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Wednesday, August 8, 2012
My New Friends and I Are Sewing
Life is good!
I have new friends! Lots and lots of new friends.....friends with whom I have much in
common; friends from Massachusetts and Maryland. Friends from California and Texas. Friends
from Utah and Minnesota. You name the state and I have friends there. My lots and lots
of new friends and I have lots and lots of stuff in common.
My new friends and I met on line. We are
all educators, so that's one thing we have in common. We are all enthusiatic--or were at one time--about
the work we each do at our schools. We care about people. We want to help.
When we see someone being mistreated, we speak up. We also speak up for ourselves.
For example, we might say to a man who is
calling us--both men and women--"babe" and "doll": "Please don't call me that, I feel disrespected
when you do."
We
might also say, "No, I won't do that," when coerced to lie on documents.
We might require that required services be
truly offered to special needs children.
We might say, "That's not right" when our position is given to the son of a someone else because
they are friends.
We
might just go ahead with cool and creative ideas at our schools, in spite of jealousy and mean-spiritedness from co-workers.
We might hold
our unions accountable for not protecting us when our simple requests to be treated respectfully open the flood gates of our
adminstrators' wrath--for HOW DARE WE speak up? We might hold our unions accountable for appearing to work at appeasing our
school districts instead of truly helping us.
Ours might appear to be individual voices, from across the nation, asking for help.
Our individual voices--voices from New York, for example, heard in Florida: voices from California heard
in Texas-- might seem inconsequential. They may appear to be just individual voices of truth-thinly
woven through thick garments of districts' lies--that appear to be like nuisance threads to be pulled from the hems of those
garments. Threads that, if districts are not careful, will unravel those same garments.
Our voices, when brought together, will create a different kind
of garment: a vibrant garment of truth. That garment, in which each voice and the truth of each person
those unified voices represent, will be sewn together by educators from our entire nation. Ours
will be a garment of rich colors, not sullied by spills, rips, or tears ; lies and false documents. Ours--a
garment of truth telling--is of strong fabric. My online friends
and I are beginning to sew. We've set up a truth telling loom. We are, together, working hard.
You will like what we are making. It's hard work. But it is worth it.
Come join us. I invite
you to check out our work at: http://neatoday.org/2012/05/16/bullying-of-teachers-pervasive-in-many-schools/
Hang in there everybody! I am loving it!
Kim
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Click here for my district's bullying and harassment policy. You will see I have made comments....
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