Friday, October 9, 2009

after the firings (update)

I should've been reading the blogs I love more often. I suppose I should learn that empathy-building thing that everyone's talking about. Anyway, there's more to this than I know, and I think it's because, in general, I haven't been following the news via the DCTblogs. That's unfortunate, but that's the way it happened.

It's strange, reflecting on the whole experience, that this hasn't impacted me. It just seems to me that it should have, or that I should've been more upset or more aware about it than usual. It just felt like most teachers weren't talking about it much--or maybe they were, and I was just locked up in my room working, or something. Yikes, it's like I'm early 19th century Japan or something! (right? history teachers? anyone?)

So, in general, I still say that it hasn't affected me as much, except that my class size increased, and that I kept getting these ridiculous, curious, and obscure letters in my room detailing the happenings of the RIF (as people're callin it these days). I never bothered handing those letters out to my kids (that's what we were supposed to do)...because I forgot...but also because it just didn't seem like something important at the time. Obviously I was wrong, duh.

Maybe Mr. Potter's right: maybe there's racism in the school district. Isn't that pretty typical of most cities? Aren't we supposed to be teaching kids not to be racist (i hate it when those freakin kids call my Chinese and Vietnamese kids chinito...it makes me wicked mad...and I hate not being consistent in my detention rules of no racial slurs or judgements), though? And also, is there a larger proportion of principals in schools like Kelly Miller or Cardozo or Roosevelt that are white? Because as I understand it, racism is about people in position of social power (not economic power, like principal vs. staff) beating down on those in the minority as it were, or those with less social power. I dunno...does that make the city or the DCPS itself racist?

2 comments:

Vanessa Rogers said...

I guess I am out of the loop. What firings are you talking about?

Reading the District said...

oh, right--well, around 200 or so teachers were fired by the Michelle Rhee admin because of over-spending...it was abrupt, completely ridiculous and it took too long to figure out than it needed to (it was supposed to happen one day; it didn't; it happened after that; everyone was clenching their teeth and waiting). that's the basic barebones story.