{"id":259,"date":"2019-02-09T12:29:29","date_gmt":"2019-02-09T17:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/?p=259"},"modified":"2019-02-09T19:15:15","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T00:15:15","slug":"outside-the-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/outside-the-box\/","title":{"rendered":"OUTSIDE THE BOX"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Donna\nDufresne<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nhave spent my lifetime feeling left out \u2013 too dark, to white, not Indian\nenough, not smart enough for the liberal intelligentsia, too smart for my\nfamily, working class by birth and therefore severely lacking in a sense of\nentitlement to carry me through life. And there is no place on earth where it\nis more obvious when you are an outsider than in a school. Schools are where\nchildren practice the craft of sorting out who\u2019s inside and who\u2019s outside. It\nis obvious when you study and observe mean girl behavior starting as early as\nkindergarten that it\u2019s all about sorting the wheat from the shaft. And if for\nsome reason unbeknownst to you \u2013 perhaps it\u2019s the way you dress, or some morsel\nof gossip about your family \u2013 you are separated as \u201cother\u201d, you are stuck\nwearing that yellow star the rest of your life. So, you might wonder how the\nhell I ended up being a teacher.  I will\ntell you that I ask myself the same thing every day<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nthink that I must have gained enough self-confidence after joining the middle\nclass by proxy of marriage, to assume that of course I could waltz in there and\nchange the system. Never mind the fact that I hated school my whole life and\ngot my college degree through an independent study option. Never mind the fact\nthat had I been able to have children, I would have home schooled them to\nprotect them from the materialism and violence of American culture.  But for some reason, after ten years of\nteaching environmental education, I believed that I had a gift. I wanted to\ngive students the kind of education I never got. It would be more akin to prep\nschool in my mind, where you would be taught to think, and lead, not to follow\nand march lock-step off to the factories and the wars the military industrial complex\ndesigned to deepen their pockets. I envisioned lots of hands-on learning,\nscience labs, outdoor labs, inquiry, field trips, and creativity.  It was the 90\u2019s and President Clinton had\ndecreed that 21st<\/sup> century schools needed creative teachers. It was like\nUncle Sam was pointing his patriotic finger directly at me.  \u201cThey want me! They really want me!\u201d I\nthought in my best Sally Field\u2019s self.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nindeed \u2013 on the university level, it was obvious that I was on the right track.\nI thrived in my student teaching, I won awards, I got great grades, I was a\nstar \u2013 the one whom my liberal thinking professors had labeled \u201chope\u201d.  My environmental education background had\nprepared me for cross curricular units of study, where students would apply\nreading, writing, math, science, social studies and thinking skills while\ninvestigating relevant topics.  This was\nway before the Common Core. I was ahead of my time.  And who wouldn\u2019t want that?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My\nfirst job was in Stafford Springs, a dead factory town. I was the gifted &\ntalented teacher. It was part-time, but I brought those kids on an amazing\njourney. But with the ominous cloud of standardized testing on the horizon, the\nprogram was cut. After all \u2013 testing is an expensive endeavor. When you are the\nG & T (not gin & tonic) teacher, it is expected that you are the quirky\nMiss Frizzle type, and your colleagues have a benevolent tolerance toward\nyou.  But once you join their ranks in\nthe classroom, the barricades are quickly constructed. That Trumpian wall,\nmeant to exclude all who dare to be \u201cother\u201d is extremely difficult to\nscale.  It is the dark shadow looming\nbehind the smooth coating of acceptance (if you conform), forcing you to become\na beggar, groveling for the right to exist.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nam creative and good natured, if not determined, and spent my whole career\ntrying to dismantle that wall, brick-by-brick. Since most of my colleagues were\nobsessed with sports (which I am not), I organized staff volleyball games. This\nwas the one sport I was comfortable with. It enabled them to see me more\nbroadly and allowed me to pop out of the \u201cJack-in-a-box\u201d they\u2019d stuffed me in.\nI drank beer with them and joked around. But I refused to compromise my\nteaching. I refused to perpetuate mediocrity, even though it\u2019s the way things\nare done. And this set me up for being under suspicion.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\ncan sense when people don\u2019t trust you by the way the teacher\u2019s lounge gets\nsilent when you walk in. They assume that because you got teacher of the year,\nyou are the administration\u2019s pet \u2013 not because you work your ass off.  They don\u2019t like the way you dress, and your\nsinging drives them crazy. They think the guitar thing and the music have\nnothing to do with learning.  They assume\nthat you aren\u2019t really teaching, and certainly not diagramming sentences.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of\ncourse, that was nothing new. I spent my childhood with teachers who would say\nthings like \u201cShe\u2019s so creative\u2026\u201d with a click of the tongue and a rolling of\neyes. I didn\u2019t follow directions and didn\u2019t color in the lines. I grew up\nthinking that being \u201ccreative\u201d meant that I was stupid. Being \u201ccreative\u201d meant\nthat I would never learn math, and I would always be one of those crazy artist\ntypes, or as my dad preferred to label them\u2013 \u201cGoddamned crazy communist\nartists\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nif I could close my door and teach my way, I was able to dance around the\ncrankiness of my colleagues. I enabled them to a certain degree. Being a good\nlistener, and an experienced co-counselor, I allowed them to client and gripe\ntheir way through all the dumb-ass administrative decisions, the even more\nridiculous Federal mandates, and the mounting workload. I agreed with them. I\nfelt the oppression, and when the first wave of standardized testing came along\n(the Connecticut Mastery Test), I became their activist \u2013 saying all the things\nthey wanted to say but could not. I plastered the school with posters about how\nthe CMT would be the ruin of teaching and learning. My poster had a cartoon-\nlike androgynous kid saying something like: I\nam not a widget in a factory; I am not a test score; I am not a handicap; I am\nnot a data point; I am not a pair of glasses. I am a student. I am here to\nlearn.  <\/em>  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boy\n\u2013 that got me in a lot of trouble. And even though I expressed everything my\ncolleagues and I felt, you could hear them all scurry like cockroaches into the\nwoodwork when the principal was pointing her finger in my face and yelling at\nme in the hall.  Maybe there was one tiny\nlittle cricket chirp \u2013 \u201cYou go girl!\u201d from a solitary corner, but for the most\npart \u2013 my colleagues were happy to see me thrown under the bus because it took\nthe attention off them. It wasn\u2019t the only time I stuck my neck out to speak\ntruth and stand up for what I thought was best for students. But after all that\ncomplaining by my colleagues, and the bidding I tried to do for them through\nthe wisdom of my pen as I tried to articulate their concerns \u2013 they still\nturned their back when the Nazi\u2019s came.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nwas one thing to be an outsider when they thought I was still one of them. But\nthen word got out that the work I was doing, showed up positive on the Mastery\nTest.  Not only was I not conforming to\nmediocrity, and bending downward toward teaching the test, but whatever I was<\/em> doing was getting good results.  My principal begrudgingly informed me that\nshe didn\u2019t know how I did it, but she could always tell my students from the\nother fifth grades because of their higher test scores. I could tell it was a\nbass-ackwards compliment, because she had never quite forgiven me for those\nwidget posters. Up until that point, I was able to escape to the underground,\nlike the French Resistance. I could close my door and teach, knowing there were\nstill those who didn\u2019t understand what I was doing, and even some who continued\nto roll their eyes saying, \u201cShe\u2019s so creative\u201d, as if I were smoking pot and planning\nrevolutions with fifth graders.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nfinal nail in the coffin of any outsider teacher, is when your administration\nbegins to recognize you for your work. You walk a fine line between trying to\nplease and trying to be true to yourself, as if teaching isn\u2019t hard enough\nalready.  And then the little jabs, the\nsnide comments, the clicking of tongues begin to take their toll. You can hear\nthe same rustling of crinolines and scuffing of penny loafers you experienced\nin grade school in the sixties. Rather than celebrating you for your talents,\nyour hard work, there are rumors that you are one of the minions of the\nmuch-hated principal. It is assumed that you are her pet and can do nothing\nwrong. You become the topic of discussion at union meetings as a possible scab\nwho will run to the administration and tattle. You become isolated because your\ncolleagues have been told not to trust you. \nThen the bully teachers say things right to your face, like \u201c well it\nmust be nice to be the principal\u2019s pet while the rest of us have to work\u2026\u201d, or\nthe daily mantra of one teacher who nabs you every day in tears: \u201cI know that\nshe likes you, but you don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like for me and how terrible she\ntreats me\u2026\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\nthey don\u2019t realize is that I have earned the respect of my principal not\nbecause we are friends, or I am anointed, but because I work extremely hard. I\ntake risks to push my own learning and thinking as a teacher, and I have dived\ninto common core strategies, developing rigorous ELA units that teach students\nabout history and civil rights and things that matter in the world.  They don\u2019t realize that I argue with the\nprincipal about the data driven corporate model which is sucking the life out\nof schools. They also don\u2019t realize that unlike them, I have treated my\nprincipal with kindness and respect, even when we disagree, so of course she\ndoes not feel threatened by me. We can have civil conversations. I didn\u2019t join\nthe hate group to get her fired, when teachers riled up parents and the parents\nput all their misguided energy into running her out of town. Because I know the\nlong arc of history and understand what a witch hunt, or a pogrom looks like, I\nrefused to join the fray. This perpetuated those minion rumors which were\nspread into the parent community, making me not only an outsider with my\ncolleagues, but one not to be trusted by the parents and their children who\nlisten, watch and believe that grown-ups speak truth.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately,\nbeing an outsider comes down to betrayal. Not if you will be betrayed, but\nwhen.  If you are culturally experienced\nwith this scenario, you know when to pack up and flee to a new village, a new\ncountry where you can start over.  My\nJewish friends know better than to stick their necks out like I do, and African\nAmericans know what can happen to them if they dare to stand up or kneel in\npublic. Unlike my Native American ancestors, and the ever-elusive Romani, who\nknow how to disappear, I have put myself out there my whole life. But I\u2019m O.K.\nwith that. Do I really want to belong to a tribe associated with murder,\ngenocide and annihilation? The kind of people who are cowardly and fearful and\nunwilling to change?  Do I really want to\nbe embraced by those who depend upon a scapegoat for survival?  I think not. \nAs I pack my bags and slip into the dark of night, I\u2019m happy to place my\ncards in the company of the Gypsies, the Jews, and all the other outsiders who\nnavigate this weary worn world. At least I know where my moral compass is set,\nand I know that I am not alone.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donna Dufresne I have spent my lifetime feeling left out \u2013 too dark, to white, not Indian enough, not smart enough for the liberal intelligentsia, too smart for my family, working class by birth and therefore severely lacking in a sense of entitlement to carry me through life. And there is no place on earth … <\/p>\n

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