Memoir of a Nonstriking Teacher

...31, a More Effective School in a predominantly Negro neighborhood of Staten Island...

...Those who reckon the cost of the strike in terms of school hours lost are missing the main point...

...And the children could not help seeing the sheer concern that some parents felt about the importance of school...

...The private face emerged among ourselves or after school...

...But these pleas met with silence...

...The public face was for the children: We strove to show that nothing could be more normal than walking through a picket line, sawing off a padlock, holding classes in a building without light or heat, and having school lunch served by parents rather than by school personnel...

...The uft claimed a monopoly on virtue, and its inability to see that the other side—whether it was Ocean Hill-Brownsville, or nonstriking teachers —also had principles was a major cause of the strike and of the bitterness it engendered...

...Often the argument climaxed with the showing of a letter that had allegedly been put in the mailbox of every teacher at JHS 271, or Boys High School, or elsewhere, containing the crudest sort of anti-Semitic ravings...

...On the day that some of the regular P.S...

...I felt impelled to teach for a variety of personal and professional reasons, not because I had switched my "thing" from antiwar protests to the schools...

...The rapport at P.S...

...By turning the class into a factory where I was the boss and the children were the workers, we brought out the value of unions and the economic benefits they secured for their members...

...A few parents suggested reconciliation, and one asked, "Can't we at least have a cease-fire...

...Before looking for work elsewhere, I had reported several times to my own Intermediate School, along with other teachers and pupils who wanted to go in...

...That task, clearly, would fall to groups of parents and teachers all over the city, whatever the formal structure of the system, or the legal focus of authority...

...Some of the best teachers with the best intentions would not hear of a compromise...

...I had a firsthand glimpse of this mood when I reported for work one morning and walked past a woman on the picket line whom I knew vaguely...

...There was one important difference in the attitudes of strikers and nonstrikers...

...On one point the uft is certainly right: Harassment does not make for good teaching...

...it took place daily within the corridors, lunchroom and courtyard...

...they would have to get involved themselves...

...40, in an old middle-class area near Staten Island's north shore...

...During the second and third rounds of the strike I taught in three schools...

...Each school was functioning without a principal or most of its regular staff, but in every case, a pickup team of licensed teachers and parents organized classes and made sure the kids got lunch...

...At P.S...

...One earnest young man, himself not a teacher, congratulated me on going in to teach, and gave his New Left version of the issue: "A lot of my friends in Harlem are...

...Surely, I was told, in view of this "evidence" one had no choice but to take one's place on the picket line...

...the same cluster of parents and children, huddling patiently under umbrellas before the locked front gate...

...Some were antiunion, a few supported Ocean Hill down the line, and still others like myself saw enough wrong on both sides to make a citywide strike cruel and unwarranted...

...At the strike's end, the most promising aspect of the entire situation was the emotional exhaustion of all parties?suggesting that a truce would be in order, at least for a time...

...there were others who had no particular opinion and said they would take whatever course a majority favored...

...While we who went in acknowledged that many United Federation of Teachers' (uft) members were acting from conviction, those who stayed out refused to grant us the same courtesy...

...Anumber of the younger teachers subsequently met with parents in their living rooms...

...This meeting took place when the third strike was a week old...

...Nor was there complete uniformity in the views of nonstrikers...

...The counterpart of this awakening was the recognition by solid middle-class lawyers and doctors that they could not leave the fate of the school system to professionals...

...What held us together was the feeling that we belonged in school, and the kinship inspired by the jeers of pickets and parents who supported the strike...

...These and other lessons made clear how taken the children were with the strike and its repercussions...

...For all these reasons, instruction during the strike was neither routine nor efficient...

...Several of us had high hopes for such a middle course, but the emotions of the public school board meeting should have told us otherwise...

...By the same token, they were not ready to accept the union's claim that its fight for job security was really the fight of every parent and school child...

...The boos of the evening were reserved for a group of Staten Island parents called the Ad Hoc Committee to Open the Schools...

...Like many others, though, I felt these were not the only issues...

...Moments later the padlock on the gate snapped, the front door opened, and 44 children and seven teachers filed into the building to begin another school day in this past fall's New York City teachers' strike...

...Simultaneously, if somewhat contradictorily, there was a pervasive desire for a return to normalcy...

...At the beginning I knew less than they did: Imagine being ignorant of how to write the school heading, how to prepare a grid for subtraction problems, where to line up the class for lunch...

...The best safeguard against a recurrence of the crisis would be a uft strong enough and conscientious enough to talk to disaffected groups, and even to endure some unjustified criticism, without demanding retaliation for past injuries...

...In art, one boy drew a picketing teacher outside a school, labeled him "Shanker," and wrote underneath the word "super-striker...

...one supervisor asked...

...The damage that the strike had done lay exposed for everyone to see...

...For three mornings running we arrived at eight o'clock and asked to be admitted...

...As any teacher knows, such concern is only a jumping-off point...

...40 we walked past a picket sign which read, "We need money too—but we have principles...

...Those at the top —the Mayor, the Board of Education, the State Commissioner of Education—showed themselves so incapable of resolving a matter of great urgency, that there was little hope they could deal with the longer-range but no less crucial problem of upgrading the entire school system...

...In my own experience, I saw the strike conveying lessons—both good and bad—that might not have been learned any other way...

...For I had no doubt that the teachers' cause was basically just: Due process and the right to teach without harassment are legitimate issues, worth fighting for...

...it might bring anything from a resumption of regular classes to a sympathy walkout by some third party...

...There are easier ways to earn a dollar...

...The latter was especially important, considering the vacuum of leadership during the crisis...

...At certain times in the course of an evening they would be subjected to long silences...

...Unfortunately, fear is a powerful vise...

...Because many of the teachers were new to the school, we relied heavily on school aides and cooperating parents to give us information about the kids and the building...

...The first was P.S...

...The underlying cause of the crisis was the legacy of inferior education for thousands of children in New York City, white and black...

...I had the same group every day—a fifth grade—and by the end of the second week I was collecting homework and giving tests...

...Negro parents in the ghetto learned this hard lesson five years ago...

...In the general milling around, however, a series of sidewalk debates sprang up between parents who wanted the schools open, and teachers and supervisors who wanted them shut...

...Recognizing me, her features bunched up in rage, and she cried, "Shame, shame" as I bid her good morning and entered the building...

...And I saw it even more vividly at an open meeting of the local school board of District 30 (Staten Island) on October 21...

...It is easy to deride the excessive emotionalism of many of the strikers, but less easy to portray the genuine anguish which gnawed at strikers and nonstrikers alike...

...A young male teacher hopped the fence to try the door, while another opened his attache case and took out the latest in educational equipment—a hacksaw...

...Such inexperience, plus a few volatile children, means trouble, and I had my share of it...

...Here and there parents began meeting to talk about more long-range problems: how to support sound candidates for the local school board, and how to combat the hysteria which the strike had loosed...

...One woman who was teaching tried to reassure her class that "it's a very difficult situation and no one hates anybody else...

...in those weeks was the transistor radio...

...Efrem Sigel, a contributor to the Reporter and Wall Street Journal, began teaching in the New York City public school system this year...

...An added incentive was that the usual low-income criterion for free lunch was dispensed with, and schools fed anyone who came...

...Wives or husbands of those teaching came to know the anxiety firsthand...

...At a quarter to nine, two nonstriking teachers arrived from the District Superintendent's office with the necessary papers for the policeman on duty: a letter requesting a key to the school from Police Headquarters, and an authorization to break locks, if necessary...

...One saw the spirit of vengeance, too, in pickets at the District Office who brought cameras to photograph those going in, or who wrote their names down in notebooks...

...There were the same pickets and placards ("Justice for Teachers,'' "End Racism in Our Schools...

...I personally knew teachers who opposed the strike yet stayed out because they feared to cross supervisors and colleagues...

...Though our proposal gathered some support at a local uft chapter meeting, the dominant mood of many teachers was that they could no longer trust anybody...

...Yet the mechanics of the classroom are never all there is to education...

...I still don't understand the complex of reasons that pushed me to show up for school every day, but financial greed—the only motive the pickets would accord us—had nothing to do with it...

...But without it, the teacher is licked before he starts...

...For one thing, it nurtured an attitude of resentment by children toward teachers...

...Many public officials pandered openly to the hatreds and fears of citizens...

...Our proposal languished, as did similar initiatives all over the city...

...At the time, I was having all sorts of discussions with younger, striking teachers from my regular school...

...My first Social Studies lesson to a mixed group of fifth- and sixth-graders began with the question, "What is a union...

...When they were asked to do a composition about what the election of Richard Nixon would mean, for example, many students concurred with the view of a pupil who wrote, "He will be a good President if he gets the teachers back to work...

...It would be nice to report that the open schools glowed with inspired teaching and attentive children...

...When I answered that I felt the strike was unwarranted, that it was creating tremendous hostility, and that my conscience required me to come to work, the reply was always that I did not understand the issues...

...Is it the money...

...Nor were these same lessons lost on striking teachers...

...Spanish and Chinese...

...And overhanging this change was the prospect of more confusion once the strike was over and the teachers who had been displaced came back...

...Otherwise, there were enough injuries on both sides to keep the war going a long time...

...31 we were able to settle into a routine that had all the trappings of regular school...

...40 came from other schools...

...Indeed, what the strike should have impressed upon those of us at the local level is the necessity of decentralization, and for a very practical reason...

...In my own case, the Intermediate School where I taught French had been closed since the first day of the strike, and rather than twiddle my thumbs in the District Office, I requested an assignment in any school operating...

...In fact, without the leadership of parents I doubt that any school could have functioned during the strike...

...Next to adult pickets who yelled insults at children and teachers, I reserved my greatest distaste for those who viewed strike-breaking as some sort of holy calling...

...The tension at P.S...

...they demanded enforcement of the New York State Compulsory Education Law, and urged "full protection for existing experimental districts . . . including Ocean Hill-Brownsville...

...In Staten Island, this support was overwhelming...

...The issue of anti-Semitism stirred up such waves of feeling that it made a rational exchange of views all but impossible...

...And the last outcome I wanted was to see the union broken...

...As I stood in front of the gate on October 17, the morning the Board of Education ordered all schools open, several tried to reason with me...

...My decision to cross the picket line set me—a new teacher—against the great majority of teachers in the school, including some who were personal friends or friends of my parents...

...But the looks of the pickets outside and the words of some parents told a different story...

...I had to delay making lesson plans until about nine each night, on the off-chance that those interminable negotiations at Gracie Mansion would finally produce a settlement, thereby plucking me from Open Highways readers and four-place subtraction and sending me back to first- and second-year French...

...The statement ended with a call for a two-week cooling off period: Teachers would go back to work, provided that the other parties agreed to negotiate a settlement on the basis of the aforementioned principles, and that the Mayor took certain concrete steps to protect teachers' safety...

...What further complicated any teacher's task in these circumstances was the uncertainty of how long the job would last...

...40 teachers came in for their belongings, the children could feel the hostility in the air...

...The principal said his convictions prevented him from going in, the custodian refused to open up for anyone elese...

...the good that might come out of it was still only a hope...

...Teachers, it seemed to me, could best guarantee their job security by working with community critics, not by seeking to erect walls against them...

...it does not guarantee that learning will take place...

...And finally, we moved our staff to P.S...

...One charge leveled by the strikers was undeniably true: Most of us at P.S...

...A number of children no doubt showed up only for that purpose...

...Most of us who went in to teach at P.S...

...There, supervisors and teachers thundered their demands for retribution against Mayor Lindsay, the Board of Education, Rhody McCoy, and the Ford Foundation, which the uft tried to picture as the mastermind of a plot to break the union and destroy the school system...

...In sidewalk discussions in front of closed schools, and in impromptu get-togethers, some parents made it plain that they did not consider the uft to be the sole arbiter of educational policy in New York...

...In vain I protested that I too was against anti-Semitism and harassment—and I would oppose them anywhere—but the dispute seemed more complicated to me than these slogans would indicate...

...It went on to enunciate a series of principles, including due process, freedom from harassment, and the right to collective bargaining for teachers...

...The usual reaction on the part of these older teachers was disbelief...

...2 in lower Manhattan—a fascinating school of such ethnic diversity that notices go home to parents in three languages, English...

...In the absence of a clear order from the District Superintendent, the school stayed shut...

...With this failure I resigned myself to working in any school that was open—not to break the strike, but simply to be able to live with myself...

...Again perhaps contradictorily, yet I think most significantly, the situation showed the degree of cooperation that can exist between parents and teachers...

...Suddenly they had a new teacher, a new classroom and new schoolmates...

...While I had always been somewhat skeptical about what role "community involvement" really had to play in education, the experience at P.S...

...My instinct was that the strike could be settled only by assuaging the fears of teachers about job security, while appealing to their fair-mindedness and professional pride...

...but it also embraced decentralization accompanied by written guidelines...

...They think the union really has to be broken on this community control issue...

...Why are you doing this...

...An added strain for many was that wc got too little sleep...

...In my own schools there was a typical mixture of good and bad teaching, bored and inquisitive children, and rather more disorganization and disorder than usual...

...The uft early recognized the importance of public opinion to its cause, and was able to generate substantial backing...

...At such times we shook our heads in wonderment at the behavior of certain picketing teachers (though the majority of strikers conducted themselves with dignity), and struggled with our own notions of responsibility...

...another added "working people," and we were off and running...

...40 inevitably communicated itself to teachers and pupils alike...

...Staten Island, did not differ very much from other confrontations in the rest of New York City that drizzly October morning...

...Nothing could have been further from my own position...

...In my view, a union that could defend the rights of its members only by calling for the dismissal of a community school board and its appointed principals was surely on the wrong path...

...In many teachers, the combination of concern for job security and self-righteousness about the issue of due process gave rise to a spirit of vengeance that was terrible to behold...

...her son had been a classmate of mine...

...40 had two faces, a public and a private...

...The week of October 14, when the third strike began, parents and teachers at my school banded together in an informal group to open the building...

...It is hard to describe the effort of will it took to get up on one of those gray fall mornings, the stomach-churning that accompanied the drive to school, or the sense of relief at being able to get into the school building, even one as cheerless as P.S...

...at others to incessant monologues about the kids, the classrooms, the pickets?in short, all the details that made up a working day under those circumstances...

...like, really into the school thing...

...When the union moved from full-page newspaper advertisements to local meetings with parents, though, it came in for some surprises...

...The strike and the extraordinary measures it provoked deprived younger children of the comforting orderliness of school...

...31 went far beyond the artificial politeness of a pta meeting...

...They came away realizing that the parents were not fire-breathing militants, but very reasonable people who wanted their kids back in school—immediately...

...Our statement began with the recognition that "a legacy of inferior education" is "the primary cause of the turmoil now engulfing our school system...

...Equally important, the strike should have taught us, finally, that educational problems are not susceptible to ideological solutions, whether the ideology is black power or civil service professionalism...

...One boy answered "a group of people...

...At P.S...

...Still, I would be the first to admit the fumbling I went through to get a grip on the class...

...31 pointed up its tangible value...

...The next was P.S...

...I had never taught fifth grade before, much less kids who were supposed to receive extra help...

...This was particularly true of Negro children, who openly voiced their parents' feelings that the strike was directed against them...

...After all, no one wanted to go to bed without hearing the absolutely last news bulletin...

...Indeed, the distinguishing mark of a teacher, striking or nonstriking...

...We wanted to draw up a statement which both strikers and nonstrikers could support...