Today at school, an assistant of Arne Duncan came to a round table made up of teachers at Gage.  The conversation centered on the recent firings at work. I wasn’t there, but the part that stood most out to me was this:

When one of my colleagues mentioned the number of staff laid off this week, in relation to the number of staff at the school, he said how he understood it was like cutting off someone’s arm and asking them to do the same amount of work.  A colleague responded, “No, you don’t understand.  The people we lost weren’t an arm, they were the heart.”  And he went on to explain the extent to which those were laid off are involved in the students’ lives and the soul of the school itself.

I am one of those 13 teachers who were notified this week that after the 2009-2010 school year, my services would no longer be needed.  The powers that be failed me and 12 others who were dedicated to the school and its students in ways we are not asked or even expected to be.  Every student who heard responded to the extent of, “Why you guys? Why not the teachers who don’t care?  Why not the teachers who suck?”  And I could only explain it had to do with departments and years and money…nothing else.  I had no answers for them about what they could do, other than be involved to change the way things are.  I didn’t know what else to tell them, to make them feel better.  Nothing has made me feel better about it yet either.

The public system is broken.  I’ve known that since choosing this profession, but I thought I would get to play the game.  Instead, they’ve pushed away a group of people, small as we may be, that wanted to genuinely be involved in real, meaningful ways.  It feels like I’ve been dumped.  The whole building feels dumped upon.  Everyone, well, almost everyone,  is walking around in a state of shock and/or depression.  Tears have been shed all week.  Offers of solidarity have been made by many.  But still, there we are.  Students and teachers, victims of a messed up system that takes into account only numbers and figures.  Not relationships, not evaluations, not work, not teachers, not students.

I’ve never wanted to be one to complain or preach.  But this is wrong.  Not only because of what happened to me.  If it had just been me, I could handle this in a completely different way.  But they’ve taken away 13 people who meant way too much, had too positive an impact on too many an overlooked life.  And if this is what’s happened at Gage, then what about the other 61 public high schools in Chicago?  How hard hit have we all been by this disregard for public education?  What next?

The steps keep moving in certain directions.  To charter schools, which many of us are now looking at for employment out of necessity.  To other fields, where we will be treated more fairly and justly.  To ourselves, to question how much we should care.  And while Obama and Duncan speak of test scores and transforming schools, they just reinforced causes, whose effects will detract from both those goals.  Without a heart, you’re increasing the one thing that public urban schools need no more helpings of…apathy.  Congratulations.