Rotation Beats Long Term Assignment

David Hedges

 LINK
A dear colleague asked me if I found it easier to cope with the professional challenges after I had been assigned to a school for more than a month, instead of for just a week.

No.

Except if that month is September. 

We, as ATRs think that because we are human that we are entitled to respect, but, the students just see us as Subs and therefore as targets for abuse.  And that is what they do to us, pure and simple: abuse.  The abuse comes from the same deprived part of them that has been targeted by the DOE with cold, conscienceless violence.  Children become the abusers of their liberators, their educators, because instead of being nurtured for their imaginations, creativity, and curiosity, they are used as pawns in a boring, data and test driven governmental agency. 

For example, the Aim on the substitute lesson plan I was handed today read, "How can we review for the Regents Exam."  That's it.  Scare tactics.  Scare tactics are forms of abuse.  The premise is that education=exam score.  Like any corporal punishment or violent treatment, children develop a tolerance and they just act violently later, when they can, on the most vulnerable or blameless one they can get away with abusing.  The DOE has engaged in a campaign of fear- teachers are terrified of exam results and almost nobody dares ask interesting questions. 

The abuse is learned, cyclic, and there is no let up, at any moment in the day.  It is shocking.  If I were the parent of a child in just about any class where fear tactics and test data is more highly prized than human imagination and curiosity,  I would wonder where my tax dollars are going, and for what?  What students learn, in a class that is covered by someone who is labeled as a "Substitute" is that it is perfectly acceptable to be rude and even violent to the person who is assigned to watch over their safety.  "Oh, not, not my child," some parents would say, and even at the end of the day, after I have seen sweet, halo bearing children become pack wolves and tear the senior teachers apart, I cannot believe my own memory. 

This is not a complaint about my job- this is a statement about how the child's reaction is a preconditioned set of responses based on policy that dehumanizes their natural interests in life.  Kids are mad as hell and they take it out on the kindly strangers the DOE calls ATRs. 

And, we, the ATRs we are blamed for not being Saviors to a system that has been damned by Lord Bloomberg and Archangel Klein.

Parents, tax payers, citizens, our kids don't deserve to be degraded this way and the system that is supposed to be educating then ought not to be teaching them that fear tactics are an acceptable form of arriving at a civilized society.

And yeah, who are we going to get to do this job, of teaching children?  Only in a bad economy would someone choose this over say, impoverishing the middle class at a job on Wall Street?

Why Substitute Teachers?

David Hedges

 LINK
I don't want to be accused of suggesting that I don't need a job, nor that I can be worth every penny the taxpayers spend on me as a teacher, but what really happens in a classroom when a substitute teacher assigned to it is very different from what the taxpayers have the right to expect for their hard earned money.

This is not to say that qualified personnel is needed, and is even in short supply in the school system.  There is an overabundance of inexperienced administrators and teachers who are making the kinds of decisions that they should not be allow make.  The DOE knows this, which is why they have retired principals mentoring and keeping a watchful eye on the young'uns.  Even principals from schools that were closed are coaching the new principals, so extreme the shortage of experienced professionals must be!

A recent experience will help to illustrate my point:

A highly experienced teacher had to be out for a few weeks for medical reasons.  The DOE elected to place a highly experienced ATR in that spot until the regular teacher returned.  The thing is, as soon as students perceive that someone is substituting for their regular teacher, the unwritten code is that that room, or whatever room that substitute teacher is covering, becomes the "free-for-all" room.  And, to boot, every student is given a "get out of jail free" card since no matter how many fights break out between students who either should or should not be in that classroom, no matter how many students pelt the teacher with chalk, rolled paper balls, or threatening verbiage, there won't be any disciplinary consequences or legal remedies.  The students know this because they have seen it in action.  For example, on the second day I was covering this class I asked a student to stop throwing paper balls across the room.  His response: "But I did this yesterday and you didn't say anything."  Had he?  Perhaps he had and I hadn't noticed, since I may have spent those moments asking students to remove themselves from other students' laps, or moving out of the way as students played shuffleboard with chairs and tables.

For several days before the regular teacher left, I observed her class.  I quietly walked around and asked students to write their names on a seating chart and noted their work habits.  By midweek I had learned every students names and seen that they all came to class prepared, had their notebooks open, copied assignments from the board, and in short, had developed the kind of routine one expects of students under the watchful eye of an experienced teacher.  That was true of them on Monday and on Tuesday.  But on Wednesday, when the regular teacher was out and I was there, their behavior changed radically.  The laws of physics don't lie. 

I emulated the regular teacher's style, from the seating arrangement to the way the Do Now was worded on the Smartboard.  The students went bananas.  I had to call in the principal, the dean of students, and both assistant principals.  I was very concerned by the chaos I was witnessing.  Each time an administrator came in I gave him or her then name of the student(s) who were rough housing, or throwing chalk at me, or who were playing shuffleboard with the furniture.  I know you hope that the administrators would have found a disciplinary remedy for the situation, but now, that is not what happened at all.  In fact, there aren't even any "referral" slips, so the infractions aren't even documented.  You see, at the end of the year the UFT Chapter Leader sits with the principal and they tally up the referrals.  If the number of referrals that the administration has is less than the number that had been submitted, there is a problem.  One way of averting any problem is simply to do away with referral slips, or to pretend the infraction never happened, which is pretty much what was going on each time I had to call for back-up.

Students don't take long to figure these things out.  The chaos spread.  Students take it as their right to arrive late, because they wanted to go downstairs and get some water or a soda.  "But you are losing valuable class time," I might say.  Their response: "What difference does it make whether I go before class or during class?"  Perhaps he was right.  Perhaps his last class was closer to the stairwell that takes him to the cafeteria and he saved himself a few minutes by doing it all in one trip.  Smart, right?  Except the collective behavior of a school now makes that the norm.  Even if the better, more efficient decision is right, it is wrong because it causes everyone to presume that it's okay to be late, or play shuffleboard with the classroom furniture, or with the personnel for that matter.

Dummy-down and ego-up is the way school policies are driven.  Where we, in my day, were scolded for social promotion and "enabling" students, now unacceptable behavior is brushed under the carpet so the Superintendent and the Chancellor never get wind of it. 

There are ways of managing classes when a teacher is absent, but the standard approach of the substitute isn't a successful model.  It never has and it never will be. 

There are alternatives: for example, break the class up and reassign the students to classes where other regular teachers are giving lessons.  Even if the student is placed in a trigonometry class when she expects Spanish, the benefits on the child's behavior offset the possible loss of LOTE time.  The help with the overflow, assign the ATR to work with students individually in the library or in the administrator's office.  Temporary rescheduling of a student's program is less harmful than sending them into the "free-for-all" room.  That tradition, the way students behave when a substitute teacher is in charge of the class, is not going to change.  What can change is to recognize the need for pedagogical continuity in the child's life and regroup the students so they won't panic because their teacher is out.

If, however, flexible programming is out of the question, then why not discipline students who act out, instead of making excuses for them and covering up their infractions so the big bosses don't find out?

David Hedges: UFT v DOE on Missed School Days Due To Sandy

UFT Joins NYSED in Custody Battle Over Our Children

David Hedges

LINK

The latest in the custody battle over our children between the State and the Family

If we can trust the polls, and Paul Volker[1] to quote them accurately, that “four out of five Americans don’t instinctively trust our own government to do the ‘right thing’ even half of the time,”[2] then perhaps we-the-people should question the government’s authority to rule our lives when their policy decision making power seems cross the line.  For example, how much power should the public sector assume it has the right to in determining the agenda of the private lives of the community?  Do families have rights to decide how to spend their free time, or is that up to the government too?  We have boundaries in place, yet the bureaucratic powers that be are bent on invading that domain with no greater rationale than “because I said so.”  People, not bureaucracies have inalienable rights, right?

Yet, in a joint decision between two bureaucratic giants, the United Federation of Teachers and the New York State Education Department, three days in February have been seized to force public schools to meet the mandated 180-day school year.  Those days were lost as a result of hurricane Sandy.[3]

The days that were seized were termed, “vacation” days, but in reality, they are days when the public sector does not impose its agenda on the private sector.  It is boundary, if you will, when the State permits families to spend time with each other, either by going away, or by staying home with each other.  The State takes it as it right to take that time away from the private sector, but the State does not impose this on private schools.  A vacation day, for a child who does not work for a living, is an invaluable part of that child’s development.  Depriving him or her of that private time is wrong in four significant ways: first, it teaches the child that the public sector has the right to seize the private rights of the individual, and second, it requires that a child submit to being co-opted and take the side against his or her parents in the custody battle that divides government and family.  Third, it is bad educational policy for it deprives the child of the time they need to reflect on what he or she has learned and to consider how to improve in ones learning, when school reconvenes.  Fourth, and most importantly, it deprives children of the time they need to socialize with friends and family.  Forcing children into the school building during their vacation deprives children of the time they need for both a healthier cognitive and social developments.  Surely there are better, less intrusive ways to repair the 180-day school year. 

In the wake of the trauma caused by Sandy, students need more, not less family time. During the week when there was no power, heat, and when students lost their homes, they did not run to school for emotional support- they stuck by their families.  They instinctively knew whom they could trust.  And it wasn't the government.  Imposing school-time at the time when family time is so important simply underscores how out of touch with the real lives of real people these bureaucracies, the UFT and NYSED, are. It also provides an insight into why so many people instinctively distrust the government to do the right thing.  Bureaucracies are, by definition, insulated from the consequences of the decisions they make.   They abuse their power and take it away from us because, like the psycho-pathology of the sadist, they cannot feel, so they use their control over others to compensate for what they lack, in an effort to fill the void they have in their own humanity. 

A more effective and balanced approach to restoring instructional time to students who lost it during Sandy would be to add time to the school day.  That would reduce wasted commuting time and reduce the time that students are on the roads, (especially at that time of the year when it is so cold and often snowy).  Roughly calculated, we are talking twenty-one hours of school-time, which applied over two weeks for two hours a day would meet the State’s mandate.  I would recommend using the two weeks just prior to the State’s Regents Exams for extra tutoring and other extra help classes, but it should be up to the schools to address the needs of their students.  I think holding extra classes at the end of the school day would help students achieve better scores on their exams, thus turning a loss into a gain for everyone concerned. 

That ‘s a plan that comes from a fundamental and balanced respect I have for both the private sector and its right to family time, and the mandates of the public school to provide effective and accountable instruction to public school children.  Seizing three days in February will not have any measurable effect on student learning.  As one parent commented, the canceled vacation days will just be baby-sitting days in school.  The impact that extra instructional time can have can be measured when it has a goal or a purpose.  Just adding days without a specific plan that can be verified only contributes to the dysfunctional culture that pervades the public school system, for those days would lack the kind accountability that could provide us, as citizens, with the data we need in order to hold them to the high standards we expect from them.

Here is the opportunity for government to do the right thing.  Frankly, I expect to be disappointed, but hey, you never know.  Comments, anyone?

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[1] Paul Volker was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Carter and Reagan from 1979 to 1987 and the Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President Obama during 2009 and 2010.

[2] Newsweek Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates. Oct. 9-10, 2003. N=1,004 adults nationwide. .

"Generally speaking, how often do you think you can trust the government to do what's right? Can you trust the government most of the time, only some of the time, hardly ever, or never?

Most of the time                                    27%

Some of the time                                   52%

Hardly ever                                            13%

Never                                                      6%

Unsure                                                    2%

[3] The New York Times: “Storm Prompts New York City’s Schools to Cancel 3 Days Off” by By JENNY ANDERSON Published: November 19, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/education/3-february-vacation-days-to-be-canceled-in-new-york-city-schools.html?_r=0