what does contrast mean, teacher lady?
I have found contrast to be one of the most powerful ways that I learn or realize something. When I see a light color among darkness, it seems even brighter and more vivid. When I spend time with someone who talks very fast and then have a conversation with a slow-speaking southerner, I am much better able to understand them but also find myself growing a bit impatient with the way their words amble on casually. When I spot something of incredible beauty in the middle of utter ugliness, I am overwhelmed by the way that the loveliness is somehow enhanced by its unattractive surroundings.Today was a day of stark contrast, and I really wasn't even looking for that or the lessons that would come from it.
I began my day with a mandatory employee "training" session, in which we learned about a new performance evaluation method that is being implemented this year. I am familiar with the process, as it's something that I had to endure each year at my old job at the publishing company. The title of the training today was "pay for performance", and basically the idea behind it is that employees can be rewarded for the quality of their work. If someone wants to just do their job and meet the basic expectations, they can do that and just ignore the whole process. However, if someone desires to go "above and beyond" their job expectations and establish goals and then get their supervisor to sign off on those goals, they may be eligible for a certain percentage of a bonus at the end of the year. According to this system, there are two levels of increase that you can work toward -- one would be if you exceed job expectations, and the other would be if you are outstanding at exceeding job expectations. I understand the big push these days for incentives in order to try to ensure that people stay motivated and blah blah blah, but I don't buy into it.
What am I getting paid for in the first place? For doing my job, I would hope. Why should someone have to offer me extra for doing extra? Why don't they just ask me to do extra and then I do it? Or why shouldn't the "extra" be a part of my job in the first place? This all seems so ridiculous to me. If there are things that I can do that go above my current job description, then maybe my job description needs to be rewritten. Seems kinda like a big "duh" issue to me, but maybe I'm just strange. It just seems like, to me, that maybe the incentive to go a good job should be just that - doing a good job. Have we set such low standards for ourselves that someone can't take satisfaction in their work, but they need extra in order for them to do something well?
So, these are some of the thoughts running through my head during this meeting. And also, I should mention that I am not even eligible to write out goals this year anyway, because I am still considered a "new employee". But, even if I were eligible, I'm not sure I would do it just because I think this whole thing is ridiculous. Ok, so I was thinking about the stupidity of it all when we were instructed to break off into small groups (as should be done at any effective training session, of course).
Each of the groups was designated as a certain department within the organization and was given the task of establishing a goal. The details here aren't important. My group began to work on a goal, but somehow (and I still have no idea how) we ended up on a discussion of wages and how no one in the county gets paid what they deserve. There was a ___ man in my group (I need to insert blanks so that I don't use other words here) who opened his mouth and began, "I'm not prejudiced against anyone, I have no problems with people of other races, but ..." Ok, here's a hint -- if you have to make clear that you aren't something before you say something else, then you probably shouldn't say any of it in the first place. I have learned that most of the time when people say this kind of thing (especially about race issues), that they are in fact what they are saying they're not.
This man went on to say that he doesn't understand how a particular ethnic group (he said which, I will not) gets such a good deal on life. He went on to talk about totally irrelevant things like how he was in line the other day at a grocery store and ended up behind a family that had two carts and blah blurb blah blurb blah. I know he must have felt the glare that I was giving him, but he still went on and on and on. And then somehow the rest of the group (people who, based on appearances, you would think were educated and somewhat human) started chirping in about this race and that race and people who live in trailers and draw public assistance and don't work and have the easy life. And they moaned and whined about how we are basically punished because we get out there and "bust our butts" (boy, that training session was just SO physically exhausting!) to make a dollar and pay our bills. And they griped and complained about how we are basically supporting these people who just sit around and get to enjoy life.
I thought my tongue was going to split, I was biting it so hard. Several times I brought us back to the task at hand and spoke not a word about their conversation. I wish that I had, but it didn't seem worth my while to step near the pile of dung which seemed to be surrounding me. Anyway, we made it through (by busting our butts, of course), and I left that auditorium as quickly as possible. I still cannot believe what ingrateful people I was with this morning. And sadly I work for the county, and these people are considered "servants to the community." They are social workers and health educators and prison staff, and they are idiots. I have a feeling that they represent only a small sampling of a larger epidemic of people who think that the world owes them everything, and they should have to do nothing to get it.
It seems there is possibly a direct correlation between the mental flabbiness of these individuals and their physical states. Maybe if they exercised their minds and bodies as much as their mouths and their complaining muscles, they probably would be much happier and not have as much to talk about in the first place. That sounds harsh, but I couldn't help but notice it. Obviously this experience affected me more than even I realized (until now), because this post is turning into a bit of a venting forum for me.
Here comes the good part of my day ... the beauty in the midst of the ugliness. Tonight I spent three hours at the local community college, volunteering as a teacher's aide in an ESL class. I arrived a few minutes late (the program director had actually suggested I do so, so that I could be there once the class was actually in session) and took my seat in a classroom full of people with a skin color different than mine. There were 16 students in the class, one teacher, a teacher's assistant, and then me. With the exception of one Asian man, all of the students were Hispanic. I knew that they were all there willingly. No one was forcing them to give three hours of their night to sit and learn a language that was foreign to them. They were because they believed in the importance of furthering their education and expanding their minds and abilities and horizons.
As I had the opportunity to speak to several of the students, I learned that many of them came there straight from work, or were going to a night job straight from the class. Some came from one job and were going to another as soon as the class was over. Without exception, every single student in the class smiled at me when I walked in. If any of them hadn't yet introduced himself or herself to me as I walked around the room and answered questions (and also caught one mischievous looking Honduran student asking a Mexican student for an answer on the vocabulary test), they were sure to come up to me during the break and tell me their names.
The mood of the evening was light and jovial, and the teacher (who I think is quite possibly the best teacher I have ever seen in my life) encouraged the students and praised them and made them feel like geniuses. As a man named Oscar sat beside me and worked on his vocabulary test, his face was wracked with tension and nervousness and uncertainty, and Teacher Lady (as they called her) came and put her hand on his shoulders and told him not to worry, that there would be other tests for him to ace. I looked at his paper and saw that he had only left one question blank, but he was determined to do his very best, even if the rest of the class had been done for quite a while.
As I sat in that room and listened to 16 voices stumble to repeat words that the teacher spoke to them, each of the students refusing to move on to the next word until they had gotten the pronunciation exactly right, I felt my eyes welling up with tears. These were the very people that I had heard being spoken of in such a cruel and belittling way earlier that day. These eyes, so intently focused on the teacher as she unveiled ideas and opened doors simply by speaking new words, were the eyes of people who supposedly just sit around and expect things from people like those I sat with this morning.
There is a major disconnect here for me, and I can't quite express it. But I can tell you without hesitation who I would rather work alongside if I had a choice between those colleagues this morning and those "foreigners" tonight. In a millisecond I can tell you who probably deserves a paycheck and then some, and who deserves to be kicked out to the street. This morning I was forced to listen to people who think the world owes them everything, and tonight I was fortunate enough to listen to and speak with people who can't wait to start to give back to the world that they feel has given them everything. What a sad, but beautiful contrast I experienced today ... and it's something I hope to somehow work towards changing.
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