Monday

13 November 2017

— I look up and see what my mom used to say: “Enough blue to make a Dutchman’s britches."

Good Morning All,

I spent my last year (2012/2013) at C.I.S. at loggerheads with the Director, Walter Plotkin, an ignorant and arrogant, crypto-fascist, mealy-mouthed, duplicitous SOB who had never taught a single class, who--like most Americans--regarded teachers as getting paid far too much for far too little work, and who did a remarkable Bob Newhart imitation with the exception that nothing he ever said was remotely funny.

The Danish Ministry of Education had recently lost a game-changing battle with the Ministry of Finance. From 2013 onward, gymnasium (high school) directors would have pretty much carte blanche to do whatever the hell they wanted. Walter spent a couple of faculty meeting going over what he had in mind, which was basically a muddled and self-contradictory plan for destroying the school and everything it stood for. 

After one such meeting, during which smoke rose from my ears and fire from my mouth, I took Walter aside and said, “Look, Walter, I know you think I am a dickhead, and I know you are one, so we can keep doing it this way, in public, if you like, calling each other names, or we can do it once a week in your office. Behind closed doors. Your choice.”

He chose the latter, and that’s what we did every Thursday lunch for four months. I knew I had to pick my battles and as such settled for the most part on one theme: what constituted a full teaching load. Up until the Ministry of Education lost its spine: a full load was three lessons a day, with equal time allotted for preparation. Walter wanted to up the lessons to five per day and drastically reduce the prep. time. 

Week after week, I told him what made our school special was our pastoral care, making ourselves available to our students outside the classroom, the educational and personal support, and the rapport that came from that. If he upped the classes to five and reduced prep time, pastoral care would go down the toilet, and the teachers would show up less prepared to teach what are essentially first and second year college courses.

Eventually, mirabile dictu, he said he’d compromise. He’d try four lessons per teacher, at least for the following year, and see how it went. Best he could do. I told him it was not good enough, but knew in my own mind he would budge no further. 

Four lessons it remained. 

I tell you all this because, frankly, I’m proud of it. All things considered, that was likely my best contribution to our little school.

Now jump four years.  Now, through Walter’s inept management (until he retired last year), and the inept management in his wake, the school is in plummeting financial crisis. Their solution is to lay off some teachers at the top of the pay scale, or reduce others to part time positions. Their solution is to try to fire the teacher representative at the board meetings. Their solution is to do away with the Social Anthropology Department, one of the most popular and best selling points of the school, as well as laying off the teacher, a gifted person who has been getting sensational IB results for a quarter of a century, and whose earth-mother warmth and generosity has helped maintain morale among students and faculty alike. I imagine, though I have not heard specifically, they will increase class size.

And: beginning next fall, a teaching load will be five lessons per day. 

So, I am feeling a bit down at present. Copenhagen International School is one of the ten founding schools of the International Baccalaureate. Jim Keson and Britta made the school what it was. (From an IB article: “My mental picture of CIS for most of its history is composed of a series of modest buildings with groups of willing students taught by a motley assortment of charismatic teachers,” reflects James Keson.) I was privileged to teach at C.I.S. for three decades. I now count dozens of colleagues and students as friends.

I feel bad for those colleagues and friends now being laid off without so much as a bye-your-leave. I feel bad for the present-day students who will not get the first-rate education that was once the hallmark of the school. Probably, I feel worst for the remaining colleagues and friends who I am sure will soldier along as best they can as the school enters its death throes.

Esther reminds me, “You do not work there any longer, Bheka.” She is, of course, correct, but still.

And on that cheery note,

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Two Johs snaps: