On Parole

Followers of this blog know that my last school was a disaster, with a jackass principal and a bunch of heartless admins who thought nothing of trying to ruin a teacher's career. They had little use for senior teachers involved in union activities. As such, I amassed a couple of letters in file and a U one year as they tried to pressure me into leaving the school. At least 4 others I know had their careers ruined, and a few managed to barely avoid the rubber room. I was one of the lucky ones, as I found a new and much better school.

Today, I finally got to see my file and get rid of some of the foul crap in there. It was a relief, and a fairly painless process, but let me emphasize one thing: it should never have happened. If not for the 2005 contract, I would have been able to grieve those LIFs and phony evaluations, and so would the other teachers I worked with. Remember when the Unity hacks told us it didn't matter if we had LIFs, because we rarely got them removed at step one grievances? What they forgot to tell you is that admins didn't write very many LIFs until the 2005 contract gave them a free hand. And does anyone recall Randi's promise that we'd reopen the grieveance issue if there was an increase in LIFs? Yeah, right.

Anyway, I feel like I've been paroled. For three years, I've known that the lies in my file could be used against me. I wasn't really fearful of it happening, as I am respected in my current school, but a change of leadership or a budget crunch could have changed all that. Now it can't.

The best part is that now that those letters are gone, I've finally managed to shake the last bit of my former school's dust from my feet. It feels good--they are history. Still, I can't help feeling resentful that they were allowed to run amok over a bunch of hard working teachers. And while I've finally been paroled, some of my friends were executed and others still languish in that dungeon of a school.

If a Unity person tells you that some new agreement won't have any effect on you, run screaming away.

Michael Mulgrew vs. Mark Sanchez

I'm a long time Jets fan. Today, my team plays the Cincinnati Bengals in the first round of the playoffs. Jets fans know the drill. We approach the game with both hope and apprehension, knowing that the Jets have found creative ways to blow big games for the last 40 years. Despite the fact that we gave the Bengals a drubbing just six days ago, the Jets are 3 point underdogs. No one believes they can end their run of bad plays and stupid decisions.

To win today, all the Jets have to do is follow the game plan. Rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez needs to hand the ball off about 75% of the time, and execute a few short passes to keep the Bengals' defense off balance. Sanchez has to control his emotions and keep from getting rattled, which leads to mistakes. I think he can be a great quarterback if he learns to, in sports parlance, "stay within himself".

Rookie UFT President Michael Mulgrew faces the same challenge. He's faced with an expired contract and a mayor who wants to drive him face first into the turf. Mulgrew's first challenge is to avoid mistakes. Randi Weingarten, his predecessor, fumbled the ball on seniority, ATRs, the rubber room, extended day, the open market, and a bunch of other issues. She turned to ball over so often you had to wonder which team she was playing for.

So far, I like Mulgrew. He has the potential to be the quarterback the UFT needs. He's pleaded his case in a calm but forceful manner with the public. He's shown no sense of urgency to sign a contract at any cost. He's stood firm for ATRs and the rubber room teachers, and has kept tenure off the table.

Mulgrew also seems to realize that you can't win with just a good defense alone. He's gone on the offensive on a number of issues, including actively fighting the proposed lifting of the charter school cap and suing the city for failing to use the CFE funds to reduce class size.

Both Mulgrew and Sanchez have shown the guts and poise needed to be good leaders. Whether they can hang on to that in the face of high pressure situations remains to be seen. The Jets face their test at 4:30 this afternoon. Mulgrew's challenge is ongoing.

I hope both are up to the task. Let's go Jets! And the UFT!

A Solution to School Closings

It seems to me that if we want to stop BloomKlein from closing schools, we have to think like them. So follow me, if you will, with about 10% of your brain, which is about what they use.

What we need to do is build a one foot wall of snow around schools that the chancellor intends to close, like Jamaica HS. Now, such a tiny wall won't keep even troll sized people like the mayor out, but that's not the idea. Once we build the wall, we have Michael Mulgrew demand that the schools be closed due to snow. The one thing that BloomKlein will NEVER do is close the schools with less than two feet of snow on the ground, and sometimes not even then. Viola--the schools stay open.

I know this won't last beyond the winter, but the next solution will have to wait because I can't think like BloomKlein for even a minute longer. It'll be hard enough to get the drool stains out of my clothes as it is.

Top Ten Blots on Education for 2009

As we look back in horror at the education landscape of 2009, a few individuals stood out. Originally, I wanted to crown them "douchebags" because it's such a nasty sounding word. I looked it up in the urban dictionary and a douchebag is defined as "...a pretentious, sugar coated prick, but with emphasis on pretentious and sugar coated. It's not an adjective for an asshole, because assholes call other people douchebags, and assholes are more often than not proud of being assholes." Another definition says that a douchebag "can also be described as an overzealous, pompous, or vexatious asshole that most people wish were killed with a Mortal Kombat fatality." So there are definitely some people on the following list who, in my opinion, would have qualified, but a few didn't quite reach that storied low. And since it's a season for charitable feelings let's just say they're "blots".

Keep in mind that the following list is merely my opinion. These honorees most likely have mothers who love them, and perhaps even some friends. Still, as far as I am concerned, these individuals made being a teacher even more difficult than it already was in 2009. If you have any additional people to add, please write about them in the comments section.

10. Ariel Sacks--As a 4th year teacher, Ariel stepped up to the plate to deliver a diatribe against ATRs, many of whom have more than five times her experience, and pronounced them all unhireable. To her credit, it seems that Ariel learned something from the vitriolic outburst that hit her right between the eyes, and revised some of her comments. Nevertheless, as a UFT member, her comments were enough of a betrayal to earn her the 10th spot on our list.

9. David Patterson--As governor of New York, Patterson has decided to save money by eliminating metrocards for high school students who have to travel to get to school. This affects all students who need transportation, but disproportionately affects poor and minority students who can't afford to get to school or who must leave their neighborhood to get a decent education.

8. Eva Moskowitz--While actual students will be unable to afford transportation, former City Council member Eva Moskowitz managed to wrangle $371,000 in salary from the city by running some charter schools. As far as I can tell, her only qualification to run schools appears to be her extraordinary teacher bashing skills. Eva also tried to grab space for one of her charters by taking it from PS 123 without the approval of the DOE.

7. Your Principal--I don't know your principal. But I'm still willing to take a chance that you think he/she would qualify, even though mine would not.

6. Stephen Brill--Author of a completely biased article on rubber rooms, Mr. Brill managed to snag the 6 spot with a bit of journalism that even the New York Post would have been proud of.

5. Matt Polazzo--Even though Matt's call to rip up the UFT contract that protects his privileged ass did less harm than Brill's piece, Polazzo beats him out because like Ariel Sacks, he is a UFT member and should know better. Ignorance is no excuse. Apparently, Polazzo feels he is safe from the DOE because he can garner the support of a few hundred equally privileged students from Stuyvesant who protect him by posting on Facebook. I say, let's send him to Jamaica High School where he can become an ATR himself, and let's see how far his posse gets him.

4. Randi Weingarten--The former UFT president would have ranked higher on the list but she did us the tremendous favor of getting the hell out to become AFT president. She also put Mike Mulgrew in her place, who, so far, has not done anything idiotic. Randi was rumored to have formed some sort of alliance with Mike Bloomberg to sign a contract in exchange for the UFT staying neutral in the election, but apparently Randi couldn't even get that right.

3. Arne Duncan--Obama's Secretary of Education who brought the policies that failed in his Chicago schools, blended them with the failed policies of NYC schools, and is now in charge of 4 billion in RttT funds which he is using as a club to get states to union bust. As a teacher from 1990 to 1992, he has less experience than Ariel Sacks.

2. Joel Klein--No list of education deformers would be complete without the current chancellor of NYC schools. After eight years at the helm, schools are only doing marginally better on the NAEP than when he started, despite a longer school day and endless test prep. While he bears an uncanny resemblance to Professor Moriarty, he possesses none of the reasoning skills of that archvillain. Teachers hate him, admins hate him, and parents hate him. None of this matters, however, as he is liked by the one person who matters...our number one blot on the education landscape...

1. Michael Bloomberg--As the newly emboldened Mayor4Life, Bloomberg has called for an end to tenure and seniority. He has closed 20 more schools this year, thus adding to the ATR crisis which he blames on the teachers themselves. He wants to lay off senior teachers as a money saving strategy while he flies helicopters around Copenhagen pretending to care for the masses and the environment. He'd like to fire all ATRs and those in the rubber rooms, and it appears he wants to deny teachers the measly 4% he gave other unions despite humping the concept of pattern bargaining in his first two (legal) terms. Class sizes have increased under his watch despite an influx of money from the CFE lawsuit. His personal wealth has quadrupled this decade while teachers have to beg for the paltry $150 in Teacher's Choice funds we need to buy chalk.

That's it for this year. Enjoy the next few days off, because you can bet that some of the people on this list will be working hard to make a repeat performance in 2010.

The Grinch Recycled

I'm far too lazy sitting in front of the TV to write a new post about Christmas like the indefatigable NYC Educator and Chaz. So I'll take the easy route and repost something I wrote last year when this blog was brand spanking new. I had about 4 readers when this first appeared, so hopefully it's new to you. Unfortunately, it's still as true as it was a year ago.

The Klein Who Stole Tenure

Every teacher in Schoolville loved tenure a lot,
But the Klein, who worked in Tweed Courthouse, did not.
The Klein hated tenure! He thought it a cancer!
Now please don’t ask why, no one quite knows the answer.
It could be that a teacher once called HIM a dunce,
Or he got pelted with spitballs when he tried teaching once,
But I think the most likely reason of all,
May be that he knows nothing about teaching at all!

But whatever his reason for hating the teachers,
What he hated more, was one of the features,
Of the UFT contract that stood undiminished.
Despite 2005, he still wasn’t finished.
He knew the one hope, to which teachers could cling,
Could be dashed if he could destroy one more thing.
For every three years, despite all his jive,
Some teachers in Schoolville still managed to thrive.
And when they survived, it was tenure they got,
And this twisted the Klein’s BVDs in a knot!

“How COULD they get tenure?” Klein snarled with a sneer.
“After all I’ve thrown at them, why are they still here?
I don’t pay them enough and I make them feel small.
I’ve cut Teacher’s Choice down to nothing at all!
I give them lunch duty and potty patrol,
Sufficient to sear the hardiest soul!
And if that wasn’t enough to anger the staff,
I piled on thirty seven minutes—and a HALF!

They read to the children on germ-ridden rugs!
And share cafeterias with rodent-sized bugs!
Bulletin boards, walkthroughs, unsatisfactory ratings!
TAN notebooks, portfolios, PD unabating!
Acuity! ARIS! And monthly staff meetings!
Only a masochist smiles through such beatings!
Such horrible things! I don’t think I can top them!
Yet still they get tenure! Is there no way to stop them?”

And then he got an idea.
The Klein got a terrible, awful idea.
“I think,” the Klein chuckled, “I can end this whole mess,
If I can finagle support from the press!
But I’ll need an accomplice as heartless as me!”
So he called up his old bulldog pal from DC.
And together the Klein saddled up with the Rhee,
And declared war on tenure with malevolent glee.

Rhee’s taught for 2 years, and Klein less than one,
But has that stopped this duo? No, they’ve hardly begun!
Armed with three years of classroom experience between them.
They’ve set upon teachers, hell bent to demean them.
With data most spurious and a press most incurious,
The Klein and the Rhee hope to make parents furious,
So they’ll call for tenure to come to an end!
Are we going to allow this to happen, my friend?

I wish I could tell you the Klein’s heart has grown,
Or the Rhee’s tiny ticker was not made of stone,
Or the laughter of children would melt their exteriors,
Or the voters would finally boot their posteriors.
But unless the teachers in Schoolville take action,
And finally begin voicing their dissatisfaction,
The Kleins and the Rhees will most surely banish
Our tenure, and the last of our rights will just vanish.

Embracing your Inner Geek!

When someone's computer breaks down in school, they don't call the computer teacher--they call me. I can program in BASIC (extra points if you know what the acronym BASIC stands for), I have a six digit ICQ number, and my first modem was a 300 baud job from Radio Shack which I used before the world wide web was invented (more extra points if you know the difference between baud and bps).

The point is, I'm a geek. A nerd. Always have been and always will be. I'm proud of my collection of antique expansion cards and the fact that I know the quadratic equation even though I don't teach math. So you can imagine how disturbed I was to read that there are people out there--including genuine nerds themselves--who want to get rid of the terms nerd and geek. They feel these terms have a negative connotation and that they hold kids back from wanting to become mathematicians and scientists.

When I read that, I nearly spilled the mechanical pencils from my pocket protector. Because of my geekhood, I now have a job I love and from which I can retire in a few years to pursue other endeavors if I so choose. Meanwhile, the kids who pulled my BVDs over my head in seventh grade are now stocking the shelves at the Dairy Barn while I'm hitting the top salary step.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against manual labor, and I believe all work has value. But being geeky gave me choices in life. I don't have to stock shelves, and I play with computers for fun instead of for a living. I can choose to retire or keep going. I'd bet you anything that the average annual salary of all the geeks you knew in high school is at least double that of the jocks and cheerleaders.

Get rid of nerd and geek because they're not cool words? Let's MAKE them cool words! Let's make dressing in Ecko clothing mandatory in public schools and prohibit the wearing of Pi tee shirts except on dress down days! Let's start talking about how great Lady Gaga is and before you know it, they'll be listening to Mozart! Let's ban Shakespeare because of all the sexual innuendo and the kids will be sneaking copies of Richard III in their bookbags!

Let's make geek the new black! Pull your waistband up to your nipples! And when we're done, we can klhdejihe fkieiu efiwoinf!

Oops...sorry about that. The tape that was holding my glasses together broke.

School's Open!

Not a shocker, but at least it came early enough that we don't have to wake up at 5AM tomorrow to find out. The 2006 blizzard that dropped 27 inches of snow in 2006 didn't shut the schools or cause a delay, so why should this?

Everyone can look forward to a day of coverages, mass absences, and almost no actual learning. Don't forget to leave home an hour early!