by special guest Jonathan Halabi

For me, it's not much of a choice. Dog before blog, of course. I'd been dreading this week, because I was scheduled for meetings four nights in a row. Monday was the 400-member Contract Committee. Tuesday School Leadership Team. Tonight is the UFT Delegate Assembly, Thursday is the ELL Focus Group.

However, my wife came down with the flu, and is really floored by it. If I don't go home, my noble little dog will suffer. Toby is a survivor of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, and how this little guy pulled that off I have no idea.

Monday morning I took him out in the miserable wind and rain, and he decided to Be a Tree. Probably he has bad memories, or maybe even PTSD. I dragged him around a little, but he would not move at all on his own volition. After a few minutes I gave up and brought him back inside. After not having been out since 7 the previous night, he declined food and drink and waited until I got home at 4 PM. I surely would have exploded or something, but he's made of stronger stuff than I.

Tonight is the DA. They're going to talk about the new UFT app. I've actually downloaded it. (Correction--I now realize I'd downloaded another app they offered to promote recruitment.) I followed the directions given me and it simply does not work. I wrote back and it turns out you can't yet follow the directions. You need further directions, which I presume will be given tonight.

I hate to miss the DA, not because it's such great fun, but rather because I can usually get two blogs out of it--first the actual notes, and then an analysis. Sometimes it makes people crazy, and part of my role as blogger is to make people crazy. But I can't allow Toby to suffer so I'm giving it up and going home. My New Action buddy Jonathan Halabi has agreed to take notes in my absence, and I will post them here as soon as I get them.

I'm glad, though, because I get to walk Toby. Toby is crazy to walk. He will walk anywhere and everywhere, and he doesn't care how long it takes. Walking him has become my Zen, my center, and half the things I write come to me while I'm talking to him. Good walk Toby. No, don't eat that thing. No, we're not visiting that big dog. He might not scare you, but he scares me.

Toby is amazingly friendly. He wants to greet every human and every dog we come across. It's good because my tendency is to keep to myself. I now have multiple regulars I see on the Nautical Mile in Freeport, both canine and human. Alas, I don't allow him to chase random felines, but he loves them too. When I adopted him, he was living with a cat who was bigger than he was. I wonder whether or not she gave him orders.

He's become my constant companion. No matter how boring I get, even if I spend all day writing, he will hang out with me. In fact, he'll guard my laptop until I get back to it. Lots of dogs will sleep on your clothes, or your bed, but he's the first I've seen who's become attached to a piece of metal.

On the brighter side, like many people, I'd really rather walk the dog than go to meetings. But there's a balance somewhere. Maybe you have to go to a whole lot of meetings before you appreciate what a luxury it is to walk the dog.

Anyway, I hope my wife gets well soon, even if it means more meetings for me. The flu is terrible. I used to get the flu shot most years. Whenever I forgot, I got the flu. Ten years ago. I got the flu shot, and almost immediately thereafter was diagnosed with  an oral cancer, which was no fun at all. Out of sheer superstition I haven't gotten another shot since. My wife, who is generally smarter than I am, got the shot this year, but also got the flu. Go figure.

Toby is with her right now, urging her to stop being sick and to come play with him instead. He hasn't got a medical degree, but he knows what he likes. 

Mr. Green was excited about how his class was going. He had never taught English Language Learners before, but they were great. The kids were enthusiastic and eager to learn. He was surprised at how much he liked teaching them. Many of them picked things up as quickly if not quicker than the native English speakers he'd been teaching for most of his career.

He co-teacher was young and smart. Not only that, but she knew all the new stuff that he hadn't paid particularly strong attention too. Danielson? Who knows from Danielson? Well she did, and she was always making little suggestions that would get you extra brownie points when the muckety mucks surprised you with a visit.

"Whatever you're doing, when they come in, ask some question and then make them turn and talk. Make sure you do it at least once or twice a week so they know what you're talking about."

Well OK, he thought. That makes sense. It doesn't really, but hey, if it gets a few points and you can easily pull it off, why not?

"Make sure after you ask a question you make the kids hold up those red and green things to say whether or not they understand," she said.

"Do you think they will really tell us?" asked Mr. Green.

"No, of course they won't," she said. "But after the supervisors leave we can walk around, look at their work, and find out whether or not they really understand." 

This didn't make much sense. But she was keyed in and he wasn't.

"Make sure you don't spend more than three minutes on the DO NOW," she instructed. "I'll bring in an egg timer."

This didn't make sense either. If there was good conversation going on, why should he stop it? What if one thing led to another, and something really spontaneous happened? He spoke to his co-teacher about it.

"I'll bring the egg timer tomorrow," she said.

Well, that was that. Three minutes for this, eight minutes for that, and you're a highly effective teacher. At this point, Mr. Green wanted nothing more than to be a highly high teacher. Of course you don't get Danielson brownie points for that. On the other hand, a principal at a school three miles away just got caught snorting meth in his car. Maybe it's OK for principals. Mr. Green decided not to find out how it was for teachers.

The next day, Mr. Green decided to alter the aim.

"Yesterday we covered metaphor. Today we are covering dramatic irony."

"You can't write that," said his co-teacher.

"Why not?" asked Mr. Green.

"Well, we have the Common Core goal on the lesson plan. If you write about what you did yesterday, it doesn't jibe with what we're doing today."

That didn't make any sense to Mr. Green. Why couldn't he remind them of what they did yesterday? Certainly it would come up again in conversation, on a test, in their lives, or in any random combination of above. He decided to go to his supervisor and ask about it.

"She's right," said his supervisor. "If someone were in your classroom and rating you via the Danielson rubric, you could certainly get an adverse rating for that."

Mr. Green still wasn't satisfied. He went to his co-teacher's supervisor. She was pretty smart. She would know for sure.

"Well," she said, "If you really wanted to refer back to yesterday's lesson you could do it orally, and not write it on the board. That way, if someone came in, they wouldn't know you had done it."

That was one way to do it, thought Mr. Green.

That was when Mr. Green decided, on the spot, that this would be his last year teaching. He retired in June. He adopted a dog, joined an acting group, dropped 25 pounds, and never once looked back.

One of the most despicable practices in the city is that of discontinuance. In case you're unfamiliar with it, it applies only to untenured teachers. A myth about tenure is that teachers have jobs for life. The truth is that teachers have jobs until and unless charges are brought and sustained. That process is called 3020a, and that process is due process. However you may feel about it, that's what has to happen in NY State to fire a teacher.

Untenured teachers don't have due process. They may be fired for a bad haircut. Of course no one really wants to be fired for a bad haircut, so untenured teachers have to be very careful about where they get their hair cut. Beyond that, they have to somehow please their principals, who may or may not be insane.  It's a tough path to walk, considering what I see.

If you're not cutting the principal's mustard on your tenure year, there are a number of options the principal can pursue. One is extension of tenure, which is always big fun. Your best friend is getting tenure and you aren't. What can you think about that? I suck and she doesn't, for whatever reason. Maybe there is something you have to do. Ask more questions. Ask fewer questions. Be nicer. Stop being too nice. Who knows? And you may or may not find out.

Of course, if you suck so much that, in the principal's view, there is no viable remedy for said suckiness, you will be discontinued. That means, for one thing, that you are fired. For another, you lose your health benefits. You'd think that would be enough. But in NYC, it isn't. There is also a mark, or a code, or something, that basically alerts anyone who thinks of hiring you that you suck. I have heard of one or two people overcoming the Scarlet Suck, but it's rare. A principal would have to really go above and beyond for that. What are the chances of you walking into a school with a Scarlet Suck on your chest and persuading a principal to hire you?

I'm thinking: not good.

There are things you can do. For example, if you have the Scarlet Suck on your chest for math, you might get an English license. I mean, just because you suck at math (like I do, for example) it doesn't necessarily follow that you suck in English. (I endeavor not to suck in English but we all have good days and bad.) Still, I have to think any new principal would see your work history and note that you sucked in this subject. That doesn't bode well for your chances of getting hired in another subject.

Now you could go out of district. I'm not sure how easily you'd get a gig in Long Island with a crappy history and no good references from NYC, but I wish you luck. You could get a charter school gig. Maybe you like hanging around the house with a school cell phone on weeknights waiting to give homework help. Maybe you like being told you will travel around and visit every student's home. For some reason, charters always need people. If you're suspended for six months without pay, or if you're discontinued, your prospects are still good at charters. Of course there's a high burnout rate, but there you go.

Here's the thing, though--discontinuing someone is draconian and unnecessary, always. Different schools have different needs. Just because I suck at this school (which, given the percentage of insane administrators, may or may not be the case), it doesn't follow that I would suck at another. Maybe one has smaller classes. Maybe one has an accent on whatever I'm good at. Maybe I learned something from experience. Who knows? Many things could happen.

But placing a mark on a teacher forever is never a good idea. School culture varies from building to building, from department to department, and from class to class. We have a Danielson rubric but if you think this means every administrator sees everything in the same way, I can easily find a bridge to sell you.

Maybe it's time we find a better way to deal with struggling teachers than ruining their lives.

I've got mixed feelings about actress Cynthia Nixon and her foray into politics. On the one hand, I'm really excited to see a true progressive looking at the governorship of my state. I have to say, though, that I was not happy with some of her remarks about unions.

“With the deals that [unions] have now, you can’t hope to make improvements to the trains in a fiscally responsible way,” Nixon told amNY, not specifying the unions to which she was referring. “Everybody’s got to pull together, and everybody’s got to make sacrifices.”

I don't know what deals the unions have now, so I can't comment on that. I was sorely disappointed, though, to hear a nominal progressive criticize union. It reminded me of no one more than Andrew Cuomo himself, whose first campaign platform entailed going after unions. This opened my eyes a lot, and made Cuomo the first Democrat for whom I declined to vote. I voted for Green Howie Hawkins for Governor these last two rounds.

Nixon, though, is very good on education. Unlike Cuomo, who takes suitcases full of cash from charter folk, she won't be doing that. She has an entirely different POV.

Too many corporate Democrats like Andrew Cuomo are taking charter school hedge fund money.

We have to stop diverting education funding into privately run charter schools, and put the focus back where it should be: on strengthening our public schools and keeping them public.

— Cynthia Nixon (@CynthiaNixon) April 13, 2018

Now here's the thing about Andrew Cuomo--he's making an effort to look good to us, and has been doing so over the last year or so. Cuomo observed the 2016 election, and read the tea leaves. They told him that America wants a government that fulfills its needs. Some of those needs are universal healthcare, affordable college, and a living wage. I repeat that often. Another, of course, is a decent  K-12 education for all of our children.

Cuomo has indeed made concessions. He's moderated his tone over firing all of us because of highly flawed test scores. He's created a program that will make it easier for some New Yorkers to go to college. He's stepped back on the IDC, which kept the Senate in GOP hands even though Democrats held the ostensible majority. Even though that thwarted a whole lot of improvements for New Yorkers, Cuomo can now say he's stopped it so as to disassociate himself from them.

The problem with Andrew Cuomo, of course, is that he has no moral center. He sways whichever way the political wind blows. He is for sale to the highest bidder, so long as whatever the bidder is buying will aid him toward reaching his Prime Directive--the advancement of Andrew Cuomo.

And that's when we come to our own union leadership, clearly poised to endorse Cuomo this time around.  A NY Times headline declares key unions are leaving the Working Families Party, which has now endorsed Cynthia Nixon for governor. You have to scroll down quite a bit for specifics, but when you do, you see this quote from UFT President Michael Mulgrew:

“My only concern is some reckless behavior that will have an unintended consequence of us ending up with a Republican governor,” Mr. Mulgrew said. “When these elections are over, we will judge any decision we have to make off your behavior if you caused bad things to happen — even though it was not your intent you are responsible for them.”

Let's focus a little on reckless behavior. Our parent union, the AFT, endorsed Hillary Clinton well before we saw any teacher voice at the polls. There was a kabuki dance of deciding the endorsement, but we ultimately got behind a candidate who did not support universal health care, a living wage, or affordable college. We got behind a candidate who mustered the audacity to lecture AFT about what we could learn from "public charter schools," whatever the hell they may be.

And just in case you hadn't noticed, Hillary Clinton lost that election. So by Mulgrew's logic, even though it was not our intent, we are responsible for Donald Trump. That's quite an albatross to hang around our own necks. You'd think we'd learn something from that, but you'd be wrong.

Rather than embrace a progressive candidate who holds causes dear to our hearts, we condemn her for one thoughtless comment. We might try to talk with her, negotiate with her, but instead we dismiss her out of hand, back a man with no integrity whatsoever, and hope the progressive wind that's blowing him this week will not change direction any time soon. We ignore mountains of evidence that Cuomo will do whatever is expedient for Cuomo, and brush away Nixon just as we brushed away Bernie Sanders.

This is an egregious error. I'm sure that UFT leadership will disagree, since they know better than me, they know better than you, and making a potentially fatal error in the 2016 Presidential campaign has done nothing to persuade them they are fallible in any way, ever. But it's not a huge leap of logic to say that Cynthia Nixon's philosophy more closely resembles that of working teachers, just as Bernie Sanders' did.

The blanket condemnation of Nixon is precisely the same as that of Sanders. The blind support of sure thing corporate Democrat Cuomo is precisely the same as that of sure thing corporate Democrat Clinton. Now I'm reading that union leadership may set up their own ballot line to make sure Cuomo wins and the progressive gets no traction whatsoever.

What has leadership learned from the debacle that was the 2016 election?

Nothing I can determine.

Mr. Fisk had a very good class in general. They cooperated and he had a good rapport with them. In fact, they often took him off on tangents that were as interesting, if not more so, than whatever he'd prepared. He figured if he ever got observed at one of those moments he'd be highly effective for sure, but alas his boss was always observing his other classes. They were okay too, but they didn't quite do what this class did. It was the day before Christmas break and he was going to surprise them by giving no homework whatsoever.

So you can imagine his surprise when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, one of his best students started behaving like a 14-year-old. In fairness, the boy may have actually been 14 years old, but he had not really achieved the stereotype until this very day. What precipitates a cry for attention like this? Mr. Fisk tried talking directly to the boy, in a friendly tone, but the boy was simply not having a friendly day.

On this particular day, Mr. Fisk could achieve very little. Though interruptions came largely from this one boy, when they were directed at other students they responded somewhat less diplomatically than the teacher. This caused multiple conflicts, because some of the students who weren't being directly insulted were amused by the show. Now things were coming to a head.

Mr. Fisk didn't want to call a dean or anyone because he never called a dean or anyone. He thought doing that made him appear weak. Still, why were they all gathered in one place if all they were going to do was insult each other? It was getting as though they were all on Twitter and Donald Trump was one of the students.

Mr. Fisk suggested that the student in question might be more comfortable sitting in the department office and cooling off for the day. But the student was not happy with that suggestion.

"Why should I have to leave?" he asked.

Mr. Fisk suggested it was a good idea. He didn't want to call the boy's house the day before vacation.

"Go ahead," said the boy. "My father won't answer the phone."

To underline that he meant business, the boy took out the phone, set it to dial his house, and handed it to Mr. Fisk.

Mr. Fisk was a little nervous. He wasn't in the practice of calling homes in front of the students whose homes he happened to be calling. But he was up for a challenge. He figured if the boy directly asked him to call, he couldn't effectively complain about how bad he felt when it actually happened.

Mr. Fisk began talking to Dad. The boy's face changed completely. He listened as Mr. Fisk spoke. No, he couldn't send him home right now. No, he was just hoping that Dad could give him some good advice. Well, Dad knew best what to do. Yes of course he could come in for a meeting whenever he liked.

It turned out the boy was from a multi-religious home. Dad was Catholic and Mom was Jewish. They made a big deal out of celebrating both Hanukah and Christmas and Dad had decreed that not only would there be neither for his son this year, but that also the boy was grounded for the entire break.

Mr. Fisk hadn't actually wished anything bad for the boy. But he didn't feel particularly guilty about it either.

Yesterday I heard someone speak on how we need to be activated. I heard about how we are powerful, and capable of much more. On that I agree absolutely. We are large in numbers and could be a force to be reckoned with.

And yet we are afraid. We are all afraid. Why is that?

I'm a bad example, but that's only because I'm not afraid. I'm not sure when I lost my fear. When I first started this blog, it was anonymous. Though I haven't specifically attached my name to it, you could now click on the Twitter button and find out who I am in less than a minute. I don't remember when I changed my mind about this, but even when I was anonymous it seemed to me that anyone who really cared knew who I was anyway.

What is it that causes us to be this way? I think a lot of readers will argue that we're following in the footsteps of leadership. NYC Educator actually appeared a little before the 2005 Contract. My goal in putting this up was to counter the anti-teacher spin I saw so frequently in the NYC papers. But the 2005 Contract, full of extra time, goodies for Bloomberg, and particularly the ATR, made me turn a critical eye toward leadership.

What happened to militant unionism, or even speaking up? It's not simple, but it's largely attached to 2005. I remember 1986, when as a new teacher with a temporary license, I drove to work one day in September only to find I didn't have a job anymore. I decided to look for a job in Queens rather than the Bronx so my next stop was the Queens hiring hall. A secretary there showed me a room full of teachers in folding chairs and told me she needed to place every single one of them before she could place me.

I called the union. A rep told me there was nothing they could do for me, but that when I was a more senior teacher I'd be glad of this policy. Of course, that changed in 2005. Now, if my principal puts me up on nonsensical charges, I'm not terribly likely to be fired. But there is this DOE policy of splitting the baby, which means I'll almost certainly be found guilty of some minor thing or other and be fined a few thousand bucks. When that happens, the principal who brought the crazy charges can generally make you an ATR.

I would hate to be an ATR. Teaching is a big part of my life, and I take it seriously. I would have a lot of trouble doing that if I were a wandering sub. I see this do bad things to people, and I understand completely. I see people who've found ways to cope. Blogger Chaz has decided to acknowledge and celebrate the oddness and humor in his situation and is the healthiest-minded ATR I know. I hope, were I ever to be in that position, that I'd find the courage to meet it the way he does. I have no idea, though, whether or not I could.

I find myself in conflict with some of my ATR friends, in that I'm absolutely keen on preserving union. For all my complaints about leadership, they hung tough against Bloomberg and declined to sell out the ATR for the raise other unions got. This was the right thing to do for multiple reasons. One is solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the ATR. Another is we're all just a school closing or 3020a from being ATRs ourselves. Opening up the ATR with a time limit would mean DOE could manipulate the system to fire almost anyone.

This notwithstanding, teacher morale is in the toilet. Few are inclined to take a stand. Why is that? One factor is certainly the ATR. We used to be placed in schools when we were bumped. Another is the evaluation system. Leadership can talk till they're red in the face about how few teachers get rated ineffective. That's a thing. Another thing, though, is how working teachers feel, and they feel afraid. There are a lot of crazy vindictive supervisors all over the city, and uprisings here are not happening spontaneously, despite what we see happening in Oklahoma, West Virginia and elsewhere.

I have a supervisor who is not remotely insane. I don't expect to get bad ratings. But I certainly understand the feeling of hatred for this system. I know and I feel that it was borne of a desire to fire my brothers and sisters. I heard Cuomo say so. Later, I heard him call it "baloney" because so few teachers were fired. I watched him and the heavy-hearted Assembly vote for his new system. Like all teachers, I know and I feel what this system is intended to do. Though it's a large failure, as would be any system conceived in junk science, it's hanging over my head, and all our heads, every moment of our lives.

Of course there are powerful forces right now trying to destroy our union. They absolutely wish to push us into the same corner in which WV and OK find themselves. Maybe if they're successful, they can ruin us. Maybe, at that point, we'll take a stand city or statewide. But there's one big impediment to activism, and that impediment is leadership.

It was leadership that told us we must be smoking something if we thought we could do better than a contract that raised maximum to 25. Back then we had a streak of self-preservation, voted it down and got it reduced to 22. It was leadership that told us we needed to accept the crap we got in 2005, and we no longer had it in us to say no. It was leadership that posted an idiotic piece suggesting the crap 2005 contract "scraped the skies."

It was leadership that sold the last contract via fear, telling us if we didn't accept it we'd move all the way back in line behind 200 unions, and that there was no "God-given right" to retro pay. It is leadership right now loudly telling us we do not make public demands. Leadership tells us there is a 400-member negotiating committee and only they have the sacred right of negotiating the contract. In fact, the last such committee passed the leadership proposal before even having seen the Memorandum of Agreement. My expectations for rank and file voice on the current committee, of which I'm a member, are not high.

It was also leadership that sold us Danielson and junk science with the question, "Do you want to go back to the bad old days when principals controlled 100% of your evaluation?" For one thing, no, no one's ever said that. It's a strawman. For another, the days were not so bad when the principal also held 100% of the power to leave you alone if she so chose. But mostly, it didn't feel so bad back in those bad old days. These days, the fear is palpable.

Leadership manipulates us with appeals to fear and is shocked when teachers are fearful. I'm not. Leadership can maintain we need not be afraid because of union, and that's potentially accurate. This notwithstanding, I'm not afraid, but I feel it's mostly in spite of union leadership. I've developed my own voice and I've had to think out of the box to do it. Meanwhile, almost all the people UFT considers activists have signed  loyalty oaths. These people, on pain of losing perks and jobs, will not utter a public word that contradicts leadership. Some of them are outright ridiculous. But guess what? They're acting out of fear too.

Hey, if leadership wants to groom and build an activist membership, I'm all for it. I'll help. But to do that, they themselves will have to stop indulging in fear tactics. I'm up for it.

Now show me.

That's what you'll find inside this piece in Reformy Chalkbeat. Evidently the UFT is going to ask for parental leave and money. Also, they did a survey. We don't know the results of the survey, and neither does Reformy Chalkbeat.

Once again, if it isn't about Eva Moskowitz or E4E, Reformy Chalkbeat can't be bothered to seek out even the most basic information.

That's what passes for journalism in these United States, and that's why Donald Trump is President. If I were Bill Gates, I'd ask for my support money back. Except if I were Bill Gates I'd probably be happy to know every time Eva sneezed or E4E collected 100 signatures demanding more work for less pay.

As a living, breathing, NYC schoolteacher, I hope for better. Actually the city tabloids often offer that. It's hard to come up with something to say each and every day, I guess. Still, if I can do it with no budget and no staff, you'd think Reformy Chalkbeat could get someone to do it for money.

That's about the sense I get from leadership.

Every few weeks I go to the UFT Executive Board. It's extraordinary, after all these years, to be able to direct questions to leadership. Now I don't always get an answer, but nonetheless it's extraordinary. It's also kind of sad that, in order to directly pose questions to leadership, you have to run for Executive Board and win. I spent a lot of time with Long Island locals a few years ago, and union leadership is much closer.

Before the last meeting I asked here, and also on Facebook and Twitter what people would like me to ask. I got an awful lot of responses about what people wanted in the contract. Here's the thing--all questions about the contract will be answered with, "That's the province of the 400-member negotiating committee."

That's not precisely the first answer I'd give if I were presiding over Janus. And we are not blameless in Janus. By jumping on board so early to endorse Hillary, which many of us saw as a fait accompli anyway, we may have affected the outcome. I don't know how many AFT people reminded me of 1972 in telling me why we couldn't endorse Bernie. In 1972 George McGovern opposed the Vietnam War and was considered a wild-eyed radical. In 2016 Hillary Clinton, the sure thing, lost the election and make no mistake, that's why we're facing Janus.

We, the AFT and UFT, declined to endorse a candidate who believed in universal health care, a living wage, and affordable college. Instead, we endorsed a candidate who was Not Donald Trump. While I'll freely admit that beats the hell out of Donald Trump, it wasn't enough to motivate enough Americans to get off their asses and vote in key states.

These are the same people telling us to rely on the good judgment of the 400-member committee. I can't tell you what goes on at that committee, but neither can I tell you what goes on in Unity Caucus meetings, and the overwhelming committee majority is Unity Caucus. Unity Caucus has brought us contract after contract, giveback after giveback, and we're still waiting for most of the money NYPD got back in 2009.

The city, according to PBA, is demanding draconian health givebacks. I can understand why they don't even wish to bother sitting down and discussing the insulting proposals. Bill de Blasio, if you read the NY Post, is some kind of hippie commie weirdo, but by a whole lot of standards, he negotiates far tougher than Bloomberg ever did. Take a look at the miserable pattern we imposed on our brothers and sisters--10% over seven years. As far as I know, that's the lowest pattern bargain in city history. And if that's not enough, take a look at your copays.

I'm glad it isn't my job to tell you everything, without exception, is wonderful. It is my job to tell you that we are certainly better with than without union. I know a whole lot of charter teachers and hear stories where they click their fingers and you jump, no matter how stupid the request is. I know exactly where each and every ATR teacher would be without a union. I have not been an ATR, but I once worked for a principal who'd certainly have fired me for having told a NY Times writer about two students in my ESL classes who actually knew English but were illiterate.

I have a friend who used to work for a charter, was treated in an unconscionable fashion, and now works in a public school. I criticize leadership a lot, but I do not take what I have for granted. We stand to lose an awful lot if we fail to support our union. To save it, we will all have to become active. That means, just for starters, we will all have to vote in union elections.

Should we do that, we may be able to seriously improve on leadership

6 PM—Secretary Howard Schoor welcomes us.  Only one other person at dais right now.

No speakers tonight.

Minutes—approved.

President’s report—Mulgrew not here.

Staff director not here.

Arthur Goldstein—MORE—You may or may not have seen an open letter from High School of Art and Design. signed by eight teachers including the chapter leader. This appears to involve another case of a principal in need of improvement, which unfortunately we tend to see too much of. A lot of us would love to see principals in need of improvement back in NY Teacher, and perhaps here’s a candidate.

Meanwhile, I’m hearing that teachers from this school will come to our next meeting. I’m hoping that we can get perhaps ahead of the curve and make things a little better before that happens.

Can we specifically send Art and Design some conversation and support before our next meeting?

Schoor—We’re already ahead of the curve. Have had several meetings with DOE. Have spoken at three chancellor’s meetings. Have reached out to CL and others, invited them in to devise a strategy. Have refused to come. Refused to allow legal intakes. We’re ready, willing and able. Without teachers telling us firsthand we’re not prepared to do anything.

Jonathan Halabi—New Action—On ATRs—In a school where some teachers work compensated 6th class, can ATR be assigned a six period schedule? Also, in unbalanced days where teachers teach six and four do they teach six?

Mike Sill—A person can be asked to do six periods, but should be paid a coverage each and every time. We should advocate teachers get paid for period 6 and should grieve if denied.

Halabi—Can ATRs be observed teaching out of subject area?

Schoor—Yes.

Eliu Lara—Any time a teacher is working he or she can be observed. However, if teacher gets bad rating we can fight that.

Schoor—can’t stop members from observations, even if they are out of license.

Sill—In past, when field supervisor observed we didn’t have whole lot of success having observations reconsidered. But we want to know about it because we will advocate for that person.

LeRoy Barr—Next week is negotiation meeting. Please come out April 16. Friday 13 is high school awards at 5:30. April 21 social studies conference. May 5 UFT 5K run at Coney Island. Next EB April 23. April 18 DA.

Dais is now pretty full.

Schoor—Another union was in Chief about health negotiations. Health care issues will be part of our negotiations, along with other city unions. Weighted vote by members. If they want to come to an agreement have to go through Municipal Labor Coalition. No one union will do this alone.

Report from Districts

George Altomari—Mentions social studies conference. Needs union members to come. Empty hall looming before us. Asks us to come or tell people to come. Leticia James will be there.

David Kazansky—running for teacher trustee, NYC teacher retirement board. On March 27 annual labor seder. 100 in attendance. Story of passover and labor tie in together. Was huge success. Please come next year.

Pat Cristino—members at building want to move school from one floor to another, give no space and add charter. Meet with students and members each week. PEP panel impressed. Please come to PEP April 25th. Space is key to their success. Will hurt them to aid charter.

Paul Egan—1-1 to Westham. European dreams are shattered. Biggest news this week is IDC has come back to Democrats, but will not change anything except Jeff Klein’s office and vanity plate. GOP still in charge because of Simka Felder. Special election April 24, please vote for Shelly Mayer. GOP has put 2 million into race for 79K job, that will run again in November.

Door knocking, have hit 25K. Still many more to go. Over 5K long conversations, Mostly productive. People see need for union.

Trying to repeat at workplace with membership teams. Starting training this week. Hope that people will realize importance of union. Trump makes it clear every day.

Schoor—How much money are charters giving to this race?

Egan—Over a million—some set as IE and we don’t know yet. Airtime bought. Will go over 3 million.

6:24 Mulgrew arrives

Trying to tally budget—close to a billion. 14.3 million for teacher center, pivotal for CTLE.
Janus legislation for NY State—says what employer has to do for us, talks about Taylor Law and what fair representation is. We will keep NY State’s ability to have one union for a worksite, not multiple. NY Post hates it.

This is it—membership team training starts this week. We launch our new IT platform next week. Membership cards go out next week. App next Wednesday.This will be all UFT members, not just DOE. By June we should be able to communicate more rapidly.

Met with new chancellor. Very nice. All nice at first. Everyone says he is very nice. Do you want him
to come to EB or DA first?

EB seems to be answer.

Mulgrew will ask him to next meeting, 23rd. After that we will invite him to Spring Conference.

We understand our focus. Our business with him is DOE and middle management. Will he be working partner or same old same old?
We will tell him what and who works and what and who doesn’t.

Federal spending plan was a miracle. Won’t happen again. Didn’t think this would get done, but it did.

Thanks us. 6:31, Mulgrew leaves.
Janella Hinds—Reports on commemoration of assassination of Dr. King and sanitation workers strike. Randi Weingarten and other leaders were there. Others from UFT attended. Other unions from across the country acknowledged Dr. King’s commitment to working people. Sanitation workers just made whole a few months ago. Rallied and marched on April 4th. Acknowledged civil rights and labor movement work of Dr. King.

Shelvy Abrams—also attended rally. Had labor seder on Wednesday night, at church where workers went to do mailings. Was closed for 50 years, now remodeled. Will be memorial for all sanitation workers. Will be part of history when they finished. It’s beautiful. Great that three surviving workers spoke well and strong. Randi spoke—what happened 50 years ago hasn’t changed. Poverty is worse in richest country in world. People starving. Boarded up homes. Everything he fought for—it’s the same way it was the day before he was killed. His voice says, “Our weapon is our vote.” Our mission is 2018. If we don’t do it, we can forget it.

We are adjourned. 6:37

...what question would you ask leadership at UFT Executive Board tomorrow night?

It's kind of funny to hear leadership say that our evaluation model ought to be emulated statewide. They appear to base this on percentages, and if percentages are all you examine, their conclusion might be sound. If the only factor that's relevant is which percentage of teachers get ineffective ratings, then let's have a party. We're in the best of all possible worlds. That appears to be leadership's contention.

So why, then, does almost every single working teacher hate this system? Of course, there are exceptions. There are teachers on the union payroll whose jobs depend on loving everything adore this system. Also E4E, paid off by Gates, seems to like it, and leadership seems to have become soulmates with them over restorative justice. This notwithstanding, I hear complaints about it each and every day. It doesn't even matter if you get decent ratings. I hate it. My colleagues hate it. Even the more reasonable supervisors hate it.

People tell me stories about changing their plans the moment a supervisor walks into the room. I was gonna do fractions today but it looks like I better do Danielson today. I can do fractions tomorrow, but today I'll ask a bunch of broad questions and have the kids put up their red and green cards to indicate whether or not they understand. Tomorrow I'll walk around the room and check their work instead, because we're having a test next week and I need to really know whether they understand. I'll have to put it off one day because I've lost another day to Danielson.

I see supervisors hunched over computer screens. Sometimes they put gatekeepers outside their doors. They have no time to help anyone who needs it because they have to finish another 20 reports by the end of the week. Leadership says that's great because it keeps them busy. Yet in my world, at least, supervisors still find time to write disciplinary letters over baseless nonsense. Who knows how they do it? Maybe they teach it in principal school.

I don't buy the premise that if supervisors are kept busy writing endless observation reports they don't have time to be petty and vindictive. If I spent each and every day writing redundant reports I might need to be petty and vindictive too. What if I'm thirty years old, I don't actually know how to write anything whatsoever, and yet my job entails writing 180 reports a year? I must be pretty pissed off.

Over at 52 Broadway, there's no APPR, and not one single officer has ever been Danielsoned, ever. Yet many UFT employees  (who've also never been Danielsoned) will tell you to your face that being observed four or six times a year is no big deal. They should know. They've seen the stats. But they have no idea how demoralizing it is when some 30-year-old Boy Wonder supervisor says you are developing or ineffective because you did this or that. It's particularly dispiriting when you did neither this nor that, and the fact that it's utterly false gives you no basis for an APPR complaint.

No matter how few double ineffectives there may be, having the burden of proof on the teacher at 3020a is unacceptable. How do you prove a negative? A sitting Executive Board member argued with me on Twitter that it was great the burden of proof was on the teacher. That way the teacher could own it. This was one of the stupidest arguments I've heard in my entire life. Doubtless this person is bound for glory in UFT. I wonder how much money it costs to buy people off so thoroughly they'll utter nonsense of that magnitude.

As if that's not enough, week after week I hear from teachers who work under Principals from Hell. In extraordinary circumstances, communities are awakened and the media jumps in, but often Principals from Hell sit unchallenged for years. Sometimes even after the press covers them nothing happens. You read about a principal falsifying observations at Banana Kelly, and I know a person who suffered that who's as of yet been unable to reduce her negative rating. How many more such stories are there that we haven't yet heard? Who knows?

When we stand and ask leadership to require fewer observations for people who do well with them, they argue that people do better with more. Yet we only asked for fewer observations for people already doing well. They have no notion of the stress this system causes day to day. Let's face it--the entire system is predicated on the assumption that teachers suck and need to be fired. The most recent iteration was, in fact, based on Andrew Cuomo's public outcry that plenty of teachers suck and not enough were being fired.

UFT leadership needs to step out of its self-imposed cone of silence. It needs to speak more frequently to rank and file who aren't on the payroll. I don't understand why Janus isn't a wake-up call. Everyone hates Danielson except those who have never experienced it and those who are paid to say everything is wonderful and we are in the best of all possible worlds.

Were I in leadership, I'd make it priority number one to hear and respond to the prevailing point of view otherwise. This would be a win-win for sure. Have they got the courage to open their ears?

Only time will tell.

I was pretty surprised to see that incoming NYC Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza deemed opt-out an extreme reaction to the standardized testing that has plagued and poisoned our educational system. First of all, this implies the parents who mounted a statewide protest to resist making widgets of their children are somehow taking the wrong approach.

Carranza probably doesn't remember when Reformy John King announced that very few New York children met his exacting standards, and almost immediately thereafter fewer than 20% NY children rang the big Common Core bell in Albany. He probably doesn't recall the statewide protests of these tests. He must not remember even the Great and Powerful Andrew Cuomo shrinking at the sight of Jeanette Deutermann and Beth Dimino. He probably doesn't remember that there is a moratorium on actually using any of these test scores for much of anything.

In a way, you can't blame the guy, He wasn't around when any of this was happening. On the other hand, if Carranza wants to be el rey, the king, he's gonna have to do a little bit of homework. Specifically, he's gonna have to educate himself on what opt-out is, who was in it, and exactly how powerful the tsunami of parent power was that accompanied it. Kings get to sit on a throne, but only so long as no one topples it. Andrew Cuomo was comfortably ensconced in his reformy castle until opt-out raised its formidable head. Now he acts like he's our good buddy, and he pretends to be a Democrat instead of going after unions.

A key rule in writing and teaching is know your audience. I can't give the same lesson to an AP English class as the one I present to a group of newcomers from El Salvador and China. I mean, I could, but it would fall on deaf ears a good portion of the time. Carranza, by talking off the top of his head, has failed to consider his audience. I hope he's a quick learner, but thus far he's shown no evidence he is.

This is not necessarily a fundamental or irreversible error. Here's a guy who's learned how to play a violin. That's not an easy process. You have to endure sounds no human ought to before you coax a sweet tone from this instrument. We have to hope the tortured sounds we're hearing now are only practice.

Still, if Bill de Blasio scoured the country for the best, it's hard to understand why he couldn't find someone who, you know, read a few articles about opt-out before venturing toward such an outlandish comment. It's possible that Carranza thinks, as el rey, that any questioning of his actions is beyond the pale. I certainly hope not.

Opt-out remains one of the great hopes for quality education, as opposed to the reformy slice-em, dice-em, rigor and grit crap that Broad, Gates and Walmart would impose on our children.

Which side are you on, Mr. Chancellor?

I teach a lot of students from China. Sometimes I learn things about Chinese. A lot of the materials I choose are designed for college, so sometimes there are questions about whether or not students are married. Sometimes the boys say, "No, I'm a Single Dog." When I ask what they're talking about, they say that's what single guys are called in China. I think that's hilarious, and now I notice the expression when it comes up.

China's a Confucian society, and there's still this thing about having sons. People want to carry on the family name. There's been this one child per family rule in China. While it's phased out nowadays, the effect of preferring male children has been one of a country in which there are more men than women. So there are an awful lot of Single Dogs out there in China. I sometimes think that's why the Chinese boys come here, but I must be wrong because the girls come too.

My classroom is dominated by Chinese speakers. My second largest group is Spanish speakers, but they're outnumbered maybe four to one. It's problematic in that my goal is to get them to speak English, and it goes against all natural tendency. I mean, imagine we, native English speakers, are grouped together in China and some crazy teacher is standing in front of the room insisting we speak Chinese. What a ridiculous demand.

Yet that's essentially my job. A good friend of mine once asked a student, "Who's the craziest teacher you know?" He was quite confident the student would say he was, but he counted me out too soon.

"Mr. Goldstein," said the student without hesitation.

"Why?" asked my disappointed friend.

"We came here, the first day, and none of us could speak any English. The first thing Mr. Goldstein said to us was from now on we would speak only in English."

I'm always proud of that, particularly because my friend is pretty crazy on his own terms. But it is a crazy thing to ask. It's a little tougher this year because I now have four or five Single Dogs with pretty active senses of humor. I'm pro-humor, actually, but it's problematic when it's in a language a fair group of us don't understand. It's particularly problematic when it's used in an unfriendly way.

One day we were talking about animal sounds. Dogs say bow wow in English, but guau guau in Spanish. One of my Single Dogs told me what cats say in Chinese, I repeated it, and it turned out to be a pretty vulgar word. The Chinese girls are a little more mature than the boys, they didn't find that amusing, and they let me know. I verified it with the Chinese teachers and called his house.

Usually their banter is not that offensive, but it's still rude to cut out so many people. One day, after they had a hilarious in-joke, I started speaking Spanish, which is something I never do in class.

I looked at the boys and asked them how they liked being left out of the conversation. What did they think I was saying? Do they like it when we have conversations and exclude them? I don't remember exactly what else I said but my Spanish speakers were very happy about it. Several of them came up and told me so. It looked like they were feeling much what I was feeling.

The boys were visibly stunned. They didn't expect that and had no way to react. My Single Dogs have slowed down their private conversations since then. But they will surely pick it up, and having used that trick once, I can't rely upon it again. I'll have to come up with something else.

I'm Sisyphus, pushing the boulder up the hill, and every time they make a joke in Chinese I have to push it even farther. But I'm making progress despite all reasonable expectations otherwise.

I can't put pictures of my students on the blog, so pictured is my dog Toby. While he's not technically a Single Dog, he is nonetheless both single and a dog.

Last night I watched Justice League with my young nephew. I spent my misbegotten youth reading comic books, so I love superhero movies. There've been some great ones lately--Wonder Woman and Black Panther. There've also been some really awful ones. Batman vs. Superman was abysmal, except for the five minutes when Wonder Woman showed up.

Justice League is really not very good. It tries to tell too many stories and introduce too many characters, and doesn't develop any of the new ones sufficiently. Superman returns from the dead and still has no evident personality. If we're gonna have an overweight Batman, it should probably be Kevin Smith instead of Ben Affleck. At least he'd be interesting to listen to. Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman is great, and the director often showed her face for no apparent reason, just so you could say, "Look, there's Wonder Woman."

Nonetheless, as a UFT member, I was struck by the bad guy with the big horns. I don't remember if he had a name, but his goal was to put together three boxes of some kind of power and therefore create Unity. (Evidently no one had advised him that Al Shanker did that years ago.) Not only that, but he had an army of flying monkey/ insect creatures to support him. These creatures bled green slime when wounded, and there was more than one scene of superheroes being slimed by them upon their demise.

The thing about the flying monkeys was that they had no loyalty. They may or may not have signed loyalty oaths, but once they smelled fear on the guy with the big horns, they were ready to turn on him with no hesitation. This is problematic. I mean, think about all those people in Unity whose job it is to sit around and write lies about people like me. How many of them does it take to create a handout at the DA saying people who don't tow the party line are disloyal? If you can write lies about us, you can pretty much write lies about anyone. That's just one reason not to depend on people who lie.

In a union, who or what merits your loyalty? If you're part of the Unity Caucus, you've signed an oath to support whatever positions the caucus supports. This opens up a world of free trips and patronage gigs. You might find yourself working after school giving advice on pensions of something. If you hit the jackpot, you might find yourself with a full time job in some office or other. You'd hope this would be by merit, but the primary qualification is signing away your opinions to the Unity Caucus.

If you do that, you agree to support Common Core. You agree to support junk science evaluation. You agree to support the Danielson Rubric and oppose any reduction in observations until and unless UFT leadership does the same. In fact, despite vocal protests from a Unity Caucus member at the last Executive Board meeting, you agree to support the ATR. This is required, because it was part of the 2005 Contract, and you supported that too. So when you get up there and complain when we demand elected representation for the ATR we're supporting the ATR, you're being disingenuous. It wasn't us who supported it--it was you. You probably don't know that, because the likelihood of this coming up at Unity get-togethers hovers around nil.

Now here's the thing--should the gravy train slow down, and should the budget call for fewer flying monkeys, someone's gotta go. Will they turn on leadership? Probably not. That would require independent thought, and that's something you need to suppress or avoid if you're gonna support punching the faces of anyone who opposes Common Core. Nonetheless, the problem is people who don't think things through suffer from lack of vision.

It doesn't really matter whether you have no vision or have chosen to consciously shut it down. Regardless, you're just along for the ride and you aren't a leader. Thus you get people in positions of authority who observe Barack Obama pursuing the most anti-teacher agenda in history and they say, "Hey, let's unconditionally support this guy." You get people who look at Hillary Clinton's unwillingness to embrace universal health care, a living wage or affordable college. They decide, "Hey, let's support her way ahead of time. That guy Sanders is a wild-eyed fanatic, what with his crazy ideas about universal health care, a living wage, and affordable college."

When Clinton stands in front of the  AFT in Minnesota and declares we can learn a lot from public charter schools, whatever the hell they may be, these folks applaud. They lecture you online and to your face that you're crazy to support Sanders. "Remember McGovern in 72?" they ask. Yet even now, none of them are asking, "Remember Clinton in 2016?"

You can love America without loving Trump. You can love the union without loving Mulgrew. You now face a turning point, though. Do you give up on America altogether? Aren't you part of it, and if Donald Trump is President, isn't that partially your fault? If you don't love UFT leadership, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to quit the union and say screw everyone else, I'm keeping my 1400 bucks? That'll certainly weaken union, us, and make the Koch Brothers happy with a job well done.

Of course, if I were running the union, I'd want to reach out to rank and file. I'd want to show them that I'm listening. Instead, we get the same old imperious nonsense, sitting up on their 14th floor Mount Olympus looking down upon us as though their omniscience were beyond question. High schools? They voted the wrong way. Screw high schools. The ATR? They're lucky to have a job. Screw the ATR. Class sizes? We negotiated them 50 years ago and that should be good enough for anyone.

I believe in union. I will work to maintain it. But this isn't a one-way street. UFT Unity owes us their ear. While they may be totally unfamiliar with this concept, it's their job to represent us, not to do any damn thing they feel like and send flying monkeys out to tell us why they are right and we are wrong. UFT leadership has woken up to the fact that, due to their utter failure (among others) to mobilize the electorate, we are in crisis.

But they've still failed to take even baby steps toward doing what their prime directive ought to be--listening to their members. If I were them, I'd be taking serious stock of how to do that. Otherwise teachers will have to wait for members to rise up on their own a la West Virginia or Oklahoma. Given the culture of complacency that has three of four UFT members failing to even vote in union elections, that could take years, decades, or centuries.

We haven't got that kind of time anymore.

I'm not surprised to see that the suspension rate has risen this year. I'm not surprised either that the cited article interviews not one single UFT member. Fortunately, they ask Mona David her opinion. David runs some parent group which, as far as I know, consists of at least her and some guy from Staten Island who wish to kill teacher tenure. Why bother asking teachers what they think?

The article cites reasons suspensions are given, though:

Students are suspended for such infractions as attacking staff or other students, destroying school property or bringing weapons to campus.

Fortunately, the city is looking to take a "restorative justice" approach to these matters. So if you or one of your students get the crap kicked out of you at school, the attacker will get to sit around and talk about just why he hit you over the head with that two by four. When we finally discover the root cause, you and your assaulter can hug it out. What's better than that?

Let's say that some student offers to kill your entire class. Doubtless he's misunderstood. You should talk to him, and find out why he feels that way. Let's say you respond, and he once again signals his intention to kill everyone. Clearly he's had some childhood trauma that put him in this unfortunate situation. There's a conflict between him and the entire class. The only thing to do is set up a mediation. He can explain why he wants to kill everyone while you and the rest of the class explain why you don't want to die.

Hidden and buried feelings are simply unhealthy. So it's important that you get them right out there in the open. As educators, it's important that we not just skim the surface. Now sure, this is not 100% effective. I mean, sometimes students actually show up to schools and kill everybody. But don't you want to be absolutely sure you've exhausted all restorative means at your disposal before you resort to something as drastic as suspension?

I'm kind of old school, so you can't really go by me. Once, I was teaching a class, and a student I'd never seen walked in. I told him he'd have to leave. He was offended by that, and thus he announced to the class that he was going to blow my head off with a 45. Clearly it was my fault. I should've taken the time to ask him why he felt he needed to come into my classroom, as opposed to whatever one he belonged in. Had I taken the time to understand him, perhaps he wouldn't have felt the need to threaten my life in front of 30 witnesses.

But that's not all I did. After the class, I ran around the whole building and sought to ascertain the identity of the kid. When I finally did, rather than apologize face to face for failing to understand his needs, I wrote him up to the dean. Not only that, but I followed up a few days later. I asked what happened, and the dean told me they had called the kid's parents. I asked why he wasn't suspended. He had problems, they told me.

Now here's how callous I am--I said if he had problems that caused him to threaten people's lives in public, he did not belong in the same building as my students. Can you imagine my level of insensitivity? Even now I feel wracked with guilt over my unreasonable requests.

Statistics show that students who are suspended graduate at lower rates than students who are not suspended. Clearly the suspensions are damaging to student self-esteem. Now I know there are Doubting Thomases out there who will say, "Hey, NYC Educator, don't they graduate at lower rates because they bring weapons to school, or run around assaulting people and threatening to kill them?"

To you doubters, I say this. Last Wednesday UFT passed a resolution for more restorative justice and less suspension. And they must be right, because E4E also supported it, and they're endorsed by Bill Gates.

What more evidence could anyone ask?