Numb Nuts does a lunch period alone. Actually he does it alone because a good 75% of the time he is not where he should be. He runs, he hides, he shirks his responsibilities and as usual, pawns it off on others. The thing is he has the easiest lunch period there is. Three classes!

Travel back in time to this past Thursday. Out in the yard whilst the children are playing and frolicking in the cool autumn air there is not one supervisor or pedagogue to be found out there with the students. Oh there are a some excellent aides out there, aides that are more aware of what to do than Numb Nuts, but what if a child gets seriously hurt? Would not the powers that be be curious as to why Numb Nuts is not out there? Or perhaps the lawyers of the parents that decide to sue the DOE when their child suffers from a head injury. I don't wish that to happen, but would it not be fascinating being fly on the wall and watch Numb Nuts being disposed by a lawyer? I don't think his smarmy attitude would go over to well.

You ask how about when he is there, actually making a lunch duty contribution. I don't know how to put this. It should be simple since Numb Nuts claims he is a disciple and sycophant of Lee Canter's Assertive Discipline. Oh but when he gives workshops on Canter's work, he just copies and pastes the information. See, he is a phony. One would think that the lunch period is calm, that Numb Nuts and the students are connecting on some Zen like plane. Sorry to inform you, that is the furthest thing from the truth.

The man is a shriek machine. I swear, his head will explode one day like that guys in the 1981 movie "Scanners". There is no sense of order, no sense of anything. All he does is go up to a student, get in their face and scream, "excuse me!" The students do not take him seriously at all. Several years ago some third grade students came up to me and said, "Numb Nuts is a pussy. He never means what he says and we can get over on him all the time." Shouldn't this make someone, somewhere wonder if this man is cut out to be an AP? This inane drone does not have tenure yet as an AP, so what is the DOE waiting for? Does John Deacon see something that students, teachers, and parents do not see?

Thank you Joel Klein for putting children first.

This story is too funny not to tell.

In the 90's I and my 3rd class went on a field trip to the Bronx Zoo towards the end of the school year. A teacher in my school had arranged it for her class and another but for some reason my class went instead. It was your typical end of year field trip. Something to waste time. In fact most field trips are, very few have any tie in with the curriculum. If they did then every fouth grade class that was studying the American Revolution would go see all the locations in the city where the Battle of New York took place. It happens in Westchester County.

On the bus to the zoo the only thing on the student's minds were the bears. They wanted desperately to see the bears. The bus dropped us off at the Southern Blvd entrance. I had one parent volunteer with me and thirty students. Easy. I doubt Numb Nuts would be able to handle it.

So off the bus we go. We line up in two lines enter the zoo and the kids are still OCD'ing on the bears. "Please, A Teacher in the Bronx, can we please see the bears first?" I tell them OK. It makes sense. As any who have been the Bronx Zoo know the bears are in an almost direct line from the Southern Blvd entrance. So we make a bee line to see the bears.

The expression on the students faces were of a high anticipation. Bears! Bears! Bears! They were almost there. In fact it was clear sailing. The railing was empty. They were promised an unimpeded view of the bears. Praise be the bears!

"Oh mi dios!", the parent volunteer cries out. Kevin one of my students looks at me and says, "A Teacher in the Bronx, one of the bears is trying to jump over the other bear and can't make it over." I look and there is Papa Bear getting down with Mama Bear and Baby Bear must have been sent to the movies, or maybe was at Grandma and Grandpa Bear's den. Anyway the kids seemed to have no idea of what was happening, I ended the the bear viewing prematurely, though I don't think there was anything premature with Papa Bear. I saw Mama Bear later. She was laying back and having a cigarette. Papa Bear wasn't there. I think he had to get up early for work.

No biggie. It was done, it was over. But what would happen now under the reign of Chancellor Klein? I would have been called immoral for not thinking ahead of time that bears might be fornicating that time of the year and should have considered this option. Condon's office would have been sent into the school to take statements with leading questions from the students, and the bears would have been interviewed as well. The New York Post would have labeled me the "BEAR VOYEUR TEACHER" and would have felt shame. My career would be hanging by a thread.

And people wonder why teachers won't go the extra mile anymore.

It appears that Bloomberg thinks himself indispensable. Hey I give him credit for keeping New York solvent, keeping crime down, being pretty much straight forward. But what he has yet to learn is humility. He thinks that the the sh** will hit the fan if he is not around to control the sh**. This is exactly what Hugo Chavez tried to do in in Venezuela. Wait, are teachers allowed to use swear words? Must we lead a chaste life? More on this another time.

I think the days of seeing New York turn into the budget busting, crime infested, filthy city are long gone. In fact this transformation is going on throughout the US with some exceptions. Hell, even Yonkers is nicer. But like Giuliani, Bloomberg is a control freak and thinks that only he can save us from ourselves. All he is really doing is saving us from Anthony Weiner, an attention whore if there ever was one.

William Thompson seems to have the skills, the brains, and the cajones to do the job as mayor. Yeah we know that Bloomberg is worth $20 billion, but Thompson manages a combined portfolio of nearly $95 billion. Like David Paterson he is a no nonsense, no bullshit person. Best of all he actually has experience in education unlike Bloomberg and Klein.

Which is my entire issue with Bloomberg and Klein. The lack of HOTS when it comes to education, and the constant blaming the teachers tirades. Yes, I agree there are some bad teachers. But, there are a great many teachers out there who care. Or worse, did care until they found out that they had to worry about themselves and their direct deposit first, and this is what this administration has done to us, and now are just robots for the DOE. Aren't the parents the ones who are ultimately responsible for a students progress and success in school? Why not hold a press conference in City Hall and make examples of parents who never sign a report card, never ever come to conferences, never show an interest in their child's education? If the mayor is unable or unwilling to find such parents I will be more than happy to supply him with a rather long list.

Bloomberg and Klein bust our balls about attendance, why not the parents balls about showing up on conference night? I have never seen a class in my school, or anywhere with more than fifty percent of the parents showing up.

Check this out. Eight years ago I awoke on a Saturday morning to drive all the way into the Bronx for a district wide presentation on gangs. It was replete with an officer from the local precinct, elected officials, etc... Notices were sent home, fliers in every school. Ten parents showed up.

Maybe if food was served more would have shown.

Remember the olden days of the DOE? Well, not the DOE, the BOE, pre-2003. Come around children and listen to a story about the days when things were not quite right, and things were not quite wrong. All depends on how you look at issues. Like is the glass half empty or half full.

There used to be thirty two districts, and thirty two school boards in the City of New York. In a sense there still is. Yes there were lots of problems. School boards traveling to Hawaii on special educational junkets, principal jobs gotten for $10,000 in small bills inside a small envelope, rampant cronyism, lack of accountability. Hey these were problems. I admit it, and a band aid wasn't the salve to heal the problem.

So along comes Il Duce Bloomy. He knows how to resolve the problem. Mayoral control. OK, why not. So he convinces Albany to give him all the power to control the schools. He goes out looking for a Mini-Me and find Joel "The Animal" Klein. Mini Me wishes to streamline the DOE, get rid of waste, etc... OK still going along. What does Mini Me do? He breaks up the system into ten regions by combining districts. Each region now has about 100-120 schools. Makes sense. Lets take a district with 20-30 schools and make it bigger. But then he makes the regions smaller by having schools in a "network" with an Local Instructional Superintendent. But this LIS is then another layer of bureaucratic feces. And this LIS needs to be paid as well as he staff. Figure about ten LIS to a region times ten. I will let you the reader do the math.

But the big things now are in centralized locations further away from the people they serve. If you are a parent who lives on 125th St and Lexington Ave you know must travel all the way downtown to 28th St to get help. Makes sense so far? Oh I am sure it does in some warped way. Oh yeah before I forget there is still a figurehead Superintendent in each district along with some kind of weakened Jedi Council and each school now has a paid parent's advocate. Does anyone see the saving of money so far? Or at least the multiple layers added on?

Each region has it's own personnel office, support, etc... I guess that is where the saving came from. Too many duplicated jobs throughout the districts. Hey I am down with that. I can dig it. But now instead of serving a small amount of schools these people are over extended and serve many schools. Highly illogical.

So what happens two years ago? Everything is broken up again! No we have schools that belong to nobody because they are empowered. The LIS doesn't work for the DOE, but works for and serves at the pleasure of the principals in the network. Not only do you have the principals drunk with power, but the people who are supposed to be watching them, keeping an eye on them are paid by the principals themselves. Are these LIS' loyalty to principals or the students? The fox is watching the hen house.

Now there are LSO's, DSO, Essos I can't keep track. But what I can keep track of is how the system is getting further away from serving the needs of the students and the families in the community. There were strong support staffs in the DO's and they were there to assist the schools with professional development at the drop of a hat. If a parent had an issue that parent knew exactly where to go and whom to see. Where is the after school PD that you used to see. It is gone. Where are the staff developers who lectured at conferences and were experts in their fields. Now their are "coaches" who are training teachers after five years of teaching themselves. Coaches? I was expecting Don Zimmer when I heard this.

How is this better way better? Who does it serve? I think it serves the consultants we keep on hearing about at Tweed. A lot of "keep busy" work for them and the cronies that hire them.

All we have now is the captain of the Titanic rearranging the deck chairs while the ship be sinking.

Joel Klein and Kukla of Kukla, Fran and Ollie fame. Both are puppets with their controllers hand up their butts!

Or...............




Joel Klein
and Ted Buckland lawyer from Scrubs . Both cowardly lawyers.

So for anyone who has missed it, PS 8 in Brooklyn Heights has received an F. This school, though it is a shining star with its parents failed the city’s standardized testing and now its principal should be removed according to Chancellor Klein’s edicts about failing schools. But what about the 50 or so other schools that has received an F? Have all those principals been removed? Wait a minute; there seem to be extenuating circumstances, especially at PS 8. Could it be that all standardized tests are subjective? Why does PS 8 get a break, but parents of students who get ones on city and state exams have to go through hoops to prove that the tests are wrong in their child’s case? As they esteemed Chris Baker once proclaimed “the only people that tests are an advantage for are the companies that produce them.”

Many years ago when I was a teacher in a testing grade a girl failed a city wide reading test. I was shocked. I sat many times with this girl listening to her read, kept running records on her and listened to her as she retold story after story, was able to predict and had excellent skills. What did this test prove? Nothing. Except that she was not a good test taker. I got anxious having to take my teaching exams, what do you think happens to 9, 10, 11, etc… year olds when they have to take an exam?

I speak from experience. I was never a good test taker. To sit there and read questions and answer them was not showing what I learned, it showed what I was able to memorize. Judge any child, or myself on the totality of our work. What we contribute to class, what we contribute to the bigger picture of our education. I took my PSAT in 10th grade and got an 800 total. I didn’t care. The whole test was illogical. The kid going to MIT was smarter than me? No. He studied better, he had better habits, but surely he was not smarter than me. Let’s see that kid in Getty Square late at night and see if he doesn’t pee on himself. Maybe he could fend off his tormentors with reciting the periodic table from rote.

Now let’s take our students in special education, the deep abyss where students don’t ever come out of, and where troublemakers, and rabble-rousers are sent. Special Ed is a roach motel for students. “Students check in, but they don’t check out.” These students who are behind are forced to take exams at the grade/age level there are at chronologically. Oh they have extra time, have the test read to them, can write in the booklet, but it doesn’t make any sense at all that a student who is behind has to take an exam that is for a student that is at the proper level. When will this insanity stop? Does it do anything to help a students self esteem? And the grading system is not helping. The difference between a one and a two in which two is considered passing (not in suburbs, more on that in another posting) could be so much as guessing one more answer correctly?

Hey now there are many schools that deserve to get an F. But the larger picture needs to be addressed and actually seen. The schools that fail are not because of the teachers. It is because of a “cover your ass” system. Let’s stay later and have the kids stay until 3 30 or whatever SBO time your school decides. Doesn’t matter that a 7 year old is tired as heck at the end of a long day. I always thought of myself as a facilitator, introduce and watch the students take the ball and do beautiful things with it, like a Gale Sayers. But now teachers are so frazzled and so scared about the wrath and the blame we have stopped being teachers but have become test givers.

I am currently a teacher in a south Bronx elementary school. I have many years of experience and have been wishing to chronicle what really happens within a NYC school. Not what Chancellor Bonehead and Mayor Doofus wish to have you believe. The system is broken. The only ones who can save it are the union and the teachers