NY Post Reports Teacher Has Office

This morning I was perusing the news when I saw this story about some 36-year-old teacher who evidently had an affair with a 16-year-old student. It appears this was not completely unique in that school, and the Post calls it "Horndog High." The student was just awarded $750,000 in punitive damages.

Of course this teacher, unlike the ATRs whose heads are regularly demanded, was actually found guilty of something and fired. That's what happens to teachers when they do things like these, as opposed to, say, being in the wrong school at the right time.

In any case, the story also contained this paragraph:

While the married mom was supposed to be tutoring Eng, the pair were having intercourse and oral sex in her SUV and even in her office, where she was accused of keeping a stash of weed in her filing cabinet.

Her office? A teacher has an office? Have you ever heard of such a thing? Could you imagine having a quiet place to prepare your lessons, think about what you're going to do, and write quietly? I share a department office with a dozen other people, and since we work with the English department, a bunch of English teachers are always coming and going as well. Actually I come in an hour early almost every single day to prepare for my classes.

That's not enough, of course. You never know what's going to happen, or what you'll have to change or adjust. At the end of almost every day I have things on my mind, and I have to write them down or they'll forever be lost. My short-term memory is not exactly a thing of wonder and beauty.

I'm also the chapter leader, so I'm contractually entitled to a work space. I've had one for the last three or four years, in fact. I've shared a small office with the leader of our JROTC program. I'm sure he would tell you I'm the best office mate anyone could have. I'm almost never there. Originally I used it a little more. The principal was kind enough to furnish me with a computer, and whenever there was a grievance or something, I'd file it online and print it there.

Then I bought a Macbook Air and started carrying it everywhere. With WiFi printing available in our building, there wasn't much need for me to visit the office,  I therefore became an even better office mate.

However, there were about 300 UFT members in my school last time I looked. Stuff happens. People get upset. Sometimes they need a private space. I was able to provide that because my friend from JROTC, perhaps in eternal gratitude for my having left him alone 98% of the time, was always ready to give space to me and whoever else required it.

Unfortunately, this year the DOE, in its infinite wisdom, decided to give us 4,725 students. They also increased our special education population from about 650 to 800. This means we needed another school psychologist. Actually we've needed one for years. This year we probably need three, so we'll have two. Alas, the principal has unceremoniously booted me and the JROTC leader from our office.

Now in fairness, he's also given up his conference room to be used as a classroom, so the sacrifice is not entirely on our end. He's also offered me alternate space in our UFT Teacher Center office. But that's ridiculous, with all sorts of people marching in and out, and all sorts of scheduled meetings and PD sessions there. I declined the offer.

The thing is, when people are upset, they need privacy. The contract requires the school to give me some space, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't need to be adequate space. For now, I'm moving my office to the street.

Now things could change. With the help of Ellie Engler from UFT we were able to negotiate an annex to our building, though that's a few years away. This should get us 18 classrooms, although if they remove the trailers it will only be a net gain of ten. DOE agreed that this would be to accommodate our existing population. However, as far as I'm concerned, but overloading us in advance, they've reneged on their deal.

I expect September to be a disaster. Meanwhile, the folks who made these decisions will sit around in Tweed, in their air-conditioned offices, doing Whatever it Is They Do There. Thank goodness they're on the job.

Who Had this Man Fired?

There's an amazing and multi-layered story in yesterday's NY Post. A lot of people say that teachers can never be fired, but here's a story about one who was. (And he isn't the only one, because I know others.) I see a bunch of charges, none of which seem to merit a whole lot of response, if any.

Evidently this school has a gender-bender day, where students dress up as the opposite sex. I wonder how students already struggling with gender issues would feel about that. I wonder how parents would feel. In any case, gender-bender is a thing at this school, but visits to Malcolm X's grave site are off limits. And wouldn't you know it? This teacher not only questioned gender-bender day, but also wanted to take his students to see Malcolm's grave site.

But that's not all this teacher did. He turned the lights off while showing a video! Can you imagine? Not only that, but he showed a clip from a Boondocks cartoon, and maybe there was a bad word or something. Also, he used a cell phone in school. (I actually don't know any teacher who has not used a cell phone in school. And in fact, when I show a video clip, students routinely get up and switch the lights off. I let them do it, so maybe I should be fired too.)

This is the flip side of all the crap spread around by Campbell Brown, and the incurious one-sided reporting of Chalkbeat. In fact, it even links to another story that says what's really going on, which evidently escaped the notice of the arbitrator who ordered the firing. You see the principal, the one Campbell Brown wants to make firing decisions, was embroiled in a cheating scandal. And waddya know, the fired teacher was one of the ones who blew the whistle on him.

At first, they fined the teacher $2,000 for this petty nonsense and placed him in the ATR. You'd think the principal would be happy just to bounce this guy, who as far as I can tell did nothing of significance beyond blowing a whistle. Maybe, if the video clip was that questionable, they could have asked him not to show clips like that. But evidently that's not enough, so the principal, or the DOE, or likely both decided to dredge up whatever they could muster, and do a second 3020a on this guy. The genius arbitrator went for it hook, line, and sinker and fired the guy.

I mean, hey, a teacher who turns the lights off when he shows a video? A teacher who uses his cell phone in the school? This is the anti-Campbell Brown. UFT, or anyone, could use this guy as the face of why principals and the DOE should not and cannot be entrusted to fire people without due process. In fact, this is an argument that due process can go awry, and that even $1600 a day arbitrators are not infallible.

An incredible takeaway here is that this principal has never taught except as a sub. How on earth does the DOE hire someone like this? For all I know, he's Leadership Academy. After all, Klein saw teachers as just another stop on the Axis of Evil. Why not just drag someone off the street and make that person principal? I have no idea where this principal came from, but the story certainly alleges some funny things were happening at this school.

This fired teacher embarrassed not only the principal, but also the DOE. Who decided that this whistleblower needed to pay? Who dredged up a bunch of ridiculous charges and took this man's job? And what on earth made an arbitrator decide there was merit to this nonsense?

Let's also be clear on this--all the charges that the teacher faced on 3020a number two occurred before 3020a number one. You see, once you've been placed in the ATR, even for inconsequential nonsense that garners a $2,000 fine, you're under a microscope. Did the DOE deliberately save half of their trumped-up nonsense for round two so they could fire this guy?

Honestly, I see nothing here that merits one round of 3020a charges, let alone two. At the very worst, if the Boondocks video were that egregious, it could be a letter to file. This story, to me at least, is conclusive evidence that the DOE should not be trusted to fire teachers. And that's before we even look at the shoddy judgment of the highly-paid arbitrator. The fact that all charges happened before 3020a round one suggests the arbitrator's conclusion the teacher was "beyond remediation" is  utterly flawed and false on its face.

I was a little tough on the NY Post the other day, but they have their moments. This is one of them. Maybe they'll do better if they read their own stories before stereotyping ATR teachers, many of whom are in the ATR for reasons like these, or no reason at all.

The NYC Investigator

Yesterday I was visited by some charming representatives from the City of New York. They were doing an investigation, and I got called out of one of my classes. A member was sitting there. It was not very difficult to know what to say.

"Please give us your card. The member will be happy to speak with you as soon as we have representation."

I've been chapter leader for eight years now. I was trained to say this, I tell all my members to say the same thing, and that's the protocol. In the last eight years, I know of only one member who failed to follow this advice. He was fired. I'm not saying that wouldn't have happened anyway, but I'm absolutely certain it didn't help.

Every time I've given the card speech, the  rep has handed the card, and the member was represented. One of these guys was different, though. He was indignant.

"Do you know what this is about?" he asked.

"No, I don't."

"Do you care what this is about?"

"No, I don't."

Whatever it's about, the protocol is the same. The investigators from are not our friends. I've seen them drag people through the mud for no reason.  They might say you aren't the target and target you anyway. But this guy, he had an answer.

"YOU don't care about CHILDREN! All YOU care about is protecting TEACHERS!"

There was some back and forth and I told him that was a strawman.

"YOU don't know what a strawman IS!" declared the investigating genius.

In fact I know very well what a strawman is. A strawman is a logical fallacy. It's when you fabricate or misrepresent your opponent's argument in such a way to make it look ridiculous or impossible to defend. It's when you tell your opponent what he thinks. Actually, though, this was also an attempt to rattle me. And it worked. I was pretty angry. I work for children every day of my life. I will not hesitate to go to jail for them if guys like this one come into my classroom. 

I went outside with the member, who told me what the issue was. We then went back inside. I decided to make him mad this time.

"We've discussed the issue. NOW I know what we're talking about. Please give us your card and the member will call you as soon as we have representation."

The DOE guy got visibly upset, screaming more about how I don't care about children. Evidently, if I cared about children I would advise my members to give up their rights to due process. I would tell them to submit to the lies and manipulation of guys like these without question. Then the kids, the ones this guy cares about and I don't, could grow up into a world in which they unquestioningly submit to guys like this one.

I asked the guy if he fancied himself the Amazing Kreskin, what with his reading my mind and all. I told him I'd be filing a complaint about him. I don't much appreciate being slandered and vilified for doing my job. He then turned to the member, and shouted, "Well, if you won't talk now, we're not coming back here. You'll have to come to Manhattan, or maybe Brooklyn." Threats and intimidation designed to make the member give up due process.

You know what? Everyone should get due process. Accused murderers get lawyers. Whatever happened, my member needs to be protected. If my member isn't protected, the children this man supposedly cares for won't be either.

Later that afternoon I called 311 to file a complaint. After much conversation they told me they were switching me over to DOE, and that I could file the complaint anonymously. I told them I didn't want to be anonymous and they said that was OK too. I told them if it was DOE I'd like to do this through UFT instead, so I hung up and reached out to someone there. I figure a complaint from the United Federation of Teachers will carry more weight than it will from just me.

But if they don't do it, I'll do it myself. Whatever happened in this case will come out, and the city is simply going to have to follow procedures to make that happen. Their bullying and intimidation tactics change nothing. I guess, though, that they work sometimes, maybe often, and that's why we need to answer them.

The only thing I regret is that I lost my temper as well. Clearly that was this guy's intention. That won't happen again. When kids do that to me, I'm ready. I respond to provocation with complete calm, offer gentle reproaches, and think about what I'll do next. That's what I'll do the next time this or any other city rep tries to intimidate me.

Correction--I'm now told that this agency is not part of DOE, despite what 311 told me. I've revised the piece to reflect this.

The Part 154 Police Visit Our School

I've written in the past about Part 154, the newly revised regulation that effectively cuts direct English instruction and reduces ESL teachers to support staff for teachers of other subjects. In New York State, learning the English language is subordinate to mastering things on which you can be tested. Therefore, in the same time American-born students are studying Macbeth, ESL teachers are supposed to stand around and make sure students who don't understand English acquire the language via studying a form of it no one uses anymore.

Last year, the state was rather benign about enforcement. This was a good thing, because it was a huge stinking mess. Small schools with one ESL teacher would expect said teacher to be everywhere, teaching everything. As you can imagine, that's not a task that can be easily accomplished. What actually happened was that these teachers ran around like headless chickens accomplishing little or nothing. That's too bad because on this astral plane, it's actually kind of important to learn the prevalent language of the country in which you reside.

I know of other small schools in which the ESL teacher is treated as an annoyance. There's the social studies teacher, teaching about the Spanish American War, and that pesky ESL teacher is always interrupting, handing the ELLs vocabulary sheets and stuff. How are they supposed to pay attention to the lesson? How are they supposed to grasp what the social studies teacher is offering when the other teacher is continually interrupting? And how are they supposed to teach not only the subject, but also the language, when newcomers have the same 40 minutes as American-born kids to learn in?

On the other hand, I work in a large school. Aside from the issue of concurrently teaching the subject and basic English, the demands of Part 154 are equally impossible there as in any setting. There are a whole lot of things that just don't make any sense. For example, students are not allowed to be more than one grade apart, so it's virtually impossible to make up classes based on language level rather than grade level. You can, of course, run one section of 4 students and another of 44 students. While that might not make sense to any teacher or administrator who hasn't eaten LSD for breakfast, rules are rules.

The geniuses at Tweed, of course, have the answer. What you do, you see, is you hang up bulletin boards with student work. Also, you make sure a rubric is attached. You see how that fixes everything? Also, you make sure there is a library in the back of the classroom. You also make sure that every ESL teacher does all this stuff, because of course they have nothing else to do. This helps everything. Those are just a few things I noticed in 23 pages of rubrics and demands the DOE helpfully sent us last week.

To further help us, they're gonna visit us six times this year and rate us on said rubrics. That's great. Because just last week, a whole lot of UFT members were approaching me and saying, "Hey, you know what? I don't feel enough pressure on myself as a teacher. I'm just not being micromanaged enough." So naturally, we're all glad the New York City Department of Education, which knows absolutely everything, is coming around with a ponderous and detailed document that no one has ever seen before and demanding we do absolutely everything on it. Because a day without rubrics is like a day without sunshine.

I guess if I were an effective teacher I'd make up 23 pages of rubrics for my students and demand they tow the line. Instead, I've been limiting my focus every day trying to make them learn English so they can, you know, communicate, have lives, and maybe be happy. The truth is I have never seen any of those goals on any rubric detailing college and career readiness, so they must be frivolous and unnecessary. Only the NYC Department of Education, which actually has a PowerPoint somewhere that says acquisition of English is strictly for the purpose of excelling in academic subjects, has the answers. Otherwise, why would they be in those air-conditioned offices in Tweed while we just hang around having big fun in classrooms?

Me, I'm just glad they're coming. I know my colleagues are delighted. Like all teachers, we haven't got enough pressure on us. Being visited and judged six times by people wielding an incomprehensible rubric designed by a bunch of bureaucrats with no idea what we actually do, or how impossible it is to meet their regulations, is just what we need to keep us on our toes. And naturally, as our jobs are so breezy and easy, we have plenty of time to sit around and incorporate their demands into what we do each and every day. Evidently, the DOE thinks we sit around each day and wait for them to tell us what to do, so they are performing a great service by swooping down like the Spanish Inquisition.

The Sword of Damocles that is the APPR system isn't enough. The huge exodus of new teachers isn't enough either. So lets focus on one single department and support them six full days. Let's amp up the observations and judge the teachers on not one, but rather two distinct rubrics. Because Danielson, while it's on par with the Ten Commandments and never to be questioned, cannot truly assess quality even though it assesses quality perfectly.

Oversized classes? Not our problem. Kids never been to school in their first language? Too bad for you. School at 214% capacity? Deal with it. We're from the Department of Education and we're here to help.

Class Size, Overcrowding, the DOE and Me

Yesterday morning I went to the American Arbitration Association to grieve class sizes. Oddly, we had to evacuate the building for a fire drill. I felt right at home, except for being on the street. We hastily reassembled at 52 Broadway, a block south.

As instructed, I had three copies of our master schedule, which runs over fifty pages. We had 37 oversized classes, personally highlighted by yours truly. There were three other chapter leaders there and I was set to go third.

However, as soon as I got in I learned that our master had been revised. So, lucky me, I got bumped, and had to wait until they made three more copies. Then I sat and highlighted them all over again, which is always big fun. There were fewer oversized classes, of course, so it had to be done

The lawyer from the DOE has an interesting job. Whatever you argue, she has to argue the opposite. There are always reasons to keep classes oversized. For example, if a teacher has a College Now class, they argue that since a college is paying the teacher for that class, the contract doesn't apply. It doesn't matter that the class is taught in a UFT school, that the teacher is a UFT teacher, or that the kids are in a class of 36. It doesn't matter if the kid gets a grade on her report card, or if the kid gets high school credit. Another brilliant win for the DOE.

Then there are the music classes, which are a disgrace. For reasons that elude me completely, required music classes can go up to 50. Required music is actually an academic class. The teacher might be teaching music history, and that could really be enlightening for kids who'd never be exposed to it otherwise. But the way we introduce it to them is via a ridiculously overcrowded class in which their chance of learning is not all that good. So much for how much NYC values culture, or cares whether or not our young people are exposed to it.

I understand why we might leave performing groups, like choirs and orchestras, in groups of 50. These kids are already at a point in which they're engrossed in music, and they wouldn't choose these classes if they weren't motivated. It's a lot different in required music, a class a whole lot of kids would just as soon not take.

There has been some minimal progress on the music front. Classes like guitar, in which students are not performing groups, are now capped at 34. That's a boon for kids who want to learn to play. If you have a kid in a city school, and a class like that is available, see if your kid wants to take it. I'd much rather see my kid play an instrument than read a book about music.

Then there are the classes that are simply oversized. The DOE always asks for exceptions. Always. It's the job of the DOE lawyer to argue for higher class sizes for city kids. It's kind of amazing. The motto of the DOE is "Children First, Always." How the hell is arguing for class sizes that exceed the highest allowable in the state of New York placing children first, ever? Yet that's what they do.

I would not want to be one of those lawyers. 

What does the DOE do that's worthwhile? Well, last night I was at a very encouraging meeting where real live people from the DOE met with UFT members and discussed making space for the students of my preposterously overcrowded school, among others.  They're going to look at it and discuss extending our school, the largest in Queens, to accommodate our capacity, now around 200%.

Wish us luck.

When Things Come Together

 Full disclosure--I may say something good about an AP here, so if you can't take that, please stop reading now.

On Wednesday morning, my colleague Paula Duffy, English teacher and UFT delegate, Eric Mc Carthy, AP Security, and I met near the Francis Lewis trailers at 6 AM. From there, we drove to the Edison Ballroom in Manhattan for the Daily News Hometown Hero Awards.

I had applied posthumously on behalf of my colleague, Kevin O'Connor, who passed away suddenly last Spring. We had known since last summer that he'd won and had to keep it secret. Kevin taught social studies and worked as a dean.

Kevin would surely have done the same for me. Eight years ago I had to take a semester's leave when I got cancer, and he ran around seeking contributions from colleagues. He presented me with a $500 Visa card. That made for a lot of lunch dates for my wife and me before I went back to work.

Kevin had applied for the dean position a few times before he actually got it. He seemed to find his place and a really distinct voice in our school as a dean. He had endless patience for kids, and he had a way of connecting with the most troubled of kids. Kevin had had his own troubles, and he was able to quickly understand what troubled kids needed. Often it was a non-judgmental adult ear, and he was always ready and willing to provide one. Ears like those are hard to find.

Kevin himself found one in our AP Eric McCarthy, who would always listen and help him out with scheduling issues or whatever he needed. Any extended conversation I had with Kevin always included praise for Eric. I was really happy to hear this. As chapter leader, I get to hear absolutely every negative comment about every AP. It was very nice to hear something different for a change, and it's pretty good to be able to repeat it here.

Kevin, like me, had the insane habit of coming to school ridiculously early. He lived in Long Beach, which is not precisely a hop, skip, and a jump from Queens. The only way to beat the traffic is to leave well before you need to. Thus on days when there was some awful accident or something Kevin and I would be among the only people who showed up on time. Our drive to beat the traffic made for many early-morning conversations.

When my colleagues and I got to the Edison Ballroom, they were pretty impressed by the surroundings. I think they expected something like a school breakfast, with tables full of bagels and cream cheese, and a big coffee urn with 500 people waiting in line to take a cup. Instead, we got fresh fruit, table service, eggs, quiche, and asparagus with hollandaise sauce. It was a nice change, though we'd all drunk too much coffee to eat much.

There were celebrity presenters, one for each of the eleven award recipients. There was Chancellor Carmen Fariña, a bunch of TV newscasters, and rapper DMC. But we all almost fell out of our seats when Mayor Bill de Blasio broke from his general comments and started speaking about Kevin O'Connor. It was almost too good to be true to see the Mayor of New York City recognizing someone much beloved by our children, a thousand of whom stood to mourn and praise him at a ceremony held in our courtyard.

We're the largest school system in the country, with 1.1 million students and 76,000 teachers. One out of 300 Americans is a New York City student. So there's a lot of bureaucracy, and a lot of nonsense. There are a lot of people sitting around Tweed who've never taught a day in their lives. There are principals who haven't either. Consequently there's a great deal of nonsense with which we have to contend. (I may even have written about that once or twice.)

But sometimes they really get everything right. On Monday, everything kind of came together, courtesy of sponsors NY Daily News, UFT, CSA, DOE, and CUNY, and the excellent judgment of the mayor, who obviously had choices, and chose to come out and speak about Kevin.

More please.

You Will Differentiate Instruction the Same Way for Everyone

That seems to be the main thrust of the new grading policy. A big thing, for me at least, is the policy on what is and is not acceptable for participation. I had been doing precisely the thing that the DOE seems to loath—granting a participation grade at the end of each marking period. I essentially gave a positive grade for students who raised their hands and were active all the time, a negative grade for those who spent most of the time sleeping, and various degrees in between for others.

Now here’s the thing—DOE gives an example that you give credit each day when a student brings a pencil and notebook. That is, of course, measurable. It’s also idiotic, as it’s a preposterously low standard. I think the reason they gave that example was because it was very easy for them to think of. And thus, we part ways. I actually think about grades a lot. To me, bringing a pencil is only a marginal step above breathing.

But they don’t need to think about it. They just need to sit in air-conditioned offices and tell us what to do. Why bother considering the real lives of lowly teachers, let alone the students they ostensibly serve? Treat everyone the same.

So if someone places a student in my class, tells me she has a 70 IQ, and the girl looks appears so fragile that if you touched her she would break, well, rules are rules. If she doesn’t participate each and every day, screw her, she gets zero. If one of my students is from a country where they have classes of 50, if she’s been taught all her life to sit down and shut up, if she’s so painfully shy that she actually trembles when you ask her a question, give her a zero. Everything is black and white in the ivory towers of the DOE.

Your opinion cannot be quantified. Let’s say you teach strings. Let’s say one of your students comes in and plays a beautiful piece, with perfect vibrato. She makes you feel as though you have reached nirvana. I come in and scratch out something that sounds like I’m strangling a cat.

But we’ve both brought in our violins and cases, and how the hell are you gonna prove she plays better than me? Is it on the rubric? And who’s to say I didn’t find my own piece to be breathtakingly beautiful? Who the hell are you to judge me without a rubric? And if you do have one, and you tell me how badly I played, maybe I’ll just report your ass under Chancellor’s Regulation A-421, verbal abuse. You made me feel bad. So screw you too.

After all, the supervisors are using rubrics. They come in with that Danielson thing and check boxes. These boxes contain the evidence.  Plus they have notes. So who cares if the notes came from the voices in their heads and nothing they say actually happened? I’ve seen supervisors outright make stuff up.

So is that the solution to this ridiculous rule? Do we lie and say that students who didn’t participate did?

I have a disagreement with my co-teacher over what volunteering means. For her, it’s, “Did you raise your hand and get up and do something?” For me, it’s you, you, and you. Thank you for volunteering. I usually do that and call on everyone. Should they get less credit because I forced them to? Or should I wait and hope for the best? Here's another manner in which I part ways with the DOE--I'm willing to negotiate or discuss it. I don't just say, "Here's how we do it. If you don't like it, screw you." Because that's not how you work productively here on Planet Earth. 

Here’s what I think—I think if you’re a teacher you should have discretion. I think it’s ridiculous that everyone must be graded the same without exception. I think what’s excellent for me may be so-so for you. What if you’re the person who plays that violin like an angel? Do you seriously believe the Department of Education won’t place you in a class with a cat strangling, off-key person who can’t spit out a tune to save his life?

Oh, and your self-contained class must be held to the same standard as the gen. ed. class. The fact that there are only 15 kids is the accommodation. That’s it. The fact that the Regents exam holds them to a lower standard doesn’t mean you can because screw you. And screw the kid too. It’s no problem for the DOE, which is impeccable in treating everyone fairly.

And that class with the push-in ESL teacher? The one where everyone is learning about the Civil War for 40 minutes a day and the ESL students are supposed to be concurrently learning English? Too bad the native kids only need to learn about the Civil War. You need to learn both, in the same time, because screw you. NY State says that’s how we have to teach it and that’s the way it is. So screw you, and screw your students too, because you have to be fair but we don’t.

That’s what the new grading policy looks like to me so far.

Stupid Stupid Stupid

This week I’ve been examining the new DOE grading protocols, which insist everything be fair and transparent. I’ve written about their notions about homework, which I deemed borderline clueless, but I’m learning even more about them.

In our school, we are semi-annualized. This means that most classes last a year, though they get one credit for each half. We have an understanding that if a student gets a 55 in January, it will be reversed if the teacher grants a 65 at year’s end. This, since it’s understood by staff, makes sense to me. But it doesn’t make sense to the geniuses at Tweed. You see, the average of 55 and 65 is 60, and if things aren’t properly averaged, it’s likely the world will stop turning. We can’t have that, can we?

So teacher discretion is a thing of the past because it’s all about the numbers. To me, that’s ironic because our esteemed chancellor made her bones by running a school. She was legendary. She turned the whole thing around. And she did so by turning down 6 out of 7 applicants, according to the New York Times. If that’s not juking the stats I don’t know what is.

In any case, God forbid some kid should rehabilitate herself, start attending, and actually learn what I have to teach. If her average does not rise to 65, screw her. Let her take the whole course over for no reason because fairness. After all, there should be no discretion whatsoever on the part of the teacher to help a child. Who the hell do these teachers think they are anyway? Why on earth should their individual subjective judgment or desire to help a child trump an average?

It’s funny how people in NYSED and the DOE who regularly mess with figures have no trust whatsoever for working teachers. People who aren’t trustworthy, for some reason. seem to assume other people aren’t trustworthy either. Now I have my bad qualities, and I could line up a lot of people who would characterize me as a pain in the ass, but my word is my bond.

Nonetheless, that’s not actually the stupidest thing I’ve seen this week. While I’d actually planned on saying it was, something happened this morning that made me reconsider. This morning, after a test, a girl in my class almost passed out. I called for a wheelchair. I was told that there was a directive that they not be used. It seems people have not been sufficiently trained in their usage and maintenance, and are therefore not only unqualified, but also liable in the case of anything untoward occurring.

I’m supposing that someone got hurt while using a wheelchair somewhere. What the geniuses at Tweed fail to consider is the number of people who will be hurt by not using wheelchairs. It must be good to sit around an office all day, come up with stupid ideas, force schools to use them, and blame the people who actually teach children for everything and anything that goes wrong.

Sure beats working.

Correction--Actually the document gives as an example that a student with a minimum grade of 75 in June will have her  January grade adjusted to 75 as well. I'm not sure this is minimum policy. 

Homework--Threat or Menace?

I've recently become privy to a DOE directive about grading policies (and I'm sorry, but I haven't got a link). It says that homework may be used as a tool to measure mastery. It seems to place less value on teachers walking around the room and giving simple credit for homework, or giving a grade of 100% for completion. On this astral plane, that's more than a little disappointing.

Homework is routinely copied, and anyone who doesn't think so is either a fool, in some proverbial ivory tower, or composing directives at Tweed. Most homework I give is relatively easy. While I don't want to make kids miserable, I have no problem giving them a few minutes of review at home. Were I to always grade homework I gave, I'd have to not only penalize students who honestly entered incorrect answers (which they could review and correct the next day in class), but also grant higher grades to those who copied from someone more capable. I'd rather just give everyone 100%.

In my sordid past, I did not give number grades to homework. I simply entered check marks in a book. But I now grade via a program that likes numbers, hence the 100. It's certainly true that students who copy homework get undeserved credit, but I can see who does and does not understand in other ways. For one thing, I'm in the classroom every day and I can see who does and does not complete and understand the work. I have a pretty good idea of who will and will not pass actual tests, which happen to be another indicator of who has mastered the material. Homework alone will not make anyone pass my class.

Another advantage of electronic grading is the chance to assign weight to various assignments. A homework assignment that I grade up or down has a value of one. If I simply walk around and look, it's 100 for completed homework, 50 for incomplete homework, and zero for nothing. My program enables this by allowing me to give a grade of 100 to everyone, and alter only those who vary via icons I set in advance.

I don't do that for all homework, though. if I assign, for example, a paragraph, I'll grade each one individually, and assign a value of two, so that it counts double what a short-answer homework assignment does. If I assign a multi-paragraph assignment, I'll grade that individually, and assign it triple value. On assignments like those, copying is quite a bad idea, as I notice pretty much all of it.

Unfortunately, if I were to expect my students to do homework assignments like that on a daily basis, they'd likely as not hate me and everything I stand for. That would make me sad, particularly as there's no need for it. Also, some kids do not do homework alone, or at all. Some families employ tutors who simply do homework for students. Some kids hand assignments to these tutors, or friends and/ or family who complete them. Often kids, perceiving nothing wrong with this, just tell me.

For a few years, I taught ESL students how to pass the English Regents, which of course they should never have had to take in the first place. At that time, it was a marathon writing test. I showed students how to complete formulaic four-paragraph essays that I would never dream of using for anything but that test. At first, I had students complete a lot of writing at home. That didn't work well.

I'd get papers that clearly had nothing whatsoever to do with what students were writing in class. Sometimes they were not even on topic. Sometimes I could find sources from which students had plagiarized, but often I could not. To stop wasting my time, I utterly eliminated homework in these classes. Absolutely every piece of writing was done in class, before my eyes. It gave me a much better idea of what my students could and could not do.

In fact, there is another potential value to checking homework, one of which the DOE never dreamed (what with their not being real teachers and all). If teachers check homework immediately upon student arrival, it's a great tool to discourage lateness. Oops! You're late and I already checked the homework? Gee, that's too bad. Not doing it again. Hope you're quicker tomorrow.

DOE also wants to make sure there is a policy explaining how late homework can come in, and they're much more patient than I am. When can students make up homework? Should it be a week after it is due? Should it be up to the end of the semester? I'd argue that it ought to be made up only if the student were legitimately absent, and only within a day or two after said student's return. Are teachers seriously expected to monitor whether or not students copied late homework weeks after it was assigned? How long does it take a kid to copy thirty homework assignments and why the hell should I give credit for such dubious effort?

The DOE is obsessed with making everyone college-ready. I taught in colleges for twenty years and I was never handed a policy instructing me to grade like this or like that. The DOE thinks everything can be measured on a rubric. The DOE is wrong. We are routinely subjective in many things, but our opinions are crafted on observations of who is and is not doing the work, or at least trying to, when we spend time with our classes each and every day. There needs to be a balance, and in fact there needs to be trust. Of course people whose careers revolve around manipulating data to make themselves look better have trust issues.

Nonetheless, teachers, as professionals, ought to be able to exercise discretion. If not, why are we even here?

On Marking and Marginalizing

I'm getting field reports from my friends in exile. They're off grading Regents exams in schools that are Far, Far Away. They keep asking me how things are on the home planet. I've been proctoring and sitting in the reserve room. I even got to go out to lunch, once, but I can't count on lightning striking twice in the same place.

Of course they're away because here in Fun City, teachers are assumed to be worthless layabouts who sit in classrooms reading the New York Times all year. Toward the end of the semester, they try to make it look like they're actually doing something, so what they do is falsify results on Regents exams, instruments so precise they are the only valid measurements of how kids perform. For example, as a teacher of beginning ELLs, it's assumed I'd give each and every incoherent scribble an excellent grade because the students draw breath.

That's not an offensive assumption, is it?

In most of the state, they deal with the perfidy of teachers by swapping exams, i.e., you grade my class and I'll grade yours. But in New York City, we're scrupulous about ethics. That's why we insist on perfect leadership and you never, ever read about administrators being arrested for drug possession or having sex on official DOE property. It's those filthy, cheating, unscrupulous teachers to blame for it all.

So we don't swap exams. We're so scrupulous that we don't let teachers even grade tests from their home schools. We either send them packing to other buildings or pay them hourly to grade tests. After all, why shouldn't we pay people extra to do what they've always done as a matter of course? That's a worthwhile expenditure, isn't it?

In fact, we've taken it one step further. My colleague reports that she and another teacher at our school are not permitted to grade together. This, of course, is because they would surely conspire to pass everyone. Or fail everyone. Maybe they'd conspire to pass some and fail others. It's tough to say. The only thing of which we can be certain is that each and every element of this plot is diabolical. Thank goodness the great minds of our city have come together to prevent such an outrage.

The takeaway, though, is that teachers are cunning and ruthless, utterly self-serving, and must not be permitted to get together and hatch their evil plans. No doubt that's why the powers that be are so intent on crushing our unions over at SCOTUS.

Surely that will teach us a valuable lesson.

We're from the DOE and We're Here to Help

The UFT Contract calls for a remarkable volume of meetings. Most of my colleagues spend 80 minutes after work on Monday, and 70 on Tuesday doing all sorts of things. Those I speak with are not happy. Not even a little. I guess it's good to have time to contact parents, and if only the kids will cooperate by limiting their misbehavior or notable achievements to Tuesdays it may eventually prove to be a good idea.

Of course, multi-session schools like mine are supposed to figure out some other way to enable PD and all its wonderfulness. For months, we didn't. But we finally came to an agreement. We would have monthly sessions that would enable teacher teams, parental contact, other professional work and whatever else the UFT MOA demands. Our SBO passed by a huge margin.

But then we had to provide dates to the DOE. No, not those kind of dates. I know it must be tough for fanatical ideologues left over from the Bloomberg regime to find people who will talk to them, but that wasn't our problem. Our problem was establishing dates we could change our school schedule. It turns out it was too late for us to do this in December, and we could only modify three days per semester. After all, rules are rules.

Who cares if the UFT modified the contract and requires all this extra stuff? We have to follow DOE rules, no matter how nonsensical they may be. Let them bitch and moan that we don't have enough PD, but perish forbid they should bend a rule. It's OK to cut learning time absolutely every single day, but if you do it more than three days per semester the world may come to an end, even if you're demonstrably offering significantly more of it than most schools in the city.

So maybe the PD, parental contact and Other Stuff is not so vital after all. If it were, maybe they'd stop overcrowding schools in the first place. If it were, maybe they'd build us enough space to comfortably accommodate the students we already have. If it were, maybe they'd blow up the leaky moldy miserable trailers and replace them with classrooms that respect the kids we serve.

But they aren't going to bother with trivialities like that. They'd rather sit around in Tweed. After all, there are vital rules that must be protected.

Another way to accommodate the Very Important Stuff, a way that several of my neighbor schools adopted, is to shorten the classes to 40 minutes and have 40 minutes of PD before or after every single day. I am not hearing rave reviews of this system. One teacher told me she fought an urge to slit her throat during one of these never-ending sessions.

I suppose if I wanted my colleagues to tar and feather me and run me out of town by rail I'd float a similar SBO. But that prospect, for some inexplicable reason, does not much appeal to me.

It appears being reasonable toward those of us who wish to be reasonable is expressly against DOE policy. It's never been done that way.

I'm naive to even entertain the notion they'd help us help them.

No Clean Air For You

That's a photo of the cafeteria at P.S. 256 in the Rockaways, a school for children with developmental difficulties, autism or severe emotional disorders.

According to a report in the NY Daily News, the rest of the school building isn't in much better condition than the cafeteria. The peeling paint, crumbling plaster and broken tiles in the building contains asbestos, lead and other dangerous substances.

Now I'm no scientist, but if the rest of the building looks even half as bad as the photo of the cafeteria, I'd have to say the place sure isn't safe for use.

Apparently the Department of Education doesn't feel the same way, however. The Daily News says education officials "toured" the building in July and "made note of the disrepair" but continued to allow 60 staff members and 120 children to finish out the summer session at P.S. 256, which ended on August 15.

Gee, that makes sense. Kids with developmental disabilities need continuity, you know? You wouldn't want to upset them by moving them midway through the summer session.

DOE officials haven't decided what to do with the school yet, but the Daily News says they are meeting today to "review the situation."

I suspect now that the News has done the story and the photos have made it into the press, the school will be closed for a bit and the kids and staff will be moved somewhere else.

But you know that if the story hadn't made it into the papers, Chancellor Jolly Joel Klein and Mayor Moneybags could have cared less if kids and staff at P.S. 256 were breathing in asbestos every day and carrying the fibers home on their clothes to friends and family.

Now if these kids were attending a charter school or one of Bill Gates' small schools, that's a different story. As NYC Educator noted yesterday, the DOE has been pushing regular schools out of spaces in their buildings in order to place newly formed charter schools.

You see, all school students are equal, but charter school students are just a little more equal than others and charter schools must always receive precedence over the needs of regular schools.

After all, this is the mayor's reputation as an "education reformer," we're talking about here, and given the mayor's desire to break term limits and run for a third mayoral term, he's got to continue to show "accomplishments" to make an effective case to voters.

So charter schools must be given every opportunity and every resource necessary to make the mayor and the chancellor (and perhaps Bill Gates or some other corporate "education reformer") look good at year's end. Whatever it takes - space, money, clean air - nothing's too good for those charter school kids (see here for the latest charter school p.r. extravaganza/exercise in self-aggrandizement by Jolly Joel and Mayor Moneybags.)

But you kids and staff at P.S. 256, stop whining and finish your summer session - you're lucky you have environmental contamination at your school. If your school had been safe and clean, they would have stuck a charter school where you are and put you guys into a series of broom closets in the basement.

This is serious stuff, of course. Health problems related to lead show up pretty quickly, but health conditions related to asbestos do not show up for decades, so by the time any of the kids, family members of kids, or staff members are diagnosed with cancer as a result of their exposure to the contaminants at P.S. 256, the DOE and city officials responsible will be long gone.

Nonetheless, if that building at P.S. 256 contains exposed asbestos and DOE officials avoided doing anything about the problem until forced to by negative press reports, they will be guilty of murder when kids, family members of kids and staff members start dying from asbestos-related conditions decades from now.

There ought to be a study set up to track the health conditions of all the people exposed to that building, including family members (even people who have not been exposed to the contaminated site can be in danger because asbestos can be carried away from a contaminated area on clothing and other personal articles.)

The study ought to track how many of these people come down with health problems that can be traced to asbestos and/or lead exposure. That way we will know just how many people were harmed by this mess.

But I bet those will be the one set of statistics that normally stat-happy Jolly Joel or Mayor Moneybags won't want tracked.

Uncle Joel and the Parents

Let's see, the DoE bounced the NEST school's principal after the parents successfully fought off the arrival of the Moneybags Charter School. Then, they installed a principal who caused a bunch of those troublemakers to be hauled off in the paddy wagon.

Now, they're doing a friendly little audit on those nasty folks who dared involve themselves in the school their kids attended.

Is something going on here? Nah. It's just a coincidence.

Doubtless parents all over the city are saying, "Gee, I want to get more involved in my kid's school too."

Thanks to Schoolgal