On Sensitivity Training

You will, soon enough, experience the mixed blessing that is a Professional Development Day, should you be embedded in the education profession. It is known by many names- A PD, an in-service, a f**king waste of time for the more cynical among teachers, whatever. It depends on your perspective, really. It will, however, be blessedly child-free, and if you have any sort of tolerance for beauracracy, extended meetings, and sharing your feelings, it can be a mini-vacation of sorts. If you don’t, I suggest sitting behind a pillar, one that prevents the speaker from seeing you. Bring some papers to grade, so that the time is not wasted. If you do enjoy this sort of thing, you are probably reading the wrong blog.

If you aren’t a teacher, you’ve still done this. On a good day in Corporate America, it’s the ‘bonding’ session, the retreat where you play paintball or do trust games or some such team building activity, although I’m unsure how paintball encourages team building rather than perpetuating office rivalry. No matter, I’m just speculating; I’ve yet to hold down a corporate job, and all these projections are hearsay from people in the Business, stories told to me from friends. What they do tell me, though, is that we all share a common thread- everyone, in any profession, must eventually suffer through “Sensitivity Training.”

I understand the theory behind training like this, and the need for it too. A brief excerpt from a Thanksgiving in high school will do the trick. We- a half British/half Indian sort of family- were eating with our friend, her friends, her friend’s friends: basically a lot of strangers. One woman- whom I will call Claire- was just being polite, trying to make small talk with my dad, who hails from Calcutta. I should note that my dad is pretty shy, and it wasn’t until years later that I understood that he got this line of questioning all the time, which must have been painfully awkward. I admire him for his patience.

Claire: So, Malay, what is your background?

Dad: I’m Indian

Claire: Really? What tribe do you come from?

Dad: Umm, we don’t have tribes. I think you are thinking of American Indians.

Claire: So, you are like Soux or something?

Dad: Umm, no, East Indian, As in ‘another country’.

Claire: Oh, so you are, like, from Mexico. Shouldn’t you be West Indian, then? Mexico is west of here. Can I help you with your directions sometime? I know English is hard.

Dad: Umm, no, across the ocean is what I mean. Not here, on this continent, is what I’m trying to say. You know, the sitars and the dots on the forehead? That kind of Indian.

Claire: OOOhhhhh, I see. Like the incense and the curry. Boy, I sure love curry. You people sure make some tasty food. Are you sure you don’t want help with your English? I can help, you know.

Dad: I speak English just fine.

Claire: You sure do! I’m impressed! So what do you guys usually cook for Thanksgiving? What was the ‘original’ Indian Thanksgiving? I’m dying to know. My ancestors came over on the Mayflower, you know.

Dad: We don’t have Thanksgiving.


You may understand already why I don’t think discussing how people talk will really change how people feel. It’s a cynical attitude, I know, but one thing about cultural differences is that we all aren’t all that different. I’m lucky in that, with both of my parents being immigrants from two separate countries, I got to travel a lot from an early age. As a result, I was able to realize pretty quickly that there are certain cultural themes present everywhere, a major one being obnoxious mother-fuckers are available in every culture; it’s not a black thing, a gay thing, a Jewish thing, or an Anglo-Indian thing- it’s an asshole thing. And so I prefer to dislike people on an individual level, rather than by category. But of course, that still says I retain an essential dichotomy, and isn’t that what we are trying to avoid with sensitivity training? To unearth our deep-seated prejudices that we don’t even realize we have integrated in our personal philosophies? Eh. Fuck it. I still think I’m right.


Anywhoosle, I clearly have strayed. I was trying to talk about the efficacy of the training as applies to teaching. The problem with lies with this fact: Using your time wisely is the hallmark of a good teacher. Time is your enemy, and you must battle it on all fronts.

Some days, though, this is simply impossible, due to the agenda, and Sensitivity Training is one of those days. These days will usually involve outside consultants coming in with a Program. These consultants will have zero classroom experience between all of them, which, as you can imagine, does not endear them to the faculty. They will start the day with some sort of marginally relevant “ice breaker”, which will inevitably involve moving around the classroom with some word or phrase written on a piece of colored construction paper, and your job will be to find your fellow ‘people’ – people who are somehow tangentially related to you via the word written on their piece of colored construction paper. Discussions will then ensue; at least until it is time to convene into our ‘break-out’ groups. The outside consultants will watch all of this with fixed grins, immobile disingenuous half-watermelons and wavering pupils, and they never blink. This is because they- outside of being brittle and uncomfortable - are waiting, like scavengers, for the Teaching Moment©.

Have you come across this term yet? If you are nearing the end of your “Education” education, chances are you have. It is ostensibly a moment that arises, through natural classroom discourse, that you can draw attention to as an impromptu ‘mini-lesson’ of sorts.

Herein lies the problem with jargon. Good teachers will recognize the moment without needing a special term for it. Bad teachers- and no teacher thinks he/she sucks- will grope for the moment, consciously hovering over the class, waiting for something interesting to occur, like a vulture or a life-coach. The analogy doesn’t end there- like a vulture, they usually only intervene in an argument just as a student is about to get verbally slaughtered. This is considered ‘educational’.

Our professional development day was hosted by Sensitivity Inc.* I knew they were coming, and at this point- being at the school for four years- I was, if not seasoned, than at least reasonably marinated. I just got tenure that year, so I abused the privilege and showed up late. Really late. I was hoping to be forgiven.

A word of advice- don’t ever reason like this. From an individual point of view, I could construct a reasonable argument about how it might be useless for me to be there, but the obvious extension is that it would then be useless for everyone to be there, and why should I enjoy the privelege of absence?

The thing about these meetings is everyone who has to suffer through them expects some amount of solidarity from you- if they have to put up with it, so should everybody. And such is how mob mentality is formed.

When I did finally get with the Program, all teachers were in their assigned rooms in all parts of the school. I tracked down my assigned room, and found all the teachers lined up in rows at their students’ desks, each with a folded piece of construction paper with their name on them, placed prominently from the morning icebreaker. I rather awkwardly slipped into a seat in the back, a habit I retained from my high school years, and started silently handing out packages of Reese’s Pieces as bribes, hoping to buy forgiveness for missing the earlier meeting excruciation.

Another handy piece of advice- bribes work. All the candy was received warmly, and no one even questioned the fact that I had actually paid for them, as they came from the stash that we use as a fund-raising tool. Perhaps I should feel bad, violating some sort of principle about money, but, well, fuck money. None of us were teaching in the public school system to get rich anyway, and if $2.75 worth of reeses’ pieces bought peace among the masses, so be it.

So I had a seat, by the people I always sit by, and other sub-groups were sitting with all the people they usually sit by, and it was all very cliquish, in a way that you would naturally expect from people who literally never left High School.

That was the theme of the meeting, really, people representing their sub-groups. I think people feel the need to represent, to explain the trials and tribulations of their own upbringing, thinking all the while that they are unique to them only. I am certainly guilty of this. It may be, though, however much we want someone to understand exactly what it is like to be us, it might never happen. Someone might try, explain at length that someone else won’t ever understand what it feels like to be a an

Afro-Portuguese-Bi-sexual-Jewish-by-conversion transgendered former professional wrestler;

and of course they are right.

But we kind of knew that already.

I can only illustrate this properly by giving you a view into some actual discourse from the meeting. This may take a minute- bear with me.

Let me set the stage first; We were sitting in the classroom and an argument was developing. It is between the Black Gym Teacher (BGT) and the Gay White Algebra (GWA) teacher.

I don’t know much about the BGT, other than he wears a whistle around his neck and a sweat suit at all times. He looks like gym teacher, the relevant exception to the rule being that he looks as if he could actually do something physical, as opposed to the fat, red-faced, paunchy manly men that were the gym teachers of my youth. Still, though, he is set in his ways, a poster child- or adult, as the case may be- for not being too quick to decide Who You Are and What You Believe In. He was, in a word, inflexible. And kind of a Dick.

The GWA I knew a bit better, as he was tangentally related to my department- and so I’ve actually talked to him before. He was young, idealistic and earnest in his desire to educate. He was also, as many gay males are in this profession, SASA; this is an acronym from the dating classifieds, standing for ‘Straight Acting/Straight Appearing’. It is a necessary coping mechanism for gay educators, as the stigma of appearing gay in the public school system is amplified by the abuse hurled at you by 14-year olds. I am clearly more sympathetic towards him; I am neither black nor gay, but he, in plain language, wasn’t a Dick.

I digress. The argument I speak of had been boiling for a while, and was about the use of the word “gay”. Kids still use this term all the time, and it’s true, they don’t mean ‘homosexual’ per se, just some permutation of ‘bad’ or ‘weak’ and the GWA had, reasonably, issue with this.



BGT: “When my students say something is ‘gay’ they don’t really mean it is gay actually, just that it was kind of wack, you know, just kinda dumb.”

GWA: “That’s just the point I’m trying to make. The word is associated with ‘wackness’ and ‘dumbness’ and it really shouldn’t be.”

“Do you see my point?” he asked.

The black gym teacher did not see his point.

GWA: “ Well, can I use the word ‘nigger’ and not have it really mean black, just, you know, synonymous with wackness and dumbness?”

BGT: “ Hell No, not if you don’t want your faggoty white ass kicked so hard you can taste what you ate for dinner last night.”

GWA: “Well then, there you go. It’s because I’m white that I can’t use the word “nigger”.

BGT: “You’re damn right** you can’t!”

GWA: “So, by your logic, if you want to use the word ‘gay’, you’ll just have to bend over and-"

The Sensitivity Inc. representative abruptly cut him off, which I thought was a shame, as I was definitely seeing a Teaching Moment© coming on. We were then diverted, instructed to join our ‘break-out’ groups, to talk about what just transpired.

The discussion, as far as Sensitivty Inc. was concerned, had already transpired years ago. We used to joke, Papolous and I, about all the measures the students would take to promote their vision of equality. Our school had problems, sure, as any large public school does, but there were hallmarks of a new kind of tolerance- there was interracial dating, plenty of mixed ethnicity kids, and a fraternization among different classes and groups that I can’t even remember growing up. Papolous was the sponsor of the club “Students Against Racism” and we laughed about his, figuring that I should sponsor similarly moot social movements like “Students Against Murder” while Ms. Jackson could sponsor “ Students Against Anally Raping Their Grandmothers” We were pompous, assured that we were on the cutting edge of a new progressive educational setting, one that accepts everybody into the fold equally and without reserve.

It occurs to me now, though, that maybe we really did need this training. We were naïve to think that through this particular school, and through our outstanding*** efforts as role models, that we had solved the classist crisis, that we were the cutting edge of societal discourse, when really, we were just a reflection of it. I think we all would have considered ourselves as accepting- willing to see each other’s differences, but mostly, we didn’t make the effort. All of our bleating about tolerance and understanding tended to manifest itself as a self-important struggle, a knowledge that we possessed the most even-handed analysis of racial and societal tensions bestowed upon us by our intellect and that fact that our parents could afford to send us to get university degrees. We want to think that we are thinking for everyone, that we are using the Great Social Equation that is Just and Unbiased, derived from numbers only, an excuse that let’s us think that we are being fair, but our internal dialogue screams “Why doesn’t any one understand me?” and for that reason we may be more alone than we thought.

It is the real nature of the American melting pot, that good ole’ individualism- you can be anyone from anywhere under any circumstances, and we, the Elite will happily accept you, provided you did it solo, pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps, elbowed your way into the nobility. By doing this, by accepting the stoic frontiersman as our ideal, we have given up a sense of community. We have betrayed our own people in exchange for a winning lottery ticket, a chance to Be Somebody. I’m happy to cut down the Sensitivity Inc. company, probably because I don’t want to consciously admit that they are underscoring a deeper loss in our culture, that of being able to rely on one another when the chips are not just down, but out. At least the Sensitivity people acknowledge this, and have dedicated their time and effort to give us something that teachers really need; and, like most people who really need something, we weren’t having it.



Perhaps it isn’t all that bleak, though. People do draw together under adverse circumstances. As teachers. we are apt to behave badly during off-hours, and I chalk^^ it up to hazards of the profession. Like cops, we become corrupt after being exposed to bad behavior- we smoke, drink, swear, engage in ill-advised liaisons. Being a ‘role model’ is largely false- we are under the confines of social acceptability. These mandates dictate that you can’t expose students to profanity, but you can cram 35 of them in a classroom, effectively negating the teacher’s ability to monitor each and everyone of them, which leads to fights, cruelty, and all the unsavory parts of your own education that I’m certain you remember. But you did already know how to swear, and that is the irony of the profession. We collect these prohibited items like quarters in a can, one for every curse word. We pretend to be squeaky-clean for 5 shows a day, 5 days a week, but the problem lies with all the quarters we’ve collected- they must be spent, or we will go insane. This goes a long way in explaining how we behaved after the meeting.

I came across the Chemistry teacher chastising the History teacher in the hallway, saying he could smell his greasy olive-oil Mediterranean pompadour from a mile off. He calmly retaliated, putting forth an argument that the Chemistry teacher’s Polish/Republican background compelled him to drink vodka and smoke cigars, and perhaps that made him agitated. I suggested that we all relax; maybe talk it over at the Discothèque that the History teacher obviously owned, him being a member of the Chicago Greek Mafia, after all. They nodded, noting that little Indian Camel-Jocky-Towelheads are smarter than they look. The black english teacher strolled up and inquired about what we were considering for an after work get-together; we stated our plans to hit the Discotheque and invited her, with the caveat that she might want to change, as that was a fairly obvious watermelon juice stain on her blouse. She suggested that we go out for some fried chicken, as we all might meed the protein to bolster our protein levels- we were going out for the evening after all, and as males, we tended to lose 14 IQ points each time we ejaculate, should our sorry asses be lucky enough to get lucky. The gay algebra teacher had, by this time, glommed onto our little clique, and volunteered to buy the first round, as he wouldn’t need to spend the money on protein-we were going to a Breeder bar anyway. He stipulated that it would have to be fru-fru fabulous Cosmopolitans in chilled Martini glasses with a lemon twist, but later he’d be happy to do a round of Budweiser when our inbred-hick tendencies kicked in, and we started to consider fornication with our first cousins. We all agreed that this was a good plan, and headed out the door for a drink.

* Not their real name, but close enough.

** He actually said “You’re damn straight you can’t.” There was a relevant pause, as we all considered his use of the word ‘straight’.

*** There is a bar called “The Store” directly across the street from this school, which shared a street corner with the bus stop that took all of our students home. We held absolutely no qualms about pushing through these crowds of kids on Fridays, loudly proclaiming “It’s you guys who drive us to drink.”

^^ Pun intended.