Corporal Punisment in Georgia--I Wouldn't Treat My Dog Like This

Of course I love my dog, so I don't hit him, ever. If he doesn't come when I ask him, he won't get a treat. He's very fond of treats. I may say, "No," and ignore him for a while. He doesn't like that very much. While I work at training him, he's not a machine with an on/ off switch and he doesn't always listen to me.

For example, when I ordered him to come yesterday, he knew it meant another trip out in the rain with the red raincoat he abhors. He sat like a statue. I picked him up, put the raincoat on him, and dragged him out. I didn't hit him. Even if I'd wanted to hit him, I had to respect his position. Outside, it was just as terrible as he imagined it would be.

In Georgia, though, The Georgia School of Innovation and the Classics has decided to reinstate paddling, which I understand is legal in 20 states. I'm kind of surprised it's legal anywhere, but a country that has made Donald Trump president is constantly full of surprises. (Of course it's a charter school, but I can't be sure whether they consider beating children to be "innovation" or "classic.")

I always think any teacher that hit my kid would be one dead teacher. I would likely not go out and kill the person, but I would use every legal measure at my disposal to make that teacher regret doing that. As far as I know paddling is illegal in NY State, and I'd have no reservations about seeing teacher who hit children fired.

I always think teaching is about somehow persuading kids that we have something to offer that they can actually use. It's pretty clear to me that English, which I teach, is useful to everyone in the United States each and every day. I think I have things easy in that regard. I can honestly say I use everything I teach virtually all the time. It's tougher to sell kids on other things.

For example, I have an advanced class right now. I expect to have them read a few novels, and I expect some percentage of them never to have done so. I'm gonna have to come up with a better rationale than, "If you don't read this book, I will hit you." I'm gonna have to find ways that the books I choose relate to their lives. I'm therefore going to have to choose books carefully. I'm sure teachers of other disciplines have their own ways.

Hitting kids, though, means you've run out of ideas. It's just the last thing you can possibly do. If that's the only trick you have left, I'd suggest you have few tricks indeed. To their marginal credit, the school is offering parents opt-out letters. You can have your kid suspended for five days rather than brutalized by the lunatics who run the school.

Given that choice, I'd rather have my kid suspended. Of course, a better choice would be to remove lunatics from running schools. That's a widespread issue that fails to merit sufficient attention anywhere, Every New York City teacher I know can attest to seeing lunatics in charge of departments, if not entire schools. Thus, you get ideas like these.

We are teachers. It is our job to very quickly assess situations and very quickly seek solutions. Thankfully, they don't always have to work. But we always have to try, The thing about hitting kids is it's just like hitting dogs. It makes them fearful and angry and it spills out some other way. You teach a kid (or a dog) violence and you beget violence elsewhere.

I wouldn't hit my kid, so I wouldn't hit yours either. I would quit rather than hit a kid. When I get very angry at students, I don't scream or yell or hit. I become very quiet and think of the best thing I can do to make this behavior highly inconvenient. Sometimes that's a tough job, because students can be very smart. You have to think very carefully when dealing with students who are very smart. You have to think things through further than they do. It's not easy.

When you hit kids, you've run out of ideas. You've given up on reason. And if you've given up on reason, why on earth would you want to be a teacher? Do you want to foster cynicism and violence? If that's your goal, there are probably better jobs. I'm thinking reality TV, but I'm sure you can come up with something.

The Quest to Become an Administrator

One morning I walked into a department office and found three teachers. One was at a computer. Another was at a desk, eating a sandwich. A third was standing on a table. I found that a little odd. The person on the table, though, was not particularly happy. This was evident. I asked what the problem was.

"There's a MOUSE in the corner there. This office is INFESTED."

That didn't sound good at all. I said there was a custodial form that was available in the office downstairs. Fill it out, make a copy, and if nothing happened I'd bring it up in committee with the principal.

"I can't do that," the teacher said. Evidently, this teacher was in this committee, that committee, and some other committee as well. I didn't really understand why that was relevant. I mean, I'm on more committees than that person is, and I complain all the time.

So why are people on all these committees? Is it because they love the school and want to pitch in? I mean, that's what Danielson would say. It's not enough that you go to the meetings you're required to be at. You should go to some other meeting, or PD, or something. That would be viable evidence of your enthusiasm. It would not, of course, suggest that you only did it because you were trying to up your rating, and I must be deeply cynical to even imagine such a thing. No, being there is absolute proof you love being there.

On the other hand, you might argue that a concern for health and sanitary conditions shows you care as well. I could argue that dragging UFT in every year to inspect the trailers, so that the inevitable mold can be remediated, ought to get me Danielson points. I might argue that grieving the conditions in a room full of diesel fumes from the custodial workshop next door ought to get me Danielson points. I might argue that grieving the windowless rooms until some sort of adequate ventilation system was established should earn points as well.

Yet none of the above gets me credit. If I want credit I have to sit through some PD about why kids shouldn't be late to class. After all, how will I ever learn that kids shouldn't be late to class unless I sit through a PD about it? And how will I learn how to stop kids from being late unless I sit through a PD and have someone tell me about it? There is absolutely zero possibility I will work out that, or any other issue, in my feeble mind and come up with a solution.

And yet this other teacher, despite being on all those committees, could not write a report about a mouse in the office. A few months later, we were given a directive by the principal to document every instance of classroom participation. This was the result of some memo written by some random genius at Tweed saying we had to use a rubric or something, and that our memory of what happened in class was insufficient to document participation.

"How can I do that?" the teacher asked. "There is no way I can do that and also teach."

That, in fact, was my thought exactly. I told the teacher not to worry, and that I was doing something about it. What I did was file a paperwork complaint. We argued, basically, that this was extra paperwork we were never before required to do. This was ironic, because at the moment I was experimenting with a program called classroom dojo or something. I was, in fact, recording participation in real time. However, I was only able to do that because I had a co-teacher. When I was leading the class I'd hand over my laptop to the co-teacher and she'd record.

We won that paperwork complaint. The Tweed genius was overruled by someone above his pay grade, and teachers were allowed to record participation via memory. It's kind of remarkable how little some Tweedies know about what goes on in actual classrooms. If I don't know who participates, and who doesn't, it probably means I haven't been attending my own class. Or maybe I was asleep and not paying attention. Despite what I read in the local papers, I don't know a whole lot of teachers who sleep in their own classes.

Anyway, the teacher who would not report the mouse has moved on and is now an assistant principal. A cynic might question why this teacher was on all those committees, or why this person wouldn't report the mice that were clearly very usetting. So here's the question--was this teacher on all these committees to acquire the professional enrichment deemed so important by Charlotte Danielson? Or was this teacher, in fact, only doing this as a stepping stone to become an administrator?

Also, as an administrator, will this person report future mice in the new office? Or will this person ignore them? I can only suppose it will depend on whether reporting the mice or not will help this person to become principal. Do you want this person to become your principal?

Or is this person your principal already?

Nope. They Begin With Great Teachers.

This is the CSA float from the Labor Day Parade. Here's a fact--the Labor Day Parade began with UFT. There is no doubt in my mind that we have more to do with great schools than administrators.

Don't get me wrong--there are great administrators. There are administrators for whom I have nothing but respect. This notwithstanding, I've seen quite a few who are cruel, who are small-minded, and who are extraordinarily vindictive. Sometimes their schools and departments are saved by teachers, parents, or students. Sometimes not.

Being an administrative leader is a huge job, and it's a job I would not want. Some administrators are good at some things, but not others. An administrator for whom I had great respect selected some of the best administrators I've ever seen. Alas, he also selected some of the worst. It's like there's no rhyme or reason. At least one of the terrible administrators he selected was reputed to be a good teacher. It's hard for me to imagine this person being a good teacher. To me, a good teacher has a quick mind, or is thoughtful, and this person most certainly was neither. I have students who'd think circles around this guy. (I love these students, but they are a lot of work.)

Teachers are busy around the clock. When I come in ridiculously early each morning, there are dozens of colleagues who've come in even more ridiculously early. I see social studies teachers huddled in a bookroom working on computers. All day long they're in that closet, prepping their classes. I don't think I spend as much time as they do, but I'm there early in the hopes I can get my work done before anyone finds me. I always find some way to finish, even if I can't explain just how.

And just for the record, we are brothers and sisters, we are union, and we also support one another. I get texts and emails all day long about more things than I can tell you. The first two days were real scorchers. The trailers were diabolical. I kept telling people to call the office and move the kids to the auditorium. No, I don't care if you're covering binomials. I don't even know what binomials are and it hasn't fundamentally affected my lifestyle.

Last week I helped a teacher in the trailer not only get a functional lock on the outside door, but also get a lock on the bathroom door so her students would no longer get locked inside. I helped five teachers file grievances. I helped a pregnant colleague get her entire program on one floor. I signed up every agency fee payer and every new teacher for our union.

I hear a lot about how the union sucks. The union makes bad endorsements. True.  The 2005 contract was an irredeemable piece of crap that we still pay for every single day. Also true. Nonetheless, the same union just negotiated six weeks of paid parental leave. Could it have been better? Of course. Is it a great step forward? Absolutely.

There are things we can do to make our union better. I know because I'm doing them. I became chapter leader of my school.  I ran for several union positions, and finally won one. I worked very hard to make that happen, and it was pretty much miraculous. This is what happens when we work together.

There are a lot of things going on in the UFT, all the time. You don't see them every day, but I do. During the Labor Day Parade, while I was marching, I was texting a union leader about an issue a member was having. This leader reached out to that member right at that moment. Here's the thing--we are the UFT. We are as active, or not, as we choose to be.

We need to take care of one another. We aren't going to win every battle. We aren't going to get rid of every crazy supervisor, because believe me, if they managed to find jobs in my school, they are an epidemic. But if we are not afraid, we can fight. If we are not afraid, we can win. We are role models. We owe it to our students to do what's right. We owe it to our students to make our jobs better. We owe it to our students to leave this job one they can aspire to.

Two of my former ELLs are now teachers in my building. I'm very proud of them. It's on us to improve our working conditions, and I'm reminded of this every time I look at these young women. It's on us to stand strong. It's on us to make change and to avoid letting grass grow beneath our feet. It's on us to create a better environment for our students and children. It's on us to make this job better for those who follow us.

I'll say just one more thing--CSA may think they're the leaders, but whither we go, they go too. Maybe more CSA members should support and help us. We will fight the bastards who gave us Janus, and we will win. If we didn't, CSA would most certainly be washed into the ocean right along with us, and when we faced draconian salary cuts and health fees, like they did in who knows how many union-hostile red states, they'd face them right along with us.

We lead. Where we lead to is up to us.

Mandatory Sexual Harassment Training--Highly Effective, or Just High?

A lot of members in my building were upset by an email saying there was mandatory sexual harassment training. However, it turns out it isn't sexual harassment training at all, but rather sexual harassment prevention training. So if, for example, you don't know anything about sexual harassment, you need not study it beforehand.

Here's what I saw when I tried to connect to it:

I had planned to take the thing and report back. But seeing that message, I decided the hell with it. Who knows what evil lurks in the DOE website? And who wants to find out firsthand? Not me.

This notwithstanding, it's a tough message to understand, and a lot of members asked me about it. I've put out feelers to the UFT about what "mandatory" really means. As far as I can tell, if you don't take the course, you will not receive the certificate that says you took the course. Thus, there will be one more piece of paper you'll never be able to hang on your wall. As far as I can tell, there is no other consequence, but you never know what Tweed will do. They don't think like us, you know.

Some of my colleagues are telling me I got the warning because I don't have a DOE laptop, but I don't know. I was on the DOE wifi when I saw it. I suppose I could wrestle my colleagues over one of the hard-wired computers in the office. Some of them look stronger than me, though. And who knows if they have martial arts training or whatever? In fact I carry this little laptop precisely so I won't need to do that. (I also carry it to utilize tech in my classroom, but none of the tech in my classroom works.  The DOE can't be bothered with that, let alone providing a classroom bigger than a closet.)

Let's forget about all the idiotic obstacles the DOE is throwing in my path for a moment. It doesn't take very much to dissuade me from doing things I don't really want to do. Nonetheless, what if I really needed it? Let's say Harvey Weinstein is my co-teacher. Does anyone really believe that a 45-minute online whatever is gonna turn him around?

The New York City Department of Education does, evidently. If only Harvey had sat for this webinar, or whatever the hell it is, none of this would've happened, or it would at least have come to a dead stop. This is kind of remarkable. People spend years in therapy to deal with their issues, but the DOE can write 45 minutes of something and cure them instantly. They are Highly Effective, simply because they are the sole arbiters of what is and is not Highly Effective.

Next on their list of Activities Designed to Save the World is diversity training. Once that happens, that teacher who stands up in the teacher cafe to sing Deutchland Uber Alles will never do it again. Those people who hate those other people will stop. Who cares if they've been mindless bigots since they were children? Once the DOE gets to show them a PowerPoint, prejudice and racism will be a thing of the past.

Obviously, like sexual harassment, bigotry is an issue. And obviously, we should address it. I'd venture, though, that these are issues that ought to be addressed on a much larger scale. This is particularly important when the President of the United States sees good people "on both sides" when one side is nazis. It's particularly important when our president is a self indulgent juvenile who thinks women are placed on earth for his amusement. It's particularly important when our government is so rampantly xenophobic it separates children from their parents, who are likely as not fleeing for their lives. It's particularly important when racist galoots from coast to coast feel empowered to spout their vitriol everywhere in the name of Making America Great Again.

I may be cynical, but I don't see how spending 45 minutes with the great minds who fight to keep class sizes above contractual limits is going to reverse negative attitudes. I don't hate people for their skin color, sex, nationality, or religion. Ask me what I think, though, when I say, "There are 57 oversized classes at Francis Lewis High School," and the lawyer across the table responds, "There are zero."

Ask me privately, please. For all I know, my students may be reading this blog.

Teacher's Diary--Class Day One

It's kind of nerve-racking meeting classes for the first time. First and foremost, you never know anyone's name. Our ELLs are largely Asian, and some of the names are very tough for me. My pronunciation is better than it once was, but it's never gonna be anything to brag about. I've called kids by the wrong names for months sometimes before they corrected me.

Yesterday, in my first class, I did diagnostic essays. This class is supposed to be the highest level ESL class there is. Yet I found students who would clearly benefit from what I teach in my beginning English classes. I found really fundamental errors, like failure to capitalize anything, utter ignorance of tense use, and writing I am with an apostrophe between the two full words. It's pretty clear to me that the students I used to get in beginning levels are now simply in higher levels.

Now it's nice that the students are in higher levels, I suppose. It certainly makes me look good, if I happened to teach those kids. However, for all but three in that group, I did not. That's not really the point. The actual point is to make NY State look good. We have this insane thing about giving way less ESL instruction. I'm not exactly sure what made the state go this way. I have theories.

My first is that there has always been a shortage of ESL teachers. That's why I've frequently been offered the chance to teach and extra class, in a shortage area, and make an extra 12K or so per year. I've said no each and every time because I have no idea how I even do what I already do, let alone teach an extra class. Fortunately, a whole lot of my colleagues have worked this out better than I have.

So you move all the kids up a level or two, cut a good half of the actual ESL classes, and maybe there will be no shortage. Hopefully you'll have so few kids studying English you won't need any ESL teachers at all. They'll simply acquire English by pure magic. You could write a book--How to Learn a Language Without Studying at All. Or not. It doesn't really matter whether you learn the language as long as you pass this test. And since NY State not only designs the test, but also creates the cut scores, the test can say any damn thing they wish it to.

It's sad, really. My beginner classes are now almost exclusively rank beginners, which is kind of sad. These kids would benefit from being challenged more by their peers. Of course, I'm not a genius from Albany. I'm just a lowly teacher so what do I know about teaching? If I knew anything about teaching, I'd be sitting on my ass in some Albany building telling all the working teachers what to do.

Meanwhile, I'm losing the perpetual battle of man vs. machine. For years, I was in the trailers, No one ever put tech out there. Last I was there, there was some ancient windows laptop chained to the wall. When I taught The Cask of Amontillado, I told the students the guy was just like the laptop. I think I showed a video from it on Chinese New Year, when only four kids showed up.

I was later promoted into the building, where I had a dead Smartboard. Though I dutifully hung my coat on it each and every day, I never could talk my AP into giving me credit for innovative use of technology. Then, something even worse happened, They pulled out the thing and replaced it with something that actually worked.. This grieved me deeply. I actually had to learn how to use the thing.

So now that I've done that, I'm in a new room with tech that is absolutely non-functional. I have a student who visits me who's a computer genius. He pointed to a box on the wall and said, "You see that thing? That thing needs to be replaced." As if that's not enough, the teacher who precedes me pointed out the lockbox the computer is in. It has no handle anymore, and it's impossible to open.

What bothers me most is I've become someone I used to ridicule. I found it hilarious when young teachers would freak out because the tech was unavailable. What am I gonna do without my PowerPoint? Actually I don't say that. I say what am I gonna do without my Keynote, which is completely different.

That's the ticket. I wish you all a great day two.

First Day Back

People kept asking me yesterday how my summer was. I had to tell the truth. I woke up in the morning and it was finished. I cried for 90 minutes but it still didn't come back. Perhaps that was not the optimal approach, but that doesn't necessarily mean I won't give it another try.

There were the usual disasters, things that no one ever thought would happen that happened anyway. No one really knows what to do about those things, so I won't go into detail. Those things seem to happen everywhere anyway.

There were two former agency fee payers in my building, and I signed up both of them. I signed up every new teacher I met. It was easy and they were happy. I was fortunate enough to get some time with teachers new to the school and new to the system. They had a lot of questions this year. I was encouraged. There have been years when there were no questions whatsoever. The then-principal told me they were so great they knew everything already. Personally, I've been doing this for 34 years and I don't know everything, I figure as soon as I think I know everything, I probably know less than I did when I realized I didn't.

I wrote a long Keynote presentation for when I met with staff. In case you don't know, Keynote is the Mac version of PowerPoint, I like it better than PowerPoint. However, the display in our auditorium has some strange connection that isn't HDMI or anything I've ever noticed before. I ended up looking at my presentation on my laptop and sharing it with staff via my mouth. That's okay. It just goes to show you that the machines break down but the people go on without them.

I do know people who agonize over having the computers go down. I'm bordering on that, having made up this presentation with all cool transitions and stuff, but what are you gonna do? I mean, just because I might sit and cry upon realizing that summer is gone is no reason to sit and cry in front of the entire staff. Some would say that's not leadership. Yet how many of us wish we had a supervisor who would just sit and cry rather than telling us how it's bad that students come late, and they shouldn't come late, and then they get all high and mighty and start telling us that we shouldn't come late either. That's your Boy Wonder supervisor for you, and he's probably late every day.

I only had three reorganization grievances, and I was pretty proud until I got to Queens UFT for a meeting, where other chapter leaders were boasting they didn't have any. Who the hell do they think they are having big fun while I'm struggling to write grievances? This is yet another tech issue, in fact.  No one sent in the election form for our school. Though I got it filled out last week, I still haven't got access to the chapter leader section at the UFT website. And why should I? We're only the biggest school in Queens. I don't need any stinking resources.

I got to see my two crappy rooms yesterday, and was given the choice of consolidating into one crappy room. I chose the crappy room with tables rather than chairs. That way, my students can all sit around and have little conversations about how crappy the room is. I can teach them adjectives.

The room is:

a. small
b. diminutive
c. inadequate
d. miserable
e. all of the above

I see a test coming. It will be a test to see how long I can go without complaining about the room. This will be a very tough test for me. I only began complaining yesterday, and I haven't stopped yet. What do we have, 180 days in the year? That's 178 more opportunities. You have to grab life and take it where you need it to go. I am, therefore I complain.

I wish all of you a great school day. I hope you get to do something fun. I know I will, even if it entails complaining. It's one of the things I do best.

The Crappiest Rooms in the Building

It's discouraging to wake up and learn that's what you have. But alas, I checked my program online before and that's what I have. It's funny, because I literally spent years working in the trailers specifically to preclude this. The first time I got dumped into the trailers it was because someone complained louder than I did, I think, so my class and I got bounced. That was before I found my voice.

I was pretty upset. At that time, I was in a room that had a whiteboard. No, not some electronic thing, but rather a blackboard that was covered with white tape stuff. You could use dry erase markers on it. For the first time ever, my handwriting was borderline legible. I mean, the kids still laughed at it, but I found it a lot easier to manipulate. It was a miracle, and I was lucky. My luck lasted less than a month, though.

It was a tough change being placed in the trailers. First of all, they were all the way in back of the building. On cold days, you got cold, on wet days you got wet, and so on and so forth. Sometimes you'd open a trailer to find a sheet of ice on the floor. Sometimes someone would leave the AC at 50, all night, and every desk in the room would be covered in some kind of AC mist. (I'm not sure why so few people understand how thermostats work.) Sometimes a rail would fall off a stairway, and you'd see something that resembled a medieval weapon lying on the ground.

Since I've been chapter leader, I've been bringing UFT health inspectors every year. They come, they find mold, and the DOE does a big song and dance about removing it. The thing is, the geniuses who installed them there placed them on the lowest point on our campus, so there is always water under the trailers. They remove the mold, and it grows back as sure as the sun rises.

Despite all my complaints about the trailers, they're a whole lot better than the crappy half classrooms in our building. It's funny, because there's all that Danielson talk about students being in groups, yet they'll squeeze 30 desks into a space that can barely fit twenty and let the rest of the kids stand, or sit on a windowsill, or take the teacher desk or whatever. Then they come in and complain that the kids aren't in groups.

We also had several rooms that ended up shaped like bowling lanes. I taught in all of them, too. A former principal converted them into computer labs, so that there's a wall of computers on each side of the room. In an overcrowded school like ours, though, a lot of teachers get assigned regular classes in the computer labs. Sometimes when teachers get bad ratings, Boy Wonder supervisors will assign the poorly rated teachers to the computer labs and observe them only in that room.

It's funny though. If I were a supervisor, and if I thought you were a terrible teacher, I'd put you in the very best room in the building. I would figure that, if I were making a case against you, that this would make me look like much less of an asshole. I'd also hope that perhaps this would help you. I'd hope to see something better, because I would get no pleasure out of giving a teacher a bad rating. I get no pleasure in giving students bad grades, so why would that make me happy?

Of course I'm not a supervisor. I've never been drawn to that. However, I am UFT chapter leader of our school. It's a pretty big job. I'm not complaining. I chose this job, and I'm finding in my old age that I am drawn to impossible jobs. I thrive on them.

I was in the trailers for maybe twelve years. I probably got a lot of mileage complaining about them. The rooms I'm in now are worse. When the geniuses from the DOE get up on their high horses about how they love our children, and put them first, I'll ask why they dump them in places like these. It's particularly galling that they do this to ELLs.  It's kind of like what I said about placing troubled teachers in bad rooms. If the students are already hindered by not knowing English, why do you further hurt them by putting them in crap classrooms?

If you run into the mayor or chancellor, ask them. I know if I see them I will.

Happy Labor Day

You remember labor, don't you? That's us, the people who work for a living. Alas, it's traumatic to be a teacher on a day like this. Here we are, having established a rhythm of not working, and we have to re-establish a whole new one. It seems unnatural. For me, it's all about lifestyle. I've gotten into this luxurious habit of sleeping until 6:30 AM. That's gonna change tomorrow.

I haven't used an alarm clock in years, but tomorrow I may have to. As of June I was in the habit of waking ridiculously early, maybe 4 AM. It was the only way I could ever get anything done. I'd usually get to work at least an hour early, which was the only way I could actually do any schoolwork. Even so, people as crazy as I am would come just as early, and sometimes they'd have issues. The thing about us crazy people is we almost always have issues.

I half expect the orange president to get up and declare there is no Labor Day, but rather a corporation day. After all, in our economy, it's corporations that get all the breaks. The GOP tax plan was a huge giveaway to corporations, some of which were already paying nothing or less. Corporations have rights, like they're individuals, and are free to buy politicians like Scott Walker, who target us and make it virtually impossible for us to get ahead.

Of course, things are changing.  Suddenly there's life in the labor movement, and people in some states are getting real traction.

In Missouri, a statewide movement put a referendum on a state right-to-work law on the Primary Day ballot. Not only did voters overwhelmingly overturn the law, but the referendum drew more votes than were cast in the party primaries. Missouri’s unions and labor organizations such as Jobs With Justice led the fight, but in a state where only about 9 percent of the work force is represented by a union, labor had to mobilize plenty of nonunion workers to reject the right to work law. The coalition relied heavily on black and Latino voters, almost certainly benefiting from organizing efforts in the wake of the 2014 Ferguson uprising. 

That's remarkable. It gives me hope on this Labor Day. Of course, that affected only private unions. Public unions have been targeted under Janus, and we don't get a vote on it. Scumbag Janus was bankrolled by corporate interests who don't give a damn about us, and now has a cozy gig at some think tank as a reward. It's a good thing, too, because his former co-workers don't particularly adore him. They threw him a going-away party, but didn't invite him because he's not a union member.

Not only did we not get a vote on Janus, but we didn't even elect the people who pushed it. Consider how many on SCOTUS were appointed by GW and Trump, neither of whom won the popular vote. It's not a huge logical leap to say that the judges they pick are not representative of We, the People. Even as Orange Man's people go down, even as he's an unindicted co-conspirator, even has he withholds 100,000 pages of documents about his SCOTUS pick, his thugs in the Senate are planning to push this through, again bypassing the filibuster with a simple majority.

Even if we dump these scumbags from the Congress and Senate, it will be a long time dealing with the lifetime SCOTUS appointments, probably generations. I'm sorry to be such a bummer on your last day before going back.

I wish you a happy Labor Day anyway. Remember to check your programs very carefully. If you have four preps, if you're in four classrooms, if you got nothing you requested, if you got no C6 you requested, file a grievance. You have only 48 hours to do so. Speak now or forever hold your crappy program. Okay, not forever. But a whole school year with a crappy program is a long time.

Thanks to Harris

The Albany Way

There's a famous quote from Sean Connery's character in The Untouchables when he's schooling young Eliot Ness. He explains the Chicago Way.

He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. 

They don't mess around in Chicago. In Albany, messing around seems to be the number one activity. I mean, Diane Ravitch looks at the amazing test scores, compares them to NAEP, and says that's impossible. The papers declare Ravitch must be out of her mind. The grades went up because of Michael Bloomberg's reforminess, he's a genius, and any damn fool could see that. Otherwise, why would he have all that money?

A year later there's a big scandal. Oh my gosh the tests were dumbed down. It's a disaster. How could this happen? A little later, Reformy John King declares that 70% of the people who take the tests are going to fail, because we aren't Common Corey enough. Then the tests go to Albany, they set the cut scores, and waddya know? 70% failed. I'm pretty sure Arne Duncan looked at the results and declared that white soccer moms had kids who weren't so smart, or something equally stupid at that time.

I'm thinking about this because one of the ways Albany rationalizes the miserable CR Part 154 that robs newcomers of English instruction is by saying more of them pass the test. They're talking about the NYSESLAT test, which is supposed to determine English ability but actually does nothing of the sort. Every year all our kids take the test, and we don't get the results until maybe October.

Can you imagine programming hundreds of kids for classes, only to find out in October that the geniuses in Albany want to send them elsewhere? Every school in the state has to do that, and those of us with large ELL populations really have a hard time with it. That's not to mention, of course, that kids who've been sitting in a classroom for months, studying, taking tests, making friends, are suddenly moved around, likely as not for no good reason at all.

Here's the thing, though--Albany manipulates the scores to say whatever they wish them to. It's not even a secret. We can't give grades to the papers, even the ones we ourselves corrected, because Albany sets the cut scores to say any damn thing they wish. Why are students doing better on the test? Is it because less English instruction causes more English learning? Is that the most absurd question you've seen today? I hope so.

I teach these kids, and have done for years. Here's something I notice as a beginning level teacher--my students know less English than they ever did. Why? Because getting into a higher level is easier, or course. I tend to get really rank beginners now, rather than students who know a little English and need a little push. I also tend to get fewer students. Three years ago there was no space in my classes. Lately there's quite a bit.

Why do you think Meryl Tisch, in her infinite wisdom, declared that teachers could no longer grade state tests of our own students? Tisch assumed because she's a crook, we must all be crooks too. The thing about dishonest people is they tend to expect others to share their dishonesty. I don't do like Tisch does. If I give a test, it actually says how many points you get for each answer. If students don't get the proper credit, they can come and scream at me so I change it.

Of course you can't scream at the geniuses in Albany. For one thing, you'd have to drive there. For another, who knows where your test even is? And even if they found it, the score is whatever they say it is. In fact, you won't find it, you'll never see it, and you'll never know exactly why you got that score, be it good, bad, or whatever. There is absolutely no way you will learn anything from a state test, and that's just fine with the geniuses in Albany.

That's the Albany Way.

Oklahoma Shows We Are Powerful When We Stand Together

NY Magazine ran an amazing article about how Oklahoma teachers stood together and made GOP tools pay for their indifference to education, the voters and their children. This is what happens when working people come together, ignore the blaring noise of those who feel life's purpose is to enrich billionaires, and vote the bastards out. This story is full of wonderfully crafted paragraphs:

Tess Teague mocked the ignorance of protesters who were demanding tax hikes on fracking companies — in a Snapchat video that made heavy use of animal filters. Sooner voters just gave Teague a lot more time to spend with her social media accounts.

I'm really happy to see teachers engaging in such effective collective action. Sadly, the impetus for it was things getting simply so awful that no one could tolerate the job anymore. Pay was so low teachers could not make ends meet. The Republican pigs saw education as a place to cut so as to support their caprices and megadonors.

Here in New York, things are not nearly so bad. I have a friend in a school district just over the Queens line, and he told me top salary over there was within a thousand dollars of NYC. That is not actually a result of our gaining wonderful amazing raises, but rather Cuomo's two-percent tax cap, which has seriously slowed teacher raises in the rest of the state.

Yet we are fractured, with the majority likely wallowing in indifference. No, there hasn't been a mass exodus from union, but neither has there been a massive, focused and well-financed campaign to destroy us. Make no mistake, it's coming. Fred Klonsky posted the photo above on Facebook yesterday. and refers to it as "a waste of stamps."I certainly hope he's right.

There is no doubt whatsoever that our union has become complacent and sleepy after decades of guaranteed dues. Our focus on organizing has been sloppy, indifferent, and bordered on non-existent for decades. It's a new thing to have to reach out and listen. There is a bright side, of course. I don't think we'll see another 2005-style contract, ever. Leadership will have to think very carefully before tossing a giveback-laden piece of crap to us and claiming it scrapes the skies.

On the other hand, after decades of self-congratulatory action, painting absolutely everything as a great victory no matter what, they're going to have to be just a little more introspective. No more can they say Bloomberg wanted 8 pieces of Danielson, but we got 22 so it's a victory, then turn around and say we reduced it to 7 and that's a victory too. No longer can union reps tell aggrieved members they still have a job and therefore everything's okay. No longer can we support pols who hate us and everything we stand for and tell members that's as good as it gets. Old habits die hard.

For my part, I see what the Koch Brothers and the Walmart family want, and they can't have it. They want to tear us apart so we'll have no collective strength. They will succeed with some of us. Some people just see an opportunity to keep a little money and will go with that. I'd argue those people are not socially responsible enough to be teachers. Others will think of past grievances, decide the union sucks, and go that way. I've had people argue to me that their chapter leader sucks, and therefore they shouldn't have to pay. To me, if your chapter leader sucks, you run to replace him, or at least find someone else who will.

I'm irked by people who say the UFT sucks. If that's true, then we suck. In fact, when only 25% of us vote in leadership elections, we kind of suck big time. What kind of role models are we when we don't even give a crap who leads us? So there are a few scenarios here. One is that we allow the corporate giants to get us to leave en masse, watch the collapse of our union, watch our working conditions and pay deteriorate until we are at a point as low as Oklahoma. Then we rise from the ashes like a phoenix, run the corporate bastards from office, and step by step win our way back.

Here's the thing, though. That's not gonna happen. I see the anger of teachers at other places on the net. I don't believe those teachers have the numbers, let alone the voice to become something. I also don't believe the bastards who send this crap will succeed in crippling us. I think leadership is feeling the pressure and needs to continue doing so.

Standing together is a big ask, but we need to find a way to do it. It would be a lot more productive to do from where we are now, rather than wait until we're swirling the drainpipe.

Reforminess Doesn't Work, and Wishful Thinking Isn't Much Better

I'm kind of disappointed to see stories like these anywhere, but reformy Chalkbeat linked to it this morning, so I read it. This piece contends that Chancellor Carranza is "fixated on race." That's a pretty strong way to put it. "Fixated" suggests near-obsession, as opposed to concerned. The implication of the story is that the chancellor cares only about race and doesn't give a golly gosh darn about school quality.

Because "college and career ready" is a thing, the writer goes to it, and suggests that "420 of the city’s 525 high schools" had failed to prep half their students. That's an interesting statistic for a number of reasons. The first that comes to my mind is the relative size of high schools. My school has 4600 students, and does well, while another might have 200 and do poorly, and I mean by any standard.

"College and career ready" is some bizarre formula about getting 75% on this state exam and something else on another. Studies show teacher grades are a better indicator of future student performance, and we're seeing this come up as the test for schools like Stuyvesant is all over the news. The writer has still harsher words for the union and the mayor:

Because no single shortcoming dominates here, no quick fix is possible. Neither de Blasio, who is in charge of the system, nor the de facto commander of the classrooms, United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew, seems to care much.

I haven't been particularly happy with the DOE, ever, and I've been disappointed more than usual lately. My reasons have nothing to do with those of this writer, though. I do not, for one moment, believe de Blasio doesn't care about public schools. And while Mulgrew may be many things, he's far from the "de facto commander" of the classrooms. I'm the de facto commander of my classroom, and if you aren't the same with yours, well, maybe you work for Eva Moskowitz. The statement blames Mulgrew, but implies those of us who do the work every day don't care much either, perhaps at Mulgrew's urging. That's not only insulting--it's also ridiculous.

The writer acknowledges poverty in the piece, to his credit, but kind of dismisses efforts to deal with it. The writer suggests we need to improve standards across the board, and suggests that efforts to integrate schools will somehow distract from it. However, the writer offers no plan to accomplish this. There are a whole lot of active plans in place to do this, the most prominent of which is charter schools. As we watch Eva graduate 20% of the kids who began with her, and hire her 19-year-old non-college graduated son to teach at Moskowitz Academy, she fails to impress.

Reformies never want to address root causes of student failure, the most glaring of which is poverty. This is particularly ironic in NYC, the most liberal area of the state. Even as Andrew Cuomo runs ridiculous ads about how he will protect health care, he enabled the IDC, which has blocked universal health care for years. Cuomo runs commercials about his free college plan, but it actually funds fewer than 4% of our college students, and rejects 70% of those who apply.

The fact is a lot of our students don't get decent health care. A lot of our students are not proficient in English. In fact, none of my students are, and the state is actively exploring programs to give them even less instruction. This writer, who probably knows nothing of the state's idiotic plans, rails against a plan that would find seats for ELLs and homeless children. But hey, they have to sit somewhere.

It's pretty easy to sit in an air-conditioned office somewhere and imply we have to get tough with kids so they have more grit and rigor, or whatever buzz words are in vogue this week. It's a lot tougher to look at root causes and try to address them. This is something we're doing at no level whatsoever. Bill Gates likes to talk about schools in Finland and say we suck next to them. He's right, you know.

The reason Finland does better than we do, though, is not because they turned all their schools into no excuses Moskowitz Academies. It's because they, as a country, decided to address poverty. They also decided that all their kids would go to public schools. Over in Finland, rich people don't pay to keep their children away from kids like yours and mine. If Mayor Bloomberg had to send his kids to public schools he wouldn't have turned them into a reformy lab experiment.

I'd argue it isn't Mayor de Blasio, Michael Mulgrew, you or me who is responsible for student failure in schools. Unless, of course, you hold us responsible for electing people like Cuomo, Bloomberg, Trump, Obama and countless others who waste our time with nonsensical reforminess rather than actually helping the children of America.

At the Moskowitz Academy, Charity Begins at Home

Eva Moskowitz has made a career of telling the world how UFT teachers suck. We devote our lives to helping the city's children and that's an unpardonable crime. Only she has the secret sauce that leads to an amazing 20% of her students graduating over at the Moskowitz Academy. You might say, but Eva, we graduate that many on a very bad year. That doesn't matter because there are no excuses over in Moskowitz World. I mean no excuses for us.

And we know that she's right. Otherwise, why would hedge funders be taking suitcases of cash and buying off easy targets like Andrew Cuomo? Why would the last Democratic president have hired Arne Duncan to push charter schools and whatever programs flowed from the ample posterior of Bill Gates? Why would we all be bribed to Race to the Top and be judged via junk science? They must be right because they have all that money. Who cares if research fails to support their ideas, or if the American Statistical Association rates them as nonsense?

Now some people might say that the incredible churn of charter teachers is an issue. How can you have institutional memory when year after year you lose most of your people? How do kids feel coming year after year and seeing the teachers they may well love gone and never coming back? Is that how you do role modeling? None of that is important. Otherwise why would all those people with all that money keep supporting Eva?

Furthermore, Moskowitz Academies have high standards. No excuses. If you screw up, be prepared to suffer. Eva Moskowitz doesn't pay herself almost a million dollars a year to put up with your nonsense. They hire only the best teachers charter pay and working conditions can provide. The fact that they can't hold on to the overwhelming majority of them is only a testament to the selfishness of teachers. They aren't focused on the test scores because they want to have lives. Some of them want to get married and even have children.

But in Moskowitz World, there are no excuses. Make the kids pass the tests. No excuses and no time for that nonsense. Except for Eva, of course, who is in fact married with children. I wasn't actually aware she had children until I read Chalkbeat, the publication that covers All Things Moskowitz All the Time. It turns out that Eva has hired her 19-year-old son to teach economics.

A lot of people shook their heads in wonder when Eva and her BFFs wanted charters to certify their own teachers. I mean, shouldn't teachers graduate from college? In Moskowitz World, that seems not to be a prerequisite. This is particularly true if you happen to be Son of Moskowitz. Here's yet another innovation from Moskowitz World:

Michaud says Culver Moskowitz makes minimum wage, as he did last year as an intern at Success Academy Harlem East, a middle school. Santiago, Venner, and a former student said he taught eighth-grade math classes there last year.

Wow. Teachers making minimum wage. Betsy DeVos is probably rolling over in her coffin this morning wondering why she didn't think of that. And then there's that other tidbit--while reformy Chalkbeat is all over Moskowitz Junior teaching economics, this isn't the first time they've set him up as a teacher. Maybe they think teaching math while being totally unqualified doesn't merit mention, but teaching economics is beyond the pale.

Personally, I'd question the wisdom of having an economics instructor who worked for minimum wage. I see that as an extremely poor role model--unless, of course, your goal is to have students working for minimum wage. I have to think that's pretty much okay with the reformies. Otherwise, why would the Walmart Family be sinking so much cash into reforminess? If they were interested in helping working people, they could always pay their employees more, as opposed to fighting union tooth and nail and imposing notoriously awful working conditions.

Here's the truth--as reformies like Moskowitz make careers out of trashing us for our supposed low standards, our standards are consistently higher than hers. We take every kid who walks into our buildings. If they have issues, we don't place them on "got to go" lists. We don't make children do test prep until they pee themselves, and any teacher who did would be up on charges.

We also have standards for teachers. We insist they are certified. We insist that they've graduated college. Also, we don't pay them minimum wage. We don't wave our magic wands and make our children into teachers. In fact, we frown on nepotism.

Eva's standards and values seem to waver with her personal convenience. That's hardly what I'd call a leader.

New Union Maid

 No, that's not a union maid on the left. That's legendary troubadour Woody Guthrie, with a message that's tragically relevant today, 80 years later, pasted to the face of his guitar. When I was very young, my mother played folk music on the radio in our house almost every day. I know a whole lot of his songs.

After Janus, I am reborn as a unionist. I see it as a moral imperative, but alas, here in America, there are few morals, and fewer imperatives. I'm horrified by this concerted attack on union, but it tells me leadership needs to be reborn as well. Trump and his illegitimate SCOTUS thugs have moved us back decades. The only bright spot is that activism is no longer simply an option. So where are the union songs? You have to look back to 1940 to find Union Maid, Woody's classic anthem.

Things have changed, though, since 1940.

There once was a union maid, who never was afraid, of the goons and the ginks, and the company finks, and the sheriffs who made the raids...

We don't have a whole lot of sheriffs raiding us nowadays. So I changed that a little.

There once was a union maid, who never was afraid, of the Kochs and the Trumps and the hedge fund chumps who thought they had her played...

That's who we're fighting right now. And it's not really about beating us up with sticks and stones. It's about fooling us into thinking they're on our side. So instead of:

Oh, you can't scare me I'm sticking with the union...

New Union Maid sings you can't fool me, I'm sticking with the union.

That's the entire premise of "right to work." We're fighting, they say, so you can save a few bucks on union dues. "Your pay, your say."  Of course, people like the Kochs are not here to help us. If you believe they are, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale at a bargain basement price. The Kochs, along with all the politicians they own, want to weaken us by tearing us apart and cutting our resources, and thus add money we need and deserve to their already countless wealth.

And when they said don’t pay, it put her in a rage,
With half a chance they’d change their stance and pay her minimum wage.

That's a fact, Jack. If you don't believe it, go work in a non-unionized charter school. Bring home a cell phone and spend the night answering homework questions. Or go around the neighborhood on days "off" knocking on doors to canvas your students. Instead of writing your own plans, follow the ones Eva gives you. If you don't like them, too bad, and if you don't make the kids do test prep until they pee their pants, you're fired. There's a reason why charter teachers burn out after a few years, and that's beneficial neither to them nor their students.

It's pretty easy to find fault with leadership. I know, because I've been doing it right here for over thirteen years. The 2005 contract was an abomination, likely as not the biggest mistake we've ever made. We pay for it each and every day with the Absent Teacher Reserve, not to mention the inability to grieve preposterous letters to file. We need to work on that.

On the other hand, we just negotiated paid parental leave, a remarkable advance, for a one-time delay in contract. I've seen this agreement parsed to the nth degree, lately because of arguments we paid too much. I don't buy that. More importantly, new teachers with whom I speak, and I've spoken to many over the last week, don't buy it either. I was asked to recruit new members by telephone, and every one I spoke to was thrilled by it. It was my best selling point, and no one turned me down.

This is a time to embrace and promote unionism. This is a time to look at the New Union Maid, who's markedly different from her 1940 counterpart:

You gals who want to be free, just take a tip from me;
Get you a man who's a union man and join the ladies' auxiliary.
Married life ain't hard when you got a union card,
A union man has a happy life when he's got a union wife.

At this point, women aren't joining ladies' auxiliaries. Our profession in particular is actually dominated by women. So the new union maid is actually a working person, not just someone supporting her husband on the job. It's a great song, but it's dated, so I updated.

New Union Maid was mostly made in my dining room on my new Macbook Pro. Apple offered an educator package for $199 that contained professional recording and video software. I'm a sucker for a bargain, and got right to work on Logic Pro X, which challenged the hell out of me. After a particularly brutal battle trying to find a suitable reverb for the voices and fiddle, I turned to my friend Bob Harris, guitarist extraordinaire, who has a professional recording studio. Bob finished and mastered the recording, and also took over on the bass guitar after I brutally fired myself. I thought he made it sound almost like a stand up, but I guess that's debatable.

I see this as an anthem with potential for a promotional video, assuming someone finds a suitable union maid. I'd love to record this completely at Bob's studio with a full bluegrass band. My next project is a song about Boy Wonder, the 30-year-old supervisor who knows everything. I don't know how long that will take. As currently conceived, it will entail my mastering the frightening and formidable drum machine in Logic Pro X. A music teacher in my school actually understands it, and I'm hoping he can get me to understand it too.

If you haven't listened to New Union Maid yet, you can find it right here.

You're Taking This Walking Stuff Way Too Far

That's what Toby told me yesterday. He sat on the boardwalk at the park and refused to move. I tried everything. I tried to reason with him. I tried to bribe him with treats. Eventually he let me bribe him with a treat, but he wasn't happy about it.

"You know how many times you make me walk the canal?" he asked.

"I know. Sometimes four times a day."

"That's right. Do you have any idea how far that is for me? Look at the size of my legs. They're tiny compared to yours."

"Yeah, well, maybe I have longer legs than you, but you have four of them. I only have two."

"Look," he said. "No one's forcing you to walk all funny like that. If you want to use all four of your legs I won't stop you."

"Listen Toby," I told him. "These two are ARMS, not legs. And I need my hands free so I can give you treats sometimes. And I'm mad at you too. I let you run around in the park with your friend April this morning and you both ran almost to the street to meet some Shih Tzu. I'm not gonna do that anymore"

"The Shih Tzu is our friend. We've seen her walking before. She's cute."

"I don't care. You could get hurt."

"Okay," he said. "But what's with the crappy music they always play on the canal?"

"It's not so bad," I said.

"Are you kidding me? That guy singing Rolling Stones tunes was more out of tune than those two cats who were fighting outside our window this morning."

I defended him. "He's doing Mick Jagger. No one can match that crudity."

"Give me a break," he said. "That guy had gray hair. He had no business singing rock and roll"

"Listen," I said. "First of all, you're only two, and you have gray hair, so you shouldn't be one to talk. Second, that guy had to be twenty years younger than Mick."

"Maybe," he said. "But at least Mick dyes his hair. And I may have gray hair, but I'm super cute. Everyone says so. What happened to that human at Tropix who was always fussing over me?"

"I don't know. Maybe she got fired for paying attention to you instead of the customers."

"Well, anyway, there was even more crappy music. How about that woman singing Dreaming by Blondie? I love Debbie Harry but she was no Debby Harry. So out of tune."

"Everybody loves Debby Harry. But you just complain about everyone, Toby."

"Not true. I liked that guy at Otto's singing Springsteeen songs."

"Are you kidding me? He was strumming a guitar and playing to some karaoke thing. Do you know how many musicians he's putting out of work?"

"I don't care," he said. "At least he was in tune."

I don't know if I want to have these conversations any more, It seems to me, especially during these waning summer days, that I ought not to have to do so much negotiating.

No Special Ed. for You, Says Eva Moskowitz

There's a pretty amazing story over at the NYC Parents Blog. Evidently Eva Moskowitz deems it too difficult to find certified Special Education teachers, so she's telling special ed. students and their parents they can either piss off or be left back. How inconvenient it must be for Eva to follow laws and do her job. After all, she works for less than a million bucks a year and you can hardly buy a decent house in Queens for that anymore. From the NYC Parents Blog:

In June, I was contacted by two parents whose fifth-grade special needs children were in a self-contained 12-1-1 class at Success Academy Bed Stuy middle school. They told me how the principal, Rishabh Agarwal, had brought them individually into his office and told them that the school was getting rid of their 12-1-1 self-contained program, because the school didn’t know how to educate kids with special needs and it was too difficult to find a certified special education teacher. 

He said their only two choices were to agree to have their kids held back in a regular 5^th grade class or transfer them to a different school outside the Success charter network of 46 schools.

Can you imagine such a thing occurring at a public school? If your school did that, you wouldn't be reading about it on Leonie Haimson's blog. It would be all over the tabloids and your principal would be scrambling to keep her worthless ass at the job. Sorry, it's just too inconvenient for us to serve your kid. We can't be bothered looking for a teacher. Can you imagine that from a public school leader?

Of course it isn't from a public school leader, but rather from the self-appointed Great Savior of New York City's children, Eva Moskowitz herself. They make movies about charter schools, you know. All the reformies go out and sing their praises. They will finally help all the children that the evil public schools are failing. It's about time.

But as we learn more an more about them, what we find is that they cherry pick their students. Along the way, they lose most of those with whom they start out. They fully expect us to ignore such things and claim that 100% of those who graduate go to college. Sometimes they all go to four-year colleges. And that's fine, but it's no miracle at all, especially when you've lost the majority of your kids to the public school system, you know, the one that fails everyone because it's full of horrible indifferent teachers like yours truly.

Here we find a case of their blatantly ignoring not only the needs of the children they take our money to serve, but also the law. We haven't got room for you in the classes we see fit to create, so we're gonna hold you back a grade for no reason. If this isn't an attempt to intimidate parents to move their special needs kids elsewhere, I'm not sure what is.

Here's a fact of life--special ed. teachers are indeed hard to find. My school is one of the most desirable places to work in the city and I often see admin have issues. It's even harder now that they've upped the requirements and demanded that teachers be dually licensed. Despite these issues, no administrator has called a parent and demanded that students either get out of our school or be left back, not ever. In our school, we take everyone. We have an entire program of alternate assessment students in our school, students who will never graduate. That will be counted against us in our records, though it's neither our fault nor that of the kids. If you run into Eva, ask her how many alternate assessment students are in Moskowitz Academies.

The reason for this is that we are really a public school. Charter schools are public only in the sense that they take our money. Eva Moskowitz famously refused to sign the agreement every other New York City school did to offer pre-K, and slogged through the courts until she could weasel her way out of it. If she can't do what she wants, how she wants, she won't do it at all.

More and more we are learning the limits of Eva's educational miracle. She fails the overwhelming majority of kids who start her program, and a remarkable 80% don't complete it. One Moskowitz Academy principal got caught with a "got to go" list, a list of children they wanted to dump from the program. Moskowitz calls this an anomaly, but who knows how many other such lists there are or have been? It's remarkable, in fact, we even know about this one. We see awful treatment of children and are left to wonder just how frequent it is. I'd argue taking students to Albany as pawns to make a political point is child abuse. Moskowitz gets away with it because rules don't apply to her, but if I did that with my students I'd be fired, and justifiably so.

It's unconscionable that we let children be treated this way. It's a travesty that we allow any school to take a single dime from our tax dollars and then flip the public the bird like this. Of course, there are those suitcases of hedge fund cash that travel from DFER to Governor Cuomo, so he turns a blind eye, even while mustering the audacity to call himself a "student lobbyist." When Bill de Blasio dared to deny space to the Moskowitz Academy, Cuomo and the Heavy-Hearted Assembly passed regulations that, if he denied them space, the city would have to pay their rent anyway.

It's sad that our children's education is up for sale in Albany. On September 13th I will vote for Cynthia Nixon, Jumaane Williams, and Zephyr Teachout. None of them take money from Eva's stooges. I'm a registered Democrat so I can get a vote in these primaries. I hope you are too. Please don't be one of those people who sleeps in or gets a haircut that day. People like that are precisely why we have a blight of unaccountable charter schools taking our money and abusing our children.

Moskowitz Academy to Parents--Miss Work or We Kick Your Kid Out

All the details, of course are over at Chalkbeat, which might as well be called Moskowitz Minute by Minute. Can you imagine saying such a thing to a parent? Yet Eva Moskowitz has no problem with it. Come in on June 5th or we assume you aren't coming next year.

June 5th was a Tuesday this year, and a working day for a whole lot of New Yorkers. I guess, though, if I were one of the few parents who slogged through Moskowitz Academy all the way to high school, I must have felt it was important. I mean, it would take a lot for me to leave my kid, for years, in a program where test prep was more important than bathroom breaks.

That's ironic, because of so much talk about college and career readiness. The United States lags well behind most non-third-world countries in terms of basic human decency, but OSHA has particular rules about bathroom breaks. (If you run into Donald Trump, please don't let him know this.) Unlike Moskowitz Academies, employers have to have bathrooms available, and they have to allow employees to use them. Moskowitz Academies, were they public schools, would be in violation of chancellor's regulations. Of course, were they workplaces, they'd be in violation of OSHA rules. Then there's that whole human decency thing, but they seem not to place much of a premium on that.

Nowhere is that more evident than in this compulsory meeting thing. In one of the crappy corporate charter films, charters that deny basic human needs are presented as Superman. You know, we public school teachers suck, and all we care about is ourselves and our luxurious 89 Honda Accords. But charters are here to save all the underprivileged people who can't afford private schools, you know, the ones Bloomberg sends his kids to so they don't have to mix elbows with the people he claims to care about.

Now here's the thing--in New York State, unless you've got a contract that says otherwise, you're an at-will employee. If you, and/ or your spouse, work a minimum wage job at Taco Bell, you could be fired for missing a day. Like Eva's charter school teachers, low-wage employees are pretty much disposable and replaceable. So it's entirely conceivable you could be faced with either losing your child's place in the Moskowitz Academy or losing your job. There's a choice no working parent ought to face. But there are no excuses in the Moskowitz Academy. (Unless, of course, you happen to be Moskowitz.)

Evidently her high school is a mess. It turns out that high school kids do not respond well to minute enforcement of petty rules. You can imagine how shocked I must be, having taught high school kids for only the last few decades. I may, in fact, re-examine my policy of making rules for no good reason and either leaving back or expelling students who fail to follow them.

“What if I have all As? Are you going to hold me back because I’m wearing the wrong shoes?” a student asked, according to a video of the sit-in reviewed by Chalkbeat.

Those are tough questions. I've been teaching 34 years and I have never heard questions like that. You know why? Because I do not, in fact, make rules for no good reason. I don't hand out a page of rules on the first day, even if my department has one all printed and ready to go. I have one rule, which I explain as best I can to my ELLs:

We will treat one another with respect.

That's pretty much it. I'm not going to ridicule you if you didn't do your homework. I'm not going to fail you if you understand the material having missed a bunch of it, likely as not because your grandma makes you get up at 2 AM to help her deliver Newsday. I'm not going to make fun of how you dress. Evidently the principal of Eva's high school made the egregious error of moving in that direction:

Malone’s strategy was to offer more freedom than was typical in the network’s lower grades. Some Advanced Placement classes pushed students to complete research papers, not focus purely on test preparation, former teachers said. Students recalled he allowed them to wear colorful headscarves featuring African prints, even if they weren’t technically in line with the network’s dress code.

Oh my gosh it's the end of Western Civilization! Fear not. Eva dumped his ass. No idea whether he still works for Moskowitz Academies, but there will be no more of that nonsense in Eva's high school. The rationale is that in college no one will tell you what to do. Therefore you will be micro-managed throughout your high school career. Somehow, by being entirely dependent upon carrots and mostly sticks throughout Moskowitz Academy, you will be magically 100% self-sufficient by the time you hit college. Do you see how that works? Me neither.

Even by reformy Chalkbeat's account, the very few students who made it all the way through the Moskowitz Academies had a really hard time. Does that mean they're rethinking the high school program? Does it mean they're gonna tone down the bullying that seems to work so well on 6-year-olds?

“I could have said, look, I’m going to throw in the towel,” Moskowitz told them, adding, “I didn’t abandon you. I’m here.”

Nope. No excuses. She fired the principal, but she's here, making almost a million dollars a year for whatever this thing is she does. What incredible dedication it must take to lavishly compensate yourself while punishing others for whatever goes wrong. I guess if we're preparing our kids to be minimum wage Walmart associates this is a good program. If we really want self-driven, independent thinkers, this is the last program we should place our children in. There's a reason why 80% of those who begin don't make it through this program. 

I'm not sure why a 20% success rate is anything to brag about, particularly when they're looking to leave back even more students for missing a few homework assignments. But hey, I exclusively teach kids Moskowitz wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, so I guess I must be part of the problem.

The Back to Work Dream

I was walking my dog this morning when I met a school custodian. He told me he dreaded going back to work. He had to go to a meeting a few days ago and had an awful dream about being back at work. It's not hard for me to imagine that a lot of teachers are having the same dream and/ or feelings.

I don't dread going back to work. I don't know what's wrong with me. I used to dread it when I first started. It was like when I was a kid. Oh my gosh the summer can't possible be over. Where has it gone? I mean, it was right there, but I woke up this morning and here I was at school. There must be some form of appeal.

Nonetheless, I'm not quite in the mode principals always seem to think we should be in. "It's great to see you all back and re-energized! I can't wait to get back to work, and I know you can't either!" I have heard so many variations of that speech. I wonder if they learn that in administrator school. Pro tip--it's unpersuasive. It just provokes groans and cynicism. I'm not sure what I'd say. Probably welcome back, and please let me know if I can do anything to support you. My door is always open. That's a better approach, even though we all know the door is frequently closed.

I suppose I am philosophical. This is my job so I'd better go do it. Man, am I lucky to have a substantial break, unlike most working Americans. I hope working Americans start to see if would be good if they were to have a break too. That's much better than having them lobby to take mine away. What with Trump in the White House, that's not likely. I mean, it's OK for him to spend 163 days playing golf, but not us. Funny times indeed.

My job keeps me incredibly busy. When I'm working, I sometimes think about what I'd be doing if I were off. Because I've grown so incredibly unambitious and unimaginative, that often entails walking my dog. This summer, I've walked him so much that he's starting to get sick of me. He tells me I'm taking this walking stuff way too far. He's been especially strong on that point when it's hot and humid. He keeps looking at me with eyes that say, "Jeez, when are you gonna go back to work? Things were fine until you started hanging out here every day." It's hard suffering through that sort of criticism from your best pal, but he seems to know what's best for both of us.

I have a summer project I'm working on. I bought a new Macbook a week ago to replace the one I've had for ten years that works some times but not others. It came with a professional recording program called Logic Pro X. I listened to Union Maid, Woody Guthrie's anthem about joining the ladies' auxiliary to support your union man and decided it needed an update for Janus. I wrote new words and recorded it. I played and sang harmony vocals with myself. It turns out my voice is very compatible with my voice so we harmonized well. Then I tried to add reverb to the vocals and fiddles. There are half a dozen different ones and they all sound like you're stuck on the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I can't figure out how to turn it down. That's odd because whenever I've used reverb on an amplifier, the only adjustment there was was up or down.

I've checked books and videos. I bought Logic Pro X for Dummies, and it turns out I'm too far-gone a dummy to follow it. I watched a guy name Composer Dad sit with his two kids constantly interrupting him and he managed to make the adjustment I'm looking for. But he has an older version of the software and the knob he used to do it doesn't appear on my newer version. I called a music teacher from my school who knows the program. It turns out he's in Spain, but rather than eat tapas, he took a few minutes and made me do a screenshot. Turns out he has the older version too. Another friend had me send him the file, and says he'll get to it when he gets to it.

I will be relieved to go back to work. It's really tough for me to be stuck in one place and unable to find a way out. I know there's a simple solution to this. When my music teacher friend comes back from Spain I'm pretty sure he'll look at it and solve the problem in one minute. Meanwhile I'm in way over my head.

I hope you are having a great summer and I want to remind you it's still not over! Enjoy yourself. I'm going to reclassify my problem. I had previously deemed it serious but not impossible. Until further notice, I'm calling it impossible but not serious. That's more accurate anyway.

Hope you are avoiding nightmares and doing something fun. If and when I finish this recording I'll post it here with lyrics.

95 Dollars or Paid Parental Leave?

 Which is more important to you? Does that sound hypothetical? Does it sound ridiculous? It's all in the ear of the beholder, I suppose.

I've posted several times in defense of the paid parental leave program for UFT, first here, and then here. The last criticism I've seen determines that we each pay 95 bucks more than necessary for this benefit, based on an estimated savings for the city. Evidently the calculations for this agreement were based on our last contract or raise, rather than DC37's new one, which did not exist at the time. How short-sighted of leadership to fail to consult a crystal ball before making this deal.

I want to know who it is who would not sacrifice 95 bucks for this benefit. There is, in fact, a good reason we shouldn't pay the 95 bucks, or anything whatsoever, though I didn't catch it in the critical column I saw.

That reason is that all Americans should be eligible for paid family leave. The reason we haven't got it is our politicians suck, from Trump's orange head on down. The remedy is to fire all the politicians who don't support We, the People. That's a tall order. But I will support it, and I will be happy to donate to politicians that do. Thus far this year, I've donated to Zephyr Teachout and Cynthia Nixon. I'm absolutely confident they'd both support paid parental leave for Americans. I'm open to others, though.

Another issue I've read about is that DC37 got family leave and that it's revenue-neutral. In other words, DC37 members are not paying the 95 bucks. I would also like to have family leave, and I would also like to keep my 95 bucks, all things being equal. Alas, all things are not equal. The Daily News reported on the DC37 accord:

As part of the deal, DC 37 members will also get partially paid family leave starting next year. The union is opting in to the state’s family leave program, and members will be allowed to take 10 weeks off to care for a family member while getting paid up to 55% of their salary.

The city teachers union last week announced a deal giving members six weeks of parental leave at full pay. Because DC 37’s workforce is older, they preferred the option that would allow them to take time off to care for other family members and not just a new baby, Garrido said. A payroll deduction of about 0.13% will pay for the benefit.

So it's not, in fact, revenue-neutral. 0.13% of $50,000 is 65 dollars. A whole lot of DC37 employees are paid hourly, and make well less than 50K. (Personally, I'd rather make more and pay more, but that's just me.) While they likely pay less than 95 bucks, based on salary they may pay a higher percentage.

There is no doubt that family leave is better than parental leave. There is also no doubt that ten weeks are better than six. On the other hand, there is no doubt that full pay is better than 55% pay. "Up to 55%" can certainly be less than 55%. Whichever way you view this, UFT aimed for and achieved parental leave. Make no mistake, had we taken the deal DC37 did, you'd see broad laments about the 0.13% payroll deduction and the partial benefit.

There are good and bad things about both programs. There is no Commandment etched in stone that says we cannot renegotiate in the future for improvements. Of course we should do that, and of course we can do that. I'm pretty sure we won't be able to do it only a month or two after having negotiating what we negotiated. That's unfortunate, but ultimately precludes nothing.

Perhaps we should focus on larger issues. The largest, as far as I can determine, is that our national government is run by business interests rather than human interests. This is nowhere more obvious than in the Orange President, but Democrats are also at fault. Certainly Obama failed to fulfill his promise to find those comfortable shoes and stand with labor. I can attest that there is no comfortable shoe shortage, as I regularly locate and purchase them. (They aren't even expensive.)

In case it isn't painfully obvious, it was an egregious error to run another corporate Democrat, particularly one with decades of baggage who lacked the charisma of Barack Obama. If that happens again, we're in for More of the Same, and probably worse from an emboldened would-be dictator.

Closer to home, UFT members are better off than we were before this agreement. And though I will never use this benefit, I count myself as better off. I'm happy to give a little to help my brothers and sisters who are starting out. I'm happy to make it just a little bit easier for people to stay in this vital profession.

This notwithstanding, I'd be just as happy to work toward other benefits, and family leave is certainly among them. We don't necessarily get everything we want right away. That's too bad, but neither is it reason to attack and belittle significant achievements. Make no mistake, paid parental leave is a very significant achievement. I'm very proud to have played even a small part in having made it happen.

Update: clarification in paragraphs two and three