Did John Gibson actually have orders to fire me? Can’t prove it one way or another, but he was an ambitious man and knew, at least instinctively, that getting credit for my leaving the Place would be a feather in his cap.

I was struggling. It was no secret. Gibson told an English department colleague concerned about evaluation that it would be unfair (his words), for example, to evaluate me based on that one class. (I remember no particular problems with any of my others; neither do I remember even one bona fide evaluation prior that point in my career. One year’s consisted of the principal stepping into my room and throwing me a mini-basketball from Lemay Bank; I successfully reached down and to the left to make the grab and earned praise: “You’re all right!”) Guess which was the ONLY class he sat in on and on which I was evaluated.

That spring, the late Jim (father of Cardinal broadcaster Dan) McLaughlin and I were in the lounge next to my room when the late Don Steckhan, math teacher emeritus, came huffing and puffing up the stairs. (Steckhan was a 5x5 smoker, so that description is pretty literal.) PCs were at least a decade away from common usage; everything was handwritten on paper, and Steckhan had a habit of perusing said papers on the principal’s desk while he was away.

“You need to get down there,” he wheezed. “You're being fired!” Mac (and I? – maybe) immediately headed down, confirmed what Steckhan had seen on the evaluation, and the wheels started turning.

I met with state union reps, lawyers were contacted, strategies discussed (including initial preparation for a lawsuit claiming a violation of my 1^st Amendment rights – did I say I tended to be outspoken and critical?). Most importantly, Mac (the law school graduate) set up a sidebar meeting with Superintendent Brodbeck. As near as I can tell, whether this was a plot or just a rogue operation, Brodbeck was either not in the loop or up for a fight. In any case, he assured Mac, “We don't want to fire the union president.”

They didn’t. When the evaluation conference was finally held (the shortest in my career, except for the year the [different] principal wasn’t speaking to me and just shoved it in my mailbox) the cover sheet, and ONLY the cover sheet, had been changed to read, “Recommended.” This despite, if you believe what was actually written on the evaluation itself, my being the worst teacher in the history of the universe. If I had believed it, I would have fired me. Instead, not even attempting a rebuttal, I took the win, signed the document, and left the office.

And life went on. By the time I finally retired, 29 years later, I think my personnel file had its own file drawer. 

Anger Management

A Thanksgiving Wish

I continue to be distressed by the tenor of what I see and hear, both on the news and on social media. No matter what asinine inanities emanate from his mouth, the perpetually pissed Donald Trump maintains his support among a disturbingly significant percentage of the population by playing on that anger. I would suggest, however, that he has plenty of company in almost all the candidates of both parties, even if they generally appear less bombastic and more soft-spoken (not much of a challenge IMO). 

Anger is also reflected in the many memes culled from Facebook, Twitter, and the myriad of other internet sources encouraging simple, dare I suggest simplistic, expressions of opinions. Even the purported humorous posts are too often predicated on a foundation of anger, political, racial, religious and more.

The thing is, I don’t see anger as being a solution to any problem. In fact, it interferes with the actual problem-solving process because it interferes with communication. Even if it may get your point across, at the same time it essentially attacks, and often insults, those who fail to agree with you.

I admit that in my early (allegedly) adult years I was not just a congregant at Our Lady of Righteous Indignation (OLRI), but also an evangelist, with some modicum of success even. Such an approach managed to work fairly well for the accumulation of power, but it was only after I backed away from that attitude and started working at accommodation and compromise that I actually became part of the solution team instead of a polarizing divider who exacerbated the problem(s).

Finding something to be angry about is not any particular challenge. We need look no further than the current Starbucks kerfuffle. The so-called “War on Christmas” is a fiction created and maintained by those who want to perpetuate anger at a direction of society that frightens them. That “war” is merely one front in the larger, and equally fictitious, “War on Christianity.” Or maybe even “War on Islam.” 

I admit to being naïve, but not so naïve that I deny that there are (too many of) those on the “other” side equally angry about the perceived intolerance of their beliefs, or even non-beliefs. And, of course, there is no shortage of (power hungry) potential leaders, also frequent flyers at OLRI, who can find a slight in almost anything, no matter how innocent an action or remark and then manipulate that slight to their advantage. Beware of such “leaders,” not just for your own sake but out of concern for the future of your country – and the world in which we all must live.

Our ongoing issues with race in this country feature people on both poles. Here's my question for them: “Is this a problem you want to, if not solve, at least ameliorate?” While I freely admit that racial animus has almost never been directed at me, I still maintain that anger is not your friend, or the friend of your cause, whatever cause that may be.

I understand frustration and discontent. I certainly experienced my share of both, back in the day (again, not racial, of course). Nor am I suggesting that those feelings be discounted or ignored by either allies or foes. But it is only human to react defensively when attacked, and anger directed at you or your friends is difficult to interpret as anything but an attack, even a personal one. Almost none of us are Mahatma Gandhi or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but I have no doubt that both of them had to work hard to suppress their (righteous and justifiable) anger, perhaps frequently. Nevertheless, they succeeded (slowly and incompletely, because problems of long-standing do not have simple, overnight solutions). How? They kept their anger under control and diverted the energy required to feed that non-productive emotion into building solutions instead of walls (both figurative and literal).

If more of us could find the strength to follow their model, that would truly be something for which to be thankful.

Holiday PSA: Politics and Family

It's not that simple....

    As the holidays come crashing down around us (Do yours sneak up on you? Wow, lucky you.), I am sharing once again this PSA on dealing with your relatives who are less enlightened or politically astute, and who have an apparently innate need to share their misguided opinions with you (with your best interests and edification in mind, of course).

The phrase that I plan to use and strongly recommend that you keep handy (aside from Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas or Happy Kwanzaa or Happy Hanukkah or whatever works in your family’s culture wars): “I don’t think it’s that simple.” Because, really, nothing is. You get to retain your claim to your beliefs without engaging in a no-win argument. “Agree to disagree” sounds dismissive, but most importantly, doesn’t work very well. At least it doesn’t in my family; that phrase tends only to inspire only additional louder voices and increasingly tedious arguments as the evening gets longer and the wine and beer supplies get shorter. Plus I can only go wash the dishes so many times before my absence becomes obvious.

My father used to tell me about a boss he had who was fond of saying, “When you find the answer it will be simple.” Because we seldom agreed on anything, I was always compelled to add, “… and wrong.” My father was a good man, and intelligent, but incapable of seeing any shades of grey. Like (apparently) many of his fellow citizens, he envisioned a world that conformed to his values and saw a straight path to that destination.

I don’t believe that even his world, back 75 or so years ago, was ever really that simple, but even had it been, I think most people would agree that it has become increasingly complicated and at an ever-accelerating rate. To ignore that fact makes you, well, President-elect Donald Trump. Simple solutions, as attractive as they might seem on the surface, ignore the Law of Unintended Consequences. (Of course, complicated solutions, with so many moving parts, generate their own, as well, perhaps on an even larger scale.)

Although I’m not going to convince my brothers any more than they’re going to convince me, “I don’t think it’s that simple” avoids the discussion becoming angry or personal, with the resultant (potential) hurt feelings. As I’ve noted before, talking about politics and religion is, almost by definition, personal because those topics deal with our most deeply held beliefs and world views.

I’ll let you know it works out. I’m hopeful, if not optimistic. But my solution, too, probably isn’t that simple.

Over 60 Workout

Physical fitness is, allegedly, an important component for a productive life. Based on my own experience, I think seniors should get daily life credit for physical fitness simply because staying alive requires most of the activities described below on a daily basis. Feel free to suggest others if I publish this prematurely out of fear that I’ll forget it.

I’ve already noted that I think the time it takes to put on my athletic shoes should count as part of my workout regimen. I’m calling that activity the “Socks Over Feet, Shoes Over Socks” Warm Up. It needs a name because otherwise I might forget the proper order and have to add it to Exercise #3, which carries enough reps on its own.

Let’s see what else is included in the Over 60 Workout. Large print format for obvious reasons.

The Over-60 Workout includes the following, none of which need to be done each and every day, but all of which you can count on repeating with regularity:*

1. Do Overs: 5-10 per day, the number of times you need to start over on something, because you forgot what you were doing, where you were doing it, what you came into the room for, or what you needed to do, wait, what was I working on again?

2. Roll Overs: Usually 3-5 per night, adjusting to the aches, pains, and other bodily functions associated with the Joys of Aging.

3. Start Overs: 1-2 per day, depending on your agenda: You know you did it better before, or you forgot where you started out the first time and now have the same project going simultaneously in more than one location. I’ve come to terms with accepting accomplishing one task has made it a good day.

4. Bend Overs: 5-6 per day, to pick up whatever (frequently keys, in my case) you just dropped.... again. Also used in picking up the pieces of what broke because you dropped it one too many times.

5. Up & Down Overs (Stairs): 3-4 per day, depending on how many things you forgot to get while you were up/down there, or what you forgot to get because you were distracted by something else.

6. Move Overs: Every damn time you try to walk in a straight line next to someone.

7. Trip Overs: Most days offer multiple opportunities to get this one in, even on incredibly flat surfaces.

8. Zip Overs: A small muscle exercise, created by forgetting, well, you know.

9. The ultimate, of course, is the “Keel Over,” but I’d suggest avoiding that one for as long as possible.

* Fortunately, you don’t actually need to count or keep track of exactly how many times you do any of these, which is just as well.