Work

When a public school teacher retires from a life of service

/ Rudy Owens / Leave a comment

I cannot remember if it was 21 or 22 years ago, but the timing was right around this time of year, as classes were ending for public schools. What I do remember well is that my mom officially retired from her career as a public school teacher with the University City Public Schools system.

Woman and her adult son
My mother poses with me shortly after her retirement from lifelong service as a public school teacher.

I joined her the day she turned in her paperwork at the district office. I happened to be traveling from my home in Seattle to the St. Louis area. I wanted to be there to congratulate her for her years of service to kids, many from families with many difficulties. She was mostly happy, and the staff were pleasant, but there was no big celebration for her many years with the University City Public Schools. I wish I had been more thoughtful and treated my mom that day. I let her down.

Today, as I think about the stresses facing kids and teachers over the last two years in particular, I recall the way my mom’s career of service ended. I now wish I had pictures of her in the classroom. Unfortunately, this was before the social media era. What I have is a photo is from that era, maybe two years after she left the classroom.

My mom’s post-retirement life went well for a while, until she succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease, and then her life was hell for seven years, until her death in February 2020, just before the world experienced the COVID-19 pandemic.

At her funeral, the minister who led the sermon, and who I helped with some stories about my mom’s life, said these words: “She was one who devoted her life to teaching and encouraging little children. She was also ahead of the disciples, and on the same page with Jesus, as much of her career was teaching and nurturing those of differing communities. As the little bio notes, much, if not most, of her career was engaged in teaching young African American children. Jesus’ own teaching and ministry was inclusive. In fact that was a major point of his teaching — to teach and demonstrate that the community of faith, the community of God did not discriminate. This is a justice issue, but it is also a deeply spiritual issue, and faithful to the one who calls us to follow … . What the children recognized was a relationship, someone who cared for them, wanted them to learn, as she would want her own children to learn, to be cared for.”

It still saddens me that the school district, which I contacted repeatedly, never acknowledged my mom’s passing in their official communications. It was COVID-19 time, but this willful shunning of a public teacher still left me upset how even school districts remembered their own.

With June around the corner, millions of kids and families are getting ready to head into summer. It is an uncertain time too, with school safety foremost on the minds of many, along with so many other economic issues facing the kinds of families my mom served. So, if you can, please remember to thank a teacher before the school year ends, in person, if you know one. They will always remember that kindness.

Soon, the masks come off

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Masks are coming off soon, when previously many jurisdictions had required them in many indoor settings to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Many want this. Many who also know about the term “endemicity” would also like to believe we have “immunity” and can get back to “normal.”

In Portland, Oregon’s Sellwood neighborhood, the masks are coming off already, indoors and outdoors, at most eating establishments.

Hey, as a person who yearns for social contact like millions of others, I would like to go back to that now-crowded, maskless wine bar in Sellwood near my home too. Personally, I won’t do that any time soon.

The reason is, the underlying SARS-CoV-2 virus and its mutations will remain prevalent and potentially a real public health concern, based on what current science tell us. But I’m not saying this. Professor Aris Katzourakis, of the Department of Zoology, at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, made this point in the Jan. 24, 2022 issue of Nature.

Rudy Owens, wearing two masks, on a flight in June 2021 from Seattle to St. Louis.

In his essay, “COVID-19: endemic doesn’t mean harmless,” published just before the Omicron surge began to fall in many countries, Katzourakis wrote: “There is a widespread, rosy misconception that viruses evolve over time to become more benign. This is not the case: there is no predestined evolutionary outcome for a virus to become more benign, especially ones, such as SARS-CoV-2, in which most transmission happens before the virus causes severe disease.”

Katzourakis, and other public health and scientific experts, are not rooting for one outcome or the other. They are just using science to provide an informed opinion, hopefully to keep people healthy. And if some people keep wearing masks, that is fine with me. I will likely be one of them. That is a decision we all will still be able to make, for reasons that make good scientific and health sense.

Global health icon Dr. Paul Farmer touched a generation of public health practitioners

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Dr. Paul Farmer speaks at the University of Washington School of Public Health in 2018. Photo is courtesy of the University of Washington; story here.

World-renown global health advocate, Dr. Paul Farmer, died in his sleep in Rwanda, leading to an outpouring of both sadness and praise from many health and public health practitioners in the United States and around the world. At the time of his sudden death, Farmer was working in the central African nation at the medical school he co-founded with the Rwanda’s former minister of health, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho.

Farmer, a medical doctor and anthropologist with advanced degrees from Harvard, co-founded of the Boston-based Partners in Health (PIH). The group confirmed his death on Twitter today, Feb. 21, 2022. ABC News reported PIH had confirmed Farmer died from an acute cardiac event that happened during his sleep.

Despite his prestigious graduate pedigree and also having attended Duke University as an undergraduate, he eschewed the path of traditional power and influence that his elite training afforded him. He had his eyes set on the world, where many lacked access to basic health care. According to Duke University, Farmer sought to “strengthen public health systems in order to provide quality health care in some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.” By the time of his untimely death, he had established a wide following after having spent decades of his life working on addressing global health inequities, in Haiti, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. 

It is fair to say Farmer influenced nearly a generation of health and public health practitioners in the United States who have an interest in global health and health inequities. Those singing his praises today range from policy hawks like Samantha Power, to Hollywood celebrities, to former President Bill Clinton, as well as scores of public-health minded doctors who shared comments on Twitter, expressing sadness at the news of Farmer’s passing.

Farmer left a mark with his peers and colleagues globally who shared his passion to fix the same root issues driving and underlying global health inequities. The day after Farmer’s death is filled with diversity of persons who work in those fields sharing personal comments explaining why Farmer mattered in this collective effort. One former colleague, Dr. Sriram Shamasunder, met Farmer as a university student and was inspired to join in the work Farmer was doing. “He conveyed with his words, the irresistibility of social medicine, where health workers aim to address the root causes of disease in its social and economic context,” wrote Shamasunder in an essay published by National Public Radio just after Farmer’s demise. “This work is where necessity, urgency, and joy become bound together.”

Nearly every graduate student I met at the University of Washington School of Public Health (UW SPH) when I got my degree there (2010-‘12, as an older student) shared tales describing that their interest in working in international health was influenced by Farmer’s thinking and writing. He also visited my alma matter to speak about his work. That praise felt very close to hagiography, which can also hide any famous person’s flaws and blind spots. Those who know better of making saints from mere mortals can easily describe this type of myth-making as “white saviorism.” That is real too, regardless of Farmer’s accomplishments.

Tracy Kidder’s famous book about him, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World,  is the one book that came up in many conversations among UW SPH grad students. Here are some works by Farmer that provide some insights to his influential thinking, which are not uniquely his and also are shared by many doing similar work. I have not read it, but clearly the book has what can best be called a “dedicated following.” One cannot deny that Farmer was tireless in communicating the change he worked on, in the mud and in the field.

A good profile of him can be found in a New Yorker piece from 2000 that is circulating among those in global health who are lamenting this loss. The myth-making portrait by Kidder in her book about Farmer is based on a Haitian proverb: the Haitian proverb “Beyond mountains there are mountains”—as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and you go on and try to solve that too. That is a good metaphor to living life, ready to engage and never losing your purpose why you do what you do.

Remember, mankind is our business

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Nearly every year I catch a live or filmed version of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

With COVID-19 still a threat globally and the Omicron variant still the dominant strain in Oregon and the country, I will forego my normal Christmastime pilgrimage to the theater for a live show. I will miss it, because at these live shows of this timeless story, I am in the company of theatergoers who share in the many profoundly humanistic themes of this masterwork of literature.

There are too many scenes and themes to call out that speak to our common humanity, particularly this time of year, when we are asked to think of others less fortunate.

Patrick Stewart plays Ebenezer Scrooge in my favorite adaptation of A Christmas Carol, from 1999.

One of my favorites scenes is when the ghost of Jacob Marley visits the still hard-nosed and taciturn Ebenezer Scrooge to give him a chance to save his soul, while he is among the living. The ghostly apparition of his former friend and business partner warns of the three spirits who will visit him on Christmas Eve.

Marley’s ghost also reminds Scrooge of our purpose in life, to be of service to others.

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

The chills that one feels at a sprit giving us a chance for redemption never grow old for me. For me, this scene is among the best ever written telling us that we do in life, day in and day out, matters. The encouragement, spoken with the grim knowledge of death and the afterworld, reminds us all why our work matters in the here and now.

So with that holiday message, remember the importance of our “real business” in life, particularly this time of year.

Defining your values, to yourself and others

/ Rudy Owens / 3 Comments

Four years ago, I spent some time defining my core values and how these apply to work. These have been a part of my identity for as long I have worked . They also guided me as I balanced work with other experiences that contribute to my place in the world.

These values probably limited my ability to climb proverbial ladders of power, but they also mean that I am authentic in how I show up and what I want others to know about me.

That is me, Rudy Owens, on Martha’s Vineyard, in July 1984, when I worked outdoors. It was a lousy job, but I learned some important things from the crew and from my employer, DeSorcy Contracting.

In no particular order, here are some of my values as they mostly relate to me in the work world, where most of us have to find our place and earn our keep. Some values also relate to what I prioritize when seeking that elusive balance in life.

•    I value hard work.
•    I value personal and professional integrity.
•    I value collaboration with colleagues and open systems thinking more than hierarchy and closed-systems thinking.
•    I value creativity and those who are wildly passionate in visions for change.
•    I value being open to constantly learning new things.
•    I value spontaneity and the ability to change.
•    I value travel and learning from experience and other cultures.
•    I value personal health and the promotion of health at the individual, local, national, and international level.
•    I value simplicity.
•    I value the benefits that come from fair but fierce competition.
•    I believe in pursuing goals bigger than one’s self and one’s immediate surroundings.

So, these are my values. What are yours? What do you do stand for? How do you show them? What do you do when they conflict with your coworkers and neighbors? How do you respond? Do your values bend or do they guide you through life’s ambiguities?

Knowing who you are by your work

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At this stage in my life, in my middle age, I am comfortable knowing who I am. I will not become a successful entrepreneur or highly paid technical specialist in any of the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math). Nor will I be a successful business person as measured by the size of my bank account or size of the last budget I managed. I have taken a different path. And it is a good path, and it is also a professional path too. Success has other metrics.

One thing that I am comfortable with is having been a laborer and blue collar worker. I wish I could have developed a start-up company instead of having some of my crummy jobs in my youth. But there were factors and my own choices, and being lower-middle-class, there are constraints that those who are wealthier will never understand. I did run my own lawn-mowing business, but it never really took flight as a true company.

This is how I looked after a summer of hot work outside.

This is how I looked after a summer of hot work outside.

As a result of my earliest jobs, every time I see someone who is using their body to do manual labor, I feel some connection, because I did those jobs at one point. I also now agree with what Karl Marx notes in his Communist Manifesto, which has some stinging truths to those of us who have worked: “In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.”

Today I work in an office, for a local government. I am separated by a sheet of glass where I see men and women, daily, fixing the exterior to my building lately. It is very odd to have that viewpoint, knowing I had held such jobs, but I am no longer exposed to the hot sun, laboring and sweating.

Here are just a few of my jobs, and many a more famous person had dirtier, harder, and more brutal jobs than me. There is no shame in having done work getting your hands and clothes dirty.

  • Babysitter (really was not suited for this, but few jobs exist when you are younger than 16)
  • Gardener/snow shoveller (self-employed, for years)
  • Fast food cook and kitchen worker
  • Dishwasher (quit almost immediately, and that was wise)
  • Retail store assistant and janitor (yes, I really did janitorial work)
  • Librarian assistant
  • Painter
  • Roofer (hottest job I ever had)
  • Construction worker
  • Chauffeur/bus driver/tour guide
  • English teacher

Some of these jobs paid minimum wage, and one paid below minimum wage. For two of them, I likely was in violation of some state labor code, either being too young to work or not being covered properly working off the books. A few of these jobs did pay well, and the ones that did were with independent contractors, who always were excellent mentors about business, working with clients, and customer service.

By the time I was in my 20s, I finally made a move to climb up the ladder in terms of pay scale and responsibility in an organizational setting. My college degrees helped.

But I never forget the path that led me to where I am. I think former President Theodore Roosevelt summed up work nicely: “No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”

Rising above your workplace nemeses

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I know of practically no one who does not have to use their social talents to excel at work. In that social environment, many forces are at play. There are expressions of power between management and labor. There are tensions among teams, departments, sexes, races, religions, groups and leaders. Succeeding for yourself requires more than just clocking in. It requires social intelligence and the ability to read your environment and the intentions and motives of your coworkers and bosses.

The drudgery of work can be challenging enough without the need to handle challenging personalities you will inevitably encounter, all your life.

The drudgery of work can be challenging enough without the need to handle challenging personalities you will inevitably encounter, all your life. (From Diego Rivera mural at the Detroit Institute of the Arts, of the Ford River Rouge factory)

I doubt there is anyone in a contemporary workplace in the United States who has not experienced frustration on the job linked to someone they work with. One of the most challenging obstacles to overcome is that of the passive-aggressive coworker.

You may know variations of this type of person. I think I must have encountered my first when I had my second job in high school. Despite our differences, we still had to work together, for two years in my case, and I had to develop methods to rise above their personality and actions. I learned a lot from that, and I built on that knowledge in my later jobs.

Such challenges have never really ended, because such personalities remain very common, more so in low-functioning work environments.

Managing Passive-Agressive ColleaguesRobert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery, writes it is always best to steer your ship clear of their rocky shoals: “But there are people out there seething with insecurities who are veritable passive-aggressive warriors and can literally ruin your life. Your best defense is to recognize such types before you become embroiled in a battle, and avoid them like the plague. … At all cost, avoid entangling yourself emotionally in their dramas and battles. They are masters at controlling the dynamic, and you will almost lose in the end.”

Does that sound like a familiar situation to you?

The so-called Bible of mental health professionals, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV, describes what it calls passive-aggressive personality disorder as “a pervasive pattern of negativistic attitudes and passive resistance to demands for adequate performance.” It will be visible  when someone shows at least four of these traits:

  • passively resists doing routine social and occupational tasks;
  • complains of being misunderstood by others;
  • is sullen;
  • unreasonably scorns authority;
  • expresses envy to those apparently more fortunate;
  • voices persistent complaints of personal misfortune;
  • alternates between hostile defiance and contrition.

A variation of this type of warrior is one who has reached a high level of power, to become a right-hand to the one wearing the crown, or bearing the title of CEO or manager. In fact, it is the courtier who is often the real master.

Robert Greene describes such masters of deception this way: “Great courtiers throughout history have mastered the science of manipulating people. They make the king feel more kingly; they make everyone else fear their power. … Great courtiers are gracious and polite; their aggression is veiled and indirect.”

The courtier is always closest to the king and emperor and may even wield more power in that position.

The courtier is always closest to the king and emperor and may even wield more power in that position.

So what does one do? There are many strategies. I think we all of tend to use what we find works for the environment where we find ourselves and within our own comfort level. Succeeding with such people really is a test of life, and it can even be a fun challenge if you do not let such people master your emotions. If you can master your feelings, you are on very stable footing.

If you are not certain what may work, given the people around you, do as Greene suggests based on his study of people who were masters of their chosen work and of working with others. Hone your social intelligence. Above all excel at what your do, and make your value known.

“Work that is solid also protects you from the political conniving and malevolence of others—it is hard to argue with the results you produce,” writes Greene. “If you are experiencing the pressures of political maneuvering within the group, do not lose your head and become consumed with all of the pettiness. By remaining focused and speaking socially through your work, you will both continue to raise your skill level and stand out among all the others who make a lot of noise but produce nothing.”

Fast food lives and fast food memories

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Tonight, I walked by two fast food franchises that were closing down for the night around 9:30 p.m. One was a subway sandwich place, the other an ice cream parlor. Their brand names are not important. Inside, shutting things down, three young workers in their teens were hard at work.

Behind the glass at the ice cream shop, I saw two young women wiping down the metal fixtures, sweeping, and ensuring it was sanitary and clean for the next day. One of the those women met my gaze and smiled. She was energetic, attractive, and positive. I smiled back. Next door, a young man, who I think was about 17, was mopping the linoleum floor with an old-fashion slop mop, like the ones I used to use when I was around his age. He looked up, but he went quickly back to his task at hand. He looked like he was ready to leave.

Wow, what a flood of memories that brought back to me. I cannot remember how many times I “closed down the shop,” when I worked in the early 1980s at a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet just outside St. Louis.

I wore a hat like that, and apron like that, and likely had my hair even longer, and yes, I used to haul boxes of frozen chicken in and out of the giant freezer to prep the chicken for cooking.

I wore a hat like that, and shirt like that, and likely had my hair even longer. And, yes, I used to haul boxes of frozen chicken in and out of the giant freezer to prep the chicken for cooking.

I was 15 years old—at that time working illegally under the allowable 16 years of age minimum. My job involved cooking batches of factory raised chickens–or rather the edible parts of chickens, soaking them in “special sauces,” covering them special flour, and then deep-frying them in a giant vat of hot oil for the required time til the buzzer went off. That was the “extra crispy” chicken. The “Colonel’s Special Recipe” involved pressure cooking the bird pieces in a giant, and I thought, very dangerous machine. Or, worse, I had to do dishes, cleaning oil-slimed metal cooking ware and trays until my fingers puckered from the chemical cleaners.

Each night, the oil had to be drained and filtered to capture the chicken and fried coating bits, and, when the oil was too dirty to cook another batch, recycled. This meant hauling large metal containers of burning hot oil to a recycling container out back. Often hot oil burned my arms and face. I smelled like the Colonel’s recipes even the next day after a shower. I looked like hell coming home: greasy, physically exhausted, unable to think, and still with homework to do. Getting home was not easy either. I either biked home five to six miles in the dark on some pretty busy roads, or if I was lucky got rides some times from my mom, sister, or a co-worker. This sucked in the rain and cold.

The day after a night shift, I would be unable to think at school. I could not stay awake in classes. I literally zoned out and barely passed intro chemistry. The teacher, a good guy, suggested I might want to quit my job when he noticed me sleeping in class on the desk. I think I was working about 15-25 hours a week, depending on the schedule. Finally, after five months, I had to quit. I literally was going to start bombing my sophomore year classes, or keep up the routine. It was incredibly hard to give up my only source of income, as I had to rely entirely on my job to buy my own clothes and pay for all of my expenses outside of food my mom bought at home.

I hated, hated cooking this industrial food for this employer. To this day, I cannot eat fried chicken.

I hated, hated cooking this industrial food for this employer. To this day, I cannot eat fried chicken.

Making matters worse, during that point in my life, I was probably smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, and blowing up in smoke, literally, a chunk of my measly $3.15 an hour pay. (I quit for good later that year, and never looked back.)

I think I was smart enough to know that the second-degree burns that scarred my arm one night were the signal to escape the chicken shack as quickly as possible, which I did. Though my next job paid less, slightly below minimum wage, it at least gave me more stability, and I only had to work two or three nights a week, and all day Saturday. I at least could find the balance with crappy job and school without the risk of injury at the Colonel’s place, which I called K-Y Fry.

And all of this flashed through my head when I gazed into that young woman’s smiling face. I wondered where she was at in life. Finishing high school, or on track for a GED? She did not look older than 18. Did she have to work to help support her family? Did she envision a better next job, if she could get the skills she needed to move on from the world of dishing out ice cream cones and wiping down the bathroom? I do not know. But, I hope so.

I would never wish my own fast food experience on anyone. Even though I learned how to hold my own doing hard labor, I knew that I could get easily trapped and not move up the income ladder if I did not succeed in school. Maybe I did get lucky. Maybe I found just the right balance and was smart enough to know that this life in fast food America was a pit.

Still, I never forgot where I came from. That is why I always give anyone who works in these ubiquitous food sweat shops more than a little courtesy and respect. They earn it, every day.