School is Whack

“When the indigenous and neoindigenous are silenced, they tend to respond to the denial of their voices by showcasing their culture in vivid, visceral, and transgressive ways. Like the indigenous, urban youth distinguish themselves from the larger culture through their dress, their music, their creativity in nonacademic endeavors, and their artistic output. In much public discourse, the ways in which they express themselves creatively are denigrated."  

          - Christopher Emdin

        At least when I was a barista, the customer wanted what I was selling. These fiends would be lined up, wild-eyed like the living dead, waiting to be let in at the crack of dawn. But lo and behold, they'd actually thank and even tip us… cash money …for our service. As a public school teacher in America, conversely, my "customers" weren't the least bit interested in and rarely grateful for what I was peddlin' - information, ideas, facts, questions, concepts, devices, strategies, stories, hope, history, skills, sound financial, political & relationship advice, hard-earned wisdom and even a little magic. 

But I get it, they're kids. Their brains aren't developed enough to comprehend the gravity of it all until around 25. Likely later than that. I learned this priceless nugget in teacher school. Explains a lot about my own chaotic youth. Most of their parents weren't interested either which came as quite the shock. I assumed every parent was like my father James who made it clear early on that my education was non-negotiable. He wasn't averse to bribes either. I was promised a gold Fiero and $10,000 while in elementary school at Precious Blood if I graduated from college one day. So I entered the teaching profession believing the parents of my students would be like Jim.

It was the rudest awakening. 

So what could I do but try?

For most of 'em, their child’s "education" meant money in their pockets and little more. Some, mostly the Trump-loving “Christians,” were downright antagonistic toward my earnest, loving efforts. Something, I deeply resented and occasionally raged against.

“You don’t scare me,” I apparently told that awful mom nobody could stand after she disrespected my super helpful, extremely generous, one-of-a-kind colleague, Mr. Nguyen. I'd brushed off her mean girl energy for a year and half, but when she took aim at an innocent friend, my concealed rage was hidden no more, and I responded rather dramatically as my bedazzled colleagues looked on - their mouths agape, their faces frozen in shock & delight. They continue to tell the story to this day.

Mean "Christian" mom ultimately got her revenge on me in a way that had to be seen and heard to be believed. That story, in later chapter.

On June 10, 2022, I concluded a five-year excursion into the teaching profession in America. I was an independent studies English teacher for four of those years. Six years ago at this time, I'd just passed the CSET on my second attempt and was about to enroll in the accelerated program through Cal State. Words can't express how elated I was to give my two week notice at the coffee shop because the first quarter was set to begin. I was equally excited about the prospect of an actual career versus a mere job slingin’ espresso, supplements, or The Big Penis Book. I naively imagined that I’d finally get the respect I deserved. Little did I know it would be the most agonizing, painful, abusive period of my professional life.

Agonizing but rewarding. Nobody loves you like dogs and kids.

I'm not sure what I expected from this endeavor, other than a more honorable profession and the chance to make a positive impact in the lives of our most innocent, but what I found once I got there horrified me.

In case you’re wondering how an unruly amount of people in this (sometimes great) country of ours could be so credulous as to fall for batshit conspiracy theories and the obvious lies of a grifting, rapey demagogue, I can confidently tell you - AMERICA’S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM (at least where I worked) IS WHACK. Worse than crack. And I've smoked it. Actual education seems to be the least of their concerns, only enrollments and money, honey. And by their concerns, I mean school boards, administrators and the overworked slaves who answer to them.  My boss, a nice guy relatively speaking, reminded us often that a 30-student roster (it was independent studies) was quote, “job security”.

For four agonizing years, I was complicit in this fraud. Complicit, but by no means content. I lost more nights of sleep than I can remember. In fact, I struggle to remember anything anymore. The damage done to my physical body & mental health continues to come to burning light. I never had panic attacks or chronic gut pain before becoming a teacher, but my state of mind was in fragile disrepair from learning period one. 

    And the aimless tasks just kept coming and coming and coming. All of it designed to make our school look legitimate and nothing more. It didn't take long (the first week?) for me to realize that perhaps I'd made a grave mistake. I was stuck in something I'd never truly enjoy no matter how much they paid me, because the entire premise lacked integrity. It was a scam. Total bullshit. An embarrassing waste of paper. Such revelations are a shock to one's psyche especially given the amount of effort and pure will it took to get there. Between the credential program and my first year on the job, I had to take myself to urgent care, the E.R., get excruciating shots of Ativan, start seeing a therapist (who was worse than what brought me there) and get on anti-anxiety meds in order to show up one... more... day. I'd signed a damn contract after all. Or so I thought.

During the height of COVID, the administrators wouldn’t let us work solely from home to save ourselves from this awful thing even though they'd let us do so during the initial lockdown. Well, Gavin made them.

“Not even just until I’m fully vaccinated?” I implored the female CEO over Zoom. 

“Nope.”

"But I need some extra protection being, you know, high-risk & all" I told her.

"We don't have to protect you."

"But I have a doctor's note."

"So what."

"Everybody's gettin' this thing."

"Dying too."

"I'm not ready to die. Jesus, I've barely lived."

Truth was, these people didn't give a damn if I lived or died, and I knew my days were numbered as I looked at myself looking back at me on Zoom. 

They chose instead to pay an uncredentialed sub more than they even paid me rather than just letting me work temporarily from home until I got the second Pfizer shot. Even with a letter from my doctor I still had to take a leave of absence to protect my health. Apparently, the so-called service they swore by didn't apply to us. The slaves. Who would die for that?

The coup de grace came during my fourth and final year when the principal accused me that dreadful January morning of getting “too upset”. Too upset over the fact that one of my most vulnerable students, a precious 5th grader named Jeremy whom I adored, wasn’t getting a proper homeschool education from his, shall we say... apathetic parents and was even losing the ability to hold a freakin' pencil. When my boss said it, I almost collapsed in front of his tiny little office. Also happened to be my dead mother's birthday. Haven't seen her since December 31, 1998.

"You seem angry" he observed, obviously agitated.

          "Can you tell?" 

"You're getting too upset." 

   "Am I really? Too upset, eh? Because you obviously don't give a damn. It's all an act." With those words, I left for the day eternally grateful for that PTO. Lord knows I used all but about 6 minutes of it when everything was said and done.   

   

So my first and only teaching job was at a charter homeschool for at-risk kids in the Coachella Valley. By “at-risk” they mean teetering on the brink of dropping out. For one reason or another, they just can't make it in the traditional setting. But not just the at-risk ones. We also catered to families who didn't want their kids exposed to a traditional education like the priceless one I received in both public and private schools. Or, and this is the subset that really rocked me ...they simply didn't want to be inconvenienced by getting their kids to and from school every day. That's right. Whatever the mind-boggling reason, homeschool was a convenient way to circumvent responsibility and still get a welfare check. The problem for me was, maybe 3% of the parents actually did a lick of schoolin' at home with their kids. Many had never even graduated high school, were basically illiterate, or they spoke another language and were effectively useless.  

So where's the damn regulation here? 

There ain't any. And this is the dirty little secret of our botched primary and secondary education system in America right now. Among the many issues plaguing it, parents who are not qualified to be teachers are being allowed to "homeschool" their kids without anyone questioning what the hell's really going on, and all under the notion of "parental rights".

In his May 30th WaPo article, The revolt of the Christian home-schoolers, Peter Jamison writes, "This movement, led by deeply conservative Christians, saw homeschooling as a way of life - a conscious rejection of contemporary ideas about biology, history, gender equality, and the role of religion in the American government. [Many were] raised to believe that public schools were tools of a demonic social order, government 'indoctrination camps' devoted to the propagation of lies and the subversion of Christian families."  

Indoctrination camps and the propagation of lies, eh? How fucking ironic.

So what could I do for four long years but love and nurture and give hope to these helpless kids in all the ways I wished my own mother would've given to me but didn't. Couldn't. Wouldn't? In them, I saw pure innocence and the best of humanity.

Prior to becoming a teacher, I’d been a barista at a popular coffeehouse in Palm Springs. The perfect job for a chick who's addicted to uppers and just can’t commit. A job that was so stressful, so demoralizing, so low-paying that I was forced, through untold suffering, to get it together before all my will was gone. So I went back to school in my mid-40s and earned a single subject credential, acquired with honors (straight As), hitched to the highest of hopes that my passion for the word might rub off on the new generation. In the same way that art rubbed off on me thanks to Denis Jory's illuminating Humanities class during my senior year. Those hopes were quickly dashed when I realized the school that employed me cared little about the education of our children and more about giving what they called “customer service” to keep parents happy and re-enrollments rolling in. This meant passing kids whether they could read, write, hold a pencil or not. Mostly not. But never mind that.

 

The district's cynical, low-expectation rationale was: No... they're not good students, they know they're not good students, they don't like school, their lives are tough, their parents suck, they're in a cult, they're having another baby, they live in the hood... blah, blah, blah ...so just give 'em a break and get 'em out of here. They're better off with a high school diploma than without.

Perhaps. But...

But nothing. Customer service.

Customer service? What is this ...Macy's? Where am I, JC Penney's at the Palm Desert Town Center? I didn't realize I was back at Barnes & Noble. At least at Barnes & Noble everybody could read.

In a prior life (and century), I worked for the bookstore giant - still alive today in spite of the bookstore carnage. Hands down my all-time favorite job. B&N Palm Desert circa 1994 specifically. Back in the day, Barnes & Noble had a strict customer service policy that gave store patrons free rein to consume (tear the fuck apart) magazines, newspapers & books without having to purchase them; allowed them to make filthy messes all over the store if the urge compelled them, and us lowly booksellers weren’t allowed to say anything... only smile and clean it up since “customer service” was our low-pay raison d'être.

So when I discovered the school district that just hired me also had a customer service mandate and that our students were really our “clients,” I was disheartened. All I could foresee were filthy messes everywhere.

"How are you supposed to properly assess someone who's a client?" was the incisive question my short-lived therapist posited when I came crawling in to her upstairs El Paseo office that hellish first year. The short answer was - I wasn’t. 

She went on to deem teaching an "Awful profession."         

Because in America everybody's a customer, and I was supposed to pass mine whether they earned it or not. Deserved it or not. Me and another teacher called this repugnant act: eating your liver. Us lowly, expendable teachers were expected to clean up our students' messes with a wink and a smile. That was our business. Credit recovery. A diploma mill. "Homeschooling" hell. It felt criminal, and I would know. Do whatever it takes to make these kids "graduate" was Habit #1 (Be Proactive). If the bullying EMT mom insists her son Matt passes, you pass him. Especially since he's got an IEP. You know how litigious these folks can get. In fact, when I complained to my principal about another student not doing a lick of work and risking failure, I'll never forget his response. It was my second year on the job. A few months pre-pandemic.

Sitting across from me at my desk, he looked slowly side to side to make sure no one was listening, leaned in and whispered, “Just pass her,” as he made a sweeping motion with his hand. He didn't give a damn, and I felt ill. This was not what I signed up for. Not what I imagined as I foamed your milk at Koffi at 5:32 am.

I passed Alyssa with a D- then passed her off to another, more compliant teacher. She's his problem now I rationalized. The D minuses didn't stop there I'm ashamed to say, though I gave more Fs than most. Many of these kids, mostly my obstinate high schoolers, I failed in multiple classes their junior year much to their dismay. Like CiCi, God rest her impatient soul. Where I worked, failing students was an act of rebellion. And I did it until I quite literally couldn't stomach it anymore and resigned. By that time, the damage was done and my contempt - oozing from every orifice. Some realities you just can't hide.

All of this raises a profoundly important question for me and hopefully anybody else who gives a damn about our country, the world writ large: wouldn't true customer service in an academic setting mean holding their asses, parents' included, to the goddamn fire? It's serious fucking business, education. More than ever. We seem to have forgotten this somewhere along the way. And much to our growing collective dismay. 

Dr. Chris Emdin at USC - required reading during my credential program - deemed education: "An activation of the imagination and a path toward liberation." If this is true, shouldn't we be asking our freedom-loving clientele a little more often and with a greater urgency: What kind of an education do you want here? A complete and utter delusion? Or would you rather be better prepared for an increasingly complicated, confounding and dangerous world? I'll never forget when an inspirational college professor posed this very question to our five unit Intertextuality class during one of his breathtaking episodes of heightened arousal.