Keeping It Real At Work

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Five/ Six years ago i was working as an Assistant Group Leader with the Women In Need Child Day Care Program on the West Side of Midtown. During the school year i worked part time in the afterschool program and during the summer full time. I worked there for three years. While there i met and aquainted myself with working amongst a diverse staff. This i appreciated. What sucked was that while it was the first time i had worked with adults (Before WIN i worked with primarily with my teen peers), ranging between 16 and like 65, it happened to also become the job that would introduce me to workplace gossip and two-facedness.
You could just hear the whispers from the store on break, rambling-on way down the block and in the rectory's cafeteria. And when you were alone with the snake, they spoke of everyone you thought you knew them to be close with.
The worst thing about it all was the way they would speak about the children themselves. There was no doubt that some of the youth were pains in the vein you cant find in the ass but there comes a point when the shit talk gets disgusting (children will be children.. I mean come on).

Lately i have found myself trying to find my way out of the same situation. Only now i am experienced an additional five years in youth services and am vocal about destroying that attitude. And it has become obvious that some co-workers are irritated with the fact that i am trying to drag their mind out of the gutter along with my own. It has become apparent that they feel i take my job too serious, that i am "messing up the curve", an going out of my way to make problems/ create an uncomfortable workspace.
There's alot of "Oh well, there are only three weeks/ two weeks/ one week left" going around...
Alot of "These kids cant even read, and they want to go to college... I'm looking at them like: are you foreal" going around...
Maybe it isn't fair that some of my haste comes from the fact that i have found out that people five years younger than me, with waaaaayyyy less experience are getting paid the same as me... That i took a four dollar cut to work where im working... That we never had the liberty of openly introducing our own ideas into the curriculum... and i may be taking it out on the culture of our program at our meetings. From my perspective, not only am i being undervalued and playing a mentor role to younger workers, but it has increasingly become clear that i am working along with a team that sets the integrity below a standard i have worked hard to be at. I've reacted by acting on my sense of responsibility to be highly critical.

Example: At our last meeting i finally confronted a pair of Workshop Leaders whom have come complaining to our meetings, week after week, about how their teens just wont follow through with activities, partly because they are 'incapeable' shall we say intellectually (whether or not due to their economic condition), and partly because of behavior (whether or not due to their economic condition).
My response was "You guys have let these young people down"
Why did i respond this way? because every day during lunch all these Workshop Leaders do is complain and mock the youth, posturing a resistance to the attitude of these youth in a way i can only explain as reactionary... as if though the elders are guarding their pride against any perceivable challenge... from a YOUNG MAN/WOMAN.
"Im not going to stress myself", "If they don't want to be here they can leave"
This has been the attitude.
At meetings they put on a different face:
"Oh, these kids need something different, i can't change the world in 7 weeks"

What my co-workers are saying is true. Some of these youth come with really deep rooted issues. Some really can't read very well; Some really do find it hard to stop speaking and thus distracting a lesson; Some really do come in not wanting to participate... But it was never in our job description to change the world. It IS in our job description to engage the youth in workshops, and GOD DAMMIT if that doesn't work with plan A you move on the plan B.. If plan B doesn't work you get support from fellow co-workers to develop a fucking plan C!
My problem is that my co-workers are not willing to be SELF critical about the job they are doing. They have out their own mouths insinuated that they are not willing to go out of their way to evaluate why their workshops havent been successful. So they've been giving up on the youth and running lame workshops for three/four weeks where they allow the youth to do what they want, or run though activities without an effort at debriefing and processing the lessons students should be internalizing. They are warehousing the youth and putting them through fucking doggy tricks, because that is what group work activities become when there is no discussion and reflection on purpose!

Years ago i may have been just as annoyed by some self annointed big shot in the room whom thought he knew all the answers and was telling me how to run a workshop... but there is one thing i can say... I may have failed, but i always tried... I may have gone two, three classes in a row lacking anything of substance while i straggled for new ideas (it's been a long time since that time... i can pull 100 activities out my ass at this point), but i never shitted on the youth! I never blamed my own inadequacies on them! In fact i wouldn't be around any longer were that to be the case. I would've dropped out a long time ago, having determined that i cannot work with youth. In fact i have gone the other route. I have adapted. I have given the power to THEM. They run the lessons. I am invisible. Every once inawhile i put a trap in place, a challenge to overcome, a question to face up to. Other than that i smile, i grin, i speak low, i yell... but i do it to their heart and not to their face!


At one time i was all about challenging the captain (and i am talking about very specific instances! I quit my last job for example because in a dispute between our youth and a security guard at George Westinghouse HS my Program Director wouldn't support me in challenging the Security Guards threat to arrest youth for simply cursing at them___along with an instance or two of that same boss of mine refusing to support a partner and I's decision to expose our youth to historical figueres of their own background). I went after my Coordinator or Director. Still today watch out because if i can sniff out that you are tryng to play me or my fellow worker i am going to rally some type of response. But i take this more personal. Sometimes i have to step back from challenging the system so that i can put a calling out to my fellow worker to assume responsibility over what it is we've committed to take on.
As a result i find myself isolated. I don't get the giggles i used to get when i free a whitty remark into the tense room. People no longer look me in the eye. I am no longer invited to go out after work (although there does remain a couple whom DO extend an invitation; real recognize real). Today in an appreciation circle (it is our last week) i was one of the last to receive a compliment, and it didnt even come from a peer.. it came from the supervisor "for bringing topics it is sometimes scary to confront into our discussions".


I feel like a trader
For sticking up for our youth

Fuking Shame considering when i'm called into the office for evaluation my response to my relationship to my co-workers and my judgement on the job their doing is positive. Because i answer to my own weaknesses. And if there is a weakness of my people i readily point to how i have failed them.
But what happens when half of your people, and they are the elders, the established; are neglecting the other half of your people- those at the mercy>?
This is the sad reality in our schools. Teachers themselves don't respect the job they do. It is just a job to them. They are on the clock. And politicians are opening the flood gates for even more of these apathetic jerkoffs into the system with programs that invite paraprofessionals looking to cross over from other workfields, whom often lack the passion to teach and only seek a job with decent pay and so many breaks free. They are opening the flood gates by chosing to place principals with expertise in business management over principals whom have strong theories and methodologies about teaching. That's a whole other subject, but holler if you hear me.

Whatever it is... im not down with that lay back sh!t nomore. If you are a fukkin stock clerk work hard at what you do, if you are a hairdresser or a flyer distributer. Secure your work, and in the mean time inspire those around you to move as well. What you will find is that a whole lot can change and you can win your respect and even success caring about what you do. If it isn't for you move on. I mean, i understand sometimes we gotta take what we can get (like i said i took a four dollar pay cut)... but understand that you will either someday find yourself in a position of influence (whether in the heirarchical or horizontal sense), or you will just live check to check working a conveyor belt.. waiting to be laid off with nothing to do but dig yourself deeper in the shits when youve gotta take your grumpy ass to the same job with another company, hating what you do, and fucking up the quality of what and whom it is you are working with. You will be the Old ladies in the lunch room with nothing better to do then talk about how this little girl is gonna be a hot one, and that little boy must be slow.


That's that bullshhhh

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