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FIRST PERSON
Classrooms are set up for social distancing in Burncoat High School Monday, March 15. RICK CINCLAIR/T&G FILE
Jack Miller
Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
Malcom X once said, “Truth is on the side of the oppressed.” Many times in school systems, specifically urban ones, there is a large demographic of BIPOC students. Considering the demographic we have been given, justice, law enforcement controversy and white washing are bound to be issues that are talked about. The key to creating a better system for education is to listen to those who say there are problems.
I grew up in a very privileged position. Although this does mean I was blind to the injustices around me constantly, I was given opportunities that were not commonly given to my POC friends. I grew up being taught by those that had the same skin color and ethnicity as me. My first POC teacher was in 9th grade. The first step that would be taken by me as a superintendent for this school system would be to expand the faculty demographic, to provide different views of the world and create a more welcoming environment for POC students. This would be a huge step forward as education is based around allowing different views in your life and finding your own way. POC students in school systems, including in WPS, have been saying this for a long time, and to no avail. They have not had that privilege.
Curriculum is obviously an integral part of education; however, for it to truly be considered education it needs to be just that: education. In a DON LANDGREN JET-SKIERS ON INDIAN LAKE
WORCESTERIA
Union buzz seems to be everywhere
Victor D. Infante
Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
A couple decades ago, in a land far, far away, I was actually a business journalist. I wasn’t particularly good at it, and I wasn’t very happy doing it, but it’s a weird little hiccup on my resume that sometimes makes itself useful. Indeed, one of the dings on my first and only performance review for that magazine was that I was often too sympathetic toward organized labor, and used a lot of resources from labor unions. Which? Fair. I personally thought they were too dismissive of labor, and too quick to follow well-established party line talking points designed to enrich shareholders and owners at the expense of workers. So my then-employers were probably right to lay me off, cause that marriage just wasn’t going to work.
Still, I can hear those party lines reverberate through the news all the time. Certainly, I’ve been hearing them during the ongoing Saint Vincent’s strike – now currently the longest ongoing strike in the country – every time St. Vincent Hospital CEO Carolyn Jackson puts out a press statement. It’s the same old shtick: Vilify organized labor, cast aspersions on people who perform actual labor, and don’t draw attention to actual financials, save those the company wants to frame and present. It’s worth noting that St. Vincent’s owner, Tenet Healthcare Corporation, is trending pretty well on the stock mar-
Community
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school system I would run, the curriculum would be, in the simplest terms, brutal. Not as in overbearing or difficult, as in truthful. This more pertains to English and history classes. We need to understand what truly happened in history to be sure never to repeat it. A loose example would be that myths such as “Christopher Columbus discovered America” or “The Native Americans and Europeans got along very well” would not be taught, as they are untrue. The way that it needs to be is that, if the truth is too violent or “raw” for young audiences, young audiences are not ready to learn it. Lying does nothing but misinform the youth, which is against education as a concept.
Disciplinary policy is an interesting topic to explore. If education is based on learning, then discipline needs to follow suit. In a school setting that I am the superintendent for, these policies would be focused on education more than punishment. Using education over punishment will create a welcoming environment that houses love and safety. Off the disciplinary policy, a much more specific rule that would be implemented would be to take police officers out of schools, as it reinforces the school-to-prison pipeline which disproportionately affects BIPOC students.
Community is essential. To create a community, we need to understand the different backgrounds that students and teachers come from and accommodate accordingly. To create a loving environment, we need to listen to people who come out to talk about the inevitable problems in the system. This exact incident occurred in WPS with an Instagram account known as “racismfreewps,” where hundreds of students came forward to talk about problems with faculty or systems that occurred to them, yet were not acknowledged by WPS. I must make it clear that this is not an attack on WPS, more a commentary. In a system that I ran, we would listen and address the issue, as well as learn how to help the students affected.
Community means to listen and to love. The superintendent’s job is to listen and to fix problems to create a more welcoming community.
Jack Miller is a student at Burncoat High School, and this essay was the winner of a schoolwide contest which “asked students to act in the role of school superintendent to a city as large and diverse as Worcester and to suggest procedure and policy ideas that would improve access and justice, etc.”
WeloveLocal.
localiq.com/NewEngland
Union
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ket. MarketWatch todayputs the stock price, as of this writing, at $68.06 a share, up from $66.51 on Jan. 1, and not down much from its high this year of $68.25. It’s way down, though, from its all-time high of around $197, in 2002. It tumbled pretty hard in the oughts –remember that big recession? – but for the past year, it’s been mostly stable with the usual peaks and valleys, and on the whole trending upward. It’s definitely improved over a year ago, when the stock price was a mere $22.11. Point being? Tenet Healthcare looks pretty healthy, at least on paper. It certainly calls into question the rationale behind its intractable resistance to raising nursing staffing levels.
Ah, but that’s corporate America, where the profit is king. Still, the past few weeks, I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about unions and organized labor, enough to make me wonder if something’s in the air … probably related to the shocks of the past year, as everyone dusts themselves off and eyes returning to normal … only to realize that normal wasn’t always that great. Recently, I had an exchange with someone representing workers at a local company who were looking to organize. While I’ve been a dues-paying member of the Providence Newspaper Guild for ages, I’ve never really been active in the process of starting a union, so I passed them along to to the AFL CIO’s useful website on how to do just that.
On another front, acclaimed line cook and sometimes journalist Bill Shaner, in his blog, laid out a pretty convincing argumentthat the hiring problems restaurants are having nationally are less about overly generous unemployment benefits and more of a form of labor strike, noting that, where he works, “it’s more that people are leaving because there are other places that are willing to pay a lot more money and they work you a lot less hard. The sous chef is leaving for another restaurant where he’s getting a lot more money. One of our better line cooks did the same a few weeks ago. I’m sort of doing that as well. In the past month, all I’ve had to do is float a rumor that I was considering leaving and I got two raises. There’s a worker shortage and restaurants are being forced to pay more because they laid everyone off a year ago and people had to find other work and they probably found that the other work is a way better deal than working at a restaurant. There is a long, long history of exploitation of workers in the restaurant business.” Shaner also notes that he’s leaving the restaurant to spend more time with his newsletter/blog, and also to do booking for Ralph’s Rock Diner.
Unions aren’t perfect, and they can’t, as one former local union rep once put it, “stop companies from making stupid business decisions,” but it seems the events of the past year have reminded people that maybe employers, even decent ones, aren’t always making their decisions based on what’s best for their employees, and maybe those employees are better off standing together. Certainly, union talk is in the air.
Signs worn by striking nurses at St. Vincent Hospital.
PHOTO BY TAJONN NICKELSON
