Truth in Advertising, originally uploaded by elephantsgerald.

Dear twitter users boiling with anger about forced subsidization of unionized teachers:

I've taught art for seventeen years. I've complained about certain things at work, but I've never regretted my profession. We all knew what we were signing up for when we chose our jobs; I knew I wouldn't get rich, but I knew I'd have summers off, and a steady paycheck. So did you, actually. The summer thing is an antiquated agrarian anachronism, (read, not new), so please don't act outraged at this fresh new insult. If you became a banker or waitress or IT guy or whatever job you have that doesn't seem to mind your constant vigilance of pro union tweets, you knew it had two weeks vacation a year. You knew the salary, and the risks of advancement. When i started teaching in 1993 my contract said $20,000. I thought that sounded AMAZING. I thought a bulldozer with a haystack of twenty thousand dollar bills was going to pull up and dump them all over me. When i started getting paid I had to take a weekend job at Carmen's Pizza taking phone orders for delivery so I could pay my bills. But I had no complaint.

To earn this $20k I taught art on a cart to 850 kids at 3 different schools every week. Almost every kid was on free lunch. My budget was $1.50 per child per year. This is *actually* possible. My classes applauded when I entered the room every single time! I took up Spanish lessons again at my own expense, so that I could say "Quieres papel amarillo, o azul? Doblalo, y desdoblalo. Ok, cortalo. Bueno!" So that the new kid off the boat (so to speak) wasn't terrified that they had to talk to the gringa teacher. We made puppets, paper mache, tissue snowflakes, and lots of chalk and tempera paintings. I loved going to work every day. I loved festooning each little school with the happy art. I enjoyed telling wide-eyed kids I actually lived in the dark, mouse-poopy art closet down the hall. I worked in the lowest paying district in a 300 mile radius, but I didn't care. I felt needed, and I knew I was making some little soul's morning, every time I went to work.

I feel less and less that way when I read angry tweets and newspaper comments about my profession. Maybe I shouldn't read what angry tax paying trolls write and say on the internet, but I'm so appalled I keep checking to see if it's still there. I'm told I'm ungrateful. I read that I am greedy, or a tool of greedy union bosses. I am a selfish son of a bitch, one guy informed me, when I was trying to explain the details and the facts of current legislation. I read that everyone's life is going down the toilet, because I am breaking their backs. I have ruined everything. Everything is ruined.

Please know it did not feel like ruining everything. It felt like sitting in a tiny plastic chair at a tiny table, cajoling an autistic preschooler into brushing watercolor across a white wax face i had pre drawn, then watching him laugh at the big reveal. It felt like receiving a drawing as a gift from a talented little boy who drew like an adult, but suffered crippling arthritis in his hands and for whom i had arranged free classes at SAIC. It felt like crossing a name off a roster because she and her grandmother had been raped and killed in their house near the school. It felt like a million little notes shoved into my hands and pockets from eager little people who only came up to my waist. It felt like tamales from mothers who could not speak much English, but beamed widely as they handed the foil package over.

Now at the high school level it feels like alarmed inquiries following my every absence, it feels like a crowd around my desk, like emails during the evenings and weekends. It feels like a 6'2 kid standing up from his computer animation to announce loudly "I AM AN ARTIST". It feels like kids who come back during their lunches and study halls, spending half the day in my room, and sometimes come to school only for my class: this according to parents. It feels like emails and letters, even years later, saying I was the best teacher they ever had. It feels like all my letters of recommendation, begging for college admission or a scholarship for another fine young person. It feels like trust, or just relief that I listen.

So guess what; I am rich, you miserable, bitter harpies. But you have it all wrong. Just because your job sucks and you can't wait to get out of there every day doesn't mean that's how I feel making my living. It's a shame, but it's a world of your own making. If you loved your job, I doubt you'd be investing this kind of time degrading mine. In contrast, I enjoy the luxurious power of changing kids' minds about school *every day*, even on eight year old computers that run on my sheer will alone.



So do it. Reduce my pension. Make me poor, since I don't qualify for Social Security. Make my medicine unaffordable. Make my raise contingent upon proof that my art lessons somehow improved state math scores. Continue firing at my feet to see how long you can make me dance. It still won't change the fact that life did not work out as you planned and you're now a bitter little turd. AND I will STILL fucking love my job, because I am rocking this for all the right reasons. After you take every tool and incentive and support away from me, and millions like me, you won't suddenly have anything great that you don't already have. And then you will be terribly disappointed to find out that this isn't a scam after all. Whether decorated or destroyed, inside every school we run on something you can't legislate, isolate, measure or destroy. Much to your inarticulate all caps despair.

It's love, dumbass. If you'd bother to volunteer at the little school down the street you could have a sample. I won't even tell the kids what you wrote about their teacher.

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  1. Thanks for this beautiful essay. There's actually a well-known -- but rarely observed -- bit of advice that describes what you did in writing this: "turn the other cheek".

    Keep working your magic with those children!

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  2. Brandi,

    Your post has simply knocked the wind out of me. And that's pretty damn difficult to do. I must, must share this absolutely brilliant essay with my radio audience tonight - Friday, February 25. It's the Mike Malloy program. We broadcast from 9P to Midnight, ET. My website is www.mikemalloy.com.

    I wish you were here so I could shake your hand, hug you, scream compliments, whatever.

    Take care,

    Mike

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  3. Thank you for posting this beautiful essay. As a teacher, I know *exactly* how you feel. I also pity those who will NEVER understand how we feel about our jobs!

    In my spare time (I know - ha ha), I work as the Education Affairs Correspondent for The Mike Malloy Show (radio). I've included the url to my website, "Kay's Report Card." You will find many, many pro-teacher/pro-union rants there.

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  4. Oops! I should have specified that you can get to my website by clicking on my name.

    I have already added this site to my favorites! ;-)

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  5. This is brilliant!! As a fellow Art teacher I get it. I get the 10 hand drawn gifts a day, the bright eyes, the hugs, and the "I'm an artist" quotes coming from all corners of the room. And no matter what they take from us, they cant't take that.
    I can't wait to share this with my colleagues. Thank you so much for posting!!

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  6. This is an amazing, wonderful, beautiful, perfect bullseye of a post.

    Thank you.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

    I've been a college bio prof for way too long. I can't say I meet with the delight and gratitude that you do. (More like, "Will this be on the test?") And yet ..., and yet, it is the same, and I'm in the same place. And I boggle at the vitriol thrown at teachers for ... for what?

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  7. Thanks for the essay. My mother has been an EBD (Emotionally Behaviorly Disordered) Teacher for 25 years. She now teaches at an alternative learning school with-in the public school system. She is the last line of defense for these kids. No charter or private school would take them no public school wants them. She is their only hope and she inspires everyday. She spends her weekends writing IEPs, she had to go to night school to get a science degree to comply with no child left behind. (She already had 2 undergrad degrees 1 in journalism and 1 in history, but no child left behind demanded she get a science degree as well.) It warms my heart to hear your story, I know for a fact I could never do you what you do.

    BTW as far as compensation and "Summers off" My mother has taught summer school. She teaches night school 2 nights a week. And has volunteered for several ESL (English as a Second Language) classes.

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  8. moved utterly. Thanks so much. You should be famous!

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  9. Simply amazing. I will share this with everyone I know.
    Thankyou

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  10. Ms. Martin, jsut heard Mike Maloy read this over his Portland, Oregon, outlet. I immediately pulled it up and sent it to my cousin, a 3rd grade teacher, in Los Altos, California.
    Beautifully said, with just the right amount of "go f*** yourselves" between the lines. Keep up the fight.
    Tom Neff West Linn, Oregon

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  11. Brandi,
    I just heard this on Mike Malloy's show and had to reread it. I've posted it on FB as a must read so all could see it. It's beautifully worded, and speaks to something beyond what some apparently cannot understand. I find it more and more difficult to live in a country that attacks it's intellectual foundation while simultaneously attacking innocent people in other countries. Anyway, thanks for sharing.

    David

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  12. Brandi-
    Heard your post read on Mike Malloy's program this evening. I'm sending a link to anyone I hear making even the slightest whining noises about teachers, unions, etc. Teachers like you were the catylist for people like me that make their livings as artists now. Brilliant. Keep "ruining"! :)

    Dave

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  13. I very much enjoyed your post. Thank you for writing it.

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  14. A radio show host read your essay on the air. It touched my soul and made me weep for our country and the "values" that have been lost. To hear you beautifully articulating your love for your job and for the benefit it gives the children you teach and how that is what gives you self-worth and identity, rather than the current norm of the number and cost of acquired goods, made me happy. It was wonderful to hear and read again. I have shared with many others.

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  15. That is so well said. Heard it on Mike's podcast. We need the ability to negotiate for our lifes.
    Thank you!

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  16. My personal reaction and response to Brandi Martin’s brilliant piece entitled “I Ruined Everything…”

    My story is only a little different in terms of my profession and the decade when my career began. Yet, it is essentially the same in that I too absolutely love my work as a Child and Family Counselor who spent years working in residential treatment programs with broken-hearted young children and teens who were dealt insufficient hands--not of their own making.

    I too felt my spirits lift every time I witnessed the courage of these children when they braved risking the vulnerability it must have taken to yet again open themselves to “us big people” (twice their size) in spite of all the losses, wounds, and discouragements most of them had grown up enduring. I can only surmise that these survivors still had within them the burning embers that were counter-balances to this risk – the amazingly powerful “need to connect” Mostly, they seemed to be driven by their need to be seen and heard, and accepted no matter what, just as they were, without having to “do” anything other than be who they were, as they were, warts, behaviors, quirks and all. Importantly, they all had a story that they needed me to be witness to, as they unfolded over time, as trust developed in their own time frames. How cool is that to be able to go to work and be allowed to be a part of this process? Brandi got it right…it’s about heart, and it’s about making a difference in these children’s lives, and in some small way, the world.

    Sadly, more often than not, I observed that it was these kids who took the hits in their lives; blaming themselves because they needed to believe their parents or caretakers "must" be “the good ones” who surely "must" know what they were doing. Ouch!

    Alas, the Harpies (read; insurance companies) who have for years been clawing at my door, seem to have finally broken through and entered into my life in ways that may at this point be irreparable. I continue to do the work I love, albeit at a diminished capacity, since I must these days spend about half my time acting as my own collection agency against this mutant form of banking. You see, they’re kind of like bankers, but without the tellers or the ATM’s, and they’re even better at implementing their business model which can be distilled down to just 3 words that when enacted, truly does maximize their “most excellent” profits. It goes like this; “JUST…SAY…NO!”. Another 3-word corollary, is a slogan that when adhered to by cooperative patients, allows them to keep messes out of their sight, not to mention off their balance sheets, and I suspect it goes something like this; “DIE…SOMEWHERE…ELSE!”. I could rant that these guys are the “new-millennia, brown-shirts with starched collars”, or the “robber-baron, rat-bastard class”, but I won’t, because that would be untoward…wouldn’t it?

    Great work Brandi,
    HelpUsAll (TruthSeeker)

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  17. I wish you were in my childs school. Thank you.

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  18. Thank you for your service to the future of this country.

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  19. Wow. This really pulls at my heart. You have beautifully articulated the plight of good teachers. Makes you wonder how some of the bitter trolls treat their kid's teachers? Would they really attack them in person the way they do online? I hope to god not.

    But, you got it right. Anyone who is content in their career & life would not be obsessed with attacking public employees. It is a sign of feeling like an animal backed into a corner. And, of course, they created their own corner.

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  20. Yes,Brandi, you have it right.

    Wisconsin is trying to blame teachers for what Wall Street and CEOs have done to this country (that is, the wealthiest 1% of the population). They get to buy Congressional elections (and indirectly the judiciary) so no laws will be passed that will affect them or their businesses. They don't pay their fair share of taxes, they don't have to. (Read the books Perfectly Legal and No Free Lunch). They support the military industrial complex which keeps us at permanent war (Read the book "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War", written by a career army officer who is now a Professor of International Relations at BU) , which inflates the deficit. BTW, if people would read books and other materials, they would understand that the Soviet Union collapsed for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest was their military budget and their adventurism abroad (take Afghanistan, for example) which helped bankrupt the country. (Sound like any country we know?)

    None of those people are suffering from the financial meltdown and its aftermath. And it's not just teachers or other union workers who are in this leaky boat, it's 99% of the population of this country. The other 1% are running the country into the ground, have been since the 1970s at least, and blaming everyone else.

    Wake up people, particularly the ones who think they think that this is "socialism" or "communism" because they haven't read enough world history to know what communism really is. Wake up people. You are helping the wealthiest 1% sink our country. And that's not patriotic.

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  21. respect.

    just respect.
    there are people who shouldn't be allowed near children and people it should be compulsory for children to experience. you sound like one of the latter.

    (did i mention the respect?)

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  22. Paul Krugman agrees with you:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/opinion/25krugman.html?src=me&ref=general

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  23. Very well stated. Good for you and keep up the great work with our youth!

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  24. WOW! I heard Mike Malloy read this on air Friday night. Thanks

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  25. Excellent piece. You might be interested in this article...

    The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Employee Pensions

    http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/02/25/the-wisconsin-lie-exposed-taxpayers-actually-contribute-nothing-to-public-employee-pensions/

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  26. As a retired language arts teacher and middle school counselor, I applaud (loudly) your willingness to be blamed for ruining (???) everything. Sometimes I weary of reading the vitriol spewed by those who know nothing and refuse to learn anything. Then I remember that some of them were my students, and no amount of education may reach them until they "unclench" those minds that closed when they walked away from teachers with diplomas in hand. Teachers continue to work with students and love those students and expose students AND parents to the world. Teaching really is fun when it comes right down to it.

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  27. Bravo!!!!! As a former fellow Art on a cart teacher I felt the same way about my job and I am hoping to get back to teaching art in the near future because it is the best job in the world - keep fighting the good fight!

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  28. Hey, Brandi -

    I felt about the same way teaching history to mostly older 9th/10th graders with (maybe) middle school skills. The school was in the geographic middle of Oakland's 180+ murders the previous year. I taught in a charter school with no classrooms for the first year, minimal supplies, and no effective guidance from the (shudder) administration.

    Except loud-mouthed homophobia. The director was very clear about that.

    So I was surprised and completely thrilled when my kids - I took "in loco parentis" to heart - started a heated argument about the French Revolution, spent their lunches wherever I set up shop, and actually started to write and think at the same time.

    There's no gimmicks to any of it. The funding structure and school philosophy don't matter. The class materials are only peripherally important (you can't buy laptops and interactive whiteboards for $1.50 per student per year). The building just needs to keep kids safe and warm. What's important is lavishing attention on them.

    And it takes a teacher to do that.

    My own kids' teachers do the same, or better, for them, and the results are clear.

    Thank you for "ruining everything," and keep up the good work. Maybe the next generation will be too full of hope and knowledge to vote for the New-Know-Nothings.

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  29. Amazing!! Could not have been written better. THANK YOU!! I will be re-posting and seeking out the mallow audio!!

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  30. Thanks so much for this essay. I am a para-educator in Special Ed. I feel the same as you. I first heard this read on the Mike Malloy show. I will share this with my friends! Thanks! Laura

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  31. Amazing blog. I'm so glad that teachers with your enthusiasm & heart continue to plow through & *teach*

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  32. OMG you are my Yoda. TY. I had an AWFUL day at school (according to one of my student's parents it has something to do with me being white); I am still confused. I'm pretty tough, but this mom got to me (she called during class, and I have a full access philosophy: open door direct line, even my cell # when needed... which is often). Two of my students saw my face from across the room before I turned away. These two middle school girls thought I needed a hug, so came rushing across the room. In the middle of their group hug the fire alarm went off (it's the 28th; got to get the one for the month in). Where else can we get this kind of quality drama and humor?! Damn straight we do it for love. Every morning when I look out on those faces (some receptive some defiant; especially since we have to use pacing guides, give Cornell notes, do Standardized Test Prep, etc.) I know the odds for them; we have a 29-36% grad rate. Even as "just an art teacher" I feel the mamma lion roar within me, "not if I can help it, not on my watch; they are going to be SUCCESSFUL, dammit!". I've been doing and feeling that way for 15 years. I hope, despite all this poop going on, I can hold on to that. I've just been told by the state legislature that my two Master's degrees in education mean nothing; as well as my 15 years here and 3 years in another state. This year I couldn't afford the art supplies I usually buy on my own, and my 20 iBook G3s are down to 8, and I was told if I wanted them to work I'd have to pay to fix them myself. Ug. I am starting to feel overwhelmed. I spend most of my summer's going to school to be a better teacher, or working on ways to improve my practices, do research, develop interdisciplinary units that show how every subject can be taught through art. I spent the summer 2 years ago writing the district pacing guide for M.S. art (though I am very disappointed in the product. The powers that be want a politically pretty tool, not a pacing guide that practical and can really help teachers get a handle on the increased demand for Accountability and Relevance to the One Curriculum. Ok, I did it. I also figured out how to help teachers "work with it" integrating some "flexibility" so they wouldn't be so terrified by it. I don't get paid to do this stuff. I do it because I like a challenge, I want to have something to say about what I teach; I want to give to my students; because I am an EDUCATOR. It is my passion, my calling, my love. My own children won't even consider being teachers because they think it takes too much time away from family, and for all the time an cash invested, there is little respect (my son says my students are painting with the car he should have had). Yet in doing this, I AM THE VILLAIN. I don't need to be hailed as a martyr; just not vilified as a miscreant. Not held up for ridicule (as I pay my hefty $800 a month health care premium, and contribute to my own measly retirement that I shall probably never see...scary, I just turned 50)as a free-loading pimple on the public backside with my hand out for a dole... OMG. To say I knew what I was getting into and then changing the rules I have dutifully played by my entire professional career; this is crazy. I am at a loss... until I get to second period (first is a bear this semester) and third, and 4/5, and 9, and 10... when Keisha walks up to me, and says, "I'm ready to ink, Ms. P." and I ask her, "Show me your 5 production steps for the layout" and she pulls out her thumbnails, gridded in centimeters, and the transfer layout she made, and finally the "nice copy" free of smudges with a crisp framal reference boundary, and she points to each piece of the production framework, naming them, and how they work together." By God Almighty I can say Fuck those bastards that don't know what I do. Fuck the mortgage company (Bank of A. never did me any favors). I AM A TEACHER.

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  33. I love all of you.

    There is a great joke going around on twitter.

    A CEO, a teacher, and a tea partier sit at a table with a dozen cookies on a plate. The CEO takes 11 cookies, and then turns and says to the tea partier, with his mouth full, "Watch out. That teacher wants a chunk of your cookie".

    Two thirds of corporations paid 0$ tax. Because they have lobbyists.

    I actually have compassion for the people who are so angry. They've not gotten the best deal. Maybe they deserve better. Their rage is misappropriated, and one day instead of an insult I'm finally going to come up with the right metaphor or explanation to make it clear. I'd rather do that, honestly.

    I am a good goddamn investment,I stay until 5 every day, I pay all my own pension, I pay $550 a month plus $3,000 deductible towards my health care. I don't qualify for social security, and if I did, if we all did, it would cost Illinois 900$ million more every year. I gave Illinois my money for my pension and they spent it on something else.

    If you care about these kinds of facts:
    http://www.ilretirementsecurity.org/news?id=0050

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  34. This is lovely and very funny. I had a good art teacher in middle school and more importantly it was a safe space during a difficult time.

    Is there way someone could donate money or supplies to your class. Like through Donor's Choose or Paypal?

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  35. Brava! I'm an artist, and I fondly remember my art teachers all through school, who pushed me, encouraged me, and believed in me. Even when I was doing a style of art they didn't really care for.

    Thanks, Mrs Judy Hines, Central Jr High, Moore OK-wherever you may be.

    Leigh Perry

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  36. Thanks... I posted a link to this on my blog for all my colleagues here in Australia. You have said what so many of us feel. Cheers!

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  37. Thanks for a wonderfully written post. As a college teacher, I feel the same way. (Although I am not currently subjected to the invective that you are.) Thanks for cutting to the heart of the matter: for most teachers, it's not about money. The greedheads just can't fathom that.

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  38. Incredibly written. Thank you for writing the truth. I aspire to teach and can only hope to do justice to the legacy and example of teachers like you. Love, Respect, and most of all, with all my heart, THANKS!

    Those who CAN, teach.

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  39. Right on Brandi! Heard this on Mike Malloy's radio show--it really got to me. I'm sending this to a bunch of people who need to STFU and learn something instead of running their mouths about crap they heard from Glenn Beck.

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  40. THANK YOU!

    My mother and sister are also teachers working in public schools and I know NO ONE who works as hard as they do to be good at their jobs.

    What a beautiful essay. It's been placed on my FB page.

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  41. Thanks for all of your responses.

    Once the donorschoose founder called me, because of a post I wrote on their facebook page. He left me a voice mail that said he thought it was great, he sent it to all 57 employees to read, and that it was an honor to serve teachers like me.

    I sat down and wept like a baby, as I listened to it again. My did that make me cry so hard?

    Positive reinforcement. I'm not used to it. Usually it seems like I only get noticed if I mess up. I'm not talking about students or parents of course.

    So frankly all the positive responses are the best salve against trolling imaginable. This has been a boost.

    I do have a donorschoose grant right now. But I really wish I could channel the money to Anonymous, Mrs P, who teaches on 13 year old G3 laptops in Oakland. Mrs. P, If you visit this page again, please contact me. I've received thousands of dollars in art supplies writing grants to Donorschoose (I seem to be good at it) and I'd love to help you set up an account and craft your message. I WOULD LOVE IT.
    My Donors choose grant- half done!

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  42. Click the gray text in the last line of the above post of mine. Thanks for your consideration!

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  43. Thank you for bringing tears to my eyes. I also LOVE my job as a teacher. I wish you the best and thank you for your words.

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  44. Thank you so much for this post. I am what I am today, because of teachers like you.

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  45. Brandi,
    you have moved me to tears & although I don't know you, I love you for this - It is exactly what I have been trying to say... THANK YOU!! <3

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  46. My first year as a programmer I made 18,000 a year. 15 years later I make 80. I don't get summers off, I don't get to play with crayons, or set my own agenda at all. I get fired at the whim of a company when they think they don't have enough work for me, or they can't afford developers at the moment. I do however get to pay taxes including high school taxes even if I send my children to a non-crappy public school. I can't even deduct my school taxes while my kids are in school, so I get to pay for educating my kids twice. All the time I hear teachers in public schools that do a crappier job than the lesser paid teachers in the private school jobs whine about how bad their jobs are and how bad the resources are. The difference between me and a teacher is that I don't have a union that pays off politicians for me, I just sit here and take it. It used to be that teachers made less and therefore were compensated with good benefits, now they make more than most of us in the private sector, and their benefits are amazing. I'm not in favor of changing things that were promised in the past, but we can't afford to keep promising the moon for teachers that release ignorant children upon society. You can call me a troll, but you union thugs are the trolls, and society is sick of you.

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  47. As a fellow Art Teacher, it is so wonderful to hear that someone else loves their job as much as I do!

    However, there are teachers in my building who don't, and I completely understand why some of us get a bad rap....because some of us deserve it!

    Let me caution all those "bitter harpies" out there. One day, in the not to distant future, the children that we are trying our best to educate will be making the decisions for this country. And I consider it a personal mission to prepare them to not only be creative and critical thinkers, but to be compassionate, caring, and innovative. If you do not feel that those things are important for our children, and you do not support those passionate teachers out there... your country's decisions will be made by a society of dull, regurgitating, incapable robots.

    Where you are a programmer, a fry cook, a teacher, a policeman, an IT guy, or a mom... that is something you should think about.


    -Mr. S., Public Elem. School Art Teacher

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  48. To the person right above me who did not have the GUTS to put your name: I do not understand your bitterness. You actually think teachers get paid as much as you? Delusional. You started at $18,000 & now make $80,000? In only 15 years? No teacher I know (and as a teacher, I know a lot of them) makes that by RETIREMENT after 30 years teaching. We do our jobs because we love "our kids" who may or may not hear "I love you" from someone at home.
    And guess what? Teachers pay taxes too... so that means they actually pay their own salary. Not that I would expect you to understand that, because it is all about poor you, making $80,000 a year & having to pay taxes (like everyone else...) to educate students (like someone paid for yours...) so they can get jobs someday too.
    But that isn't the point of Brandi's essay. And you will never get it the point because you CHOOSE not to. And that is sad.

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  1. The children pictured may not be the author's actual offspring.
    Tom Mingâlaba  2007

    Q- Serious question for fellow parents of tweens/young teens: are you doing anything to shield them from the "inappropriate" aspects of the latest news? My 13-year-old reads the Times on his phone and is understandably curious about what's in the dossier. He knows he can read it himself on Buzzfeed. I told him I didn't want him to, but it wouldn't surprise me if he did it anyway. What, if anything, are you telling your kids about this stuff?
    A- First of all, my response cannot be verified as effective until 20 years from now. That said, your kids are going to learn it one way or another, and they are going to learn it sooner than you and I did unless you move to Greenland and cut off the Internet. No way around that. I found that by being proactive, and giving just enough information so that they aren't caught unaware by their peers. The end result was that they were always comfortable coming to me first instead of their peers because I had better information. They are now 17 and 21 and they are STILL comfortable broaching the subject, although I'm no longer source number one. What's more important than protection at this point is establishing a solid safe conduit that means they might not always search the Internet first. The shortest and least judgmental description, but ensconced in the bigger picture. It isn't the act that means he's bad, it's that he made himself vulnerable to blackmail.
    Before the oldest started riding the bus to Jr High, I sat her down and told her every slang word for genitals and breasts that I have ever heard, including Spanish. I didn't want her to be riding the bus with 8th-grade boys and feeling vaguely uncomfortable and not knowing what they were saying. If she was being harassed I wanted her to know right away so she could tell someone.
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  2. “... to say something is educational is the kiss of death in art.” -Tino Sehgal

    My immersion at SVA repeatedly reveals to me that I built my previous art teaching practice with passionate artistic concerns. I can now pull my abruptly ended teaching practice from the fire and use many of those same concerns to make art. Using research, self-interrogation, art making, and conversations with former students, artists, and experts, my thesis excavates the remains of that decade-long teaching project. An intentional bias towards the results that were as aesthetic as they were educational guides the project. The final thesis product (photographs and video) pull this evidence apart, examine the elements and connections, and then reassemble that which usefully contributes to an art practice. The indirect structure isn't linear, it's formed by concerns common to both art and best pedagogy practices. Think of transparency of processes, open ended possibilities, and audience involvement. Propelled by intensely personal experience, I investigate parallel urges between pedagogy and art. Why does this matter? Far from being an ancillary practice, constructing an aesthetically educational experience for students can strengthen the intensity of an artist's practice. Simultaneously, approaching a teaching practice as if it's art can inform one's art practice and creates a transcendental experience for students and teaching artist, regardless of whether the gate-keepers define it as art or not.

    I am currently an MFA candidate at the School of Visual Arts' Art Practice program.
    See a description of this unusual program featuring some of my documentary photos on their site.
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  3. Laurent Millet, Untitled, Translucent Mould of Me series, Piezography, 40x50cm, 2013 © Laurent Millet, Courtesy La Galerie Particulière, Paris



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  4. Projections and transparencies | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
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  5. Can we be better than we are? Can we be different from what we are? 

    Torschlusspanik

    Literally translated as a “gate-closing panic”. It is sense of anxiety or fear that one’s life is passing them by and that their future opportunities are diminishing. Every choice limits other choices. 
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  6. When I watched Man with a Movie Camera, I thought the compositions and the light and shadows, and the transitions were beautiful. Many shots are the sort of things I’d photograph.
    Also, having shot black and white still film myself, I just want to make sure everyone knows that getting all those exposures correct, and getting a silhouette when one is desired is HARD. They had hand light meters and had to know how to use them. The sheer amount of footage is amazing. The superimposed images, sometimes several, mean an incredible amount of work- exposing new film in the studio, reshooting it each time to each of the four shots, and cutting templates by hand for each (at least that’s one way) is not just twice as laborious, it twenty times as laborious.  Plus developing all of that film by hand , then developing the superimposed film by hand, and then screwing some up and starting over. GAAAH.
    At first I starting connecting all the shots to read a story, but the the story did not appear. After I realized that the story would never appear I just sat there appreciating the compositions and thinking about the technical challenges.
    But then.
    I had seen the other cameraman a few times sprinkled through the footage. Finally I realized that he was one of two- that they were filming together, and often each other. I think I first realized that during the first close up camera shot. “Hmm. They’re filming a camera with the other camera. Hey, they switched! that’s the reverse!”
    The camera man in the car, filming the family in the horse and buggy on the street- he was being filmed from another car at the same time. The realization was slow- but the movie isn’t plotless at all. Thus the title Man with a Movie Camera.
    I kept remembering a quote by one of my favorite photographers Garry Winogrand, “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” This is about taking footage, editing, and mostly, looking; looking at everything with a hungry, bottomless eye. We all look every day, but with thoughts and tedium in our brains. The Man With a Movie Camera is just looking at the light, and the movement. And he will climb smokestacks, lie under a train, bolt a camera on a motorcycle while turning the camera’s crank to see what things look like on movie film.


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    Faktura-The visual demonstration of properties inherent to materials.

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    I collect mid-century modern ceramics. This Martz piece was scribbled in wax before being dipped in glaze. I collect these pieces because they explain their own process. The vessel contains it's story. I don't want the story to be lost. Man With a Movie Camera doesn't either.

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    Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake is a participatory video shot by people around the world who are invited to record images interpreting the original script of Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera and upload them to this site. Software developed specifically for this project archives, sequences and streams the submissions as a film. Anyone can upload footage. When the work streams your contribution becomes part of a worldwide montage, in Vertov’s terms the “decoding of life as it is”.
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  7. alumni show.
    I am deeply interested in this idea of whether or not context defines art.  
    I do believe that when any object is placed in a gallery setting, and called Art, that that is what's happening. When the viewer is told that it's hard and they look at it, they may or may not agree, but they are using the part of the brain that measures, looks at, and defines art. That tool is awakened, and applied. Whether the conclusion reached is agreement, disagreement, or somewhere on the gradient is almost beside the point.
    If a famous painting is hung in the basement of the school building, which is actually something I think I saw once (A George Inness, long story) is it still art? Is the gallery the requirement? I think most people would call in art object in the wrong context art.
    What about things that are called art but have never been in the gallery?
    The reason I say this is because for a long time while teaching and putting all my creative energy behind it, I often told my students that I considered teaching my art, not the way people say "cooking is an art" but that my actual teaching, the curriculum, the performance, The designed experience, The feedback and adjustment, The plan in the improvisation, The investigation of delivery to see what the medium offered they can only be learned by making it do things he wasn't supposed to do to me that was making art. I also told them I knew no one in the art world thought it was art, and that was fine, it didn't change what I thought, or how I approached it (I don't think I'll teaching is Art. I think It's possible. Depends on who's doing it. Some people do a job. Some people do art).


    Fast forward to more recent times. When I mentioned the same concept to some instructors, I could see them cringe. I know it sounds hokey When you just hear the one sentence. But if you've ever seen a comedian deal with a heckler, not only deal with them, but take what the heckler says and fold it neatly into the ongoing narrative and use it to even add to the surprise; that sort of improvisational adaptation of circumstance and effortless combination to enhance the idea being built at the same time is the quality of a creative that I'm talking about.


    If I wrote a book and memorized it and an improvised on top of it in front of an audience, I would call that art. I wrote a curriculum that was a designed experience, that  might have met  standards but had a higher theme, had references to other learnings, that had a plot with failure and triumph and surprise, and a multiplicity of valid outcomes. I performed it off book. I had props (class silent in a circle) "miss, what's in that treasure chest?" (Hand to student) student squeees "Oh it's our photos!" each student then took their photo out of the satin lined chest, somehow more transformed than if I had just handed them out.

    I could go on.  My question is, is it that it isn’t art, or is it just a distasteful idea to artists? If it could be called art, and is just distasteful, or bad or corny, why? Because I would like to know why, to be reassured that it isn’t the pink-collar associations, not bad-assed or heroic or flamboyant enough. This is a mess. It’s a sore spot. That suddenly I want to poke and see what happens.

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  8. “Our most beautiful and complex artwork that we will ever make is our identity” -Grayson Perry


    Perry is a male, British artist who creates narrative ceramic vessels and cross dressing performances.grayson-perry-spirituality.jpg

    grayson-perry-we-are-what.jpg
    Spirituality my Arse 1997                                                    We are what we buy 2000


    I highly recommend his current award winning TV series Who Are You?  It is part documentary, part talk show, and part investigative journalism. As a result, all three of these traditional forms are challenged as each element affects the interpretation of the others.  Only some of it is of self portraiture, but the process he models each episode, discussing the subject's identity, the forces that construct the self from within and without, Is the sort of transparency that is as profound to his fellow artists as the end product. Possibly even more so. The outside research and comparisons, and then the documentation of the art that Perry creates to best represent the identity in transition supports his larger concept of identity as something that is never finished. Here's the range of his subjects:


    "Episode 1
    Grayson Perry explores identity in this new series as he creates diverse portraits, starting with ex-MP Chris Huhne, Rylan Clark from X-Factor, a Muslim convert and a young transgender man


    Episode 2
    Grayson Perry explores identity as he creates diverse portraits. In this episode he meets the Jesus Army, a white gay couple with a mixed-race son and a couple living with Alzheimer's."


    The range of media is just as diverse- clearly a crucial element is how media itself connotes different elements of identity beyond content and context.


    Perry used a celebrity as one of his subjects, and that's one of the most interesting ones. We think of how the feminine identity if inflicted by males, but actually male identity is also enforced from outside forces. Being a real man, a provider, powerful, non-emotive and virile is not necessarily their natural state either. Sure, men have the less vulnerable role, but it's just as constraining and artificial. Feminism means a release of constraints for everyone, as well as the elimination of a culture that allows rape attitudes and harassment.
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  9. TeenagerTeenagers In Belfast a Project by Michelle Sank
    Michelle Sank “My practice is concerned with the notion of encountering, collecting, and re-telling.” She has engaged in projects concerned with youth who feel they need to get plastic surgery to meet societal norms, Youth who use specific identifiers that indicate their ethnic, political and social status to the world, and  many more that all investigate how societal norms or expectations of beauty, adulthood, and significance enter into them and manifest.


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    sank_michelle1.jpg


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    (it wouldn’t allow me to copy and paste text)

    Anthony Luvera works with others- he calls them “Assisted self-portraits”. Although these self portraits are not ‘his’, he has clearly thought long and hard about self-representation. He has also started bringing the subjects to the gallery with him to assist with the curating and presentation as well- but not directed by the subject, a negotiation, discussion of what they both liked, didn’t like, and why. This is an extension of his previous work. It was co-curated by artist and subject in CitiesMethodologies 2009 in London. That year’s theme was ‘exploring innovative methodologies in urban research’.
    Screen Shot 2014-12-16 at 1.21.26 PM.png
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