You’ve reached a certain level of achievements in your life, professionally and personally. Awards, schooling, life work, great reviews…and you still find yourself out of a job, for a variety of reasons: many of them not your fault.
Now add to all that some great, if not excellent, recommendation letters. Resume is up to date, all the relevant material is there. You know you have to adjust your resume to job requirements, and writing that cover letter that has all the right buzz words and terms from the job posting…
…and still no job. Many times, not even an interview, let alone even an acknowledgment they received your material. Follow ups are often met with the same silence.
I have heard too many times that I am over qualified for jobs I have applied for, the few times I am able to actually communicate with someone. We see things differently: obviously, I am looking to work, and my I feel my experience will only enable me to be great at the job, not just having to learn things but can bring my talents and skills for the benefit of all concerned; their viewpoint is (verbally told this) that I’ll be bored doing this work, or the ultimate fear of my just biding my time until I find the “right” job.I was told by one person that the job was so far “beneath someone of my caliber.”
I’d rather work in my field, in a “lesser” position, then not work at all. THAT is something they (human resources people) don’t seem to get.
I have two MAs and a ton of experience. Dumbing down my resume, to even just get that foot in the door, has come up a lot lately. I’m off to an interview for a job I am overqualified later this afternoon. It’s slightly to the side of what I’ve done for so many years. It’s definitely in the realm of “beneath my caliber.”
After this, I’m going to try the resume editing gambit: I’ll remove both Masters for a start. Then, we’ll pare it down even more, if that doesn’t work. I could take it all the way back to my first job: Chinese Restaurant buffet staff (I filled the smorgasbord dinner table after school and on weekends in High School).
One of the most disturbing things that I have heard from a student was:
“Why should I try? I’ll only be working at McDonald’s.”
I was an Artist-in-Residence for a year for a large school district in Westchester County, NY. Still early in my profession, that statement was both a shock and a revelation of a point of view I had never considered before: low expectations given, and projected; leading this student to live that that is all they can do. The young lady who said that to me was in a ninth grade repeat class. Most of them, I was told much later, were on their THIRD repeat of ninth grade.
Yes: she was a third timer.
It was not that working at McDonald’s is such a negative job, but the expectation of that is all she could expect in life is. There are jobs that many would never consider ever doing in their lives as “beneath” them; there are people who feel that there are jobs that are forever out of their reach.
I worked at a private Prep school (the capital P is on purpose) for five years. They were a usual sort of kids, except for one basic thing: their parents had power (=Money). Money enough to afford the very high K-12 tuition. If I remember correctly, all of these students went on to Ivy League universities , or “back-packed” across Europe, before coming back to such schools.
Were they born smarter, more diligent? Driven, yes, by their parents status. Academically as well. They were not taught to pass a test as the NYC public schools are (and have been) but really had a well rounded curriculum.
I’ve already written, a number of times, about this inequality in teaching. If Bloomberg and other mayors really cared, they’d look at the educational platforms that these private schools use. Yes, money pushes those kids along. We can’t fight that, but…we can elevate the level of how students are taught, what the curriculum is, and the entire structures of schools. I wrote about some ideals of mine in What Constitutes Education? and also in Public vs. Private Schools (there is a comparison of NYC schools and the same private prep school mentioned above…hopefully, it’s eye opening).
The other part, and it is a huge part: The Parents.
Parents have to be involved. Not just in making sure that their kids do their reading/homework, but support them, encourage them, take the time to invest in what they are learning, get involved in outside of school learning (excursions outside of their neighborhood)…being parents, not just adults whose house the kids reside in.
So, the next time you see your lawyer go to a McDonald’s drive through (or his/her aide), think of who is doing the ordering, and who is serving.
Do you: Go with your gut reaction? Weigh the pros & cons, and come to a decision you can back up and justify? Do you follow what your friends/family/confidants say &/or do, without question? Do you go against what you believe due to outside pressure?
On my way home from a great Interactive Theater workshop in NYC, I turned on the local NPR station (WNYC 93.9 FM). The program This American Life was on, and just in time: I had been hearing the teasers for the program and was hoping to catch it. A group of 5th graders (ten/eleven years old) were undergoing an amazing Process Drama:
“What if, say, the U.S.-led invasion of Grenada in 1983 had been decided, not by Ronald Reagan, but by a bunch of middle-schoolers?”
The students were led on an amazingly detailed program. Three rooms were set up for them: a press room, a command center, and the President’s office/war room. Split into three groups, the students were in role, being asked to make the hard decisions that adults with “experience” in these matters had struggled with almost thirty years ago.
I don’t want to spoil it for you. I included the link above (first one) so you can listen to the program (there are two other “acts”: one with a 14 year old discussing Global Climate changes and a school in Brooklyn that is governed by…the students). I hope after you listen you’ll come back here and leave some comments.
The second link is from the blog Woman Wielding Words about an amazing experience with practicing drama with kids from a very different culture.
The third link: really, the nuts and bolts of what I love to do with students: have them make personal discoveries and to think for themselves. Weigh it all out, find out what they feel is right or wrong, and then also look at how someone else see’s the same situation; How it is sometimes hard to make a decision at all.
There are applications for Arts in Education in all core curricula, as there is in Art in all aspects of life. That is part of what creativity comes into play.
I have had (and have many in the waiting) some great – and I mean GREAT – guest blogs for my creativity series. Yesterday was no exception, but a comment by Maureen of Zencherry got to me, as well as many of the comments to yesterday’s post.
I have an example of kindergarten happy turning to first grade bricks.
Youngest child: Teacher pinned a naughty badge on his shirt, (on the first day of school), and made him wear it all through the day and then on the bus home to me because he “sang in the bathroom”. It said it in big red letters on his badge.
Yesterday’s Guest Blogger, Lisa Kramer, of Woman Wielding Words, commented and said exactly how I feel: “That makes my heart hurt. “ Lisa also declared it a Sing In The Bathroom Day for her family.
I’m taking it one step further: I hereby declare a “National Sing Everywhere Movement”!
If you go back among my posts you’ll see that I have endorsed the fact that we can all sing, dance, paint, CREATE!!!
Too many times creativity and exploration is deemed unacceptable and does not fit the norm of what’s expected in school, work, and life. To these fuddy-duddies, I give a great big raspberry (and in some cases a certain raised middle finger); I just don’t have the words to describe in a public forum like this how I feel about that teacher who, to me, exemplifies all that is wrong with our education system and corporate system. Yes, there is lots more “wrong” in both – just what was done to Maureen’s kid really rankles me.
NAUGHTY BADGE
SINGING IN THE BATHROOM
(Don’t let it out, but…I do not know how to make a badge. If anybody knows how to, they can use what I’ve just done above and I would be honored to display it and give it out to all you naughty creative people).
SING OUT LOUD
FINGER PAINT ON THE WALLS
DANCE LIKE THERE’S NO TOMORROW
BE CREATIVE… WEAR THE NAUGHTY BADGE PROUDLY!!!!!!!!
Don’t EVER let someone shame you from doing something that is not causing anyone else harm.
I have PLENTY of stories of adult BULLIES who have shamed me, from childhood on. ADULT BULLIES.
This is a problem that needs to be addressed on the same level we try to do with the kids.
I had the misfortune of meeting a very ugly woman. Outwardly, she was dressed very well. She was put together. Some of you, if you looked at her, would’ve found this woman in her early 30s to be physically attractive. The ugliness came from inside.
I was at the courthouse parking lot in White Plains, which also serves as the parking lot for the White Plains Library. It waiting our turn to pay for the meter, somehow some conversation started at wound up about what was going on in New York City Wall Street occupation. I know that I mentioned, more under my breath than anything else, that 100 of the protesters had been arrested instead of giving up the space in the Park.
Her next comment: ” I know. Those lazy bastards need to get a job.”
Are you stunned?
My comment: ” Are you kidding me!? I am out of work. I can’t find a job. You… get me a job? Huh? I need a job?” And she just walked away from me as fast as her pointy expensive shoes could take her.
The haves and the have nots.
I had just had a discussion with some one the previous night (someone whose opinion and knowledge I respect and admire: NOTE – all facts that I am going to present are from this person. She presented this information while I was discussing my feeling feelings and opinions; so, I am supporting what she presented to me in total accord) about the occupation of Wall Street and in other areas of our country. It is costing the municipalities a tremendous amount of money for a protest that, while semi-peaceful, has absolutely no purpose other than to say ” I don’t like what you’re doing.” There is absolutely no clear concise agenda or, in my mind, anything that deals with solving the problem. Any problem.
I have railed here often about that fact; if you going to complain, come up with some solutions and do something about it. Playing the complain complain complain game is a total waste of time and it completely diffuses and obfuscates the real problems. Case in point: the Bank of America withdrawal of personal accounts when they decided they just wanted to make more money off of the common person. An action was decided on, it was enacted, and Bank of America backed off.
I believe in protest, but I believe in problem solving more.
I do not believe in violence and nonsensical rhetoric. It gets us nowhere.
Why do I feel that this is part of the creativity series?
It is time all of us to find creative solutions to the problems that we face is very un-united United States. If you think that this country is not a laughing stock to the rest of the world, imo, you are sadly mistaken.
What we are doing right now is not working. Doing the same old again and again and again is putting this into a spiral that goes far beyond the financial crisis of the world. I am not sure I have the intelligence or the finesse to offer any problem solving myself. I do feel that we do need extreme critical and creative team work to take care of the problems that we face.
“Our large schools)..are organized like a factory of the late 19th C : top down, command control management, a system designed to stifle creativity and independent judgment.” David T Kearns CEO Xerox
‘The guiding principle being put forward is that schools must be self directing.’ John Goodland
‘It is, in fact, little short of a miracle that the modern methods of education have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail.’
I do not believe education happens in just a school setting. If we are open to new things and explore what is around us, there is a lot of real education available. There is a whole wide world at our fingertips now. what we learn from it, what we take from it, is up to us. Or just you. YOU need to find what is out there.
We mainly think in terms of our children in education (unless you are into Continuing Ed classes or going back, like I did, for your Masters/PhD later in life). If you are not seeking out “formal” paths of paper certified education, don’t think you still can’t, or worse, don’t, have more to learn. Opening yourself to lifelong learning is, to me, a very important part of life.
‘Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it.’
— Albert Einstein
I’m now involved in the planning committees of TWO proposed Performing Arts Charter Schools. My work in curriculum development is being utilized here, making arts integration the main foundations of the schools. Yes, I want separate arts disciplines to thrive on their own, but the guidelines and rules of these Charter schools get in the way. Yes…the states mandates still get in the way.
If you’ve noticed, I have been somewhat quiet about educational subjects lately. Personally, it has been a frustrating period, and I have been trying to wrap my head around the restrictions imposed the two projects. If you look at the second link above, you’ll find a slew of alternative ideas out there. I am doing more research, so more on new(ish) ideas and thoughts to come.
The Bosch painting that heads this is how I see what is going on. My interpretation: we are fractured in our murky confinement. Boxed in, and boxed in again. Encased, closed off, separated, and just uneasily floating in a bubble that is waiting to burst.
What Constitutes Education?
In no particular order, MY answers to this are as follows (but, really, are not closed: I’m always open to a new idea, or simply one I forgot):
Inquiry Based Learning
Peer to Peer Mentoring
Freedom for Failure (learning from the “mistake”, not making it a negative)
Open ended process at times, to allow interpretations (doesn’t always work in Math & Science, but…)
Feeling safe in stating/putting out your ideas
Dialogue & exchange of ideas (see above)
Exploration of the world around us (parks, museums, historical sites, using the internet properly, etc)
LISTENING and focus
Not settling for mediocrity,
Not rewarding for least effort/what was required; only for going beyond what was expected
Drop all the PC garbage, which creates this new fear & loathing, and really teach the history behind something, to…
Allow ourselves the freedom to think, create and critique for ourselves.
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. John Steinbeck
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. William S. Burroughs
Artists are traditionally resistant to labels. Patti Smith
Artists have really never had any representation on Capitol Hill, because it’s not the nature of the artist to join together and make a unified presence. Those days kind of died in the ’60s. Sheryl Crow
All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. Pablo Picasso
All children are artists, yet we often try to take it away from them in the pursuit of testing…I’m sorry, education. Until they are told, in one way or the other, they can’t dance well, or sing well, or draw well, or tell a story/act well…well, they will just DO IT. They don’t start off with the negative filters that destroy them along the way.
I integrated all different art forms in the theatre classes. I looked to have the students explore, for themselves, how to find their artistic voice. Too many times, a student would tear up a piece of artwork. “Why?” would come out of my mouth. “Because it’s no good” or variations of that. Looking at the unfinished work, judgments in this child’s mind were already formed. Where it came from was beyond my scope most times. Seeing these 500+ students only once a week, for 45 minutes at a clip, did not afford me the full in-depth deciphering of their psyches.
Sometimes I would notice that the child would look at what someone else was doing and immediately stop. Rip, crumple, toss, and then maybe a hissy fit. Did this student have his work compared to another piece of art, directly or indirectly? Jealousy? Fear of failure? Ridicule lessons in the classroom or at home, or both? Honestly, most times I could not tell you. I’d let the classroom teacher know when she/he would pick the class up, but more often than not they dismissed it with the “oh, you know how ______ is.”
When does the toddler who throws him/herself into their art become their own worst critic?
As to adults, why do many of us turn away from embracing an art form that we love? I often tell any class I lead, no matter what age level this very simple thing: When we create in art, there is no wrong answer, and there should be no judgment of what or how we do it. We CAN all sing, paint, dance, act, tell a story, play a musical instrument (yes, you can do percussion). If we compare it (See rule #1 above) to someone who either has practiced their artistic craft for years upon years (or are just artistic savants), well…we just do ourselves a disservice.
So what if you’re off key, can’t draw a straight line, are a klutz. If you love it, DO IT. Just do it. Do it for the love and happiness you feel when you let yourself be free. I can sing, but my voice is not trained like it used to be and I go off key a lot. My art is mainly doodles. My music is percussive or on a kazoo. My artistic language comes out in the written and spoken word, but I do sing, I do dance, I do play music, and I do art.
YOU DO ART…All children are artists. We’re still those same children, but the art has been beaten out of you. Take it back.
Give it back. Give the arts back to the schools.
The reason actors, artists, writers have agents is because we’ll do it for nothing.
Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body. Martha Graham
Music is a great energizer. It’s a language everybody knows. Bill Hicks
It’s my belief we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain. Lily Tomlin
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. George Carlin
What we are all trying to do is communicate, whether to enlighten or obscure, we communicate in a number of different languages. I embrace the beauty of the spoken word as a storyteller and performer, immerse myself in the language of a creative writer, physically and verbally share the language of theater through my educational workshops and residency classes…and this is just the grace of language in a professional level.
Right there: that word, “professional,” as I typed the final letter, took on a life of its own. Automatically, it gives the whole sentence weight (to me) and to some vast importance. You don’t know if I wrote it tongue-in-cheek, with reverence, or in anger. It’s a word that it’s meaning is assumed by the reader. This medium, texts, twits, IM’s and the like, has an immediate flatness that don’t often allow the whole story of language to surface.
I use language as I talk with my hands (gesture is supposedly the first language). Body language takes on its own life. We communicate language in all areas of art: it is a way to express our feelings and thoughts in various ways.
My language art is mainly in words: spoken or written. Dance, Fine Arts and Music explore a different value of language, reaches its audience in a number of different ways, and explores a huge range of exploration, inquiry and interpretation…when it is allowed to happen.
The above picture just exemplifies how I feel about words/language, written or otherwise. I am embraced by it as a whole. It can feel comforting, enlightening, provoking, expansive, and more. It can also repel, used for the ugliness of intentions, when language is used as a weapon. That is done all too often, when the words are used as obfuscation of truth, of seeing the bigger picture, or to keep people “out of the club.” If you’ve read me enough, you know what I am alluding to. I wrote of these things on other blog posts.
Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation. Noam Chomsky
1. Special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand.
There is a disconnect between those involved in Education, and part of it is language. I am not talking about English vs. any other spoken cultural language. Jargon and interpretations of what is meant causes further barriers in reaching many accords. You join “the club,” you get the secret handshake and the coded language. If you are not part of that club…you may always be on the outside wondering “what are they talking about?”
Every profession has its own terminology. Nothing new there. I hear my IT friends and son talk, and my eyes glaze over. The comic strip Dilbert is an expression of that: I don’t work in an office. So many of the “jokes” just go over my head as not funny, whereas to someone in that position finds it can be hysterical.
The disconnect I am talking about within the education field is vast. Parents, Administration, Policy Makers, Educators, Teaching Artists and the kids all approach the same field with different languages. What one group says and thinks is an honest representation of their process is often misunderstood by another group. Ahh..so, you take the time to learn the jargon, the pathways to understanding. Oooops…time for a new paradigm shift.
“Ours is the age of substitutes: instead of language, we have jargon: instead of principles, slogans: and, instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas”
Working for the NYC Dept of Education, I had the opportunity to train with an arts organization. Well known and respected, it was, for me, a true pleasure to attend this intensive Professional Development program. Arts integration orientated, it espoused inquiry, deep observation, creative thinking skills, and a very open mindset to allowing answers to form out of personal reflections. The Teaching Artist (TA) who ran the first part of the orientation was brilliant in all ways except one: she was unable to connect with the non-arts minded teachers who felt that at the end of every process there had to be ONE correct answer. The test mentality people. She was not able, for whatever reason, to bridge the gap needed to bring resistant teachers over. And there were a number of very resistant teachers to that way of thinking.
Why was I so open to it? At that point in the game, I had worn many hats in Arts-in-Education (AIE): I have been a Teaching Artist since 1996; I had years at that point of being a certified NYC teacher; I was a parent; I had worked in Arts Administration, both as the owner of my own theater company and in working with the NYC Dept of Ed (NYCDOE)’s office of Arts & Special Projects. I saw, first hand, that what was a stumbling block for the TA and the teachers was not just the concept but the language being used. This arts organization had its own jargon as well as incorporating a majority of the NYCDOE speak.
The teachers were not getting it. The ones who had the most problems came from outside the NYC school system: Westchester County, Long Island and New Jersey. So, educational language barriers of geography on top of all the rest of it. The rest of it: pure stubbornness (yes, that is my opinion after my interaction with a lot of them).
The above, of course, is an example outside of the school building. I have seen similar circumstances played out in schools between all the “players” in the building. It is not easy when you work in a Tower of Babel, all trying to understand, or not, as the case may be: obstructionists are a plenty in the land.
What am I suggesting? I feel that there is a need to settle on one nation wide language/jargon for the Educational System. Maybe globally, but that is the naivety/John Lennon-“Imagine” part of me speaking. Anyone who enters the school environment should be informed, trained and expected to follow the same usage of the environmental language. There would be less butting of heads if people just started on a level playing ground.
I started BornStoryteller in January of 2011. In the eight months of writing this blog, I’ve written about a lot of topics. In the beginning, I had no clue as to what this space was about or should be about, and eight months later:
I’m asking myself that same question.
So: I am asking YOU to please vote in the above poll. Tell me what you like to read on BornStoryteller. What should I spend most of my writing & thinking energy on?
PLEASE don’t throw it back in my lap, as many seem to like to do with the “write what you feel like” etc.
I am asking a question(s) here for the simple fact that I would like to know my readers opinions. Like many blogs, I get a lot of hits but no where near the amount of comments percentage wise. Comments help: they tell me I’m on the right track. But, I do an interview with almost no comments, and I almost triple the number of hits on the blog.
The above poll lists the main topics I touch on. I am thinking of making BornStoryteller a three or four times a week blog, posting content only on certain days. My schedule for writing my novel and other submissions is beginning to get tight, and as Ray Davies sang: Give the People What They Want!
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