He's taken Brooklyn-Queens Day, a sentimental favorite, and turned it into purgatory. The Bronx and Manhattan teachers could briefly snigger at the plight of those of us fortunate enough to have gotten a day off in happier times, but in the end they had to sit through the same mind-numbing, clock-stopping drek as we did.There were no students in attendance. No supervisors either. It turns out when you leave people without a contract for three years, they're not all that inclined to come in as a favor.
Schoolgal told me they could've made forty bucks an hour, or received an extra vacation day for coming in anyway. In my school, without exception, they stayed out on principle. Principle, however, had no effect on our principal.
What got me in was the contract that Klein and Weingarten shoved down our throats, punishing us with three days of nonsense, to wit, Brooklyn Queens Day, and August 30th and 31st. Like all my colleagues, I eagerly await coming in for two more non-attendance days for kids which promise to be as stimulating as yesterday.
It's interesting that, in New York City, where they faced a thirty-year teacher shortage, where half of all new teachers don't last five years, the only retention incentives Klein and Weingarten can muster are the most pointless and insipid meetings Tweed's 23-year-old "experts" could devise.
Me, I'd rather just teach.
I like the kids.
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