Pardon me while I roll over laughing at LeRoy Barr's paragraph in the Chapter Leaders Weekly on the UFT's new campaign to report special ed violations.
“There is no excuse”: Urge members to report IEP violations
This week the UFT launched a new campaign to protect services for special education students. Already in the first week members have reported dozens of violations to the union’s new hotline and special Web section, and the campaign’s message is “report, report, report.” Special ed programs exist to ensure that all children, including those with disabilities and challenges get the assistance and services they need and deserve. With yet another reorganization of special ed on the horizon, the UFT has launched this proactive campaign to help ensure that students get the services, support and resources they need, called THERE IS NO EXCUSE. “Accept no excuse. Defend the IEP. It’s the law,” the campaign posters, flyers and Web site remind members . . .
Yeah, right.
While we all stand up to "report, report, report", Tweedites will swat us down with an armory of firepower — letters in the file, pop-in visits, U-observations and U-ratings, allegations from nowhere, 3020-a charges, police action, rubber room, you name it.
The city doesn't care one whit about special ed violations. The fact that the problem is endemic is proof positive they haven't been a high priority for them.
I can't believe the union is now asking teachers to do the dirty work. If this were not the BloomKlein era — more than that: the Jack Welch era — maybe we could all afford the luxury of defending the defenseless.
But with politicians so corrupt, and chancellors and many of the people around them so profoundly incapable of educating children, with a UFT that shows no sign of understanding what's bedeviling the whole system, Barr's call for action should fall on deaf ears: OURS. The only career you're about to lose is your own.
A couple of years ago I wrote a long letter to a principal and head of guidance about why on earth my register of 50 kids had 35 kids in it with specific needs: many had IEPs and were doing their major subjects in smaller classes, there were hearing impaired, those barely speaking English, four grades all mixed in with each other. I got no response to that letter, and no help either. They didn't even send me a para.
A year later when the situation remained virtually the same, I made some inquiries at the State level to see what percentage of special ed kids could be placed in a regular ed class. I got this response:
The state does not have any regulation on capping the number of students with disabilities who are mainstreamed. This might be a NYC DOE regulation/policy.
So I wrote to the special ed administrator at the city level to see if NYC had any policy on the numbers you can mainstream at one time. Turns out there weren't any caps at the city level either, but the person asked me if I wanted to pursue the matter further.
Here's my response . . . which I didn't have the guts at the time to send.
Thank you for your answer, and please don't bring the regional administrator in at this point because I am too afraid of retaliation at my school. I believe that if I do what you suggest, I will be perceived as a troublemaker, and I am not yet ready to take on that responsibility at this time.
My own career has taken strange and troublesome turns when at various times I took stances as chapter leader to help teachers and students alike (in class size issues, lack of textbooks, etc.)
I know I have the right — possibly even the obligation, for the students' sake — to check the IEPs of everyone in my classes, but I have not done this yet because I do not want to be hurt.
But I do want to know the DOE's position on this, and it is difficult for me to believe that there is no fixed policy, since UFT personnel did tell a colleague of mine that the ratio should be no more than 40-60%, and they must have gotten the number from somewhere.
I was hoping, therefore, that you could tell me — hypothetically! — whether 50% or more students who get their major subjects in small, self-contained classes 15:1 or 15:1:1 is a tolerable percentage when they are placed INSIDE of a total class register of between 45 and 50 students and no para. If one does the math, it means you can have close to DOUBLE the number of self-contained kids AS WELL AS 20 regular ed all in the same class! And no para. Furthermore, I think it is the case that other students have IEPs as well (resource room kids), but their class codes do not indicate that they are in self-contained classes.
I am concerned for everyone in these classrooms: the teacher, the spec. ed kids, and the regular ed students. The teacher is judged and held to the same standards as every other teacher in the building with smaller and far more homogeneous classes, even though he/she is responsible for educating potentially 50 kids 5 periods a day with no help from a para. This is very unfair and I have brought this up with the union. But it is also unfair to the kids coming from the self-contained classes who walk into these huge rooms with huge registers and know they have limited access to the teacher to help them through the work. Some of these kids just sit blankly, unable to do much else but stare into space; many just don't show up.
And lastly, I am concerned for the regular ed kids, who are not getting taught at the speeds or depths they should when the percentage of poorer learners and/or higher incidence of acting out behavior is so high.
As I say, I am concerned enough to ask you for clarification, but I am very afraid of retaliation and negative consequences if I take any specific action at the school, like requesting a whole bunch of IEPs and possibly getting involved with asking the school to enforce them.
I hope you can understand my fears and be able to give me some statement of DOE policy should the above hypothetical class make-up exist.
With appreciation for your time and kindest regards,
As I say, I did NOT send this letter, but the administrator could have easily found where I was working because she knew my name and subject. Did she make inquiries at my school on her own? Could it have contributed to my eventually being excessed? or my being blacklisted, or never having gotten an interview on the Open Market?
Coming back to Barr's email, here's what the union has to say about the protection they have in mind for us should we go about reporting, reporting, reporting:
You will also find information there on the city’s whistleblower law and how to seek coverage under it.
What chutzpah!
Our stupid, stupid union is now encouraging each of us educators on our very own to stand up to a whole army of hostile administrators, from Mayor Moneybags down through attorney general Klein to the lowest level of drone principals and APs, and start blowing whistles.
I fight the fight for kids and teachers, but I will not cut my legs off at the knees. Not at the behest of this union or any other.
The New York Teacher calls itself “the official publication of the UFT,” which I daresay it’s supposed to be.
Trouble is, I’m not really recognizing a labor union here in this rag. I’m thinking instead the UFT has morphed into some kind of arm of the DoE.
But, you be the judge. Here are the titles of the news articles in the the Sept 12th issue, and then maybe there’ll be time for a little song.
The ones in RED are Tweed friendly, Tweed collaborative, Tweed duped, or Much Ado About Nothing. The BROWN are informational or anemic.
What the content clearly does NOT show are the issues that most concern the membership: outrageous class size, DoE thuggery, rubber rooms, autonomy in the classroom, inexperienced non-educator administrators, the ramifications of three restructurings in 5 years, fake accountability, teaching to the test, one-size-fits all methodologies and staff development, abuses in the parking and merit pay deals, overambitious excessing, and the gross corruption in the whole system of grievances and arbitrations.
Let the list begin:
“UFT, city reach parking agreement”
“Union gets hazardous condition repaired at Queens school”
(If it was that bad, it took many years to get that way. Where was the union during all that?)
"Arbitrator upholds 3-mo. time limit for placing letters in file”
(Not much of a victory, since the arbitrator said that “Given that there never was any right to place the LIF in the first place, due to its untimeliness, it obviously cannot be kept in the file.” Ho-hum.)
“Good first impression: Hardly a glitch in ‘one of the smoothest’ school openings”
“Union’s Green Dot ‘adventure’ begins”
(In case you didn’t know, that’s a unionized charter school. Charter schools mean the demise of public education.)
“41,500 take advantage of 55/25 plan”
(Remember the trade-off was merit pay, and remember how they linked 55/25 to merit pay behind our backs.)
“Hard work by all pays off in improved graduation rate”
(If you buy into any of BloomKlein’s faked statistics and general dis-transparent accountability.)
“Public schools spared mid-year state cuts; property tax cap averted”
“Weingarten boosts Obama at DNC”
(After backing Hillary for a year and making power moves towards Washington on our paychecks.)
“Members urged: Join COPE now!”
“Finding meaning as a new teacher”
(Welcome to Disneyworld, where everyone's happy and finding meaning!!! Never mind the brutal attacks — nowhere mentioned— on senior teachers, especially those who no longer have position.)
“New teachers ‘thrilled,’ ‘excited’ — and ‘terrified’”
(As if one article for new teachers wasn't enough.)
“UFT, DOE laud school crime drop”
(Again if you believe BloomKlein statistics, which I guess they do, since it's the second article in this issue that implies as much.)
“UFT, allies fighting to protect, improve public pensions”
“Union makes recommendations on mayoral control”
“New early literacy curriculum to be tried at high-needs schools”
(That's the 3-yr pilot program the union is supporting.)
“UFT: K-2 testing pilot a ‘bad idea’”
“Union: Added [11.471] seats welcome, but mayor’s real test lies ahead”
“‘A good year to teach!’” (A fluff article about the HS for Civil Rights in East NY: Keep fiddling while Rome burns, I always say.)
“A perfect learning lab”
(Another fluff article about PS 266 in Queens, with staff in full throttle and smiling. And what about all the schools with MISERABLE conditions, like the ones squshed into the top floor of an existing school, or those with classrooms in trailers, or all those campus schools fighting each other for space and governance.)
“UFT shows new teachers a good — and informative — time”
(Again with the new teachers? What’s with this paper?)
“Are you ready to vote on Nov. 4”
(A reminder to vote, as if our membership, one of the most educated sectors of society, need a reminder to vote. It's condescending but relatively harmless. )
“P credits: Another way to earn differentials”
And now for the song, which I invite you to join in on at the top of your lungs:Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how that good old union
Has come in here to dwell
(Chorus)
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Don't scab for the bosses
Don't listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize!
(Chorus)
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
It's starting to take on biblical proportions, this Bloom/Klein thuggery.
This is the second year Veteran Teacher X has been passed over for a teacher fellow.
X is super-qualified for the job: with more than 10 years experience, she’s bilingual and has two permanent licenses for what she’s trained to teach. It seems the newbie might not even hold the right license for the job that should have been X’s. When the announcement was made at a faculty conference that X was going to get a full program this year instead of the day-to-day subbing she was doing last year, everyone broke out into spontaneous applause; some came over to hug her. X had to tell them that she’ll only be filling in for someone on sabbatical this year. She’s still in excess and still an ATR.
Obviously, X is a beloved member of the staff, and obviously, admin's counting the change in his pocket. It wasn't so long ago when an administrator’s job involved continuity, stability, and a nurturing environment for staff and kids. Bet you don't find those concepts in Leadership Academy crash courses.
This just in from Veteran Teacher Z, also an ATR:
"I thought you might want to be made aware, if you aren't already, that the union is no longer grieving against new schools/principals who don't hire the 50% of teachers in the closing schools as is required by the contract."
Much lauded as an English teacher of long standing with not a single letter in her file except for praise, Z took student teachers in under her wings, mentored for years, and prepared (and ran) professional development. The UFT even offered her a job in its Peer Intervention program. Apart from all those credentials, she’s enjoyed a whole other career involving the very theme of a new school they’re creating in her building — and in which she was, astoundingly, not installed.
"And now I find that no one wants me."
Those are the saddest words I’ve heard since I’ve joined the fight for teachers who’ve been thrown into ATR limbo.
"And now I find that no one wants me."
Hers is like so many other ones in the saga of Goliath’s chancellorship. Z’s school is going to close next year, if not sooner. In the past two years, only two of the excessed teachers were able to get jobs in the small schools upstairs, and those were only because of connections.
Not having been called in for a single interview at any of those new ones, Z complained to the union. It arranged for an interview, but too late, of course. Two teaching fellows with no classroom experience or even much familiarity with the school’s theme got the jobs. Z grieved it, and the thing eventually went to arbitration. She says it was a test case, and the UFT lost it. It will now no longer be taking grievances for teachers being excessed out of old schools who apply to new schools in their buildings.
"Most of us are now ATRs, sitting in a room waiting to be sent as a sub to some school or other while the teachers upstairs, all fellows with no experience, are being made to work long hours (with no per session). And I have heard that the halls are insane. There are now eight other schools [here, and save for two people] NONE of them have hired any of us!
"Perhaps you can make others aware of this, how our union is further destroying our contractual rights."
If anyone knows differently about the way things are done in Arbitration World, please tell us. We want to know how far this debacle is reaching, and just how much the union is NOT willing to act on our behalf.
"Something is very, very, very wrong here, and someone needs to tell the story.”
That says it all, and the Davids out here are really trying.
Please send your stories. I’ll post them, and I’ll send them to all Jennifer Medinas and Elizabeth Greens I can find.
Eduwonkette's post yesterday on teacher salaries and ATRs is an excellent "preview," as she calls it, of what she's planning for our masochistic reading pleasure in the coming weeks. I wish we could program her to work automatically on every piece of internet claptrap produced by the Brave New World of corporate education. Something like a web crawler gadget that could debunk the stuff the minute it's put up.
But, I want to emphasize something that must be included in any discussion of the cost of ATRs and the union members waiting around in rubber rooms:
It's not only a case of big senior salaries.
Many, if not most of us learned only this week that once you've been sent to a rubber room, you'll be off the school's budget in 60 days. What had been a disincentive to put teachers out of commission over there (because a principal had to pay two salaries: that of the removed teacher as well as the one who hired to replace him) is now a new TOOL for eliminating unwanted staff — regardless of age, skill or talent.
To spell this out: a frivolous charge, an opinion on someone's competence or personality ("I just don't like them"), or a downright lie can get someone moved over there. And with the backlog they've got in handling these cases, it's a lot more than Out of Sight, Out of Mind. In 60 days from removal, it'll be Off My Budget as well.
So, it is not only a question of pushing senior teachers out of the system. The BoE has been systematically — and with the blessing of our duplicitous union because they have not made an immediate stink about this any place I know of — enhancing the capability of nudging all unwanted teachers out of the system.
Just wait til this catches on.
I've already written something about serving at the principal's pleasure, and Chaz wrote a terrific summary of the current contract fallout for ATRs and other trouble spots over at his blog.
This is something I wrote in a comment to Eduwonkette's post, but it's germane to this discussion:
There is an underlying point here that cannot be separated from the discussion: The principals could ALWAYS see or find out how long you've been in the system, which not always meant your salary, but how old you are, and how often and perhaps WHY you changed schools. They also had access to hidden networking in all districts which made it a very un-level playing field for an excessed teacher.
Senior teachers -- who are the most likely staff members to want to teach with a degree of autonomy recognized in the contract but overlooked by UFT and [BoE] alike, and who include many union activists (chapter leaders, etc.) who have gone up against a principal or even a superintendent when they abuse the contract — all of these people are "known" at the district level. I suspect there is even a real list of them.
Principals ask around when they hire people who are in the system long enough to have reputations. The newer teachers not only don't have reputations, they don't have tenure. They are the ultimate inanimate body for any principal: silent, fearful, and contract-ignorant.
As ch. leader a couple of times in my career, I successfully grieved overcrowding in one of my schools for two whole grades. At that same school, the superintendent's office itself tried to get me to change the UFT personnel on the C-30 committee —how do you like that one? Just after being excessed from there (I wonder why), I loudly protested at some off-site music PD that the city was actively replacing music positions with band-aid programs where freelance artists come to the school to teach kids once a week — this was being condoned as a good thing, and we music and dance teachers should just LOVE seeing our positions given away to outside contractors; as they escorted me out of that auditorium, the entire audience of teachers, hesitantly at first, but ever-increasing, broke into a loud applause.
In another school, the principal committed fraud over my signature as chapter leader. New Visions's answer to this: "I think you and he should not be in the same school." So much for fair play.
Teachers with years in the system — and I won't use the term "senior" anymore, because the average years in the system is coming way down as the transience level goes way up — have a lot more stacked against them than bigger salaries. [see here for more on that]
And it is VERY MUCH PART OF this same discussion about what to do with ATRs.
UFT management's been back-sliding on this issue. We need to force them to address exactly what the system loses when the BoE makes it easy to expunge teachers with a certain number of years in this game.
If we don't get to keep our senior voices and fighters, it'll be under Weingarten's watch that the union's been busted.
It was a little over a year ago that we started hearing that phrase a lot, “To serve at the pleasure of the President.” Alberto Gonzales said it, Republicans used it to defend the firing of all those US Attorneys, and William Safire etymologized it in the Times, from whence this:
It seems to me that the pleasure principle could use some updating in our political discourse. . . . The political meaning of pleasure is far from “delight” and even further, one hopes, from sexual gratification. It means “control,” which will always be shifting and disputable in a flexible, balance-of-power system. In future commissions and laws, we should strike pleasure and insert “sole authority.” Archaisms are fine reminders of the lexical past . . . but not when they undermine semantic reality.
There's nothing in any contract ever signed by the BoE and the UFT that accepts the premise that educators serve “at the pleasure” of their principals. Yet they are doing just that, worse than ever. It's just another dirty little secret in BloomKlein’s war against veteran teachers.
No one's talking about all the legitimate reasons for letting someone go, like poor attendance, being without lesson plans, or even criminal behavior. A contract is a contract, as are the other laws and regulations that obligate employees.
But what’s going on across the city is way more than firing teachers for just cause. It’s become a battlefield here, and BloomKlein is not on our side. (There’s not much evidence they’re on the parents’ or the kids’ side either, but that’s for another discussion.)
In this restructured and chaotic bureaucracy they call a Department of Education, there's a remarkable shift away from the kind of balance-of-power system described by Safire towards a de facto “sole authority." Principals and superintendents will have their way with us. They're not firing people outright all that much, but empowered by Klein’s minions and a union that refuses to draw a line in the sand, they are nevertheless managing to thin the ranks.
Here is a sampling of this chancellor’s battlefield strategies in this “theater” we call NYC public education. All will demoralize the average teacher and set him thinking of early retirement:
Letters-in-the file that can no longer be handled by a grievance (Art.21.A.5). The union claims that members now have a right that is “superior” to a grievance, in that you can remove negative material in the file after three years, but only if it's not used for any disciplinary action (Know Your Rights, Feb. 28).
What a crock. The whole purpose of a deceitful letter is to make sure it is entered as evidence into a U-rating, discontinuance or 3020a procedure. If the union says it can’t be removed from the file in these cases, who then is it protecting, the BoE? The principal? It sure ain’t us.
Tolerating a malicious use of the Evaluation and Observation System described in Art.8J of the contract. First of all, where did the wording in this clause:
the traditional classroom observation by a principal or supervisor which includes pre- and post-observation conferences and written feedback/comments
get changed to:
Ask for both pre- and post-observation conferences, in writing if necessary.
That's in Know Your Rights also, which clearly implies these conferences are something you have to go around requesting. Re-interpreting (i.e., weakening) the contractual language is either union complicity or union stupidity, take your pick.
It’s hard to keep track of the cases of teacher abuse on this score. We hear that pre-observation conferences are frequently scheduled inconveniently, skipped, or otherwise mismanaged. Observations, too. In one school, for example, a principal thought he was allowed to pop in for the formal observation on teachers any time during a whole week! Written feedback often includes lies, and important explanatory material can be purposely omitted. Your letter of refutation might just as well be sent directly to the dead-letter department at the local post office for all the good it will do.
Wrongful arrest of teachers by police (here and here), and why unless the crime is egregious and front-page news are handcuffs necessary? Does anyone think a teacher would flee the classroom or the principal’s office if he's not being arrested for a specific crime and just being asked to discuss a matter outside of the school building?
Gimme a break. If teachers are the felonious types these cases imply, there’d need to be a lot more pre-employment checks on us than just a set of fingerprints to keep the potential bad guys away from children.
The monstrous acceptance of bad behavior by administrators who abuse and demean staff, particularly in front of kids. They're not going to get any slap on the wrists by this BoE, and you can't file a harassment charge against them on your own. Only the UFT can do that (under 23A), and mostly that doesn't happen.
The monstrous acceptance of bad behavior in the upper grades, when kids should know better. An entire culture of rudeness, vulgarity, insults, false accusations and the like has taken root in our system and there are no stipulations anywhere in the BoE’s regulations that call for a student's actual apology.
The continued shortage of guidance counselors and social workers, the large class-size caps and tolerated overages that simply don’t match the magnitude of this social issue, and the revolving-door detention rooms all speak to the BoE’s complete ineptitude and/or unwillingness to recognize that one heck of a lot of kids need to be counseled or re-introduced to the basics of social intercourse.
Abuse is abuse no matter whose mouth it comes from. It permeates some schools and is very depressing. I would like to know why the BoE chooses to look the other way on this issue.
Hearings for 3020-a charges that end in bargaining with the arbitrators over the amount of your fine. I heard that at the center of many of competency cases is insubordination, so you’ll go back to the classroom, but you'll only get there with a fine. This practice of bargaining your fine is both inappropriate and unacceptable. Maybe it's a special BloomKlein method of trimming the salaries of the most expensive employees.
Activities of OSI (Off. of Special Investigations) specifically designed to catch a member off-guard. The UFT can publicize its “Don’t say anything to anyone without union representation” as much as it wants, but the vast majority of teachers are people with a heightened sense of morality and service, ergo their choice of profession. They also have as a social group an unusally healthy respect for their rights and obligations under the Constitution and the laws of the land; they know in their very bones that these are designed to protect children as well as themselves.
Educators are not, however, legal eagles, and they don’t think like such animals in situations that cry out for a measure of self-protection. Your sophisticated “gotchas” will be successful, but they don’t guarantee any wrong has been done.
Union-bashing, political posturing, encouraging the press to bad-mouth teachers, etc.
With the contract under this chancellorship rendered meaningless in so many ways, we are now all serving, whether we like it or not, at the pleasure of the principal.
As long as everyone’s going around designing “grading” systems for schools – first Klein, now Weingarten — I’ve decided to make one up myself.
I see it this way. When the staff lives in fear, they can’t do a good job. Simple as that.
So, for starters I paid a short visit to the Homeland Security website to see how they’ve set things up over there. One thing I’m sure to borrow from them is that nifty little color alert chart that grades our fear levels from “Low” to “Severe.”
In some schools, you just know the principal is plain out crazy. They’ve been around for a while and have managed to circumvent the contract in almost every way. Even when RW goes over to rein these guys in, it doesn’t much help. Their vision of an educational workplace is simply not ours, and they just don’t care whose lives they’re stomping on. Those schools get a “Severe" alert.
You’ll find “High” risk of terror in some of the schools where they’ve just installed a Tweedle, one of those leadership people who haven’t come up through the ranks and probably just got out of grad school. They’re either totally new to the job or still feeling their way, so they haven’t been able to establish a record of unmitigated terror as yet.
A school with an “Elevated” level of terror means that you heard that someone down the hall got sent to the rubber room last week and no one knows why.
“Guarded” means that everyone should be looking over their shoulder, but particularly in the direction of a chapter leader who’s cozy with the principal.
I guess there are a few schools left with a “Low” risk of terror attacks, but only the Tier I people know what it’s like to be in one of those.
Someone created a widget I’m thinking of borrowing, so you could plug a Real Time Terror Warning Badge box right into your own computer. Wouldn’t it be nice to know before you leave for school in the morning how much terror you can expect from admin when you get there.
“While there continues to be no credible information at this time warning of an imminent threat to the homeland, the department's strategic threat perspective is that we are in a period of increased risk.”
That's from the DHS website, but it sure feels the same way in schools. When teachers are seen crying after administrators have had words with them, when you hear someone’s been disciplined by a principal or AP even in front of students, when a teacher, or a secretary or a guidance counselor comes right out and tells you they can’t stand it anymore and this will be their last year, that they’ve had it, that they’ll never be around long enough to make good on the 55/25, then you know you’re in a terrorized school.
I know someone who got to be chapter leader for the first time about seven years ago. After a year of collaborating with her scalawag of a principal, she's had a rocky trip ever since: excessed twice, harassed (until the union jumped in and stopped it), and marginalized. She says the threat of being given a U-rating based on nonsense or sent to the rubber room on a trumped-up charge is always on her mind. With 20 years in the system, consistent satisfactory ratings and commendations, there’s never a day, she says, that she enters a school building without thinking: What bad thing is going to happen to me in here today?
I call that terrorization of the workplace, and I believe it is one of BloomKlein’s biggest legacies.
Re-read Mary Hoffman’s "Jack Welch is My Daddy", in which she talks a whole lot about how the CEO brought his “big stick” methodologies to Klein’s Leadership Academy.
This fall, the opening episode of the documentary about the Leadership Academy featured scenes from the ceremony for the first class of graduates. . . . Jack Welch played a role in the proceedings. When I saw him at the podium I wondered: would he wish the graduates luck? Tell them they could continue to call on him for advice and support? Thank them in advance for the years of public service they were about to embark upon?
“Get rid of your negative people,” he said.
. . . And who might those people be? Probably anyone who expresses skepticism about any aspect of the new curriculum. The official term used by the instructors at the Leadership Academy is “pushback,” and students role-play methods of dealing with it. A Joel Klein statement made in the course of the documentary is also instructive in this regard: he said one way the new principals could gauge their effectiveness was to ask themselves “...how much you are changing the system, and how much the system is changing you.” In other words, “good” graduates will not be altered from the missionary outlook the Academy has instilled in them; “bad” ones might allow themselves to learn something on the ground, even from people who don’t have the Academy’s seal of approval.
This is what some of us long-term educators are up against. We know pretty much what works in the classroom, but the autonomy and prep time it needs to get it done have been taken away. Every single time we do some "pushback," we run the risk of Klein's legacy, that you're not gonna be a happy camper if you speak up.
Andrea Gabor, in Strategy+Business, also reported on a tidbit of Jack Welch, who was addressing a class of principals at the Leadership Academy:
Jack Welch is pacing the floor of a large, window-less conference room in Brooklyn. Occasionally leaning against a table, the straight-talking former chief executive officer of General Electric Company alternates between haranguing and cajoling his audience of 60 or so middle managers. “Your job is harder than running a company,” Mr. Welch tells them. “’Cause running a company, you have all the bullets in your gun. Well, you have sort of a water pistol, I guess.” He pauses. “And it’s out of water.”
The room erupts in laughter.
“But you’ve got to find a way to put water in that pistol anyway,” Mr. Welch continues, almost shouting. “And eventually, put bullets in your gun.”
Does this kind of language have anything to do with education? Should teachers be afraid of what their principals will do to them next?
The BoE takes great care to protect students from verbal abuse (A-421), which they’ve defined in part as language "that tends to cause fear or physical or mental distress" and "tends to belittle or subject students to ridicule." But they've done diddlysquat to protect its lower level employees from similar kinds of mental distress and abuse.
There should be a method — and the union has really let this go on way too long — whereby abusive, terrorizing principals can be brought up on charges of Staff Abuse and put under immediate investigation. Witnesses could be summoned, statements from colleagues taken. Maybe it wouldn’t be feasible to detain these administrators in a rubber room, but certainly a representative agreed upon by the UFT and the BoE could be installed to watch over the culprit for a while until he stopped hurting people. That would send a message, wouldn’t it.
Maybe we’ve become too used to terror in the workplace, and maybe, if the union stopped collaborating for a moment, there’d be ways to turn this around.
----------------------------------------------------------
New from the lab: It's been a few days since this post first went up, and we're working towards a way to add the names of schools that are particularly dangerous to teachers. You should be able to know what you're in for before applying for a new job. Click on the alert to see the animated version we've been working on, and when you get to the new link, click on the buttons.
Postscript:
Before closing, I'd like give a shout out to the boys at the DHS, whom I've linked to above: How y'all doin' today?
Pardon me while I roll over laughing at LeRoy Barr's paragraph in the Chapter Leaders Weekly on the UFT's new campaign to report special ed violations.
