Too Many Years Teaching at Multiple Locations in Multiple Situations with Diverse Students: Need Not Apply!

Duties — Teacher, US Forest Service, Yachats, OR

Pledge · Restore the balance: more schools, less prisons! · Change.org

Summary

This position is located on the Angell Forest Service Job Corps Civilian Center in Yachats, OR.

The incumbent is responsible for providing classroom instruction to students in a variety of academic subjects.

For more information about the duties of this position, please contact BBF at: @usda.govor 541-547-

Responsibilities

  • Through classroom instruction and guidance.
  • Establishes a learning environment in which students can develop their ability to make rational and informed decisions relevant to their needs, as well as promote opportunities for students.
  • Instructs students in the following areas: reading, language, writing, mathematics, life skills, computer literacy, general educational development program, human development, and social studies.
  • Responsible for planning courses of instruction and lesson plans based on the developmental program and general curriculum guidelines in effect.
  • Implements plan using teaching methods and techniques appropriate for the skill level being taught, allowing for adaptations to permit individual differences in interests and ability and improve the quality of instruction.
  • Evaluates individual academic progress through the use of criterion-references, tests and/or other relevant evaluative methods/instruments.
  • Maintains required records in accordance with applicable regulations, which includes progress reports and accountability reports.

+—-+

This is it for America, for Government, for the entire shooting match. So, I have four decades teaching, man, or more, if you count the scuba diving classes I used to teach frequently in my late teens (18-20).

The entire thing is this job, with the Job Corps, necessitates an Oregon K12 teaching certificate? Amazing. I have been a certified substitute, emergency status, and that was in three states, and alas, I have taught taught taught. However, I have taught: in gang prevention programs for 10th graders; gifted and talented summer program at UT-Austin for juniors in high school; subbing K12, all subjects; running start classes at several community colleges — these are 11th and 12th graders getting to go to community college for their last two years of K12 with extra credit toward college credits; college courses for prisoners, enlisted military, Air Force-Army-Navy-Coast Guard-Marines in an academy in Texas; special education classes; alternative schools; classes in adult basic education; college classes all the way up to graduate writing classes; scuba classes; nature classes; outdoor experiential classes; kayaking classes; photo classes; camping classes; continuing education classes; Life Long Learning classes for older adults. Hell, the list goes on and on, yet I am not qualified to apply to this fucking US Forest Service job just advertised.

You know where I stand if you have read my stuff over the years at Dissident Voice.

Dumb ideas rise to the surface when professional managerial classes determine x and y and z for the masses, for those intersecting with anything tied to government or bureaucracy or top down idiocy thinking.

My application today is null and void because I do not have this piece of you know what “paper.” Teaching certificate, you know, a piece of paper that tells EVERYTHING about the character, life, experience, passion, vision, etc. of the person (NOT). I called the number, and the woman said it wasn’t her job description to write or determine, but the Department of Labor’s requirement. You can’t have much of a discussion with people on the other end of the bureaucratic line, even an HR at a Job Corps.

It is a conversation with a toad. Though a toad is so much more interesting than some person with their $70 K a year job, just holding on, just hanging on, just holding out.

I told her that I was living (in stable housing) 8 miles away from this Jobs Corps site, that I am seasoned beyond seasoned, and that the entire joke of education and these government jobs destroy people, youth that is. Can you imagine which “Oregon/Other State Teaching Certificate” holder might apply? This is the Oregon Coast, and housing is shit beyond shit. Feeling the strain of Don Quixote. Willy Lohman. Walter Middy. Raging against the system, the machine of idiocy.

Here my letter, attached to the application:

RE: Instructor at Angell Forest Service,  US Forest Service

To Whom It May Concern:

I am applying for this position with great enthusiasm and interest. I have been teaching youth and adults since 1983, as a graduate teaching assistant working on a masters, in El Paso. I have taught in high school programs, at community colleges, at universities, in outdoor education programs, for youth in trouble, in gang prevention programs, in prisons, and more.

I have designed courses for youth, for refugees, for adults. I also have been a substitute teacher in Washington, Vancouver, Ridgefield and Bush Prairie, as well as in Spokane. I also substituted here in Lincoln County, and for the alternative school in Lincoln City.

I have two master’s degrees, I am a dive master (recreational scuba), a cetacean naturalist (whales), photographer, and communications/English/journalism teacher.

I have taught students in Texas, Spokane, Seattle, and Portland who were going into education for undergraduate degrees. I do not have a state K12 teaching certificate.

What a waste of a job interview, a potential candidate for this vital position. I live in Waldport, have deep ties to environmental communities, and I know youth in Job Corps programs. I had two youth clients in my role as independent living program case manager in Clackamas County with Lifeworks. I went to that Job Corps many times, and even facilitated several presentations with myself as moderator and a professional football player guest.

I have the passion, the training for trauma informed case managing, I have worked with adults with learning disabilities, and I have taught every manner of audience and in many venues in many states, and in two countries (Mexico and Guatemala). I am sure the Department of Labor can be creative here and look deeper at my background, my educational experience and my vision for working with sometimes troubled youth.

I am student and client centered, and understand many aspects of mental health, have a deep knowledge of ACES, and have worked with homeless youth and adults.

Sincerely, Paul Haeder

 

Why Many Inner City Schools Function Like Prisons | Think Research Expose

 

It is the defining lack of intelligence moment after moment in this bloody country. It is the reason why students have no interest in schooling, unless daddy and mommy have a cool $200,000 a year (at least) income, and all the toys, all the trips to this or that country, to this or that museum. Tutors, and private schools. The people who end up in government, in administrations, and in private business. These people are driven by stupidity and their own cobbled thinking. But they end up controlling the masses with their backward and mean as cuss thinking. They set the rules, and there is no deviation from those stupid rules and guidelines.

No interview with me to see what I might offer youth at the job corps. No deep analysis of what I am as a teacher, mentor, facilitator, inspiration, man, world traveler, thinker, and, well, the list is long. But these outfits do not want innovators and passion and smarts and outside the box thinkers, systems thinkers, deeply cultured and intersectional leftwing men.

Time and time again, the absurdity of this society, that is, western society, plays out in millions of examples DAILY. For me, who is trying to find some home for a few years, some place to do good, to help youth, to learn how young people navigate the world, I get this shit.

Has anyone seen how quickly education is going toward Zoom Doom? How many teachers are dropping out? How charter theft schools are colonizing the “education” field? How the next and the next bioweapon variant, Delta, what have you, will knee-jerk CDC and Biden and Blue Governors for more lockdowns?

These Department of Labor folk call this a GS-09 position. Recall, that retired colonels from the US Army, ending up in civil service, land at least on the GS-14 to start, and I’ve been a writing teacher in El Paso for the US Army, and worked with some numb nuts and numb ovaries at the GS-17 level. Double dipping (retirement from the welfare state military), pieces of human stain. Some of them did real estate calls from their government offices, at taxpayer expense.

No getting to first base here for me, no place to plead my case, no place to enter into a sound argument why a teacher with decades teaching doesn’t need that fucking teaching certificate.

This GS-09 job pay? $53,433 a year!

Not rolling in money, but imagine giving me that shot, for a few years, and, then, imagine the changes that these young people’s lives might experience. This is psycho, insane, breaking of the human spirit, killing of youthful genius. Look below:

An Unschooling Manifesto: Why Do Many Schools Resemble Prisons?

Traditional education can be seen as sculptural in nature, individual destiny is written somewhere within the human being, awaiting dross to be removed before a true image shines forth. Schooling, on the other hand, seeks a way to make mind and character blank, so others may chisel the destiny thereon.

The net effect of holding children in confinement for twelve years without honor paid to the spirit is a compelling demonstration that the State considers the Western spiritual tradition dangerous, subversive. And of course it is. School is about creating loyalty to certain goals and habits, a vision of life, support for a class structure, an intricate system of human relationships cleverly designed to manufacture the continuous low level of discontent upon which mass production and finance rely. — John Taylor —Gatto, The Underground History of American Education

What's the difference between school and prison? | Millard Fillmore's Bathtub

This all falls on deaf ears. I have friend after friend who just know I should get a few million bucks from some philanthropy to do what I can do and know what should be done —

  • Micro-housing for houseless and those disabled and aging in place.
  • Thirty acres or more with community buildings/kitchens/workshops.
  • Real community gardens/greenhouses.
  • College students in nursing, social work, other fields interning.
  • School youth (K12) coming to these communities for weekend intensive outdoor education encampments: catching salmon; smoking salmon; building teepees; constructing one tiny home on wheels in one three-day encampment; streaming live to other youth in other countries; building fires, making musical instruments, learning basket weaving; elders and others on site discussing the realities of the world from indigenous knowledge; discussing the failures of capitalism, and bringing youth to understand that creating their tribes (friends, elders, others) is the only way to survive the climate disaster, the coming of AI and robotics, and more.
  • Photo spread for the weekend; filmmaking; learning how to write to politicians, talk before city councils, and how to run for dog catcher or school board and WHY.
  • Canning and preserving.
  • So much more.

The reality is this sort of model (I have a much more detailed model or models, that is) is rubber meeting the road. Real learning, real deep thinking, real critique thinking skills, real debate skills, real ways to fight city hall, lobby and form community networks and organizing. In a natural setting. No rows of desks, prison bells, redneck vice principals and yawning PE instructors.

Instead, we get Dollar Tree education and drive-through shit for schools, which are indoctrination camps, macho camps, personality bashing camps, peer pressure dungeons, schools where the turnkeys are not the sharpest pencils in the box!

Forest Schools: Education in the great outdoors

Outdoor School | OSU Extension Service

Outdoor Environmental Education Program - Western Suffolk Boces
Pandemic could decimate environmental, outdoor science education programs | Berkeley News

Why Outdoor Experiences Are Necessary for Early Childhood Education | Resilient Educator

Paul Haeder's been a teacher, social worker, newspaperman, environmental activist, and marginalized muckraker, union organizer. Paul's book, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber (2016), looks at 10 years (now going on 17 years) of his writing at Dissident Voice. Read his musings at LA Progressive. Read (purchase) his short story collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam now out, published by Cirque Journal. Here's his Amazon page with more published work Amazon. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.