Mr. V retires from PSS

Retirement at PSS is a euphemism for someone strongly considering that one resigns one’s position. Or, the act of resigning at PSS is indicative of one’s acumen relative to an impending request that one should seriously consider retiring.

One of my co-teachers badgered me the last two years to retire. Four of my classroom students, out of 22, openly applaud the prospect that I will retire/resign soon. C-6 and C-5 in the cervical bones have an outgrowth that is irritating nerve endings causing tingling and cramping to the right side of the upper extremities, and may also be affecting the left side of the brain.

Thus, it came to pass that on MLK, Jr. Day, when one celebrates the new practice of “speaking truth to power,” and on the eve of the Great Citizens’ Swearing-In of America with Barack Obama as President and everyone else as associate executive officers to the Orator-in-chief at the Oval office, Mr. V the SVES sixth grade teacher, erstwhile TOY in 2005 for SVES, the VFW Pacific, and the NMICH, wrote letters to the Governor, the members of the Board of Education, the Commissioner of Education, the SVES Principal and teachers, the ACT President and members, the PTA and SCBM Chair and members, and the parents of his sixth grade students, announcing his resignation/retirement from the Public School System.

This letter writing is not of the intensity of the MLK, Jr. Letter from Birmingham to his fellow clergy who accused him of employing extremist tactics, nor of the profoundly meditative musings of the young German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer from prison after being accused of participating in an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Hitler. (Tom Cruise plays a German officer who failed to assassinate Hitler in the movie “Valkyrie” recently shown on island, the result of which included the hanging of Bonhoeffer three weeks before the Soviets captured Berlin.)

Raising both men’s memory is not an attempt at comparison, nor make a sly osmotic derivation of their reputation, but to highlight the function of letter writing as a form of protest in the Protestant sense, i.e., as the transitive verb protestare to mean “to declare, or to assert.” Thus, my retirement/resignation from Elementary School teaching is not just a walking away from current role and function, but to make a declarative and assertive statement to aspects of our educational system that needs attending to.

The letter to Gov. Benigno R. Fitial is to remind his office of his function to appoint a teacher’s representative to the Board of Education, cc: Dan Nielson who is to advice the Governor on educational matters. I would not object even if he appoints our eminent colleague AB who allegedly thinks he is the most qualified (and the only one at that!) to fill the position. Of course, the ACT President has been properly endorsed by the group, but at this point, dithering on this appointment damages teachers’ morale more than any legal service it may serve the clarifying (an oxymoron?) legal minds.

The address to the members of the Board of Education is an outright accusation of their seeming callousness over teachers’ wellbeing through policy decisions that allows for no elbow room to consider individual circumstances. (As is common knowledge, any attempt to impose a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to HR situations is bound to fail.) The two-year contract cycle might have been helpful in attracting temperate zone teachers to come and defrost their icy dagans in our lukewarm waters, but it does not deal with issues of tenure, and it leaves inordinate power to administrators over the professional careers of teachers. It is time to resuscitate the tenure issue within the system

I have personally felt the consequences of HR reneging on a promise of retroactive application (plus a record of heartless application), and before I finalize a Chapter 7 option, I would not mind BoE revisiting my case to make good on their promise, and save me from the ignominy of bankruptcy!

Previously, when I brought something to the attention of the David Borja while still the Commissioner, he responded that he felt his hands were tied by policy decisions made elsewhere. I commented then that taking BoE/PSS to judicial adjudication is like taking one’s Grandma to court! Our affable current Commissioner has enough political savvy to decide that her office can no longer just be captive of grant compliance and accreditation fiction writing, nor does curriculum designs be just empty echoes of current trends and fads generated elsewhere. It is time to focus on the state of personnel. The above cited two-year cycle of contracts do not serve those who are covenanted to be more than recipients of a bi-weekly pay check. Teachers are the system’s most important asset, and to say that they are underutilized is to make a great understatement. As a wit once uttered: “what passes for professional development is nothing but servicing mercenary, abused and exploited employment.”

To my Principal, two teachers in our school are publicized examples of Sam Joyner’s HET – highly effective teachers; but they are NHQT – not highly qualified teachers – by centrum’s standards because they have yet to pass their PRAXIS. New non-PRAXIS passers are paid substitute teachers’ pay rate although they are saddled with full-time classroom responsibilities; a teacher’s aide who has functioned as a certified full-fledged teacher in the past but lacks the academic credentials (has an Associate rather than a Bachelor’s degree), is used as a substitute teacher although she has functioned and fully demonstrated her competence as a full-time homeroom teacher. To add insult to injury, she clocks in on the teacher’s aide time design, but is expected to perform two roles, while receiving petty cash level of remuneration. It is time to refocus administrative efforts away from time-consuming facilities and equipment maintenance, and punitive behavior modification, to authentic curriculum supervision and care-filled personnel care. We might just be surprised to witness the blooming of creativity and effectivity from human beings treated as such rather than as mere peon of economic blackmails and squeeze plays.

The ACT President took over a reviving association that fell into disarray over internal bickerings. Elected while still a teacher, she has since assumed an administration position and that has added to the divisiveness within the ranks. Her executive term of office terminates this year and I trust that she would focus her remaining efforts to gathering a lot of us into active dialogue and constructive conversations. Although teachers are an invaluable asset, when inert, they are just as effective as fungus-infected bread in the cupboard!

To parents and students, the paradigm for teaching as exercises in rote memory, and the model of coercive military discipline as instrument of order and behavioral modification no longer works. It is time for parents to return to the education arena and struggle with their children’s hyper active behavior in a hyper active world; it is time for students to be strengthened to grow-up against the towering confidence of pedagogical giants rather than cute terrorists to the cowed jellyfish spines of coddling teachers worried about being liked.

My father when he retired, said: “ I am re-tiring; I am getting a new set of tires!” He was in his 60s then; he died last year at 94. Those new set of tires went a long way! I say the same with resigning; why not make it a re-signing occasion. Resigning in common connotation is giving up, which is the least of my intention.

We do want to underscore the message of this day and that of tomorrow: the days of representative democracy where someone on our behalf decides for us, is over; the movement of citizens’ commitment has begun. My school’s mascot is the canary, the world’s favored bird in a cage. My resignation is an act of liberation, bringing my pedagogical skills, for whatever it is forth, out into the open air.