The DOE has a whole lot of nasty sitting there at Tweed. I notice it sometimes when supervisors tell me what they're going through with one piece of red tape or another. I know some supervisors who are born for this stuff. You bite my head off, and I'll bite yours off twice. It's a skill. Maybe it's an art. Of course it's a shame that anyone would need to exercise such an art. It's one reason I'm glad I never went into supervision. Nonetheless, I absolutely see its value in dealing with the DOE.
Then, of course, there are the supervisors who use this nasty gene as a matter of course. Sure, it's good to use with the evil empire that is the NYC Department of Education. In fact, there may be no better way. Using it with people who wake up every morning with the express intent of teaching children is inappropriate. To take it a step further, using it with actual children is as bad or worse. I've seen and met supervisors who do one, both, or all, and none belong at their jobs.
I had a job one year as LAB-BESIS coordinator. There were a number of factors that led me to apply for it. One was the fact that I'd have an office. For most of my ten years as chapter leader I haven't had one, and sometimes people come to me quite upset. I didn't much like the job. It was a whole lot of tedious data entry. I quit at the end of the year, and lost the office.
It wasn't only the job that led me to quit. It was also dealing with the educrats at Tweed, Sometimes I would have incomplete information because they failed to send me things, or, you know, do their jobs. Invariably, when things like that happened, they would ignore my repeated emails. Once there was some issue that actually hurt a student somehow. I believe it was a native speaker of English whose paper registered wrong, or got lost or something. When I complained, I got this threatening response. I was going to go through hell, or be fired, or maybe worse, be forced to work with the nasty people at the DOE.
As chapter leader, I sometimes have to deal with people from city agencies. They're the most inept bunch of boobs you've ever encountered in your life. They've never met a deadline they could meet. Not only that, but their decision-making skills are almost nonexistent. I will never forget when some bully or other screamed at a member and me because she wouldn't talk without representation. You only care about protecting yourselves, he shouted. You don't care about children.
I foolishly started to argue with him. You don't know what I think, I said. That's a straw man. He didn't know what a straw man was, so he said I was using one. Some of these people are so twisted, incompetent, and fanatical there's no point even talking to them. These are the people Bloomberg put in place, and these are the people de Blasio left in power.
It seems so unnecessary. Nonetheless, it's the coin of the realm over there. Threaten loudly about whatever rather than take responsibility for anything. You even get hints of it from the people they send to do PD, or just talk with teachers. I recall some endless stupid meeting with some woman who said if we didn't include Common Core goals in our lesson plans, our school would close. I pointed out that we had a contract, and that it specified lesson plans were for the use of the teacher. It also specified that neither she nor any other administrator had the right to dictate how our plans were written. Several teachers told me they were grateful for my presence.
How many times had that presenter spouted the same idiocy in front of teachers who either didn't know, or didn't feel comfortable challenging the information? How many times did she do it after my having corrected her? Who knows?
Last summer I was on a committee tasked with negotiating the contract. I described in detail what it was like to teach oversized classes, as well as why classes that met contractual limits were already too large. The DOE reps didn't give a flying hoot. They weren't interested. They aren't interested.
It's odd. We teachers are forever criticized for being indifferent about the students it's our job to serve. Bill Gates and his clueless minions toss money everywhere to enable our enemies. Here's the thing--cruelty and indifference abound among the people he enables. MSM can paint targets on our backs in perpetuity. It won't change the fact that we're the ones concerned with serving these kids.
Educrats can scream bloody murder all they like. The fact is a whole lot of them are parasites. They draw salary and offer nothing but negativity. It's ironic that these people sit around Tweed, doing whatever they do, while those of us who actually served children are routinely vilified.
Only in America.
Posts
