Yesterday we sat for an hour and listened to a lecture about conflicts of interest. Evidently you can’t take money to tutor your students. You aren’t allowed to accept gifts of over $50. I could’ve sworn Klein made it 5, but my memory fails me.

We learned you need a waiver for conflict of interest to work in Macy’s. Also you need one if you wish to work in St, John’s or any private school as an adjunct. (I guess the thousands of DOE employees who already do it are up for discipline). You don’t need one for working at a CUNY or SUNY school. There’s some reason why, but I didn’t understand it. However, you don’t need a waiver to go to a soup kitchen and feed the homeless. Things like that are fine she said.

Several people got up and said I do this or that, and the woman said she would talk to them afterward. One (not me) mentioned working for the UFT. For the record, I’ve been paid by UFT to give PD, so if anyone wants to come after me for my unspeakable criminal activities, feel free. I’ll post all summonses and accounts right here. I’m always looking for a new blog.

A member got up and said these regulations violated his rights, and perhaps the US Constitution. He said maybe there should be a law suit about this. This provoked applause. The woman said he was absolutely wrong. Someone already had brought this to court, and of course that person lost. There are rules. Everyone must follow the rules. It doesn’t matter whether or not we like the rules. Rules is rules.

I was curious about the concept of rules is rules, so I broke a longstanding resolution to never ask questions at meetings.

I’m fascinated by the concept of rules being rules, I said. It’s really interesting that everyone has to follow rules. I’m really curious about the notion that we may or may not like rules, but we have to follow them anyway.

I asked whether that line of thought applied to the UFT Contract. Does the Collective Bargaining Agreement apply only to UFT members. or do DOE employees have to follow it too?

The woman said she didn’t understand what I meant, so I explained it again. Do the terms of our Contract apply to us only? Do administrators have to follow them too? Do they have to follow the terms of the Contract even if, for example, they don’t agree with them?

Later, though, she talked about 3020a proceedings and due process. Or they could fine you $25,000 or more if you left early to go to your second job. Evidently, she is well-informed about rules that apply consequences to teachers. Go figure.

In any case, the woman couldn’t understand the question. Why was I asking this question? She was there to speak about conflicts of interest and this didn’t apply to that. An administrator kindly informed me that the woman was not a contract lawyer.

That got me thinking about DOE contract lawyers I’ve met. I’ve met a great variety of them, mostly at oversized class hearings. I will sit down at a table, across from them and say, “There are 44 oversized classes.”

One of the DOE lawyers, I recall distinctly, said, “There are zero oversized classes.”

So I guess I’m not qualified to understand the fine points and  subtleties of being a DOE contract lawyer. I mean, I read the contract and it says 34 is the class size limit. When I see a class of 38, I say to myself, “That class is oversized.” Of course, I haven’t been to law school so it’s hard for me to understand how 38 ls less than 35. Now I don’t generally like to brag, but I’m a high school graduate, and I distinctly remember stuff like 38>34.

There were, of course, some very interesting ethical questions. It’s unethical, evidently, to practice nepotism. So you can’t hire your daughter to do some job in your organization, especially if she’s totally unqualified.

I guess rules is rules, but only for little people like us. All day long people kept asking me, "Do I need a waiver to do this?" (This being a family blog, I won't go into detail on some of the gestures that accompanied this question.)

We followed this up with a suicide prevention workshop. An exiting teacher commented, “We should’ve done suicide prevention first. That meeting took so long I almost killed myself.”

I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember Gilligan's Island. The premise was a bunch of people were going to take a three hour tour. Instead, they ended up stuck for years on an uncharted island, eating coconuts and inventing every possible kind of machine you could imagine. Except a boat. I sympathize, of course, especially after being up the creek without a paddle last week in a three hour PD.

I understand it cost a fortune. Did teachers get CTLE credit? Of course not. You don't get credit when a bunch of people come to sell you their program. Here's how it started out:

“I'm super-stoked to be here.”

Oh my gosh. She's twelve years old and excited about it. Then she introduces her colleague.

“a very, very awesome guy.”

There's an adjective I'd discourage my ELLs from using.  Especially more than once. But let's look on the bright side, as stated by the presenter:

“It’s gonna be a fun three hours.”

“I know that everyone was really excited to receive a pen today.”

Oh yeah. I'm super-stoked to have a plastic pen with your company's name on it to walk around with. I can tell everyone how awesome your program is. What are we gonna do now?

“Tell everyone one fun fact about yourself that everyone else may not know.”

Oh my gosh I'm sitting right in front. I go first.

“I live to go to three hour meetings.”

I get the feeling no one believes me. Someone else is more optimistic:

“This is my last PD.”

That one gets applause. The next one sparks a dialogue with the presenter.

“I love dessert.”

“What’s your favorite dessert?”

“Brownies.”

“So that was really awesome.”

Not just awesome, but really awesome. A fine distinction from this highly-paid presenter who has come here to teach me about writing. But she has a new message for us.

“After someone shares, this is what we do (clicks fingers).”

This sounds very charter school to me. I am less than enthused. But alas, the loudspeaker beckons. 

“Will Mr. Hatfield please come to the main office?”

The woman who dreamed up this program tells us a story about going to Yale and learning to write. It's ironic, because the entire reason these folks are here is to urge us to teach writing before our students go to college. The important thing is that we now know the woman who invented this program went to Yale. The loudspeaker again:

“Good morning everyone, and please excuse this quick interruption—just want to remind you your ID number is now called your OSIS number. We hope you have an amazing day.”

And now a special motivational message:

“You’re going to experience what hundreds of thousands of people did doing workshops similar to this.”

I can't wait.

“Thank you Alice. (clicks fingers).”

We are then presented with two stories. One is a pretentious piece of crap from some girl whose parents sent her to Paris. The other is a self-effacing and humorous piece from a young man who spent his summers working at a burger stand on the beach.

"We are gonna do story showdown and Brian’s gonna lead us through it."

“Who wouldn’t mind stepping into the role of broadened horizon officer and reading this aloud for us?”

So which do we like better? The amusing story or the piece of crap? Let's reflect and share. The suspense is killing me, but eventually most people in the room prefer the amusing story over the piece of crap. We are left to infer that college admission officers also prefer amusing stories to pieces of crap. Who knew? But there's more:

"All of us have character here. We heard a little bit about it when we were sharing fun facts about themselves.

Colleges look for:

a unique perspective
strong writing
an authentic voice."

It turns out colleges are not looking for the same old crap, weak writing, or a pretentious voice. I'm so glad I came here and learned this. How do we get rid of crap in writing? Since we are all evidently too stupid to recognize it ourselves, they have an indispensable tool that will do it for us:

“Superficialities and stereotypes. These are two things that our software can purge from your writing.”

And there's more to look forward to:

"We’re gonna constantly be with you performing stories (clicking fingers)."

Wow. This must be something special if it got the finger click. The teacher across from me is drawing flowers. They're kind of interesting. Now she's drawing a doggie. I'm very fond of doggies, so she has my full attention. But then this line is spoken:

“So awesome—so when we are listening to stories there are three things that happen in our brains. How many people understand a little bit about what it’s like to eat a goat’s eyeball?”

Evidently I've missed something.  People start sharing. The presenters respond.

“That was awesome, and a true story (clicks fingers).

Fun fact is that our fearless leader Alice is practicing 365 days of writing stories on “the Facebook.”

“Awesome.”

We are treated to a story about a wedding ring from one of the presenters. It merits a review from one of the others.

“Brian’s magnet was awesome. Second his pivot, And third his glow.”

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. My mind is about to click its fingers, but they now have something very special for us to do. But first, an important announcement:

“At this time all incoming freshman should be finished with the math placement exam and should be in the auditorium. Thank you."

Now back to the important business at hand, this time from the Yale-educated, Facebook-using leader herself:

“Take a minute and quiet your thoughts, and definitely quiet your talking.”

And breathe in and breathe out. And I’d like you to imagine that you’re at the beach. What are you wearing? Are you there by yourself? Or with somebody else? Is the sun rising, setting? Watch the waves going in and out and in and out. And when you’re ready scoop up a handful of sand and just hold it in your hand for a minute. And I’d like you to think of each grain of sand as one of your stories. And you’re gonna take one and share it with other people. And there’s thousands of grains of sand. And maybe one has sharp edges and you don’t want to share it with anybody. Every moment is a story that you can kind of share with other people to let them know where you’re going and where you come from.

So just take one grain of sand and get to know it and get comfortable with it.

Imagine it’s a year from now and it’s the first day of school and everything is exactly the way you want it.

Just listen to what I said and do it."

This is absolutely what I needed right now. My own little grain of sand. And now we sit around and they tell us to read stories into our phones. Because when students read stories into their phones they speak with authentic voices. I imagine myself trying this in my class. Please take your phones out, read stories into them, and then write them down.

What could possibly go wrong?

“Believe it or not, this just answered common app essay prompt number one!”

I have absolutely no idea what that means. But these people have uncovered the secret sauce for college essays so it must be of vital importance. No more of that old school nonsense where you read them, correct them, give honest feedback on what to expand and what to delete, because now you can simply give them your money, run it through their patented Crapometer and all the crap will be magically extracted.

The meeting ends. I leave the pen on the table.

I'm sitting in a meeting led by some guy who works for College Board. As I look around me I see almost no one paying attention. One guy keeps asking questions but I can't hear them. The guy answers each and every one of the guy's questions, but I have no idea what they are and no idea what the answers mean. Sometimes the guy repeats the questions, all from one guy, but I still have no idea what he's talking about.

One and only one other person asks one question. The woman in front of me asks about the questions, a bunch of which are ambiguous. He suggests the students are jerks for not giving the answers that College Board wants. The guy starts talking about how teachers ask questions differently than standardized tests do, and implies that we need to teach students to answer ambiguous questions the way College Board thinks they should.

This leaves us sitting there wondering why he just showed us a bunch of questions that are such crap none of us would use them. He can blame the students, but the fact is that they are giving A, B, C, D questions. If they actually want to encourage thought or discussion, they would have to examine student thought rather than contending there is only one answer.  So despite all his lip service to Common Core and other such nonsense, the all-knowing and all-seeing rep hasn't got time to plod through, you know, student ideas, the ones we lowly teachers are directed to elicit.

There's also then, the dichotomy between what he says and what he means. Really, it's not even that. It's between what he says and what else he says. Several times he alludes to how you may wish to teach this or that in your class. Later, he says it would hurt his soul to think you were doing test prep. Of course the thing is, if test prep is so soul-crushing, why would you make it your life's work to work for a test-prep company? I mean, that's just me.

I'd rather teach kids and sell them nothing but self-improvement via better use of English. Regardless, if I addressed kids the way this guy addressed us, with no regard whatsoever whether anyone were interested or even listening, I'd surely be rated ineffective. If I did it two years in a row, I'd be on the proverbial one-way train to Palookaville.  Maybe thinking like that is why so many colleges are dropping the SAT requirement. Maybe they've discovered that teacher grades are a better predictor of college readiness than a single, poorly-written test that gets shot through some computer that knows the kid as well as Marvin the Martian would.

In fact, I think Marvin the Martian could do better PD than the one we sat through yesterday. We could just get a video of an old cartoon and show it to staff. I'm absolutely sure they'd be more receptive and responsive.

The only good thing is he asked whether it was time yet, without even thinking I uttered, "It's time," and he let us all go. I have no idea whether it was time or not, but I'm grateful for tedious speakers who have no idea when they're supposed to stop yet do so at the first suggestion. In fact a lot of people thanked me. I just wonder why everybody didn't say it in unison.

You probably think I don't pay attention at PD but I do. I went to a session on Tuesday all about feedback. Evidently it has to be specific and timely. You know, you tell students right away when they have an issue. That way they can deal with it right away. For example, you should wait 30 days and then tell them about what they did last month. You also shouldn't wait 45 days and then talk to them about what they did six weeks ago, while they wait to find out what they did last month.

It's also important that the feedback be actionable. For example, you should provide strategy. This is how you can write, draw, or do that better. I would do it like this. This is what this writer does. You can't just say, "Boy, did that suck," and move on. That's not actionable. You have to offer ways they can improve.

Also, you should be positive. You can't dwell on the student's incompetence or make invidious comparisons. You can't say things like, "Why can't you teach learn like your colleague that other student?" You can't ask, "Why isn't your passing rate grade as high as this other teacher student?" It's important to be positive. That will encourage people to grow and learn. You certainly don't want to discourage people and have them wondering what the use is.

It's important that you offer change step by step. For example, you ought not to focus on every ___domain of Danielson paragraph of a composition. You should do one step at a time so the teacher student is not overwhelmed. After all, it isn't reasonable to expect a sea change overnight.

And of course you need to be receptive and assume there is an opportunity for change. Let's say, for example, you're walking around all over the building saying this teacher student sucks and you can't wait to get rid of her. Well, that might get back to the teacher student, and then how would she feel? Probably she'd feel the situation was hopeless and she'd be likely to give up. What's the point of aiming for improvement when you've destroyed a person's morale?

Peer feedback is important too. You can't just have a supervisor teacher talking down to a teacher student. That won't be as effective as it would be if you had peer to peer interaction. That's important in Danielson too, so it's noteworthy in our system. It's also easier to give feedback when the subject isn't present. That way, teachers students can learn without feeling targeted. After all, no one likes being targeted. Anonymity is always good, if possible.

It's important to target specific areas. If you were to say, for instance, that everything without exception is wrong, it could cause the teacher student to shut down. Once that happens, there's little or not possibility for improvement and all your effort is in vain. You can't just hand a person a list, say good luck, and hope for the best.

So that's what I got out of our PD session. Can you see any way it might apply or be helpful at your school?

One of the toughest things to do, if you're in a multi-session school like mine, is to figure out how to work in all the things that the Memorandum of Agreement asks for. For example, Chancellor Carmen Fariña loves her some PD, and you have to work that in somewhere.

There's also the whole Other Professional Work thing, and Parental Contact. I'm a great believer in both. Parental contact helps me do my job, and really helps me run the sort of class I want to have. Other professional work is kind of a monster, as there's just never enough time to do what needs to be done.

But then there's this other thing--the inquiry team thing that for some reason there's all kinds of pressure to have. It's also pretty hard to do effectively in a large school like mine because of scheduling. In fact, it's probably very hard to do in a small school too, because how many science teachers are there in that school and when can they meet together?

Because of various things that happened last year, our SBO was very tough to negotiate. Our committee and the principal spent months batting things back and forth without an agreement. He demanded this, and I demanded the opposite. Then I demanded that, and he demanded the opposite. We went on this way for months, until finally, by some miracle, we came to an agreement.

Of course, at almost the exact moment we did that, a better idea came along. Instead of eight periods, we break our day into nine. During the ninth period, all teachers will tutor one period, have PD another, and do Other Professional Work the other three. I had no idea the school was short of tutors, but now I know. I kind of like the idea, and see it as kind of an office hour. If a student wants to see me about whatever, I'm not gonna say go to hell, I'm here to tutor. Also people with comp-time jobs, like deans, now get a good amount of prep time during the school day.

But there are always the unanticipated side effects. In the case of our school, the principal set aside a portion of the library for tutoring. I don't really like this idea, as I really value the library. The librarians are even less happy about it than I am. But in an overcrowded school with no extra space I'm thus far unable to suggest a viable alternative. Last year, after at UFT inspection and air testing,  we closed a classroom full of diesel fumes. Instead we had classes in a gym with basketballs bouncing off the walls. We were lucky not to have people bouncing off the walls as well.

Our SBO passed overwhelmingly, and I hope it works out. One good thing about an SBO is that if it does not work out, it goes straight to the scrapheap in June. Will our PD be worthwhile, or will it just be our supervisors screaming at us about our chronic inadequacies? Will anyone show up for tutoring? Will 200 kids per teacher show up at a time? Will having 42 minute classes instead of 45 minute classes fundamentally affect student lifestyles?

It's tough to say. All in all, though, I think it's better than sitting around extra hours Mondays and Tuesdays. Do you do that? What's it like? Are you in an overcrowded school with an SBO? How is it working out for you?

In our school we have a monthly PD day. That's how we get all the indispensable info Carmen Fariña, who loves her some PD, insists we get. After all, when you're at 200% capacity or more forever, you can't just roll the 80 minute teacher torture on Monday, or even the 75 minute Tuesday. So you shorten the day once a month and hope for the best.

On Wednesday we had some woman from some company talk about formative assessment. You know, that's when you figure out what the kids know before you grade them, so they can do better. This is, of course, an absolute necessity when dealing with kids, especially if they are troubled. On the other hand, the same supervisors who so revere this process will do drive-bys on working teachers, label them ineffective, do nothing whatsoever to help them, and helpfully suggest they ought to resign or retire. Because rigor and grit.

So anyway, we were sitting there listening to this woman read a laundry list of ways you could do formative assessment. You know, because simply handing us the booklet and asking us to read it would not earn her company the big bucks they get for sending the likes of her in here. My friend, a language teacher, was sitting next to me and we suddenly noticed her skin was turning red. We couldn't figure why. She had eaten what she usually eats for lunch.

We moved on, and I got called into an impromptu conference with my supervisor. My friend knocked on the door. She was worse. She wanted to drive home. I told her no, let me take you to the urgent care. I asked Siri, who directed me to one half a mile away. I took her over and stayed with her until her husband came to meet her.

I went back to a PD run by teachers, which was better thought out in every way than the one for which our school likely paid a fortune. "Boy, this place is hard to find," I said, but I'm not at all sure anyone believed me. After all, I've been in that building over 20 years. But that always seems like a good excuse to me, at least.

An hour later, my friend showed up back at the school, looking a little woozy, but a lot clearer. She told us they'd given her a steroid shot but released her. She also waved around a note which she claimed the doctor issued, declaring she was allergic to PD. I'm not at all sure it really said that, but if it did, I'm pretty sure there will be a stampede as 220 more teachers rush to that urgent care, even if the co-pay is up to 50 bucks.

After all, you get what you pay for.

I recently got an email from Punchy Mike Mulgrew informing me that 12,000 members filled out their one-question poll and preferred Neverending Professional Development to 37.5 minute Small Group Tutoring. Apparently there was no choice C: None of the Above. Nor was there a spot to make suggestions. Therefore 3 out of 4 UFT members want to stay 80 minutes after school on Monday and 70 on Tuesday to accomplish Whatever Is Done on those days.

I guess it's good to put out polls like that. It makes it look like you care what people think. I just took a poll from NYSUT asking me about the NYSESLAT test, which I administered. It asked how I would like the test to be weighted. Should speaking, listening, reading or writing be weighted more or equally? I wrote equally, and NYSUT asked me why. I said because the test had no validity, it made no difference how the parts were weighted, and they left me no option to write any such thing.

I don't usually give A, B, C, D questions on tests I write. Maybe sometimes I'll put a few, but no more than 20%. I usually want to see what students can write themselves. I never, ever, do true and false. It's pretty ridiculous when you have a 50% chance of getting it right. When you get surveys with sorely limited choices, they're not really asking you what you think. They're giving you limited choices and suggesting one is acceptable. That's not necessarily the case.

In the case of the UFT poll, it's simply ridiculous. It's kind of like what I used to do to my daughter when she was very young and I wanted her to do something. Well, you can do this thing that I want you to do, or you can do this other awful thing that I just made up. By the time she was six, she was hip to this trick and using it against me.  But there's UFT leadership saying you can do this thing, or some other thing that you want to do even less. In argument, that's called a black or white fallacy. It's what Karen Magee used at the AFT convention when she suggested the alternative to Common Core was Complete Chaos.

I can't testify as to the 37.5 minute small group thing, as my school is multi-session, and we simply rolled the extra time into classes. As chapter leader, everyone tends to complain to me about everything, but no one ever complains about that. In six years, not one teacher has said to me, "You know, our classes are too long. Why don't we shorten them and go to meetings instead?" And plenty of teachers in my building are tutoring kids all the time, whether or not that's their C6.

As always, it's tough looking reforminess in its twisted little eye while wondering what union leadership is doing to fight it, if anything. Mayoral control is now under attack because de Blasio doesn't support charters sufficiently. They want to raise the cap or dump it. Dump it, I say. But UFT leadership supports it, along with charters, junk science, and testing.

Most teachers want real choices. Not many are getting them.

Many of my colleagues are being forced to stay after school today. The other day, a teacher pointed out to me it was nothing more than detention for teachers. She found this ironic, since students in her school are not given detention. Worse, none of the teachers had done anything to merit detention. This notwithstanding, UFT leadership managed to negotiate teacher detention on a twice weekly basis.

Every teacher (and a whole lot of other people) knows the Sunday night blues. Monday, despite your best efforts, it's time to get back into the grind. You have to get up early in the morning. When you were a student, your father told you one day you'd get used to rising early, and that, of course, is the biggest lie you've heard in your whole life. You'll have to wear shoes, which have always been an unwelcome lifestyle imposition. And your body, after a few nights of staying up late, refuses to cooperate.

Monday morning, you consume copious amounts of coffee. It's that awful French Roast your wife favors. Though it tastes and looks like mud, you know it's strong and hope for the best. You steal a Red Bull from your kid. Nothing works. You wonder whether it's viable to simply pump caffeine into your vein, and why no one has started such a business in back of a 7-11 somewhere. Nonetheless, you soldier on. You get into your car and not only maneuver to work, but also manage not to crash into anyone or anything.

You stumble into work, and your students are in a foul mood. It turns out their weekends are over too. They retreat into the world of their prohibited cell phones. You remind them that's unacceptable, but they take steps to conceal them from you. Smart phones are suddenly hidden under desks and behind books, in such numbers as to divide your already limited attention. You are outnumbered.

And then there's that kid who needs your attention every moment. She demands it repeatedly, in new and innovative ways. You try to focus on the task at hand, but she has a voice like a foghorn, a voice that cuts through everything and anyone. You can't focus on anything else, and neither can a single student in your class. You've already tried every trick and diversion in your playbook and she's devised a counter to each and every one. You are outshouted and outmatched.

Of course you are observed. Your supervisor shakes his head in disgust at this obstreperous student. He gets up to intervene, but doesn't know any more tricks than you. He fails to contain this 15-year-old threat to democracy and the American way, and does so spectacularly, in front of you and 34 other witnesses. The girl feels no one and nothing can stop her, her confidence soars, and she can and will be contained by no teacher. This week is gonna be tough for sure.

But for your boss, who studied for and took the AP job to get out of the classroom, it's a reminder that his classroom was always out of control. He couldn't wait to get that office gig, to sit and look at a computer screen, to sit in the back and conduct observations. It was an egregious error to confront that girl, that girl who's smarter than you and, of course, smarter than him too. After this very public failure, he jots down notes that will make sure Charlotte Danielson damns you straight to hell.

But he doesn't stop there, because at the end of the period it's time for him to run 80 minutes of PD. While he's got a list of crap to talk about, it's suddenly important for him to rationalize his miserable 15-minute observation. Naturally he does so at your expense, making invidious comparisons about data suggesting that some teachers control their class better than others. He coyly tries to avoid naming you, but manages to describe your age, your experience, your appearance, and your miserable attitude in excruciating detail. All of your colleagues know who he's talking about. It takes him 87 minutes, and everyone is fidgeting but afraid to get up and walk out until he finishes venting.

Fortunately, tomorrow you get 35 minutes for parental contact, so he'll only be able to belittle you for the other 35, assuming he doesn't go much overtime.

That's what a Queens chapter leader called the 80 minutes of PD most city teachers are subject to every Monday for the foreseeable future. Of course UFT leadership deems it a great victory, since there is now a committee that will sit around and figure out how to inflict plan this. The idea, of course, is that with teacher input everything will be much better. Of course, I've been to teacher-planned PD sessions for years, and I can't see a whole lot revolutionary about it.

Mulgrew asked the city chapter leaders last week whether it was PD or faculty meetings, and there was a moan that very much suggested the latter. After sitting through decades of meetings planned by administrators, almost all of which I'd have done just as well without, it's kind of tough for me to understand just why Carmen Fariña determined it would all be different this year. Did she think that because her PD was perfect in every way that it would be magically replicated citywide? Did she think that administrators everywhere would finally discover the secret sauce and motivate all the teachers who'd reluctantly sat through years of tedious and unnecessary meetings? Did she think that teachers, who supposedly never had any voice in PD before, would all wake up experts in administering it?

Of course this innovation was a great victory for the UFT, just as the small group instruction was a great victory for the UFT. Of course, when this great victory was over, it was just as great a victory to get rid of it. It must be fabulous to run the UFT, go to gala luncheons, and declare victory all the time no matter what happens. We achieved a great victory. Now we dumped it and that is yet another great victory.

One teacher told me they spend their extra time writing curriculum, you know, the one that was supposed to be in place this year so we could have Common Core and Mulgrew wouldn't punch you in the face. Another told me she sat through 80 minutes of lectures about Danielson and wanted nothing more than to slit her throat.

And that's not to mention Tuesdays, with 35 minutes of parent contact, because the only time parents ever need to be contacted is on Tuesdays, and if anything happens on Wednesday they can just sit and wait six days to hear about it. Then there is another 35 minutes for OPW, other professional work, which I've heard referred to as OFS. (We'll call it Other Frigging Stuff for the purposes of this column.)

One of the great things about teaching is you're never tired after a full day, so what's better than sitting for another 80 minutes on Monday? And surely all principals are ethical, and none would ever have teachers do extra work for which they should be paid. Nor would they ever give a dull, wasteful meeting. Doubtless teachers are jumping up and down for chances to discuss the new educational programs the geniuses who dream up such things have concocted. And next year, when the same geniuses discard those programs for new ones of equally dubious value, teachers will be equally excited to discuss them too.

It's a great thing we're using the time like this, rather than frittering it away by adding to class time. How horrible and wasteful it would be if we were actually teaching instead of going to meetings.

I received two e-mails from UFT President Mulgrew yesterday.  I'm sure he's pretty much trying to allay our fears that we're "totally screwed" before we leave for summer break.  First, in an early morning e-mail sent on behalf of President Mulgrew and Chancellor Farina, I learned that the $1,000 signing bribe bonus will hit our direct deposit before the end of the month.

I know for many, money goes a long way towards buying loyalty.  In my mind, it doesn't come close to making up for the second-class due-process rights of ATRs or the inclusion of merit pay to divide membership.  But, then, call me #151.  After many years of waiting, I wouldn't have minded waiting for something more worthwhile.  I voted, "No."  So, morally, I may not be entitled to that money:  It's "not that I loved the Idea of Working Under a New Contract less, but that I loved True Union Solidarity more."

I received a second Mulgrew e-mail later in the day.  Here's an excerpt:

Dear Arwen,

Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature heard our concerns and have agreed to a two-year pause in attaching high-stakes consequences for teachers to student performance on Common Core-aligned state tests. Everyone recognizes that the Common Core, while the right direction for education, had a terrible rollout. Students aren’t being judged on the Common Core tests and state lawmakers made the smart decision not to judge teachers on those tests either.

Off hand, the news is good.  I was horrified to read Mulgrew's implicit assumption, however.  "Everyone recognizes that the Common Core" is "the right direction for education."  How can he make this claim?  I guess everything to the contrary goes in one ear and out the other.  Does he not know how states are pulling out like it's the plague?  Louisiana pulled out just recently.  I believe only 36 states are still with the CC program.

I don't care how much PD is provided and how many CC-aligned lesson plans are sent along, I don't want the Common Core.  I don't want test companies and data companies profiting off of the misery of little kids.  I don't want to teach to someone's test today, tomorrow or ever, to save myself from professional annihilation--when I already know students living in poverty with language deficiencies and many special needs will never on average surpass the scores of children in wealthy suburbia.

As I think about it, I am sure that America has not so much bought the Common Core as been handsomely paid to adopt it.  As states begin to realize the federal morass in which they are now mired, I am sure many more will agitate for withdrawal.

I have often wondered if all of Bill Gates' money (and all his horses and all his men) had not propped up the Common Core, how far it might have reached.  Bill Gates money has gone every which way, including to the AFT and NEA.  This year, at about the time of the NPE conference in Texas, due to rank-and-file pressure, Weingarten announced the AFT would end its five-year relationship with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  The states, as well, jumped on board when offered money.  They stood to gain handsome RttT grants.  They are now realizing that the money will run out and they will be left to foot the big bills for implementation.

I have always believed education should be a reserved power, as the Founders intended.  The states must be in the driver's seat.  I believe the closer education comes to the grassroots, the better it will serve community needs and our larger democracy.  Our federal government already has enough business and thorny issues to keep it occupied.  And, I am very worried about much of that business.  Why would I want our federal government taking on even more?  We are not communist and we are not a dictatorship.  We do not need federal hands in every pie.  In my mind, the Common Core is a recipe for one rotten pie and we would all do well to keep our hands and those of our children clear of it!

Good morning. You can imagine how thrilled I must be to be amongst all you instructional purveyors. Let's get right down to it and clarify why we're in this ___location at this point in time. Our objective, naturally, is to enhance the experience of your instructional targets.

We will do this, of course, via differentiated instruction. Over decades of facilitating standards-based rigorous curriculum and instructing pedagogues how to integrate rubric-centered learning styles, I've concluded definitively the most desirable mode of achieving differentiated instruction is via the quality review rubric, because it's uniform, and thus there is no room whatsoever for variation.

I glean you've consummated your arrival tardily. Was there any particular objective you were trying to achieve?

Well, I was talking to a kid...

Let's get this in perspective. You were interfacing with an instructional target?

He had an issue...

So, there was an obstruction in communication? Did you consult a rubric? One can never be too proactive. You know, 20 years ago I was in a standards-based aggregate in Cleveland. Would you like me to expound on what we synergized there?

No, I just want to sit down, please...

So, let's rap. OK. Was there clarity now? Let's implement the document I've allocated. Presently, we shall cast our collective gaze upon indicators 1.1, 2.2, 3.2 and 4.1. Is everyone thoroughly prepared to be waylaid by a wholly unexpected notion? These four items alone constitute 40% of the quality review. That's why I'm so excited to be networking among your peer group.  If we can exercise shared initiatives to meet the objectives of this rubric, are you cognizant of what that will signify?

I have to be at the trailer in 8 minutes...

This entire process is in your hands! You will be empowered to orchestrate outcome-based initiatives that will potentially delay the inevitable closure of your educational facility! Imagine the mastery-focused benchmarks we can unleash upon the observers!

Now it's vital you retain the manipulatives I've distributed. I can sense the problem-solving rubrics we can create together. With a little perspicacity, and a touch of perspicuity...


What's perspicacity?

We can network the outcomes to create a hands-on process that no one will be able to touch. We will assess our evaluations. We will evaluate our assessments. Then we'll exercise and re-evaluate our already assessed evaluations...

Isn't it a film? Perspicacity and the Sundance Kid?

And I want to thank you for coming here. I look forward to many more sessions in which we can scaffold differentiated tiers, and answer all your outcome-based inquiries with actionable feedback.

Until we interface again, I wish you all dynamic adventures in learner centered, counter-intuitive, higher-order thinking.


RIIIING!!!!

Oh, thank you, thank you sweet Jesus....

Amen!


I've never been so happy to go to my building assignment...

For the first ten years I taught, I attended a lot of meetings. There were, of course, the new teacher meetings, required to maintain my city license. In these meetings I learned that the presenter was a dean, and that this was significant because he had aspirations to become an AP.

I learned it was important to get admin to notice you if you wanted to be an AP, and that as a dean you had frequent opportunities to remind the principal you had an AP license. I learned that every week for an entire year. You can imagine how thrilled I must have been.

Then, of course, we had PD. I learned that an aim was very important, and that it must be phrased as a statement. On a subsequent occasion I learned the aim was vital, and that it must be phrased as a question.

Then I learned that the important thing was portfolios, and that once kids had portfolios we could look at all their work right there and figure everything worth figuring. The next year they told us portfolios were out, a complete waste of time, and why would anyone bother with such a thing? The important thing, they told us, was a good motivation, which must be sexy, like Gina Lollobrigida (really).

Without a Gina Lollobrigida-style motivation, no kid would ever listen to a thing you said. Of course, the next year, that was out, and the important thing was constantly repeating "each, every and all" of you. This, they told us, would cause the kids to respond instantly, and there was absolutely no other way to reach kids.

Around year 11, a colleague told me that he was going to a three hour lunch rather than an afternoon session. But they take attendance at those things, I said. No one looks at it, said he, and went off. Nothing happened to him. I overslept the day of the next session, showed up an hour late, and nothing happened to me either. In fact, I may have overslept for just about every PD session for the next 10 years or so. This was odd, because I am never late on days when I actually teach. In any case, nothing happened.

Then we got a new principal. I overslept (only an hour or two), and got a counseling memo. When I signed it and brought it in, I told the secretary I was a little surprised. "You and the other 72 people who got the memo," she said, a little sarcastically in my view.

Since then, I've woken up on time for every PD day, as have my 72 colleagues.

Is it coincidence? Is there a moral to this story?

You tell me.