Back when I was a
high-school teacher, I always sort of enjoyed the first day or so of Pre-Plan (a
label that makes no sense, now that I think about it) or Plan Week, or whatever
it was called, except for the meetings, of course.
On most years we got new “spirit
shirts,” meaning shirts with the name of our high school on it, and usually
adorned with a sort of modernist, wind-blown lion, a lion that looked to be a
close relative of the Denver Broncos logo. Because teachers are a mostly monastic
bunch, ascetics by necessity, this was sort of like a birthday or some other
gift-giving occasion. Yay! A free shirt!
We typically didn’t have
those on the first morning back when we sat for our yearbook photos, so some of
us wore an older spirit shirt, others dressed up a bit, others would wear just
what they’d wear to work. We wore whatever someone like us would wear. No big
deal.
In my last year of
teaching, things changed. Yearbook photos got pushed back a day or so. This
gave us time to get our new shirts first, which, sadly, were a garish, road-worker,
prison-inmate orange. The administrative team received slightly nicer, but
still orange shirts, as a reminder that they were administrators and a part of
their own team. The varsity, I guess, and we the teachers would be the junior
varsity.
We’re used to that!
And we were required to
wear those things for our yearbook pictures. Required? I was so stunned when I
heard this, I raced home, unlocked my Home Security Box, and thumbed through my
vital documents until I found my 1973 honorable discharge from the United
States Air Force.
Having dutifully
completed my military obligation, I realized higher-ups no longer got to tell me what
shirt to wear. So I put the shirt in a drawer where I couldn’t see it and
skipped out on the yearbook photo.
Also, we were supposed to
put on some black pants with our orange shirt for our Entire Faculty and Staff
Photo (EFSP). Because I was required to, I didn’t do that either. Also, I don’t
have any black pants.
Later, those of us who “missed”
the first round of photos were told we could get our pictures taken when our
students went in for re-takes. But, we
would not be photographed unless we wore our orange shirt.
(Back home for another
look at the discharge papers. Yep. Still not in the Air Force, thank God.)
Seriously?! If any of us,
including your beloved author, had possessed the kind of courage that is often
likened to certain male organs, we would’ve walked over with our students and
caused a scene. We would’ve said, “Hey, I’m here to get my picture taken for
the yearbook and I insist you take it. Either take my picture or call over
whoever’s enforcing this thing, and we’ll have a discussion about what’s
important.”
And our students would
have looked on with envy and admiration, and they would’ve learned there is a
time to resist trivial, meaningless orders, something we likened to poultry
droppings back in the Air Force days. No one at my high school was going to
fire us for doing that or even make us do 50 push-ups or clean an entire john
with a toothbrush.
What poultry droppings we
all were! How I regret it! Missed teaching moment!
Now to be fair to those
who required the shirts, there was method in their rigidity. They wanted it to
be a show of teamwork, and maybe even family, even though many families don’t
require all their kids to wear the same clothes to show they’re part of the
family.
So I gave serious (for
me) thought to the teamwork concept. Who would benefit from our being a team?
And does doing what you’re told when it’s a violation of your freedom – not so
much as an American, but as a grownup – make you a team? Does conformity equal
teamwork?
And what would you call a
team of grownups who have next to no say in changes in policy, what text(s)
they use and how, how many students they have in a class, how to discourage
students from taking advantage of soft make-up policies, how they actually
teach in their own classrooms – the poor folks’ last refuge of autonomy – and how
and by whom they are evaluated, how often they are yanked out of class for
something with the faintly obscene name of “pull-outs,” so that continuity,
coherence and rapport are all damaged?
And what do you call a
team of grownups who have survived off piddling, pathetic pay raises over the last
seven years and who have had a good portion of their retirement pension
plundered by politicians?
What possible difference
does it make that all of these well-meaning, hard-working grownups, drawing
menial wages while they do their damnedest to educate Florida’s youth, i.e.,
protect them from the wildly incompetent shenanigans of the feckless boneheads
who’ve forever tarnished the Muskogean word “tallahassee” – what difference
does it make if they all form a team wearing orange shirts?
I hate to think that that
kind of team is just meant to placidly go along with every outrageous directive
that gets channeled through in-services and department meetings. “Where’s your
spirit? This is a team! We’re family here!” That, my friends is an ad populum fallacy,
and every student who’s sat through my AP Lang classes would recognize it as
such. There’s another term for it, and it has to do with bovine droppings.
Speaking of bovines, this
particular team incident brings to mind the days of my youth, milling about
in my granddad’s cow pasture. There were about 50 Black Angus out there, all,
so to speak, wearing the same black shirt and pants. They were a team.
One of them, a female,
would decide to be the Head Cow, and the rest of the bunch would be all “Whatever.
But you don’t to get wear different clothes.” The Head Cow’s main job – I swear
she was working for The Man – was to make a cow path. She would walk up to the
water trough or under the shade of a pecan tree or over to the next pasture,
and the rest would follow exactly in her footsteps.
Soon, there would be a
narrow dirt path winding through the grass, weaving and winding as if the herd
had elected a tipsy leader.
So when it came time for
them to be hauled off to you-know-where, she led them to the chute and they
followed.
So as a little kid, I
learned what “herd mentality” meant, and for me it wasn’t a metaphor. And I
learned that being a team with no power doesn’t help anybody, even if it has a
leader.
At my school, it was just
another freaking distraction to prod frustrated, financially vulnerable
grownups to tough it out for another year.
