On Being Lifelong Learners

On how we pick things up, and a little UFT politics too.

I’m a big bluegrass fan and I’ve always loved this song, called Slow Learner. It’s from the Nashville Bluegrass Band, with Stuart Duncan on the fiddle. He’s brilliant. Alas the song’s narrator isn’t, making the same mistakes in love, and learning little. I can understand that sort of mistake. Love doesn’t follow any mathematical pattern, and I’ve been lost in it more than once. I don’t like to brag, but I can be slow in other ways too.

It’s taken me a long time to learn how to speak to people, and I’m not there yet. Sure, I’m getting better all the time. When I first started teaching, I limited my vocabulary when speaking with students. That was common sense. (Of course, they say common sense is the least common of all the senses.)

I learned a lot more when I started teaching ESL. I already knew, as a Jewish person who wasn’t rich (far from it in fact), that the stereotypes about us weren’t valid. But when you start meeting people from all over the world, you learn that none of the others are either. No one is dumber, or even smarter, because they come from this country, speak this language, or practice this or that religion.

That said, I’ve been gifted with a big mouth that frequently blurts out things that, well, ought not to be blurted. I was chapter leader of a very large school for 12 years, and that taught me to stay my tongue more frequently than I’d previously trained myself.

Once, a member complained to me that the TV required for a class was being used by another member. Who the hell did she think she was? That was the only TV with a built in VCR, and everyone knew exactly who needed to use it. The member who’d taken the TV that day happened to be a friend of mine, and I said the first thing that came to my mind.

“Maybe you ought not to revolve your classroom instruction around a technology that’s been out of date for the last ten years.”

That wasn’t received well, and I got to hear about why, in great detail, for days and weeks afterward. I should have known better, but at least I didn’t make that error again.

Before I was chapter leader, I made worse errors. One of the first times I got to teach ESL full time was at John Adams High School. It was a pretty busy time for me. I had to not only get my Master’s at night, but I also needed a bunch of language credits to get certified. Not only that, but I decided it behooved me to actually learn Spanish fluently. (How could I tell kids they could learn a new language if I hadn’t done so myself?)

I was, though, very happy teaching. In fact, one summer I managed to find a job in a special program—we would teach ESL some days, and others we’d take our students on trips to museums, parks, theaters and other venues they might not ordinarily seek out. (This was back before the geniuses in Albany decided learning English was just a nuisance, and that the only thing important for newcomers was passing standardized tests.)

At an end-of-year meeting at Adams, we teachers were somehow left alone in a classroom. I was talking about this program and how lucky I was to have gotten this opportunity. A more senior teacher saw fit to chime in.

“Maybe I’ll bump you,” she said.

“Maybe I’ll firebomb your car,” I replied.

Looking back, I shouldn’t have said this. As chapter leader, I’ve been in many a disciplinary meeting, and I’ve seen many a teacher in trouble for way less than that. It turned out, though, that no one much liked this senior teacher. I later learned that my supervisor, rather than disciplining me for this incident, laughed out loud upon hearing of it. She couldn’t talk to this teacher like that, and was happy someone else did.

So I managed to elude my first disciplinary meeting, and I somehow never got a letter to file until I announced my retirement. Also, that senior teacher did not bump me that summer. Why not? Who can say? By the time I was chapter leader, I wasn’t perfect, but I was better. I hope I’m a little smarter now too.

I’ve spent a good part of the last 20 years opposing Unity. I’ve been in MORE, although I was kicked out. No one really told me why. The only thing they complained about, to my face at least, was my bringing a resolution to the UFT Executive Board demanding class size reduction. They thought I should have brought it to their steering committee instead of the class size expert with whom I shared it.

This election cycle, I aligned with ABC. We wanted to join with the caucuses, and offered to do so. Considering MORE, New Action, and Retiree Advocate, we agreed to a 25% stake in a united ticket, leaving them the other 75. MORE rejected that. Then New Action joined MORE. Retiree Advocate (which I’d mistakenly believed I was part of) joined them too. RA did this via a self-selected committee of 12, leaving out the other 288 of us, who ran and won with them.

That formed ARISE, who came back and offered us 0-8 positions on the ticket. Had we accepted, we’d have had to content ourselves with zero positions on the ballot, as per the agreement. They also told us all decisions would have to be run by a committee on which we’d be hopelessly outnumbered.

Their assumption, I suppose, was they were established, and we were just a handful of people. This was partially true. We had a lot of friends, though, some of whom turned out to be extraordinary organizers. We also had people with abilities, and I’ll cite Daniel Alicea as just one. In the end, we ran more candidates than ARISE did.

I prepped a lot for our first retiree Zoom. I had a Keynote presentation. It seemed to go well. When we opened up the conversation, speaker after speaker, from ARISE, said we needed to unite and be one ticket. What I heard, over and over, was that we, ABC, should crawl away and die, and leave the election stuff to them. They had not been reasonable with us, and I was not so inclined.

With the exception of last year’s retiree election, caucuses have never done well in a match against Unity. This year, though, Unity won the retirees. That was quite alarming to me. I can’t speak for ARISE. The day after the election, I reached out to several of their retiree leaders, and have yet to hear anything back. However, ABC took triple what ARISE did with retirees. ABC took well over double what ARISE did overall.

In two years, we’ll face Unity again. Have we learned anything? Does ARISE really want to mount a united front, or do they only say that when they want us to slink away?

Only time will tell. But ABC is here to stay. Hopefully, we can all learn from our experiences.