GO Jobs

Mindy: Hello everyone. I need your input! I want to know your opinions — as parents, as educators, and as former students — about the GO and 12th^–grade job system.

Golda: My take on it is pretty revolutionary. It’s called democracy. We had it in high school. Elections, committees, Student Council meetings, delegates, etc. — everyone was involved.

Aidel: In a crazy way, I think our girls are better off than we were because they’ve been thoroughly inculcated with the “It’s all from Hashem; Whatever is meant to be will be; Living Emunah” themes. Am I wrong?

Bassie: It’s pathetic if you have to hand out copies of Living Emunah to all the freshies as a buffer for the trauma they’ll have to endure in high school.

Aidel: Everyone’s trying so hard, but there’s going to be pain involved no matter what. School is rough and tough, but most kids come out the other side having learned something — and I don’t mean math.

Ahuva: My mantra to my own kids is that we cannot change the teacher/Rebbi/neighbor/shadchan — we deal with it and move on.

Mindy: And my mantra is that we must advocate and create change wherever possible.

Nechama: My mother had no idea who was G.O. president in my high school nor did she care. And neither did I.

Surie: I’m glad we emerged unscathed from our negative high school experiences (I have many positive memories too!).

Shulamis: On the positive end, I’ve seen a lot of mechanchos really milking these jobs for all they’re worth just to give kids opportunities. Even if sometimes it’s just for the kids to see their names in bold print on a Shabbaton invitation.

Mindy: Golda, weren’t there girls who were hurt at not being elected? It sounds like it boils down to the same thing that happens when the school chooses; some girls get elected, some don’t.

Golda: I think “by the people and for the people” is more inclusive than two students chosen by the teachers. And, besides the elected positions, all the work was done by committees chosen by chairmen. Any girl could ask to work on the committee. By the time a girl graduates, she should be able to have a resume that lists “worked on school Shabbos; assembly committees; newspaper; etc.” I think this system gives many more people a chance to shine.

Mindy: So it didn’t matter who was “head” and who was not?

Golda: Is it only all about kavod and being in charge? Democracy fosters the idea that working togj\ ether with autonomy gives you the skills to contribute to a team.

Surie: One opinionated mother who had a daughter in my daughter’s school compared high school to a recycling bin. She said that there are two types of garbage cans: The regular one, which is where most girls are, overlooked and unnoticed. The other is the recycling bin, where the same girls are reused over and over. I had daughters in both. One of my daughters who was recycled used to be embarrassed that she was constantly asked to do things. For example, she was technical head for the play but was forced to have an important part in the play too.

Mindy: The scars from 12th grade jobs seem to run very deep here.

Surie: I am not scarred at all. I wasn’t really acknowledged in school but it was fine. You need friends not a prestigious job. Social security is paramount.

Ahuva: To my knowledge, we have no G.O presidents among us. That’s not our type.

Surie: Does elementary school GO count?

Golda: At the risk of not fitting in, I was G.O. president, among other things, like editor of the school newspaper.  Anyway, after all that prestige, my primary job for the next 35 years was stay-at-home-mom. Not nearly as accomplished as you guys.

Raizy: It takes a strong value system (and a healthy sense of self) to appreciate that Golda’s title for 35 years is the most treasured one.

*****

After our chat, which lasted a couple of heated days, the following emails landed in my inbox. I was supposed to weave them together into an article, but each one is such a gem that I left them in their entirety.

Bassie

At the day school I attended out-of-town in the 1960s, there was a student organization — the General Organization, or G.O. for short. Students who had been nominated by teachers campaigned among the student body, vowing to improve school lunches, lengthen recess, and cut homework. After the candidates delivered speeches on the stage of the school auditorium, we voted by paper ballots and the winner was elected president of the G.O., the runner-up was vice president of the G.O. and the girl who came in third was secretary of the G.O.

At the beginning of this school year, I shared a car service with a ninth grader and we chatted about school as the driver chauffeured us to Boro Park.

“Did you come to this high school with any friends?” I asked.

I’m not sure if I completely got her drift, me being a very old woman who grew up out of town and she a Boro Park girl, barely out of eighth grade. But it involved a lot of: “She’s chessed. Her sister was chessed so now she’s chessed,”  “She’s chagigah,” and “She’s mishmeres.”

She was most gracious about the good fortune of her friends and accepted the rift in her relationship with them as they moved up in rank as one of life’s realities. There was no bitterness.

As I sat there with her, I understood that the semantics are not merely linguistic. They are indicative of a mindset. Students are not elected to be editors of yearbooks or secretaries of organizations. The student is yearbook or G.O. That becomes her identity.

There should be laws in place to help the students who must overcome the bottom barrel jobs such as this memorable high school position awarded to one hapless child each year: vending machine.

On the other hand, at the elementary school where I work, Mrs. Gloria Tashin, who’s in charge of extracurricular activities, has a system in place that is so fair that any discussion I might want to stir up about position fairness when I’m looking for a writing topic elicits no response from the students.

The class explodes if I say: homework.

Jobs are a non-issue.

“We write down what we want to be and then Mrs. Tashen gives us that job.” The students know their strengths. Girls who are machanayim athletes check off “sports” and girls who sing and dance want to be head of choir or dance. Organizers ask to manage the Yad Eliezer canteen. Writers work on the yearbook. It’s a job. Not an award!

Maybe it’s a high school thing. But maybe Gloria is brilliant.

One more thing. Kids are reasonable and forgiving. We all make mistakes, even with our own kids. If the schools are sincerely trying their best to recognize the ones who were not born or raised to be charismatic, the students will get over the omissions, even if they are the ones overlooked.

The problems arise when the charming and dimpled are consistently celebrated while the less privileged are consistently passed over.

To be fair to schools, there are sometimes home circumstances and difficulties that are classified information. The school may in fact be trying to support the kid but no one but the principal knows this.

****

Aidel

If we’re going to push to “eliminate the job system,” I’m sure we can make a great case for it, but realistically, it’s not going to happen anytime soon. So putting aside the problem of how we give out jobs and to whom, and instead dealing with the fallout of which job one gets, this is my experience. Looking back, it had a major impact on my own worldview.

At the end of 10th grade, I was dying to be something major-league like G.O., head of production, or head of choir. I was assigned (by the teacher in charge plus the next year’s G.O., which made it even worse) to be head of Ma’ayanim, the school newspaper, together with Batya Elbaum, an 11th-grader whom I respected but was not way up there in the cool department. Neither was the job. What a downer!

That next year, under Batya’s brilliant direction, Ma’ayanim took off like a rocket. The entire school — teachers and students — contributed to it, debated it, were involved with it. Talk about cool. By the time the year was over, Ma’ayanim was a plum job that I was proud and happy to continue with. I used my talents in a whole new way and made dear, like-minded (like-minded as in smart, funny, and interesting, but not quite cool), lifelong friends.

My friend, Michal, did the same thing with chessed head. As far as I remember, it was kind of low on the totem pole until she injected it with her positive, confident personality and I really think that she, at my high school in the 80s, was the catalyst for chessed becoming the “top job” of today.

My point is that the experience I had then — watching my contemporaries get accolades and positions that I was insanely jealous of while on the outside smiling and cheering them on, and doing the best with what I was given (successfully, to my surprise and satisfaction) — is basically what we are challenged to do in our real lives. Because some of us get better “jobs” in this world than others. And how we manage our jealousy, cheer on our friends, and make do with what we get with grace and good will is what makes us successful!

I’m not saying we should set our kids up for misery. Is it possible to do it any other way? I don’t know. We can try to smooth over the rough edges, and we can try not to be unjust.

Is there no way to do it properly? I feel like we’re falling into the same pit as those in the American colleges dealing with microaggressions — teaching our youth that discomfort equals danger.

Eliminating jobs entirely will not eliminate the inevitability of other people being better than our kids at things they want to be best at. It won’t shield them from having to deal with intense disappointment and jealousy of their peers, even of those they love.

Our kids accepting a lesser job and going with it might teach them a lot. They might learn they don’t need the limelight to be a success. And they will gain the chance to deal with bad feelings and survive; learn about themselves and their own resilience and strengths.

*****

Ahuva

High school gave me so many outlets for things that I was good at, but also a real-life perspective of what I was not good at. I understood that charisma and “coolness” was a prerequisite for some jobs and that I wasn’t that type. I did not necessarily think that the girls who got the good jobs were to be respected, I was taught from home to have real values, and I just accepted that girls who were cool and girls who were not is part of high school life. I did mind very much not being picked to go to the Bais Yaakov Convention, because I really was in the running for that. I felt betrayed, and it took me a long time to let that hurt go. In our day, girls who were presidents and play heads also got to go to Convention, which was unnecessary for them.

In my daughters’ school, they try very, very hard to give everyone their place in the sun. The school culture is centered around being nice, and a quiet girl can really be recognized.  So it is possible — and obligatory — for a school to do the absolute best that they can to give everyone a chance.

I would validate any girl who feels that the process is unfair, and I would, as my mother did, refuse to accept or even acknowledge the rating systems that go along with these jobs. My parents always thought and still maintain that we were much too smart for our teachers and principals, that we were overqualified for everything we did, and anyone who didn’t see that in us was a limited person to be pitied.

If a girl cannot turn her job into a success because she lacks the skills or doesn’t want to, that’s okay. She will make her marriage a success, or her job, or a worthy cause she becomes involved in. The message I would give this girl is that in real life, the people with drive and creativity and the need to shake things up are more often than not the girls who were lacking something in school. Many of the girls I knew with charisma and leadership abilities did not become leaders after high school. They are complacent about life. One girl even expressed to me that she feels she’s been there and done that and doesn’t have much juice left.

Some of these G.O. presidents/camp head counselors get hired as teachers in the school where I work. They come in with a swagger and won’t take direction, only to be defeated by trying unsuccessfully to control a class of 10-year-olds, because it’s the first thing they’ve ever encountered that they can’t do.

In contrast are the girls who benefited from their schools’ resource room. They have sweated and bled over every class, every test, and are humiliated again and again, yet come back to school the next day with heads held high. They see the flaws in the system, they know hypocrisy, and they know real empathy when they see it. They know which of their classmates are nice, and which are only pretending. When they graduate, those who have made it are such heroines. They carry themselves with grace and class, are very, very strong inside. They take nothing for granted and understand life in a mature way. I wouldn’t wish it on any teenager, but they take my breath away!

I’m also not dismissive of the central place that emunah and bitachon have taken in our conversations, hotlines, and learning sessions. I think that the girls see life through a more spiritual lens than we did, and I think it’s comforting for them to see Hashem’s will, even in a 12th grade job. I understand Mindy’s point of view, that they should be also able to identify injustice and understand that the people in charge have wronged them, thereby effecting change. I wonder if we can teach girls to be confident enough to speak out, while still accepting that what Hashem wants from them may be different than what they want.

What worked for me was not anger at the system. I was in awe of my teachers and principals and respected them very much. What worked was a lot of validation from older friends — my parents’ guests, friends of my older sisters — who valued me. I had sisters to shop, sing, and relax with. I worked with special needs children after school.  For me, school was not the sum total of my life.

If we could change things, it should be in what type of girl is valued and what makes the administration happy with a girl. I believe that would make a difference. But since the school culture is not likely to change, we need to work with the girls. Teachers should have this type of discussion with them. One of my best seminary experiences is when a favorite and successful teacher told us what a flop she was when she started teaching. Imagine if a charismatic teacher tells the girls that she didn’t get a great job in school!

 ****

Shlomtzy.

Twelfth. Grade. Jobs.

Three small yet explosive words.

I guess it would be prudent to delineate between my time spent as a student many years ago and as a teacher today.

As a student:

I’m a person who is very pro extracurricular jobs, as a rule. I think girls get a chance to work in different settings, spend time with girls from other classes, form lasting friendships, and develop their talents. The problem begins when jobs are given out without thought. (Remember, I’m talking as a 12th grader now!)

Why do I say without thought? In my high school experience, jobs were given out piecemeal, prolonging the agony. Each day of 12th grade, or every other day, there would be a knock on the door and everyone’s heart would skip a beat. Of course, you pretended to look cool, like you didn’t give a hoot, but who were we kidding? One or two girls would be called out and everyone would wait anxiously for the next break to sniff out the latest headline news. If you were play head, you would be jobless until December, while your friends were sweating away on yearbook, enjoying free periods left and right; and on top of that, you were completely clueless as to whether you would be bestowed with an honor that year.

I definitely would prefer a one-day explosion, where everyone receives jobs at the same time (save for the jobs that need to be assigned the year before). Some would cry, some would laugh, some would sulk, and some would rejoice. After that, there would be no talk of jobs and everyone would more or less make peace with their fate.

And if mechanchos think that the girls should “Get over it, don’t make such a big deal, you won’t put your kids to sleep telling them that you were G.O.,” my message to you is: Leave the field of chinuch and put it into the hands of those who actually care about the students and care to understand them!

Phew! That was cathartic!

Before you make any assumptions regarding any emotional ramifications stemming from 12th grade joblessness, let me tell you that I was editor of my 12th grade yearbook, with a fantastic group of girls, and had a whale of a time at it.

Now, for my perspective as a teacher:

Maybe you’re hoping I matured a little, see things differently from the other side of the desk, understand the teachers’ and principals’ point of view…

Nope!

All that happened was that I realized that most of my complaints and perceived injustices as a student were all very real. I started my teaching career in a fourth-grade classroom. With a giant chip on my shoulder, I took great pains in choosing girls for bulletin boards, kept a careful cheshbon of who was chosen first and second to teach vocabulary words, whom to choose to break out public speaking, and consulted my list yet again when it came to electing candidates for the Patriots vs. Loyalists color war.

Let me tell you, it was tempting to opt for the student who would always come through with flying colors. Sure, it would’ve made life easier for me. I could have even justified it. But I persevered.

Then I moved on to teaching eighth grade, where the real fun happens. And it’s not just about classroom jobs, but school jobs. And here’s where I realized that I was right all those years. I encountered obstacles in the form of principals and co-teachers. When I mentioned pulling out a class list, checking who’d received the main parts in last year’s seventh grade performance or who will be a candidate for valedictorian (and should therefore not be G.O.) I was looked at askance. It was as if I broke the cardinal rule of choosing whoever makes sense, based on whether her sister was G.O., she’s that perfect G.O. type, and so forth. But to look at lists and see if there are girls who are being forgotten? So not!

It isn’t so hard to get creative when you really care. A particular student of mine was given a job that truly disappointed her. She was a great student, full of personality and spirit, but would never make it to the top based on her less-than-ideal family (another meshugas, but I’ll let that go for now). I suggested that instead of walking into each class and just reminding the girls what they need to do, her group should enter with a nosh and a chant, thus giving them a chance to perform and feel good.

Jobs mean the world to girls; they’re a tremendous opportunity for growth and should be utilized as such. But let’s not turn them into a weapon against each other and against authority.

 *****

 Chavivi. 

Twelfth-grade jobs create a completely false set of values in an environment that’s hard enough as it is. People then accrue value based on the things that the school makes important. Let’s be honest. Let’s say Nerdy Kid X comes into school in ninth grade. There’s no chance that in 12th grade she’ll be recognized as anything chashuv, because jobs are not about effort; they’re about the personality that a person is blessed with. Maybe you need good grades also, but personality is the prerequisite.

I remember when a friend asked me if I was upset I didn’t get a good job. I responded, “I’m not upset that I didn’t get a good job; I’m upset that I didn’t develop into the kind of person who would get that kind of job.”

In some schools, there’s an effort to make every job chashuv, but who are we kidding? We all know that “all jobs are created equal, but some are created more equal than others.”

My opinion: People should sign up for the committees they want to participate in. I assure you, you will not have 68 girls lining up to give out potato chips with a silly pun related to the parashah.   My friends were G.O., play head, and class president. I did props and features for yearbook. I can’t imagine this discrepancy makes anyone feel good, and it just reinforces the inferiority/superiority-based-on-nothing theme.

My principal once told a girl she couldn’t have a solo because she was already doing too much.    We, her self-righteous friends, were livid. “She’s doing so much for the school! Doesn’t she deserve this?”

I don’t know. Looking back on this incident today, I’m not sure what makes one person more deserving than the next. In the end, the girl got the solo. And 10 years later, I think the principal should have stuck to her guns.

Wow. I didn’t realize I had any emotion around this until I started writing!

 *****

 Mindy

When I was in high school, I was the dumbest of the smartest group of girls in the grade. I also had many underdeveloped talents of which I was unaware. Speaking, acting, dancing, writing, creating. So it made sense then, that I wasn’t chosen for anything. But one thing I did have going for me was a drive to get what I want. I somehow managed to be head of sports in 11th grade (it helped to know the G.O. president), props (I was determined to get out of class and have fun), and editor (I let my Chumash teacher — who had a soft spot for me — know how badly I wanted to be an editor). I felt like an impostor in each of these roles, undeserving and sidelined by the other, really talented individuals with whom I worked, because I knew that if I hadn’t fought for these jobs, I would not have been recognized enough to be awarded them. I felt invisible as a student in every way; except for when I was consistently kicked out of class and moved into another for the duration of the school year. Then, finally, I had everyone in the hanhalah’s full attention.

The moral of my story? Not sure. I give you permission to discuss it in your literature class.

Nechama, who gave me the material for this final segment, is a beloved and dynamic mechaneches, a writer, a speaker, a teacher of limudei kodesh. An exemplary person, whose clarity of thought is only matched by her ability to cut through any confusing situation and make sense of it while providing solutions. And her solutions are not ones that sit well with most people because they usually require a deeper sense of self. Her words speak to the hurting student who reads this, her hurting mother, the teacher and principal of the hurting student.

She said, “Mindy, I have no patience to write an email, so call me. I have plenty to say!”

These are her words:

“High school jobs are not privileges, but responsibilities. But they have become more privilege than responsibility, so we must validate the reality that the girls who have the right marks, weight, and personality, and even the right ability deal with the school administration, are going to get the jobs. I wish I could tell the administration to be open to giving jobs to girls who are not necessarily coolest but capable. I wish I could tell the administration to reframe jobs as a responsibility, not an award.

“It is also unfortunately true that the school staff wants someone who gets the job done, not necessarily someone who will be nice to the people over whom they are head.

“What I try to teach my students is that Hashem put us in a world in which externals are the challenges. If middos would be valued, then where is the challenge of this world? This challenge begins most vividly in high school.

“When you graduate, it continues. Nobody wants to give you a chance at a teaching job but other girls, with the right externals, get it time and again.

“Girls can be chosen for jobs on the basis of good marks that are Hashem’s gift and not necessarily the result of their hard work; for their pretty looks and clothing; for their ability to fool teachers with their facade of middos that don’t really exist. This is a reality that plays out much the same way as people sitting on the dais of some function or another, chosen for their money.

“What I wish I could teach not only my students, but their parents, is that life challenges are presented in this upside-down world and what’s important is not what you get, but how much you give to others.”

Nechama remembers with awe a mother who told her that her daughter was given two solos in a performance. But the girl felt that one was enough. “I’m prouder of the solo she gave away than the one she got,” said the mother to Nechama.

“You can’t imagine the insanity of calls teachers get from mothers who say, ‘My daughter must get a job.’ Jobs have become less about getting things done and more about ‘this is what my school thinks of me.’” Nechama tells me, frustrated with how these parents are perpetuating a system in which girls rate themselves based on externals.

“It’s the truth that externals are rewarded in the world and it begins in high school. But it is chinuch that allows children to value accomplishments over award and recognition. To learn that life is about doing the right thing, not getting the right thing. That no matter what high school jobs say, it’s not true that whatever is not publicly recognized is not valued. It is. By Hashem, Who is not always publicly recognized either! By yourself, that knows the truth when it’s not buried under layers of societal pressures and abnormal norms.

“While it’s a sad reality that jobs have become important, there is a greater job — to look past this inflated reality and be aware of the opportunity to lean into your own values and create a more authentic reality of what’s important in life.

“A parent needs to truly inculcate in her daughter that she’s not missing out because of what she didn’t get in the looks, charisma, brains, or talent departments, even if it looks like that.

“It’s the same with seminary,” Nechama says. “Being accepted to the seminary of your choice, or to seminary altogether, might look like you’re getting everything you need in life, but it’s an illusion. And the earlier someone has the ability to put that into perspective, the better it is.

“The same way you don’t get a shidduch or a good life because you have looks, money, talent, brains, the right family, the right clothing, or live in the right neighborhood; even if it looks like you do!

“Ridiculous,” says Nechama. “It comes from Hashem!

“It would make it so much easier if the hanhalah would subscribe to this understanding of how the world works. Of how externals are simply challenges to make us grow. If students could grow up to be mothers who understand this. So that their daughters can understand this when jobs are given out in high school.”

And then this entire article would be irrelevant.

And our chat could move onto more important things.

Imagine that.

* All names of writers, schools, and people they refer to have been changed

except for mine.

Originally published in Binah Magazine