Teacher Detention

Many of my colleagues are being forced to stay after school today. The other day, a teacher pointed out to me it was nothing more than detention for teachers. She found this ironic, since students in her school are not given detention. Worse, none of the teachers had done anything to merit detention. This notwithstanding, UFT leadership managed to negotiate teacher detention on a twice weekly basis.

Every teacher (and a whole lot of other people) knows the Sunday night blues. Monday, despite your best efforts, it's time to get back into the grind. You have to get up early in the morning. When you were a student, your father told you one day you'd get used to rising early, and that, of course, is the biggest lie you've heard in your whole life. You'll have to wear shoes, which have always been an unwelcome lifestyle imposition. And your body, after a few nights of staying up late, refuses to cooperate.

Monday morning, you consume copious amounts of coffee. It's that awful French Roast your wife favors. Though it tastes and looks like mud, you know it's strong and hope for the best. You steal a Red Bull from your kid. Nothing works. You wonder whether it's viable to simply pump caffeine into your vein, and why no one has started such a business in back of a 7-11 somewhere. Nonetheless, you soldier on. You get into your car and not only maneuver to work, but also manage not to crash into anyone or anything.

You stumble into work, and your students are in a foul mood. It turns out their weekends are over too. They retreat into the world of their prohibited cell phones. You remind them that's unacceptable, but they take steps to conceal them from you. Smart phones are suddenly hidden under desks and behind books, in such numbers as to divide your already limited attention. You are outnumbered.

And then there's that kid who needs your attention every moment. She demands it repeatedly, in new and innovative ways. You try to focus on the task at hand, but she has a voice like a foghorn, a voice that cuts through everything and anyone. You can't focus on anything else, and neither can a single student in your class. You've already tried every trick and diversion in your playbook and she's devised a counter to each and every one. You are outshouted and outmatched.

Of course you are observed. Your supervisor shakes his head in disgust at this obstreperous student. He gets up to intervene, but doesn't know any more tricks than you. He fails to contain this 15-year-old threat to democracy and the American way, and does so spectacularly, in front of you and 34 other witnesses. The girl feels no one and nothing can stop her, her confidence soars, and she can and will be contained by no teacher. This week is gonna be tough for sure.

But for your boss, who studied for and took the AP job to get out of the classroom, it's a reminder that his classroom was always out of control. He couldn't wait to get that office gig, to sit and look at a computer screen, to sit in the back and conduct observations. It was an egregious error to confront that girl, that girl who's smarter than you and, of course, smarter than him too. After this very public failure, he jots down notes that will make sure Charlotte Danielson damns you straight to hell.

But he doesn't stop there, because at the end of the period it's time for him to run 80 minutes of PD. While he's got a list of crap to talk about, it's suddenly important for him to rationalize his miserable 15-minute observation. Naturally he does so at your expense, making invidious comparisons about data suggesting that some teachers control their class better than others. He coyly tries to avoid naming you, but manages to describe your age, your experience, your appearance, and your miserable attitude in excruciating detail. All of your colleagues know who he's talking about. It takes him 87 minutes, and everyone is fidgeting but afraid to get up and walk out until he finishes venting.

Fortunately, tomorrow you get 35 minutes for parental contact, so he'll only be able to belittle you for the other 35, assuming he doesn't go much overtime.

Teacher Torture

That's what a Queens chapter leader called the 80 minutes of PD most city teachers are subject to every Monday for the foreseeable future. Of course UFT leadership deems it a great victory, since there is now a committee that will sit around and figure out how to inflict plan this. The idea, of course, is that with teacher input everything will be much better. Of course, I've been to teacher-planned PD sessions for years, and I can't see a whole lot revolutionary about it.

Mulgrew asked the city chapter leaders last week whether it was PD or faculty meetings, and there was a moan that very much suggested the latter. After sitting through decades of meetings planned by administrators, almost all of which I'd have done just as well without, it's kind of tough for me to understand just why Carmen Fariña determined it would all be different this year. Did she think that because her PD was perfect in every way that it would be magically replicated citywide? Did she think that administrators everywhere would finally discover the secret sauce and motivate all the teachers who'd reluctantly sat through years of tedious and unnecessary meetings? Did she think that teachers, who supposedly never had any voice in PD before, would all wake up experts in administering it?

Of course this innovation was a great victory for the UFT, just as the small group instruction was a great victory for the UFT. Of course, when this great victory was over, it was just as great a victory to get rid of it. It must be fabulous to run the UFT, go to gala luncheons, and declare victory all the time no matter what happens. We achieved a great victory. Now we dumped it and that is yet another great victory.

One teacher told me they spend their extra time writing curriculum, you know, the one that was supposed to be in place this year so we could have Common Core and Mulgrew wouldn't punch you in the face. Another told me she sat through 80 minutes of lectures about Danielson and wanted nothing more than to slit her throat.

And that's not to mention Tuesdays, with 35 minutes of parent contact, because the only time parents ever need to be contacted is on Tuesdays, and if anything happens on Wednesday they can just sit and wait six days to hear about it. Then there is another 35 minutes for OPW, other professional work, which I've heard referred to as OFS. (We'll call it Other Frigging Stuff for the purposes of this column.)

One of the great things about teaching is you're never tired after a full day, so what's better than sitting for another 80 minutes on Monday? And surely all principals are ethical, and none would ever have teachers do extra work for which they should be paid. Nor would they ever give a dull, wasteful meeting. Doubtless teachers are jumping up and down for chances to discuss the new educational programs the geniuses who dream up such things have concocted. And next year, when the same geniuses discard those programs for new ones of equally dubious value, teachers will be equally excited to discuss them too.

It's a great thing we're using the time like this, rather than frittering it away by adding to class time. How horrible and wasteful it would be if we were actually teaching instead of going to meetings.

Yes, Virginia, There Are Good Meetings

I spent last weekend at SOS 2012, surrounded by people who are passionate about education, people who look beyond the headlines, people who do not take preposterous nonsense at face value. This ought to be status quo, but when you consider that even the New York Times runs editorials that don't consider, let alone bother themselves with fundamental research, it's far rarer than it should be.

When you're with a group of well-informed people seeking real solutions to real problems, real discussions ensue. You learn that democracy is not precisely getting to choose between Tweedledee and Tweedledum once every four years. You learn that there is a lot of give and take and coming to a consensus, you learn to listen, consider, compromise, and seek the best answer for the largest group of people. It's not precisely the narrow concept we still teach our children.

You also learn that the discussion does not entail how we can best enact the latest idiotic fancy of Bill Gates, recycled by our billionaire mayor. Somehow, when dozens of teachers are sitting around hearing the latest way to save their school from a groundless closing, it doesn't inspire the sort of spirit that enhances the esprit de corps.

I tend to dread meetings. Many revolve around the latest trendy silver bullet. This is the only way to do it, and the way we told you to do it last year is complete garbage. We all know that next year they'll tell us what they said this year was complete garbage, and that there will be yet another formula. Or perhaps they'll bring back something from five years ago and tell us no, it turns out it wasn't complete garbage after all.

Sometimes meetings are about how kids shouldn't be late. It's bad, and it's not good, and therefore we shouldn't tolerate it. Continue along those lines for forty minutes, and you have an idea of how tedious and mind-numbing this exercise can become.

It's not always the fault of administrators. They're contractually required to put on these meetings, whether or not they have anything to say. But here's the thing--if they are well-informed, smart and caring, they can actually do things of value, and help kids. Understandably, that's a high hurdle when they work for people imposing baseless nonsense on them, us, and the kids we're sworn to serve.