The Teacher Dudie
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Happy Amazonersary to Me!
On October 22, 1997, I woke up on a mattress on my friend's living room floor, grabbed a cup of coffee at an espresso stand on Seattle's Broadway Avenue, and caught the 7 bus (or maybe the 34) downtown. Autumn in Seattle is a very special time; ragged gold clouds hover over the Olympic Mountains in the morning, and dead leaves lie in the gutters, waiting for the day's inevitable shower to wash them into the Sound. The city smells clean, even at the bus stops.
Once downtown I made a connection for a bus that took me south, into Seattle's industrial district, past the Kingdome and the site where two new stadiums would rise, past the West Seattle Bridge, past gloomy warehouses and grimy storefronts, to the intersection of 1st and Dawson. The bus was full of people who looked nothing like me, most of whom got off at the same stop. We walked as a group to the front door of the large warehouse. Once inside, a guy with dreadlocks looked up our names on a clipboard and sent us off to report to various corners, tables, or more likely, groups of metal carts.
Amazon.com was indeed the Earth's Biggest Bookstore, but only in the technical sense. There was no fiction section; no row of Tom Robbins selections. Rather, on any given (though labeled) spot on a shelf, there would be hundreds of copies of the same book. My first job, as a temp, was to pick books: you grabbed a library cart, signed out a sheaf of packing slips (the same slips you received with your order) with titles and bin numbers, and away you went.
We all looked like freaks. Seattle in 1997 was Goth heaven. If you weren't Goth, you were punk – what the blues are to Chicago, punk is to Seattle. But the freakishness belied the unbelievable niceness of the city and its various subcultures. And everyone, absolutely everyone, smoked.
I was even a freak for being normal by most standards. But that was part of Amazon's secret – the informal motto was that no one cared what you looked like, as long as you worked hard. It was the closest thing to a genuine meritocracy I've ever seen. Some of my punk friends had barely graduated from high school, yet were assistant managers making important decisions every day. Jeff Bezos stopped by the warehouse many times, as often as not with a group of gawking suits. He really is a funny guy, and he really is a genius. He really did deserve Time's Man of the Year award in 1999.
Eventually I was hired on fulltime, one of two temps from our group of 37 to get offered a position. A few months later I moved on to the Customer Service department downtown, a shorter bus ride and more often than not, an ass-kicking bike ride up Pine Street after work. I worked my way up in CS, becoming a trainer and loving it, and taking a position as a salaried Training Manager in West Virginia because I thought I needed more of a challenge. By then it was 2000, our stock was about to plunge, and we started hearing rumors of dress codes for CS. I moved to Lexington as a low-level salaried manager in a warehouse. Two years later, sick of spreadsheets, Six Sigma, and the unrelenting pushiness of MBAs (we old-schoolers called them "Management By Ass") and new-to-the-company upper echelon managers, I quit.
Happy Amazonersary, Teacherdudie. Glad I did it. Wouldn't go back for the world. ¶ 10:27 AM 0 Comments
Once downtown I made a connection for a bus that took me south, into Seattle's industrial district, past the Kingdome and the site where two new stadiums would rise, past the West Seattle Bridge, past gloomy warehouses and grimy storefronts, to the intersection of 1st and Dawson. The bus was full of people who looked nothing like me, most of whom got off at the same stop. We walked as a group to the front door of the large warehouse. Once inside, a guy with dreadlocks looked up our names on a clipboard and sent us off to report to various corners, tables, or more likely, groups of metal carts.
Amazon.com was indeed the Earth's Biggest Bookstore, but only in the technical sense. There was no fiction section; no row of Tom Robbins selections. Rather, on any given (though labeled) spot on a shelf, there would be hundreds of copies of the same book. My first job, as a temp, was to pick books: you grabbed a library cart, signed out a sheaf of packing slips (the same slips you received with your order) with titles and bin numbers, and away you went.
We all looked like freaks. Seattle in 1997 was Goth heaven. If you weren't Goth, you were punk – what the blues are to Chicago, punk is to Seattle. But the freakishness belied the unbelievable niceness of the city and its various subcultures. And everyone, absolutely everyone, smoked.
I was even a freak for being normal by most standards. But that was part of Amazon's secret – the informal motto was that no one cared what you looked like, as long as you worked hard. It was the closest thing to a genuine meritocracy I've ever seen. Some of my punk friends had barely graduated from high school, yet were assistant managers making important decisions every day. Jeff Bezos stopped by the warehouse many times, as often as not with a group of gawking suits. He really is a funny guy, and he really is a genius. He really did deserve Time's Man of the Year award in 1999.
Eventually I was hired on fulltime, one of two temps from our group of 37 to get offered a position. A few months later I moved on to the Customer Service department downtown, a shorter bus ride and more often than not, an ass-kicking bike ride up Pine Street after work. I worked my way up in CS, becoming a trainer and loving it, and taking a position as a salaried Training Manager in West Virginia because I thought I needed more of a challenge. By then it was 2000, our stock was about to plunge, and we started hearing rumors of dress codes for CS. I moved to Lexington as a low-level salaried manager in a warehouse. Two years later, sick of spreadsheets, Six Sigma, and the unrelenting pushiness of MBAs (we old-schoolers called them "Management By Ass") and new-to-the-company upper echelon managers, I quit.
Happy Amazonersary, Teacherdudie. Glad I did it. Wouldn't go back for the world. ¶ 10:27 AM 0 Comments
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Sex and Freshmen
The past three class periods have been dedicated to discussions of gender expectations and sexual orientation. Now, I'm totally fine with this stuff, and I don't mind talking about it in a college level class, but I was a little surprised to hear some of the students saying things like "I think high school students need to hear this."
Which, on its surface, is entirely true. Your average 17 year old certainly does need to hear about sexual orientation and gender expectations and that Othering someone because of those things is simply unacceptable. What I have a problem with is me being the one addressing it. I'm an English teacher. Unless we're talking about a text, I have no business discussing these things with high school students. Not to mention the fact that in the current political climate in education (see, for example, the discourse surrounding the Intelligent Design hooey), any teacher who opens his or her yap about sexual orientation is likely to get crucified by some self-righteous parent.
There are some things that need to be taught, but never will be, in public school. ¶ 3:50 PM 0 Comments
Which, on its surface, is entirely true. Your average 17 year old certainly does need to hear about sexual orientation and gender expectations and that Othering someone because of those things is simply unacceptable. What I have a problem with is me being the one addressing it. I'm an English teacher. Unless we're talking about a text, I have no business discussing these things with high school students. Not to mention the fact that in the current political climate in education (see, for example, the discourse surrounding the Intelligent Design hooey), any teacher who opens his or her yap about sexual orientation is likely to get crucified by some self-righteous parent.
There are some things that need to be taught, but never will be, in public school. ¶ 3:50 PM 0 Comments
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Gendered
For the past week or so in one of my education classes, the sole topic of discussion has been gender. Gendered behavior, gendered expectations, gendered roles, and any combination of the three. Today's reading assignment discussed how gender operates in schools, and was specifically an indictment of the "boys under assault" theory perpetuated by several authors over the past few years. Now, like the article's author, I'm always willing to listen to theories that sound silly, so when I first heard about books like this, I thought, maybe they have a point. Maybe all the attention we've been giving to girls has in fact hurt boys. Maybe boys have actually been victimized by attempts at gender equality; maybe boys have unintentionally been marginlized by Title IX. Maybe, I thought to myself, they have a point.
They do not, in fact, have a point. They are, in fact, full of crap.
Behind the research (my favorite quote from the Publishers Weekly review: ". . . she bolsters her findings with extensive footnotes and data from such sources as the U.S. Department of Education." Because, you know, anyone kooky enough to claim that boys are treated unfairly in schools had better be swinging some heavy lumber in the research department), behind the alarmist rhetoric, behind all this BS about boys being victims in schools, one can see what's really going on. Conservative authors are taking the culture wars into public schools, where they perceive the Left has an advantage; specifically, this boys-as-victims hooey is a political reaction to feminism, a movement which very astutely noticed that adult women weren't the only ones affected by sexist behavior. So while feminists were the first ones to point out that a problem exists in public schools, and that the problem was rooted in sexism, the spate of authors claiming that the discourse is hurting boys are actually the ones politicizing the discussion.
I'm willing to bet these authors aren't necessarily all that concerned about how boys are treated in the classroom, unless they are directly related to said boys. I'm also willing to bet these authors are very concerned about advancing a political agenda that includes refuting feminism.
So in class we talked a little bit about this stuff and I mostly kept my yap shut. We did briefly discuss the notion that boys need good role models, at which point little bells went off in my head. Yes, boys certainly do need good role models, but male teachers aren't - and cannot and should not be - the only place those role models are found.
And that train of thought opens up a huge can of worms that I just don't feel like getting into here. ¶ 2:32 PM 0 Comments
They do not, in fact, have a point. They are, in fact, full of crap.
Behind the research (my favorite quote from the Publishers Weekly review: ". . . she bolsters her findings with extensive footnotes and data from such sources as the U.S. Department of Education." Because, you know, anyone kooky enough to claim that boys are treated unfairly in schools had better be swinging some heavy lumber in the research department), behind the alarmist rhetoric, behind all this BS about boys being victims in schools, one can see what's really going on. Conservative authors are taking the culture wars into public schools, where they perceive the Left has an advantage; specifically, this boys-as-victims hooey is a political reaction to feminism, a movement which very astutely noticed that adult women weren't the only ones affected by sexist behavior. So while feminists were the first ones to point out that a problem exists in public schools, and that the problem was rooted in sexism, the spate of authors claiming that the discourse is hurting boys are actually the ones politicizing the discussion.
I'm willing to bet these authors aren't necessarily all that concerned about how boys are treated in the classroom, unless they are directly related to said boys. I'm also willing to bet these authors are very concerned about advancing a political agenda that includes refuting feminism.
So in class we talked a little bit about this stuff and I mostly kept my yap shut. We did briefly discuss the notion that boys need good role models, at which point little bells went off in my head. Yes, boys certainly do need good role models, but male teachers aren't - and cannot and should not be - the only place those role models are found.
And that train of thought opens up a huge can of worms that I just don't feel like getting into here. ¶ 2:32 PM 0 Comments
Hallelujah!
I just found out that I'll be allowed to keep my RA job when I do my student teaching in the spring. This is almost entirely good news, except that it means I have to be an RA and live in a cinderblock for another semester. But at least it means food, shelter, and not moving my crap in the middle of winter.
¶ 2:30 PM 0 Comments
Monday, October 10, 2005
a quick summary
Well, it's been a relatively laid-back two weeks. Mostly we've been focusing on coming up with essential questions and thesis statements, in preparation for writing our big paper. Actually, "big" isn't really the right word- it's only 9 pages, and with research and an interesting topic, that's fairly easy to write. Then again, I haven't been writing well - or motivated - this semester, so maybe I need to be careful not to jinx myself.
I think I'll be focusing on the correlation between school funding and test scores. This interests me for a few reasons, mostly because I'm strongly inclined to pursue justice in areas where I perceive an unfair advantage. Unfortunately, those areas are usually connected somehow to people I know and like (friends of my dad and stepmom, for example) or conflict directly with friends/family in philosophy.
Somehow I have to reconcile all this, but it probably doesn't make any sense without more detail. Complicating matters is the fact that I am a product of the system I now criticize.
So, let me just come out and say it: school funding is categorically unfair. If you defend the practice of funding schools based on property values (or at least, distributing money based on local property values, thereby keeping tax revenue confined to your own school district), you are complicit in an unfair system. Don't harp at me about your hard-earned money; don't tell me that you're taxed unfairly already. I don't care about your perception of the government's tax philosophy.
I used to think this was an implicitly racist system, and I'm willing to bet some data would back that up. I'm thinking now, however, that it's less about overt racism (although some attitudes in suburbia, reflected by those in power, are repugnantly ill-informed) and more about the rich protecting themselves.
Don't get me wrong. I don't blame people for being rich (but I used to). I do blame them for being cold and thoughtless about their wealth.
Now, given my upbringing in an upper middle-class family, I need to stress that A) yes, I'm biting the hand that fed me - almost literally and B) I'm actually fiscally conservative on most issues... with one big exception reserved for school funding.
Okay, I actually need to head to class. More on this later. ¶ 8:45 AM 0 Comments
I think I'll be focusing on the correlation between school funding and test scores. This interests me for a few reasons, mostly because I'm strongly inclined to pursue justice in areas where I perceive an unfair advantage. Unfortunately, those areas are usually connected somehow to people I know and like (friends of my dad and stepmom, for example) or conflict directly with friends/family in philosophy.
Somehow I have to reconcile all this, but it probably doesn't make any sense without more detail. Complicating matters is the fact that I am a product of the system I now criticize.
So, let me just come out and say it: school funding is categorically unfair. If you defend the practice of funding schools based on property values (or at least, distributing money based on local property values, thereby keeping tax revenue confined to your own school district), you are complicit in an unfair system. Don't harp at me about your hard-earned money; don't tell me that you're taxed unfairly already. I don't care about your perception of the government's tax philosophy.
I used to think this was an implicitly racist system, and I'm willing to bet some data would back that up. I'm thinking now, however, that it's less about overt racism (although some attitudes in suburbia, reflected by those in power, are repugnantly ill-informed) and more about the rich protecting themselves.
Don't get me wrong. I don't blame people for being rich (but I used to). I do blame them for being cold and thoughtless about their wealth.
Now, given my upbringing in an upper middle-class family, I need to stress that A) yes, I'm biting the hand that fed me - almost literally and B) I'm actually fiscally conservative on most issues... with one big exception reserved for school funding.
Okay, I actually need to head to class. More on this later. ¶ 8:45 AM 0 Comments
