Under Assault: Teaching in NYC: Spring break means time to be creative

Read Mr. Talk on DC chancellor's grammar

What the critics say

Jay S. Jacobs: an interview with LW for Pop Entertainment

"A Lucy Woodward show will get you hot and bothered.
It is a sultry, jazzy, torchy experience that feels genuinely out of time and at the same moment timeless. In fact, more than any other artist, perhaps the music and showmanship of a Woodward show is reminiscent of the early, jazzy shows of young Bette Midler."

Chuck Taylor's top-10 pick (Billboard) for 2008:
"One-stop shopping for pop, soul & jazz; mirth, elegance & sensuality; across-the-board melodic idealism."

Diane Ravitch with Brian Lehrer

Click this link for the 3/7/2010 interview.

And click this link to read George Schmidt's review of the book, from which I quote:

"As we look favorably on Diane Ravitch's scathing critique of most of the main pillars of corporate school reform, we need to remember that it was Ravitch who was one of the most prolific — and dishonest — purveyors of the falsification of history and fact which has been necessary, to this day, to the vicious spread of attacks on public education. 'Race to the Top' anyone? The impact of those lies-repeated-as-history continues to this day."

David Pakter's comment on the Village Voice blog

For Those Interested In The Truth About New York City's Rubber Rooms....

I am that New York City Educator mentioned in Roy Edroso's VILLAGE VOICE story who is charged with “bringing a plant to school” but that is not the real reason I was banished to one of New York City’s infamous Rubber Room gulags.

These Big Apple "Guantanamos" which represent abominations that exist no where else in NY State, are being used more and more in New York City to retaliate against Whistle-blowers or teachers in general who expose corruption and/or mismanagement in the 23 Billion dollar New York City Dept/Board of Education.

Under the Dictatorial reign of Mayor Bloomberg and the Faux Chancellor Joel Klein, Esq., (a former Federal Prosecutor, who had to have strings pulled in Albany to get appointed via a "Special Waiver", since Klein lacked any of the normally required credentials for the position of Chancellor), the NYC Board of Education has increased its power and ability to intimidate its critics, exponentially.

Although many people in the News media have written stories dealing with the Rubber Rooms, the clear bias towards the teachers sitting in the City's legions of Rubber Rooms is always evident to any impartial reader.

There is always that lingering insinuation and/or subtle, or not so subtle suggestion that while a few teachers may not belong in the Rubber Rooms, by and large, allegedly and supposedly, the vast majority of the hundreds and hundreds of teachers sent there, often for years, probably did "something" to deserve this Fate.

In my case the reasons offered for my removal are so ludicrous, bordering on the preposterous, that one must actually attend one of my State Teacher Trial Hearings to believe that the charges even exist.

Let me say here that I fully and openly confess to the "charge" I brought some plants to my school to decorate the lobby. But that is not the real reason I was removed from my position.

Should anyone wish to know the real reason/s I was removed from my position, it is only necessary to visit the following website/s :

http://www.uft.org/news/teacher/top/axed/

http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2008/12/david-pakter-nyc-teacher-and.html

http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2008/07/nyc-chancellor-joel-klein-esqs-dirty.html

http://underassault.blogspot.com/2009/11/raw-experience-into-words.html

http://www.endteacherabuse.org/Pakter.html

There in the first website above, one will see a photograph of me being Decorated by the former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in New York’s City Hall, as a “Teacher of the Year” for “Exceptional Achievement in Education”. I had designed, built from the ground up, and personally funded, the first premiere Medical Illustration Program in the United States for gifted Minority students.

The goal of the program was to serve as a launching pad to propel those students from socio-economically deprived backgrounds into Ivy League Universities and into careers including Medicine, as Physicians and research Scientists.

The success of this unique program was such, that it attracted the attention of Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist, Clara Hemphill.

But once I became a Whistle-blower the New York City Dept/Board of Education went after me with a vengeance not witnessed in decades and has led to multiple Federal Lawsuits against those responsible for the blistering amounts of Whistle-blower Retaliation that has been directed at me for the past 5 years.

To see just a small example of what New York’s students are being deprived of please visit my personal website:

http://www.OldMasterPortraits.com

I would welcome being contacted by Mr. Roy Edroso, who ranks among the few reporters who does not buy into all the smoke and mirror propaganda constantly put out by Chancellor Klein's personal public relations machine stooges.

Any member of the news media who is interested in getting the real story behind the skewed and embarrassingly slanted slurs and smears directed at the countless teacher/victims of the NYC Board of Education under Bloomberg and Klein, can with very little effort, explore and research the reality of what New York’s “Rubber Room” system is really all about and learn how these Rubber Room “reassignment centers” are used to bludgeon, retaliate against and crush any teacher who has the temerity to Whistle-blow and/or otherwise report corruption and/or wrongdoing of any kind, within the 23 billion dollar New York Dept/Board of Education.

My upcoming State 3020-a, Teacher Trial Hearing dates are Thursday and Friday, December 10 and 11 and will take place on the 6th floor at 49 Chambers Street in lower Manhattan at 10 AM.

The building is situated directly across the street from the huge marbled and Palatial size, Tweed Courthouse, which is now the headquarters and seat of power from which a non- Education credentialed individual named Joel Klein, rules his vast 23 Billion dollar Public schools Empire - with an iron fist it should be noted.

That immense edifice to the vast unbridled corruption and theft of Public resources, perpetrated by the notorious "Boss Tweed", in the last Century, before he was finally hauled off to jail, is perhaps a fitting and perfect business address for today's present NYC Board of Education.

Klein and his willing lackeys and confederates are guilty of many ill conceived acts and decisions that have done incalculable harm to the dedicated Teachers, Parents and Public School children of our beloved City. But the tide is slowly turning and New Yorkers are starting to fight back.

And Bravo and bravo encore for that because our Children are not for sale, not even to a Billionaire and his "Legend in his own Mind", Faux Chancellor.

Attend a former "Teacher of the Year" turned Whistle-blower's Trial December 10 and 11. See how your hard earned Tax Dollars are spent to crush dissent in a free Society.

The author of this blog

UA has been a teacher for 20 some years. She has built more than 15 school choruses in this city and conducted them in well over 100 concerts. Her absences have been infrequent, her ratings satisfactory, and she teaches with enthusiasm. Up to 450 students have passed through her classroom each school year.

UA was a musicologist before she became a teacher and held the position of senior internal editor on the world's largest and most comprehensive encyclopedia of music (The New Grove Dictionary of Music, 29 vols.). She is known for her scholarly work on some of the longest (and most tedious!) bibliographical articles in the main work and the subsequent offshoot reference books. She also trained as a coloratura in New York, London and Italy, and has a working knowledge of several other languages.

After a flirtation with rumba/tango, UA wrote a play on ballroom partner dancing called Real Changes, which makes side trips into Zen, intellectualism/eroticism, tragedy/comedy, a parody of Shakespeare's Love's Labours Lost, Nietzsche's early works, and nirvana. (She is still not clear which of these should dominate the psyche, but is happy to have spent four years trying to find out. You can, too: call Oscar for dance lessons and a journey into the abyss, 917-922-1073.)

Before her recent retirement, UA thought she could pass the remaining years of her career in relative calm. But this was not to be. She was excessed for the second time in her career two years ago and was for a year and a half a sub, or in the vernacular, an ATR. A successful grievance restored her to a position, but the principal has many ways to keep someone squirming. Teaching fully out of license was one of them, during which time she lost her desire to teach at all.

It is very hard to tell whether she was excessed in that period because her subject is music (which is not particularly respected in this school system), or because she was becoming too old, too expensive, or too ... "vocal."

Email:
UnderAssault@earthink.net

Under Assault: Teaching in NYC

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Spring break means time to be creative

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