Dance of the Lemons Part 2 - Amuse Bouche #11

Welcome back! This is Amose Bouche and I'm Bridget. Here you're getting a little bit of Bridget before our weekly release of Dinner Plus Drinks on Sunday. It's time for Dance of the Lemons part two. If you missed last week, pause now and go give it a quick listen because we are going to wrap it all up this week. Okay, admittedly, last week I ended things on a little bit of a rant. Shocker, I know. Um we were talking about school boards and how the movie Waiting for Superman portrays them as much of the problem with um issues in our public school system. I struggle locally with various elected boards like City Council, our our local school board. So I let that enter the conversation certainly last week. So I'm not sure that I agree all school boards are bad. Um so I wanted to lay that out there and move on past school boards a little bit. Um because in the movie Waiting for Superman, if you haven't taken time to watch it, one of the things, um, the director's name is Davis Guggenheim. So one of the things that he alludes to, and um, you know, a couple of the people he interviews in the documentary, is the next issue is teachers' unions. Now, I am not going to go on any sort of discussion one way or the other about unions. Um, I've never been a part of one. I have limited knowledge with them, and I don't want to get into a discussion about that. So the movie itself is what I'm going to be talking about here as it relates to unions, not my personal opinion. Um, the belief is that teachers' unions specifically are protecting, quote, bad teachers. And they specifically talk about tenured teachers. The movie flashes between scenes of teachers with their feet up on the desk, reading the newspaper, not even paying attention, and and they're saying that these teachers are basically waiting for retirement and not necessarily invested in the kids' futures. So I am I'm sure those people exist. Um, in part one, I talked about a local educator that I thought had no reason teaching students. To me, it has nothing to do with the fact that this person is close to retirement age. I think this person just doesn't, isn't invested ever, probably at any point in this person's life, was invested and interested in children and the way they learn. So speaking of children, you probably just heard mine yell in the background. Working in this world that we are in now means I mostly work from home, I have a sick child home half the time, it feels like. Sometimes I'm recording in late at night, sometimes it's the middle of the day, sometimes it's early in the morning. So thanks for bearing with all of that. But back to the movie, back to the topic at hand. So we unions were presented as one of the issues, and I like I said, I'm not gonna get into the various sides of that. Um, I am just gonna be presenting what the movie says and their opinions. So thank you for not getting after me about opinions on unions. Um, what I am hearing in the movie, you know, there these tenured teachers is specifically what Guggenheim, uh the director of the movie, what he points out, as well as um the people interviewed in the movie, tenured teachers are why our students are not getting the best education, their high, their most high-quality education. Now, sure that's part of the problem. Um, there are certainly people, I mean, people even in our town that I can say this person is 100% just working towards retirement. And certainly, I'm sure there are teachers that are less invested in the children's future because they're a year away from retirement and they know they can't get fired. I do choose to believe that that's not necessarily the majority. And there are a million other reasons, namely funding would be a good one, um, oversight, a lot of different reasons that schools may be suffering. So I do always like to see both sides of things. I am not very good at being wrong, but in a topic like this, that I can see both sides, I want to make sure I read about the critics too. So I found an article that was critical of Waiting for Superman, and it's in the Harvard Educational Review. And now the author of this article is is criticizing exactly what I've been saying. He's really focusing on the union and saying that the protected tenured teacher waiting to collect his or her pension is the reason why America's children don't have a high quality education. He's saying that's what the movie is saying, and he disagrees. The article is arguing that Guggenheim did not do his job of, you know, interviewing both sides. Now, if you're a documentary watcher, an avid documentary watcher, like I would say Tyler and I are, we love watching documentaries, you know that oftentimes they are one-sided, they're presenting a political side or a very, you know, a very specific um point of view. I remember when Michael Moore was creating documentaries and I was like, that was when I first started watching them. I'm like, what? This is so biased. Well, yes, it is. So it's your job as the viewer to watch both sides, you know, find one that rebutes it, find an article that is against it, and and educate yourself on both sides of it. So this article is saying, hey, what if Guggenheim actually talked to a teacher? Um, what do you think about that? So he could have talked to a teacher, he could have perhaps um found parents or or kids' groups, volunteers, people in the community that are working to make their schools better, and talk to them and see like what they're doing, why they're doing it, what are their challenges. And that would have brought a really interesting perspective, actually. I would love to speak to, say, the teacher that they showed in Waiting for Superman, who is a tenured teacher, sitting with his feet up, reading a newspaper during class. I'd love to speak to that teacher. Like, let's hear your point of view, man. Did they just catch you, like, was it study hall? And I would just be very curious. So they're also suggesting that in um this article is criticizing Guggenheim, saying parents keeping their children in public school systems are part of the broken system. So that would be saying that I am part of the broken system. I'm contributing to it because I'm not pulling my kid and putting him in a charter school, which by the way is run by our public school system here locally. So don't quite see the benefit in that yet. Um perhaps, you know, encouraging the conversation about the broader topic, like I said, so seeing both sides of it is important. So actually, after last week, I was challenged about this by my sister. Uh, she said, Well, you were so angry last week, so mad. Why do you send your kid to a public school then? Great question. Um, part of it is we're just starting this journey, right? Um, we we kind of got thrust into this life here that we we didn't think much about, and it I shouldn't say that. We of course thought about it, but we started the school system here and like, hey, we'll see how it goes, right? And now I'm I'm just the type of person that's overly invested. So we sat down and talked about it, and I thought about that a lot. Why are we sending Elliot there and is he in the right school? And what we really believe is the importance of diversification. So if we learned anything during COVID, it was that being around other people and many other people, peers your age, is really where the education, you know, comes in. Of course, there are other things, basic skills children need to learn. But you I can teach my kid his ABCs, his colors, how to tie his shoes. Uh he's past those things. He, of course, knows his colors at five, but I can't teach him how to understand that a student that has a different color skin as him is just as important. I can tell him all I want, but unless he's side by side with that kid and sees like, hey, we're the same, this is great. Or I can't necessarily have him understand bullying until it happens to him or he sees it happen. So those things, the importance of being around many different kids is what is outweighing a bad teacher because you can find a bad teacher anywhere. Um, so far, and and I believe that even at private schools. And so far, we've been lucky. We've had two great teachers. Uh, it's only we're only two years in here. So, I mean, we're we're not even two years in, we're a year and a little. So, my insecurity of being sure that Elliot, you know, every year he's got eight kindergarten classrooms this year. Let's say there's eight first grade classrooms, he will find consistency and friends throughout those years. Already I'm seeing him um find friends through his extracurriculars that also happen to be in his class, and I don't need to be worrying about that. I think that part, my very insecurity about the public school system of the m the sheer quantity is really gonna be, I think, what ends up being the best part for him. So I'm really excited actually about the public schools. I think there are a ton of good teachers, and the bad apple shouldn't be the one to ruin it, or should I say the bad lemon? We're lucky here that we don't have to go into a lottery system like they portray in the movie. Um, but it is always great to be educated and be informed about what's happening in your local schools. So that's a quick little synopsis of my feelings about it, two different sides on the issue, um, and a little bit about an introduction into the school year here. So we'll pick back up on a super fun high note next week. Maybe I'll bring back back thrift shopping, I'm not really sure. But thanks for hanging out with me, and I hope you have an awesome weekend.