January 22, 2012 by Susan
Nielsen
They say there are two kinds of people:
Scouts and settlers. If that is true, I would fall into the first
category. Licensed to teach English in four states and a sign
language interpreter, I was able to move around a lot before I got
married. I learned that if I could "sub" a little bit for a
school district, I could usually get a job offer.
That's what happened in '97 when I
arrived in the NW with a headful of ideas and a heartful of
ambition--and an honorable-mention
Teacher-of-the-Year award from KY,.
I soon landed a job at an over-crowded
middle school in Beaverton, teaching 7th grade language arts and
rebuilding an abandoned drama program. Three months into my new job,
the guidance counselor told me--after I had to seek out the
information--that my second-term drama class would double in size.
This is not the kind of information
teachers are supposed to get from guidance counselors in public
schools; my building principal was unaware of this unfair situation
until I told her.
The ensuing conflict was "won"
by me: The class size did increase class, but only by 50 % (kids
wanted to stay in it and it was hard to say no). But, in the
aftermath, another counselor told me, portentously, to "watch my
back."
Welcome to Beaverton School District
#48. Watch Your Back.
When I was fired for insubordination
seven years later, my union rep was called beforehand. A contrived
sexual harassment complaint, sought by my administrators from an
impressionable employee whose complaint did not rise to the standard
of harassment OR sex, was used to supplement an insubordination
charge and to damage my reputation in the community while I was
unable to refute it fro six months. My union lawyer, selected by BSD
HR personnel, filed a manipulative free speech suit about something I
said truthfully to the new superintendent to silence me.
When my license to teach in Oregon was
suspended three and 1/2 years after I was fired, the sexual
harassment issue had long since disappeared. The TSPC director (hired
by the former Beaverton superintendent in 2002) used an undocumented
allegation from ten years previous, a snippet of blatantly salacious
innuendo originated by the same counselor with whom I had conflicted
about doubling my class size.
Beaverton school leaders secretly paid
insider lawyers to make that happen, using a shadowy state agency
impressively but deceptively named the Fair Dismissal Appeals Board.
I learned during the first four years
of my ordeal that we Oregonians are deeply invested in a system that
has too long celebrated the wrong parts of education. Real teachers
are not in it to get rich. Never have been. While I encountered many
wonderful teachers at two schools and was given some great
opportunities to work with some remarkable kids, I still spent a lot
of my own money and my own time trying to make it work, just as I had
had to do in Kentucky, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.
In the course of my unnecessary
conflict (I had actually asked the HR director to allow me to resign
without penalty just weeks before this nightmare began), I discovered
the extent to which some public school millionaires can go to conceal
bureaucratic misconduct.
Disclosure: I am not without fault. I
will accept my part in the initial conflict; I did not deal well with
being bullied by my bosses.
But I can assure the public--when we
finally do develop metrics to evaluate "good"
teaching--that good teachers do not readily accept tyranny and
injustice; they would no longer be good role models.
I know that the real problem with
Oregon's schools does not start with money. There are, here in Oregon
as well as everywhere else, great schools successfully educating
kids, filled with great teachers who have already been conditioned to
thrift and are not overwhelmed by austerity.
(It is the EXTRAVAGANCE that "trickles
down" in public institutions, motivated by vanity and
accompanied by materialism and avarice.)
Our priority should not be about
finding MORE money; rather, we must learn to watch what's there more
carefully. To that end, we must choose stewards who wouldn't DREAM of
hiring lawyers who earn education money making smokescreens for
misconduct.
I earned the equivalent of a doctoral
degree in the conflict I encountered when asking to be treated
fairly, when standing up for my rights (and, by extension, my
students' rights). What happened to me in Oregon's public schools can
STILL happen too easily...for the same reasons.
(And maybe editorial writers like Ms.
Nielson will step forward to acknowledge that the complacency created
by our collective "good enough" attitude is created in
large part by a media who has long enjoyed the profits generated
through biased service to influential school leaders.)
