On Thursday morning a nearly-ninety year old man who survived three years in Auschwitz came to my school to speak to the students about racism. Because he was to present from the stage where I teach my theatre classes, I helped set up for his presentation. Crazy Sue stopped me for a few minutes to yell at me for letting the nearly-ninety year old man borrow her chair as opposed to having him perch on a hard plastic student chair. At times I feel as though Crazy Sue has trouble seeing the Big Picture.
The presentation was riveting. The man was articulate and very, very sharp. He had a sense of humour and compassion for the young people who were struggling to understand the horror he was describing. He asked us not to blame young Germans for the crimes of their ancestors; he asked us to assess each person based only upon his/her own individual behaviour. He was modern and simultaneously wise. I quite adored him and had trouble saying goodbye when it was over. We stood and talked for a long time after the presentation was finished. He told me he wasn't too old to notice that I was a beauty, which I thought was lovely because most of the time these days I feel I am the one who is too old to be a beauty.
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Rehearsals are finished for the play and the show begins in earnest next week. It will be a week of fourteen hour days. I am currently in defiance of the union order to cease all extracurricular activities, and open to being fined for non-compliance. I am doubtful that this will really happen -- but it is a possibility -- and I cannot decide who is the bigger traitor in the whole debate.
The government has stripped our contract down to nothing; there are no longer any rules about class size and composition, no seniority rights for experienced teachers, and nothing to mandate the length of the working day or the length of the school year.
The union has taken away our freedom to choose what we do with our own personal free time, bargained a ridiculous starting position that made us look like idiots in the public eye, and wasted our dues on politicking instead of on supporting the members in getting a fair contract. Daily we are insulted and attacked in the media, painted as greedy, selfish, lazy opportunists.
It has been an emotionally exhausting school year, and a physically exhausting few weeks of rehearsals. I have reached a point where if I stop moving for any length of time, I fall asleep. And so it is necessary to keep moving for just a little bit longer. Soon summer will be here and I can wrap myself up in a warm cocoon made of public tax dollars and sleep and sleep and sleep.
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4 comments:
I'm sorry about the situation with the schools and the union. So demoralizing. And what a wonderful experience with the Auschwitz survivor - he sounds like he has a truly compassionate spirit.
Does that dreadful woman know what Auschwitz was? I am seriously sickened by her vile behavior. Getting screwed by your union is awful, too. We are in a very bad way when teachers don't get the respect they deserve, and the pay. Do they really think there is an endless supply of talented young teachers to replace those who burn out too soon from such impossible working conditions? No wonder you are stressed!
Nic, he was so inspiring. I think you would have enjoyed him very much too, and things like this always help me put my little first world problems into perspective. Thank you for your encouragement. <3
Secret Agent, it really is demoralizing. I don't understand the public hostility toward teachers but I do think it is intentionally orchestrated and encouraged by our government who would like nothing more than to get rid of the public system entirely so they can save a whole lot of money.
Susan, that dreadful woman doesn't care about anything but herself. She makes me sick too, quite literally. When she yelled at me, I thought I would stop her dead in her tracks by telling her I was letting a holocaust survivor borrow her chair, but she didn't miss a beat and kept ranting. She's completely twisted. It's a funny thing that our public system not only exhausts and drains good teachers, but it also protects twits like that from being fired as they should be.
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