Feeding your mind, pt 2 - union edition

Readers,

I am diverging from my favorite/least favorite topic of body image to express my strong support for the striking teachers in Chicago.

credit New York Times

Any one who has spent any amount of time inside an urban public classroom can tell you that teachers and their administrations are severely underpaid.

Any one who has spent a month there can tell you that public school teachers have responsibilities that extend far beyond teaching.  Low-income children, with fewer community resources to address their needs, are not only underprepared for a day of learning, they look to the school to provide them with these resources.

Let me start by explaining what I mean by underprepared: maybe their homes are cramped or loud and they don't get enough sleep.  Or they do not get enough food at home and are hungry during the day.  Some have no one at home who has the time/the ability to help them with their schoolwork.  Or to provide them the discipline to complete it.

Also: the drinking water at the school flows through the building's original lead piping and is not safe to drink.  There is not enough funding for a school psychologist.  Three first-grade classrooms share a single pencil sharpener, and student liaisons must be sent between classes to bring it back and forth.  There is a shortage of all school supplies.  The classrooms are old and ugly and don't get a lot of natural light.

These are a few among a myriad of reasons why a student might easily lose focus.  And they all were huge factors that hindered student learning at the elementary school where I volunteered my time last year.

Now, I'll shift to some problems teachers had to face.  Unmanageable class sizes of students with very different levels of ability.  And almost all these students would benefit from the help, either because of a learning disability, behavioral disorder, or emotional problem, from a social worker.  And an administration, lacking the funding to issue more than six IEPs per classroom, because seven means that the teacher gets a full-time aide.  The teacher had to spend so much time on discipline that her first-graders hated coming to school.

And when she went on a maternity leave, she was replaced with a rookie teacher, fresh from school, who cried every single day in trying to cope with the stress of disciplining/establishing ground rules, teaching, and handling the problems at home for every student of this very difficult class.  As a volunteer with a BA but no background in elementary education/power in the classroom, I could only handle problems as they came up, like a very large-scale game of whack-a-mole.

credit dailykos.com

There is no question in my mind that basing 25% of a teacher's evaluation on the basis of student growth is a misguided and harmful policy.  And of course student growth is measured by standardized testing, whose effectiveness is disproportionately affected by all the factors I listed above.  And extending the school day and school year without providing the support of aides or secondary teachers in the classroom is out of the question.  Urban teachers need smaller classes if they are to successfully get any teaching done.

And to those who are demonizing these striking teachers for taking away two days (and counting) of learning from the students.  These teachers sure ain't getting paid for striking.

Getting angry . . . for the wrong reasons

thank you abcnews.go.com

The RNC came and went in a flash of lightning, didn't it?  I've just spent the last twelve hours or so procrastinating instead of unpacking and catching up.  First, there was that hurricane, then Ann Romney and Chris Christie talked about how much the GOP totally loves women, then Clint Eastwood totally upstaged Mitt Romney (which was probably the point, now that I think about it).

Of course, the national conventions do nothing if to further polarize Democrats and Republicans.  The POINT is that they are unabashedly partisan and utterly lacking in a substantive political conversation.

And of course, there has been quite an uproar from my news feed, which I imagine as a single, many-headed entity that breathes fire at even the most innocuously-stated right-wing politics.  Unfortunately, social media is not structured to generate brilliant political dialogues.  There's only so much you can say in 140 characters, and with as many people reading it as possible, it had better be snappy and/or funny. And by now, I expect most people are browsing with the awesome/evil Google Chrome, trying to show me as many things that I like as possible.

Look, I can't point my finger at the naysayers, as I have definitely been guilty of taking cheap shots.  Sometimes, it's so satisfying.  And it's easy.

But it's important not to channel that anger into your pithy, brilliant tweet with the widest possible appeal.

Guys, STOP being angry at Chris Christie for being fat.  We ALREADY KNOW that he is fat.

credit jerseynut.blogspot.com

I should note that as far as today's GOP goes, Christie is a moderate.  He supports civil unions and believes that non-violent drug users should be sent to therapy rather than jail.  He has created some incentives to support local manufacturing  of sustainable energy.

Instead, maybe you'll be angry for his propaganda-style portrait of the current administration's policies at his RNC speech.  For at his relentless attacks on unions.  Or joining the rhetoric on "American exceptionalism" and for spewing misleading information about New Jersey's budget.

Exercise your democratic rights and educate yourself.  You're going to vote for Barack Obama, but what don't you like about him?  Where doesn't he go far enough?

It's hard.  Not every one can know everything about everything.  And you don't have to.

But if you scoff at the RNC because Clint Eastwood performed a shtick with a chair and Chris Christie is fat, and therefore scary/ lazy/ a bad example/ any other uninformed conclusion, you clearly know nothing.

Legitimate Voices in Fat Acceptance: Regina Benjamin

Even for those of us who believe in the system, political discourse about fat is pretty disappointing.  I mean, there is almost no discourse.  Fat acceptance is not a mainstream issue, even in the progressive world.  We only really hear about "the obesity epidemic".

I'm not sure what fat acceptance legislation would look like.  Cracking down on weight-related discrimination in the workplace?  Regulating the diet industry?  (Weight is not a protected class.  I did not realize that.)

These are serious problems, although I know government spending has other priorities right now.  Fat acceptance does not necessarily ask for laws to change, but it asks people to change their very firmly-held world views.  And in order to ask people, largely women, of all shapes and sizes, to reexamine their societally-imposed self-hatred and constant feeling of competition with one another, we're going to need public figures with strong voices, a lot of influence, and a respectable knowledge base to add their voices to the cause.

Look, I may be an ally, and I may be Phat as hell, but my influence is quite limited.  (A brief shout-out to my 5 followers, you guys are the best.)  My knowledge is limited by my own non-fat/non-professional experience and my reading.

So there's some one I want you to meet.

Regina Benjamin, MD, MBA, the 18th Surgeon General of the United States.
Google her.  I mean, you don't have to.

First, let's take a look at her undeniable credentials.  First of all, she is our first Surgeon General appointed from a private practice (non-military appointee).  What did she do at her private practice?  She campaigned for health access for the poor in Alabama, her home state, and is a strong, ongoing advocate for women's reproductive rights, encouraging all medical schools to encourage abortion training.  Her awards include a Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, the honor of being the first person under 40 (and first black woman) to be appointed to the board of the AMA, and, oh, a MacArthur Genius Grant. 

(For a great post on this, check out Unapologetically Fat.)

Of course, many major mainstream news outlets did not lose a chance to celebrate this historic nomination.  Oh, who am I kidding: I mean the very important news story that a fat woman had been nominated for Surgeon  General. 

There's this gem from ABC: Critics Slam Overweight Surgeon General Pick, Regina Benjamin. 

Bloggers on Salon.com speculated that Benjamin is 40 pounds overweight, perhaps a size 18. The nominee didn't return calls from ABCNews.com, so there is no information about how much she weighs or her eating and exercise habits.

Well, isn't that surprising.  And the always-classy Michael Karolchyk, featured on Fox News:

Would you want Michael Jackson's doctors to be in charge of drug control at the DEA? The bottom line is it's a symbolic position and obesity is the number one issue facing our country in terms of the health and wellness and she has shown not that she was born this way, not that she woke up one day and was obese, she has show through being lazy, and making poor food choices, that she's obese.

And of course, a bunch of stupid concern-troll stuff all over the Internet.  This one is from Washington Post Voices:

Some even say that her weight may help her better understand other people's struggles to maintain a healthy body size and in turn may help the general public relate to her better. Think Oprah.

To me, this epitomizes our society's obsession with obesity as *the* most important health concern of our generation, and the obesity narrative as one of loss of control and willpower.  

But may they be right?  Just listen to her radical ideas on health, hatched from her evil plot to keep America obese.