I was having lunch today at Tosca, a nice Italian bistro on F Street, and midway between the guance di maiale brasate con cannellini, ragu di shiitake e Marsala and the gettuccine alle olive con ragu di cinghiale e castagne arrosto, my cell phone rang. It was my dear sister Rose.
Rose: Tom?
Tom: You were expecting Wen Jiabao, maybe?
Rose: Uh, Tom, I need to talk to you about something.
Tom: So? Talk.
Rose: It’s about… Tom, it’s about my job.
Tom: Your job teaching elementary school in Fairfax?
Rose: Yes, of course, my job teaching elementary school in Fairfax! Where the hell else have I been working the last ten years?
Tom: What’s the matter, they having budget layoffs or something?
Rose: No, it’s not that, exactly. I’m… I’m being investigated.
Tom: By the Fairfax County Schools?
Rose: Yeah.
Tom: For Christ’s sake, why?
Rose: For selling my lesson plans.
Tom: Huh?
Rose: Well, Tom, as you might imagine, someone with my background and experience in elementary education…
Tom: Not to mention a huge Catholic family at home…
Rose: … yeah, not to mention. Anyway, I know how to get kids’ attention, how to keep them interested, and how to trick them into learning things despite their innate savage instincts and laziness.
Tom: Sure, that’s why the wall in your den is covered with teaching awards.
Rose: Right. So, after Hank lost his job…
Tom: How’s his job search going, by the way?
Rose: Well, he managed to find a position as a software salesman…
Tom: Really? You know the difference between a software salesman and a used car salesman?
Rose: What?
Tom: A used car salesman knows when he’s lying.
Rose: That’s not funny.
Tom: No?
Rose: Absolutely not. Hank lost that job after only five weeks.
Tom: How come?
Rose: They said he was too honest to sell their software.
Tom: I bet he is, too.
Rose: I’ll thank you not to make fun of my husband!
Tom: And I’ll thank you not to yell at me between the appetizer and the entrée. Oracle?
Rose: Huh?
Tom: Perot Systems?
Rose: What?
Tom: CSC?
Rose: Who?
Tom: The company!
Rose: Oh, that – Microsoft.
Tom: In that case, tell Hank he shouldn’t blame himself. Nobody’s dishonest enough to sell Microsoft; simply no one at all. It’s just that some people are better at achieving the necessary level of self-delusion than others. Hank shouldn’t hold it against himself if he can’t do that. You’re either born completely self-delusional or you aren’t. It’s just that simple.
Rose: Gee, I always thought Hank was pretty good at self delusion. I mean, he’s still a conservative Republican for instance, even now, after all this crap that’s happened.
Tom: Yeah, he is pretty damn self-delusional, but not anywhere near good enough at it to work for Microsoft. You know, he should probably get back into infant and toddler sales, like he was doing for Pabulex.
Rose: Hank only knows the high-end part of that business, Tom. None of the discount companies will even touch him.
Tom: Bummer. Okay, so what’s this about the school board coming after you?
Rose: Well, it’s like this – you know I’ve always worked K through five, and for the last six years, I’ve been specializing in the fourth grade.
Tom: They’re lovely at that age, for sure.
Rose: Tell me about it. I figure, a person has to be insane to want to teach middle school. Those fourteen and fifteen year olds are murder, I tell you.
Tom: So you’re the expert on fourth graders.
Rose: Expert? Listen, Tom, I knew I was pretty good, but damn, when I started selling my lesson plans on www.teacherspayteachers.com and www.weareteachers.com, I found out just how awesome I really am! I’ve sold nearly a thousand copies of my fourth-grade lesson plans so far.
Tom: Interesting. Who’s buying them?
Rose: Younger, less experienced teachers, all over America. It saves them hours and hours of work. Plus it helps them advance professionally.
Tom: That’s a win-win situation if I ever heard of one. Congratulations.
Rose: Thank you. At first, I used the money to buy extra supplies for the kids in my class, then I used it to pay for a couple of really nice extra field trips, and then, when I still had money left over, I realized I could make a mortgage payment with it, you know, and what with Hank out of work and all…
Tom: Makes sense to me. What kind of stuff sells best?
Rose: Well, my Harry Potter Fan Fiction lesson plan, with four writing units, is the biggest seller so far. It’s very effective. I’ve gotten e-mails from teachers that bought it who tell me some of their fourth graders were so excited and motivated, they ended up writing on a sixth grade level.
Tom: Do tell?
Rose: And my Feathered Dinosaur lesson plan is another one they can’t seem to get enough of. First, the kids build clay dinosaurs, then they cover them with feathers they collect during my Wild and Domestic Birds lesson plan. Then they vote on how to arrange the models to depict the evolution of birds from dinosaurs.
Tom: Actually, birds are dinosaurs, but I get the idea; and I’m sure the kids do, too.
Rose: Of course, since that one involves evolution, it’s not a big seller in the Red states. But Blue state sales more than make up for it.
Tom: Any problems using it in Virginia, then?
Rose: Not in Fairfax. I sent every kid in my class home with a notice and a permission slip for their parents to sign, and they all went along with it just fine. But I did have a teacher in Danville who bought that particular lesson plan tell me nearly half of her class had to go to the library and read their Bibles instead of putting feathers on the dinosaurs.
Tom: Well, you can’t get no further South than Danville, Virginia, I reckon. These do sound pretty cool. I wish you’d been my fourth grade teacher, Sis. Tell me more.
Rose: Oh, Tom, that’s so sweet of you to say. Well, there’s my Depression Economics lesson plan, that’s been very valuable for teachers with class rooms full of kids whose parents are unemployed and about to be evicted and all that kind of stuff. It helps them understand why their parents, who they thought were so god-like when the kids were a bit younger, now appear to be powerless, confused and frightened all the time. The teacher divides the class up into groups – bankers, brokers, hedge-fund managers, insurance company executives, business journalists, federal regulators, Ponzi scheme swindlers, financial derivative dealers, real estate speculators…
Tom: Sounds pretty realistic.
Rose: Oh, it is! The lesson plan has six units, each one more exciting than the last, as the kids construct their very own speculative economic bubble and experience, first hand, the same irrational exuberance, uncontrolled avarice, unchecked impulses and bone-headed stupidity that ruined their parents. You should see their little faces when the bubble bursts! Not only have they learned how modern money markets actually work, they’ve also developed a deep empathy and understanding of their parents’ predicament.
Tom: Hmmm. It certainly does seem like there ought to be a lesson or two in there somewhere. What kind of materials do you use?
Rose: Oh, there’s all kinds of options – no pun intended – turning the black board into a stock market tote, using the class room computer to simulate foreign currency exchange scams, printing out simulated contract paperwork for absurdly leveraged hostile takeovers – all kinds of stuff. But the most popular teaching aid is just a big pile of Monopoly money with nine zeros written after the numbers on every bill.
Tom: I see – you teach them to think like adults with highly responsible jobs.
Rose: Exactly. And then there’s my civics lesson plan – Special Interest Politics. The teacher needs to do that one later on in the school year, after he or she has had a few parent-teacher conferences. At that point, the teacher knows which special interest group to assign each child to, you see.
Tom: Which is?
Rose: The same one their parents belong to. So, for example, when we did that lesson plan with my fourth grade class, I assigned kids to the Organized Labor Special Interest Group, the Fundamentalist Christian Special Interest Group, the Federal Government Employees Special Interest Group, the Zionist Special Interest Group, the Hispanic Special Interest Group, the Desi Special Interest Group, the African-American Special Interest Group, the Arab-American Special Interest Group, the Asian-American Special Interest Group, the Gay and Lesbian Special Interest Group…
Tom: Gay and Lesbian?
Rose: Sure – this is Fairfax County we’re talking about. It’s just like Arlington, or Montgomery or Frederick County over in Maryland. Lots of diversity. Three kids in my class have gay or lesbian parents.
Tom: No kidding. How about that? Aren’t there any kids whose parents don’t fit into a special interest niche, though?
Rose: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I count on that. The last fourth grade class I did the lesson plan with, we had five of them. They get to be the lobbyists.
Tom: This is definitely not the fourth grade I remember.
Rose: Oh, Tom, when you were in the fourth grade, the Police, the Eurythmics and Men at Work were in the top ten.
Tom: God, I feel so old sometimes. What other big sellers have you got?
Rose: There’s my Health Care lesson plan. The kids get to become AMA board members; HMO executives; government bureaucrats at DHHS, Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans’ Administration, Social Security or the FDA; pharmaceutical company executives; members of Congress; lawyers; and lobbyists, too, of course. The kids are supposed to bring in old, used baby dolls to use as patients in the health care system, but the teacher can substitute clay or Play-Doh people, in which case, the first unit consists of the children playing God and making all these little people to use as patients. Then, in the subsequent units, the kids get to play God keeping the little homunculi from dying. The teacher spins The Wheel of Fate, and the little patients get assigned jobs, employer-sponsored health plans, yearly incomes, dependents, drug allergies, congenital conditions, that sort of thing. Then the teacher spins the Wheel of Misfortune, and the tiny patients come down with acute medical problems, after which it’s up to the kids to keep as many of them alive as they can while making as much money as possible.
Tom: Now there’s some practical education! It seems to me it’s certainly no mystery why other K through five teachers want your products, that’s for sure. Wow!
Rose: And I haven’t even mentioned my third biggest seller – the Environmental Awareness lesson plan. The boys really love that one, because their homework assignments consist of going out after school and finding six-legged frogs, three-eyed fish, two-headed turtles, stuff like that. You have to teach the lesson plan in the spring, of course, but that makes it all the more effective, because the boys are all itching to get outside that time of year.
Tom: What about the girls?
Rose: Well, the tomboys love to go hunting for evidence of industrial pollution, too, but most of the girls opt for the Global Warming and Sea Level Rise portion of the lesson plan, where they color in these meteorological and topographical maps I sell along with the lesson plan.
Tom: You sell maps?
Rose: Not paper, Tom; no hard copy’s involved at all. I sell PDF files teachers can print at their home computers, or using a computer at school. The girls get to depict what the weather and coast line is going to be like in ten, twenty, thirty and forty years in the future. Then, in the final three units of the lesson plan, the kids all get together and compare notes, and maps, and deformed salamanders and so forth. Then they write essays and draw pictures of what they think their world is going to be like when they are twenty, thirty, forty or fifty years old.
Tom: Rose, I hate to say this, but that sounds, really, really scary.
Rose: That shows how much you know about children, Tom.
Tom: Huh?
Rose: Kids love to be scared out of their wits. And what better way to do that than a nice Environmental Awareness lesson plan?
Tom: No doubt about it – my big sister Rose is one incredibly innovative elementary school teacher if there ever was one!
Rose: Thanks, Tom; and I didn’t even tell you about my latest lesson plan, that’s still under development.
Tom: What’s that?
Rose: It’s a tie-in with the new sex-education initiative for K through five.
Tom: Sex education for K through five? Are you kidding me?
Rose: I’m serious as a heart attack, Tom. It’s all the rage these days. That’s why I’m working on a Global Overpopulation lesson plan.
Tom: Gee, I can’t wait to hear about that!
Rose: I’ll fill you in when I work out all the details.
Tom: Okay. Don’t forget, though.
Rose: I won’t, I promise.
Tom: So, what’s this thing about you being investigated?
Rose: Ah, um… you know, Tom, these days, even Fairfax County, which is one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, is feeling the pinch. And when the powers that be found out I was making some pretty serious money selling my lesson plans, I got hauled up before an Administrative Review Board and grilled like a bratwurst at a Fourth of July picnic.
Tom: About what, for God’s sake?
Rose: About how they, the County of Fairfax, Virginia, own my lesson plans! Now, I ask you, is that total absurdity or what?
Tom: Well, from your point of view, I’m sure it is, but from theirs…
Rose: Oh, come on! You’re not on their side or anything, are you?
Tom: No, but you have to realize that in their world, only Fairfax County school principals, school system administrators and football and basketball coaches are supposed to make big bucks. The idea of ordinary teachers making out like bandits just because they happen to be brilliant is totally alien to them.
Rose: You think so? In that case, I say they’re going to have to get used to it!
Tom: As well they should.
Rose: You think they’ll try to get rid of me?
Tom: If they do, you should turn it around on them and offer your services as an independent educational consultant for twice your current salary, with a deal to split the lesson plan revenues with the county.
Rose: Fifty-fifty?
Tom: Oh, hell, Rose, you don’t have to be that generous with those nincompoops – offer them fifteen percent.
Rose: But only if they put the pressure on, right?
Tom: Now you’re thinking like a true Martini, Sis.
Rose: “Lotus Rose Martini-Palikowski, M. Ed., M. Sc., K Through Five Educational Consultant;” yeah, I like the way that sounds.
Tom: Tell you what – get some business cards that say that and leave them lying around the teachers’ lounge.
Rose: And the administrators will run away like squirrels from a shotgun blast!
Tom: Most likely. Hey, my entrée is here.
Rose: Then I’ll let you go, sweetie. Thanks!
Tom: Love you.
Rose: Love you, too, little brother. ‘Bye!