In 2017

I was at a meeting the other day where an administrator told me, “In 2017, we don’t do things like that.” The particulars of that discussion aren't  important. The fact is a lot of things have changed. I’m not the same teacher I was 20 years ago. I’m sensitive to what goes on around me and I evolve as necessary. I love using computers, for example, and ever since I was kicked out of the trailers I’ve been able to use them in my classroom.

Here’s the thing—I walked out of the meeting about what 2017 was like and directly into a classroom that was diabolical. The AC, which was fixed the previous day, no longer worked. I’m in the middle of a project. I’m working up to taking my classes to see Wicked on Broadway, courtesy of TDF. I therefore have to show my kids The Wizard of Oz and at least try to make them understand it. Try making anyone understand anything in a hundred degree humid room.

You’d think in 2017 you’d have air conditioning. I mean, how does anyone muster the audacity to lecture teachers on the way children should be treated and then dump them into hellish environments? If some kid got offended because I told him to sit down without the requisite happy smile and I therefore get a letter in my file, why don’t the assistant principal, the principal, the chancellor and the mayor get them when kids have to sit through lessons in rooms unfit for man or beast? And as if that isn’t enough, they challenge and lecture the girl who comes in a halter top with cutoffs split up to her belt loops. Given climate conditions, she’s the smartest person in the room. Instead of sending her home, they should make her valedictorian.

In 2017 we should know that teacher voice is a thing. It’s got various meanings and implications, but to me, teacher voice is how you choose to approach your job. It’s entirely possible that you do that in a completely different manner than I do. But that doesn’t suggest either of us is better or worse. Yet in 2017 we have a checklist. Teacher did or didn’t do this, that or the other thing. Therefore teacher is highly effective or teacher sucks. I’m sorry, but a competent administrator could write up a lesson and explain what is good and what could be improved, and do it without a cookie-cutter checklist. A competent administrator used to be a teacher, and has his or her own teacher voice. Maybe that voice could help other teachers.

Here’s the thing, though—In 2017, and you might want to sit down before you hear this, but in 2017 not all supervisors are competent. Some are small-minded and power obsessed. Some think they are smarter than they actually are. Some think there’s only one way to do things and can’t conceive that things could be done any other way. You have to use the green card and the red card to see if students understand. If you don’t, you suck and I’ll rate you ineffective. I knew a supervisor who thought that. Maybe, if administrators aren't capable of broader thinking, they should should be working at Burger King, where the mission is more clear-cut.

In fact, I knew a supervisor who had a member so on edge that every time he saw him, he had an a-fib episode. The following year, another member in the same department had a heart attack in the hall. That, of course, didn’t stop the supervisor from walking in her classroom on a half day when only eight students were in attendance, and giving her an awful writeup. The year after that he topped himself once again when a member he threatened to rate ineffective went home and died prematurely.

In the UF of T in 2017, there are seven elected members of the High School Executive Board. We are all from the opposition caucus. The Vice President is from the dominant caucus because in 2017 high school teachers are not allowed to select their own VP. And at the last Executive Board meeting, they changed the rules so that we have to place any resolutions on the tables 30 minutes before the meeting. That’s problematic because it’s anti-democratic. But there are other issues here.

In 2017, I’d be surprised if even a single Unity Executive Board member did not hold some paid position at UFT. At the very least they’re all delegates, voting at conventions where, in 2017, high school teachers have no democratically elected representation whatsoever. It’s a little different for us. In 2017, I travel from my non-air-conditioned classroom in Queens to 52 Broadway, and my fellow members come in from boroughs across the city.

Unlike the union leaders, we don’t have secretaries to run off copies. We don’t have people to run to the room and hand out stuff. As a matter of fact, in 2017, I’m not even sure whether we’re allowed to go up and enter the room thirty minutes before the meeting starts. Unity now says if we submit in advance, they'll print things up for us and distribute them. Here's the thing--given they outnumber us, and given they have voted everything we've presented down with the exception of one (which they cut to the bone), they're effectively asking that we give them advance notice of everything we do. In an already rigged system, that's an unfair advantage they neither need nor merit.

Regarding advance notice, they do nothing of the sort for us. They have the numbers to pass whatever, and our input is neither sought nor welcome. In fact we support virtually all they present, because we are not contrary for the sake of being so. They sprang the anti-democratic resolution on us without warning. Maybe they thought, given the time constraints, that like them, we wouldn't be able to respond. They were wrong.

It's easy to give a sincere response. It's harder to rationalize doing the wrong thing. If Unity can't think of appropriate ways to respond to resolutions that unequivocally support teachers and students, resolutions about class size and abusive administrators, in 2017, time is not the issue.

Rubric's Cube, or How Uniform Grading Policies Saved Western Civilization

Rubrics are perfect, or so you'd think if you heard the nonsense I do at meetings. And teachers have now lost quite a bit of discretion over how students are graded in city schools. There was a memo that went out from the chancellor, there was a meeting of the principals, and evidently this memo is tantamount to the Ten Commandments. Thou Shalt Tell Students Exactly What Basis Marking Has. Thou Shalt Not Have More than 49% in Subjective Measures.

I've always taken a holistic view of grading. Even as we entered an electronic age of grading, I was able to adjust percentages by counting some things more than others. For example, I am not unaware there is a whole lot of copying of homework. By assigning short answer homework a weight of 1, and written homework a weight of 2 or 3, I've been able to compensate a little for that. I also didn't think it was that bad that kids could earn high grades for simple completion. After all, if they failed tests and failed to participate, they simply didn't pass the class anyway.

My layout for grades has been 50% tests and quizzes, 25% participation, and 25% homework. I gave participation grades each semester. This has now been expressly prohibited by the geniuses at Tweed, who of course know better than those of us who fritter away our time actually teaching New York City's 1.1 million schoolchildren. So I will now have to give these grades more frequently and maybe write a rubric expressly explaining what it is for. This will result in more work for me and exactly the same grades. And frankly, short of posting Bill Gates-style perpetual video surveillance in the classroom, there will be no way to ascertain whether or not I am just making stuff up. (You know, like there's no way to determine whether or not supervisors make stuff up about the Danielson rubric.)

Our new department policy, if I recall correctly, is 50% tests, 10% quizzes, 20% participation and classwork, 15% graded homework, and 5% non-graded homework. This will help me not at all. This will help my students not at all. However, it will put uppity teachers like me in our place. How dare we presume to assess our students ourselves? Discretion is for professionals like Carmen Fariña, who made a brilliant success our of her school by hand picking all the students in a process nearly selective as that of Harvard. Me, I teach whoever they put in front of me. I try to do the best I can by them, my system worked fine, and now it's complicated for no good reason.

Why can't I make tests and quizzes one category and simply give tests more weight than quizzes? What if I think frequent quizzes are more important than tests and give me a better picture of where my kids are at any given point? Do I now need to test more frequently? And how can I do that when the school now says I can only test on certain days every week? And since supervisors are always quacking about formative assessment, why do tests now need to count for 60%? Isn't language, which I teach, largely about oral communication? Aren't there abundant tests in my students' home countries, don't they pass them and yet arrive here with little or no ability to communicate in English? Doesn't that argue that a test-based standard is not optimal? Do you judge the English ability of people you meet by how well they score on tests?

And let's go a little further into the woods now--do you think that I teach the same as everyone else? Do you want me to? If so, why not just stick a computer in front of the class? If not, why on earth would you think that assessing students subject to my voice is exactly the same as assessing students subject to another? Is it possible that I might, perish forbid, take the tack that actual day to day communication and survival are more important than how you do on the preposterous NYSESLAT exam about Hammurabi's Code? And if I actually do go the Hammurabi's Code route, how can you make sure the tests, quizzes, and whatever I give will make my students really know Hammurabi's Code?

Another argument I've heard is that teachers keep poor records and therefore need a tight rein so as to correct that. Let me tell you something--people who keep poor records do not need a more complicated and/ or convoluted grading system. If people keep poor records, under this system their records will get even worse. My nature is a little sloppy, but I've had college professors who sat on tests for 6-8 weeks, and then tested us on things without letting us know whether we understood the basis for them. I hated those teachers. For that reason, and also to cover my proverbial keester, I overcompensate. If I give a test, it's like a hot potato. I have to get it graded immediately, no matter what, and I almost always get it back to students the next day. I know if I don't do that they'll probably never be returned at all.

It's too bad that teacher discretion is given such short shrift. I very much believe teacher voice is a thing like writer voice, and that it varies teacher to teacher. Do some teachers work better for some kids than others? Yes, of course. But doesn't it benefit kids to learn how to deal with a variety of influences, even some they don't necessarily like?

Why does everything and everyone have to be exactly the same? How on earth does that help anyone, particularly in these times of "alternative truth?"