By M. Gustave
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
August 15, 2016
Matt Dery is now a teacher. I want to drink the same wine as Gertrude. Matt Dery doesn’t get that reference. I have been in education for over ten years, teaching part-time at a college in Detroit, moving to a state that proudly (to this day) fought for the Confederacy to teach at both the high school and collegiate levels, and then moving back to the Midwest.
I can teach in 49 of the 50 states that make up this lackluster conglomerate (Massachusetts has the most stringent requirements for certification, which is why they have the best teachers and rank first among all states in all educational metrics).
There is nothing that can happen to me that will scare, scar, or fundamentally alter my existence. I’ve walked in on students having sex in the bathroom. Not in the stall. In the open, by the urinals.
I smiled when my administrator brought in Haitian children displaced by an earthquake into my classroom. They even tried to give me food as payment for teaching them. I let the seven pregnant senior girls (out of the fifteen in my class) throw a combined baby shower, since they were all due at relatively the same time.
I’ve picked up a student and his girlfriend at the local Planned Parenthood because his parents refused. I’ve even had my lunch stolen out of my bag. I found out which student did it because she was the only sixth-grader with a package of Now and Later candies.
When I confronted her about stealing my lunch, she cried and told me she was sorry and that she hadn’t eaten in three days and that if I told anyone, CPS would take her away from her mother. I wanted to dig a hole and die. I went to the bathroom, vomited, and then cried like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan because I knew that if I didn’t report it, I could go to jail on FELONY CHARGES.
Teaching is the most difficult and rewarding experience of my life. The reason I became a teacher was because — like most of us poor, hapless bastards — at one time in my life, a teacher made a tremendous difference.
Mr. Harrison (not his real name), who had been in the shit in Vietnam — in literal shit — told me, when I was being a typical, 17-year-old prick, to, “Stop being a dumbfuck.”
If Mr. Harrison, who had survived crawling through tunnels and the Vietcong nailing poisonous snakes to tunnel entryways in Viet-fucking-nam thought I was being a dumbfuck, then I was. I stopped.
Many years later, when I visited his classroom as fellow professional, he told me that I hadn’t listened to him, and that I was still a dumbfuck because I became a teacher. I laughed, uncomfortably.
My profession is under constant attack by one, particular political party, its mouthpieces, and mouth-breathing dullards at every governmental level, and now, Matt Dery.
The state legislature’s educational committee in my state boasts only TWO former teachers in its ranks. Both of them taught at private, Christian schools, though. Teaching at a Christian school shouldn’t even count as real education, since their science departments teach that God created the world in seven, literal 24-hour days.
However, the committee does have a dairy farmer who is a substitute teacher; a real estate developer; and a few youth soccer coaches. They determine subject matter and how the children in my state will experience school, one of the most formative experiences in a child’s life. It’s good to have someone who knows how to inseminate a cow in charge of curriculum.
Not only do these people create the standards by which children experience education daily, they also just decided that teachers in Detroit Public Schools do not need to be certified in order to teach. Imagine these same people telling parents in Bloomfield Hills that their child’s teacher didn’t even go to college to become a teacher.
These are the people in charge of educational policy. Our rights to address grievances are severely limited by Republican-controlled state legislatures, our job security — in the form of tenure — is gone, and our budgets are tighter than the collars on Ryan Ermanni’s dress shirts.
Coordinated efforts by Republicans and their climate change-denying constituents have led to a shortage of teachers across the United States. Who wants to be vilified by people whose formative educational experiences occurred when the Berlin Wall still separated Berlin? I do. Many others do. We are a tightly-knit group of individuals. We have each other’s back. A teacher doesn’t survive unless he/she has the support and trust of their colleagues.
Teenagers test every boundary. They systematically look for weakness and exploit them in the cruelest and most merciless manner possible. In that regard, they’re not unlike the raptors from Jurassic Park (and what raptors were probably like 65 million years ago, when they lived on earth, and humans didn’t — they don’t teach that at Christian schools).
I’ve had students tell me that I was the worst person they’ve ever met and they hoped I, and everyone I ever loved, died of AIDS. My favorite exchange with a student was in 2010, when I had a student tell me to fuck my own face. I laughed because it was funny. I’ve also sat through countless musicals, award ceremonies, plays, and recitals. Giving up my time to foster good relationships with the children for whom I’m responsible to guide into adulthood in this participatory democracy is part of my job.
Teaching is a collaborative effort. I rely on my colleagues and count them amongst my closest confidants. If any one of my colleagues breathed a word I said about a student, their parent, or an administrator, my job and livelihood would be in serious jeopardy.
This is where we come to the point of this article: Matt Dery is a teacher. Yesterday, I saw that the former WDFN, 97.1, 105.1, and most recently, a ribbon-cutter at the opening of a concrete slab patio, landed a job at University of Detroit Jesuit School.
How could a school hire someone who once called a woman who, allegedly, had Peyton Manning’s testicles, rectum and penis put on her face against her will, “loose?” This is their mission statement: “University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy is committed to providing the highest quality of Jesuit college preparatory education to young men in southeast Michigan.”
The part about providing the, “highest quality of education in southeast Michigan…” made me want to light myself on fire. Being a private institution that receives no money from the state of Michigan, Jesuit is not bound by the same laws that govern public school districts (except Detroit, because who cares about black children, RIGHT?) in regards to having certified and highly-qualified teachers.
Matt Dery, as of 9:43 AM, on August 12, 2016, has no type of certification issued by the state. One may ask: “What does one have to do to become certified in the state of Michigan?” Well, I’m glad you asked such a pointed question. You probably had a good teacher in school who taught you that asking questions is the way you attain knowledge.
In order to teach a subject in Michigan, a person must have taken at least 30 credit hours in the subject, pass a state-mandated subject area test (that costs $300 to take), a professionalism in teaching test (that also costs $300 to take), and a basic skills test (that only costs $250).
After passing these tests, a person must interview to be placed into a student-teaching assignment where he/she will spend the next nine months PAYING their college for the right to work for free in a district they didn’t choose, all-the-while being under constant observation by evaluators from their university (whom they have to pay to observe them), their cooperating teacher and administration, as well as parents who will be unhappy their prenatally gifted, Harvard-bound angel is being taught by a tyro…while working at night to survive.
Finally, once a teacher gets a job, he/she will spend money on their own supplies, because this country has money for everything except education, even though investing in human capital is the most cost-effective way to raise GDP levels.
And what’s even more insulting is the federal tax laws that govern educator expense deductions only allow a teacher to deduct $250 per year. U.S. Representatives from states where I wouldn’t go if I were paid to (and Olivia Munn wanted to fuck me when I got there) decided that I could only deduct $250 of the money I earned for job-related expenses, much to the delight of their constituents — made up of angry, white men who are upset that there are too many “Hispanics” in baseball, and Pinterest mothers who wear Disney tee shirts while traveling to, staying in, and leaving from Walt Disney World.
Teachers, and I mean teachers who teach for the right reasons, are selfless. I took a former student who interviewed for the Gates Millennium Scholarship, which would pay for EVERY SINGLE expense he would incur from undergraduate through Ph.D., to Men’s Warehouse (he liked the way he looked) and bought him a suit, dress shirt, ties, shoes, belt, and even a goddamned pocket square so that he would have something other than jeans to wear.
I spent over $600 and wasn’t eligible to recoup that expense. Thanks. By the way, the student is at an Ivy League school now, working on a Ph.D. in Astrophysics. If he had gone in the jeans and ratty Target polo he wanted to wear, he probably wouldn’t have had the same chance. That’s what teachers do. Matt Dery is a teacher.
Fuck your own face.
Matt Dery did not go to college to be a teacher. He also lacks the ability to avoid stabbing his coworkers in the back. This website has chronicled all of the times he sold out his friends and colleagues to get ahead in radio. That is sad, since he was fired for being so bad at being on the radio.
The staff at Jesuit might want to take care when they let off steam about anything, be it school-related or personal, because, as the evidence suggests, he will set fire to any bridge if it means his career advances.
Teachers complain a great deal. We have every right to because we are responsible for the future of this entire planet and most Americans want to do that on the cheap. Now, venting to colleagues is off the table at Jesuit, thanks to the guy who once denied ever hearing of the DSR.
What is most troubling about the former employee at what is now THE BOUNCE is his most recent brush with insensitivity when it comes to alleged victims of sexual harassment.
Dery said that Manning’s accuser, Dr. Jamie Naughright, looked, “a little loose,” in one of her pictures. Before I delve into the problematic nature of implying that an alleged sexual harassment victim deserved the treatment because of the way she looked, let me reminder you that NO ONE chastised him for saying it. Imagine that. It’d be like a major newspaper not acknowledging one of its staff writers plagiarized large portions of a story, or a MLB manager intentionally walking the statistically worst hitter in the history of Major League Baseball and being able to stay employed — even after your fuckuppery cost the franchise their last chance to win with the talent they had under contract.
No one at 105.1 came out publicly and said, “Hey, alleged sexual assault victims don’t need to be impugned on a live show.” I guess it turned out well, since fewer people listened to Matt Dery’s show than will listen to him in the classroom.
Infinitely more troubling is that now, Matt Dery will be influencing future generations of young men in this participatory democracy. A man who, while on live radio, said that a woman with more education, and success in her chosen profession, looked, “… a little loose” as he looked at one of her pictures is now in a position of authority.
He will be responsible for influencing young men’s world views, and even more importantly, their views on women. It’s hard to comprehend how human resources chose Dery, as opposed to the other people who applied for the job. You know, people who actually went to college to be a teacher and are actually qualified, as opposed to someone who referenced Michael Rosenberg’s ethnicity when commenting on his story.
Parents who opt out of public education and pay upwards of $11,000 to have their sons attend Jesuit should expect highly-qualified and certified teachers with actual field experience, not a person who, until a few weeks ago, was an emcee at Jimmy John’s Field handing out pastries.
Would a senior applying to a college ask Mr. Dery to write his recommendation letter? Just imagine the admissions staff searching “Matt Dery” and looking at the letter, puzzled. Have fun at ITT Tech.
Matt Dery is a teacher.
I hope Anthony Fenech is my next Uber driver.
(You can’t follow the writer of this piece on Twitter because he would like to remain anonymous. This guest article continues in the great DSR tradition of guest writers using Wes Anderson movie characters as a nom de plume. Also, you can join in on the discussion of this article on Facebook by clicking here.)
