Ladies and gentlemen of the school board:
I appear before you tonight in open session not to bandy excuses for my behavior or plead for my reinstatement as an instructor of English at J________ High School at both the ninth- and eleventh-grade levels; instead, I would like to take this opportunity to explain in a public forum my perspective on certain preconditions of local and national concern which precipitated my statements and actions at the all-Junior assembly on dd/mm/yyyy and my subsequent termination by Principal C_____ for gross noncompliance and insubordination. My side of the story, as it were. A side that has not been given full voice, at least in a public forum such as this, since the onset of the local media hubbub (however warranted) surrounding my so-called outburst over the implementation of certain motivational incentives designed to raise student performance relative to the New England Cumulative Assessment Program (hereinafter referred to as NECAP), including but not limited to the so-called Teacher On Their Knees incentive.
Let me begin by saying that while my actions and statements at the all-Junior NECAP prep assembly, wherein students of testable populations were to be introduced to the Positive Incentive Program conceived and piloted this yyyy-yyyy school year by the new Raffle Team subcommittee of the NECAP Student Incentive action committee—a committee funded by special motion of this very esteemed board before which I now stand, and endowed with, as I understand (although I wasn’t at the meetings nor have I read official paperwork but have been told by various subcommittee members on several occasions), twenty-two thousand dollars per year of operation toward extra-contractual pay, prizes, and various other expenses deemed necessary toward the implementation of a student-incentive program relative to NECAP test preparation with measurable results relative to said test, and which committee’s diligence and seemingly (to the point of grotesquerie, in fact) indefatigable school spirit, pep, enthusiasm, et cetera, I applaud—while my unfortunate and admittedly dispirited remarks, gestures, declamations (et cetera) about the nature of the incentive program—namely, the so-called Teacher On Their Knees segment of the assembly’s rather pep-rallyish stage show—while my statements and actions in regard to said assembly and stage show and Teacher On Their Knees incentive skit were both unprofessional and contrary to the stated school board objectives for the yyyy-yyyy school year (as was my refusal to subordinate myself to certain direct orders from the administration of J________ High School), they were not without philosophical, moral, and practical precedent.
Please hear me out.
In the absence (prohibition, in fact, by this esteemed board) of certain so-called “negative incentives” toward improvement of NECAP scores—namely: the inclusion of NECAP scores on student transcripts, prerequisite scores of proficient or higher for AP-level placement and/or sports participation, and a mandate of NECAP proficiency for all graduates—and in the face of such extraordinary apathy among testable Junior populations and their attendant detestable NECAP scores, we have been driven as a school to extreme so-called “positive incentives.” The raffle. The prizes. The Teacher On Their Knees skit. Et cetera.
Let me be plain: I support any effort to improve the educational climate of J________ High School. As has become increasingly fashionable and politically expedient to say (though it has always been true of dedicated educators such as myself): I am here for the kids. If the Raffle Team subcommittee of the NECAP Student Incentive Program action committee deem it appropriate and project it to be effective to offer each Junior student one raffle ticket for each day he or she willingly participates (“willing participation” being designated by, I quote verbatim S_____ R____, the chair of the Raffle Team subcommittee, “a student not texting, sleeping, or disrupting the learning process for others”) in a nineteen-minute English and Math skills mini-class, which mini-class is to take the place of the daily advisory period for the duration of five weeks directly preceding the NECAP tests (and which ticket will be entered into a drawing for five weekly prizes ranging in worth from an Apple iPad to a ten-dollar gift card to Dunkin Donuts)—if the Raffle Team, which consists of administrators, educators, and students, deem this to be the best approach, the method most congenial to both an improved school climate and a rise in overall NECAP scores, then I am all for it. None of my statements or actions at the all-Junior NECAP assembly on dd/mm/yyyy, however abrupt and contextually inappropriate, indicated in any way insubordination to the overarching aims of the Raffle Team and their raffle and prize program. I am, as it were, doing this for the students. To the goals of improved school climate and NECAP scores, I am entirely subordinate.
It was the impromptu and, in my opinion, unwarranted expectations imposed on contracted and unionized members of the teaching faculty—namely, myself—which was the impetus of my so-called insubordination, for which statements and actions I have apologized to the deaf ears of the local media for the past several weeks now, ever since I was escorted from the J________ High School auditorium by the so-called Student Resource Officer amid the flash of cellphone cameras and the din of a bedlam I apparently incited (so goes the argument), at the all-Junior NECAP assembly on dd/mm/yyyy by said statements and actions.
And plus, there’s Z__. You need to understand the contextual significance of this particular sixteen-year-old female student, Z__ G____, at least a little bit, in order to understand the immediate emotional and moral turmoil in which I found myself embroiled during the climax of the so-called Teacher On Their Knees skit in that base and hysterical opera that called itself an all-Junior NECAP assembly but was in fact a Roman circus of decadence.
Z__ is the sort of kid whose NECAP score is always going to be a one or a two, somewhere between less-than-proficient and absolutely skill-less; who is always going to be pissy about school because her parents are indigent and divorced and abusive and live in W_____, out where the ambulances don’t go; who comes into my advisory high on LSD and refuses to turn around when I tell her I need to speak to her, and who had something like three hospitalizations last year and was out for more than thirty-six days because of an infection after a botched operation and got an excused medical absence for it and ended up doing only about a third of the curriculum for her sophomore English class (G___’s class, not mine … I’ve actually never had Z__ as a student, which makes it all the more ironic and hideous that her decision to nominate me for participation in the so-called Teacher On Their Knees pageant could be taken seriously by administration) and got away with it all.
And we’ve got Z__ and a zillion other Junior students just like her down in the auditorium on dd/mm/yyyy, and we’re offering them raffle tickets to win hundred-dollar gift certificates to local shoe outlets and Amazon Kindles and BP gas cards for basically just breathing for nineteen minutes every day for the five weeks directly preceding the NECAP tests, their scores for said assessment not in any way attached to anything relative to their life, no so-called “negative incentives” levied in any way against their graduation progress or their participation in any of the tax-funded opportunities our increasingly deprived and test-preparation-driven school has to offer, no accountability placed upon their shoulders whatsoever. I’m sitting there in the cold auditorium where I can’t even drink my morning coffee, surrounded by the entire Junior class, every testable sub-population seething with apathy around me and primed to have their greed glands milked by the announcement of more more more Positive Incentives from the gaping cheery mouths of the members of the Raffle Team subcommittee. I’m sitting there next to Z__ G_____, that wretched child, and the rest of my all-Junior advisory, for whom I will soon sacrifice our daily twelve-minute respite (as well as a portion of my prep block—a literal violation of contract) to administer the pre-packaged test-preparation materials (courtesy of the Informational Text sub-subcommittee of the English Department NECAP Prep subcommittee of the NECAP Student Incentive action committee) during the five weeks directly preceding the NECAP test (which I will be administering—or rather I would be administering, were it not for my unfortunately irrepressible statements and actions and subsequent termination by Principal C_____ for gross non-compliance and insubordination—to Z__ G_____ and the rest of my horrible all-Junior brood of advisees over the course of three days).
And, ladies and gentlemen of the board, I don’t like being touched. Physically touched on my person. Not in my work place. Especially by a herpetic wasteoid like Z__ G_____. And so when the curtains literally opened on the auditorium’s stage, and the climactic final segment of the all-Junior NECAP positive incentive assembly’s weird multi-media showcase commenced—when S_____ R____, chair of the Raffle Team subcommittee, introduced the Teacher On Their Knees incentive skit, and after the first couple of volunteers took the stage (hand-picked by the Raffle Team prior to the assembly, I have since learned, even though they presented their supplication and entreatments as ostensibly spontaneous outbursts of urgency, as if the entire teaching faculty were just about to split open with importunes to the testable sub-populations of the Junior class to please, please, please try your hardest and do your best on the NECAP test, even though there are no so-called “negative incentives,” even though you can keep on treating this test as a joke and your scores will reflect only on us, the teachers, and the cumulative effects of de-funding from state and federal sources due to poor test scores will only be felt by the next apathetic and atomized Junior class, even though nothing depends on your performance but our jobs and our adult ability to provide food clothing and shelter to my one-year-old daughter C____, whose mother is now unemployed due to her so-called gross non-compliance and insubordination, at least as of this open session of the J________ School Board, this Wednesday, dd/mm/yyyy)—after the first couple of volunteers (J___ P_____ from the math department, and the comely Chinese-exchange educator, L__ L__, of the foreign language department, and the stately and avuncular D____ H_____ of sports administration) had all done their thing in all their own unique ways, had gotten down on their knees on the sandy vanished wood of the auditorium stage, in the grime and after-image of a thousand J________ High School musicals and band recitals and pep rallies and informational assemblies—after D____ H_____ had finished pretending to cry, holding his rheumatic hands Lear-like to the sky from his genuflective position (as if in penance for his, your, all of our failure) in the yolk of the spotlight—after all of that was done and the all-Junior crowd was primed for blood, S_____ R____, chair of the Raffle Team subcommittee, came out onto the stage and, after patting D____ H_____ on his shoulder as if permitting him to rise from his knees and step down from that pedestal of humiliation (the students practically throwing heads of rotten cabbage at this point), took up the microphone in her fist and ballyhooed, “Well, are you convinced yet? Are you ready to do well on the NECAP tests in six weeks?” and they shouted, “NO!” and “BOO!” and “FUCK THIS SHIT!” at the stage, and she smiled that lunatic, credulous, positive smile and said, “Well, should we bring up a couple more teachers?” and they all said, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” and gnashed their terrible teeth and showed their terrible tattoos and body piercings and took out their hateful personal electronic devices and turned them on and waved them like pagans.
That’s when Z__ G_____ grabbed me by the wrist and raised my hand into the air. That’s when the entire all-Junior assembly somehow folded inward, its four-hundred-something pairs of eyes drawing upon me like the Roman swords upon Christ. That’s when S_____ R____ said, “Well? Who’s it gonna be?” and they all shouted my name, and I shook my head, and Z__ G_____ said, “Hey! You have to! Isn’t that the point?” and I said, quietly, “No,” and S_____ R____ smiled and nodded and waved me to the stage with a crooked finger, and when I shook my head again, despite a dozen palms on my shoulders and back now, Juniors I don’t even know attempting to physically compel me onward to my (in their eyes) inevitable supplication upon the blood-soaked stage of the NECAP prep assembly on dd/mm/yyyy—after I had persisted in my refusal to mount the gibbet for what felt like a full minute, despite all the cries and the hands and the shouted bitchings of Z__ G_____ (who swore indignantly and crowed that she would absolutely refuse to take anything seriously ever again unless I went up and got down on my knees and begged them to do well on the NECAP tests—who pretended to cry and pout and go into a state of shock unless I submitted myself to this asinine and macabre so-called Positive Incentive Program allegedly performed in the name of school spirit, in the vein of improving NECAP scores: as it were, “for the kids”), after all of that, S____ R____ finally, still smiling, shot her dead gray eyes in the direction of one Vice-principal M____, who didn’t smile at all, as if realizing (along with me alone) the direness of this standoff, the importance of maintaining a pan-faculty hegemony relative to the Positive Incentive Program—Vice principal M____, who pitted himself in that moment against the sheer force of irony, of pride, of critical perception (the sort of aesthetic awareness of situation I like to engender in my students but for which I have been deemed grossly non-compliant and insubordinate by the administration of J________ High School and subsequently subjected to immediate suspension without pay pending an investigation of my statements and actions immediately following the events I am currently relating) in the ultimate Antigonean showdown between personal integrity and professional subordination, upon the hair-trigger margin between doing it for the kids and doing it for the self, or in the name of critical thought, or by the grace of each teacher who has gone before me into the sunset of history, cup of hemlock in hand.
Ladies and gentlemen of the board, you are all sufficiently apprised as to the unfortunate events that transpired between my final spoken refusal to participate in the so-called Teacher On Their Knees (what, event? Incentive? Show? Crucifixion?). We need not relate for the umpteenth time my inappropriate and unprofessional statements and actions, nor need we dwell upon the (as it were) riotous reaction of the testable population to my so-called outburst. My one thousand apologies via the local news media to the parents, students, teachers, administration, and school board members of the J________ educational community have been cast and ignored for long enough. I come before you tonight not to excuse said statements and actions or deny the destructive nature of their repercussions, but merely to tell my side of the story. As it were. To amend the historical inequity of the so-called historical record.
And to importune you to consider the emotional and philosophical underpinnings that precipitated my unfortunate and one-million-times repented sin of gross non-compliance and insubordination at the all-Junior NECAP test-prep assembly on dd/mm/yyyy. To consider my one-year-old daughter, a nascent public-school student herself, a zygotic apathete, a primordial failure of some future testable population of the Junior class. Please, ladies and gentlemen of the school board, consider reinstating my tenure as English instructor at the ninth- and eleventh-grade level at J________ High School. Please hear me when I tell you that I have always done it for the kids. Without them, without you, I am nothing.
And so I beg you. Ladies and gentlemen of the school board. Though I may be a detestable specimen of an educator—a cynic, a braggart, a sot, miseress, a grump, a crone, a recalcitrant, a heresiarch. I beg you. Please. Though I be an insubordinate wretch. Please. Please.
_________________________________
Fall, 2012
Image: Detail from the Stations of the Cross at Pfettisheim Saint Symphorien Church in Alsace, France.