Saturday, September 3, 2011

ATR Life In Limbo Strikes Again

The saddest thing I saw was a male teacher about my age, who had two kids with him, about the ages of my older two. His name tag said, “Technology and Computer Science” and his kids kept pointing to tables saying, “What about this one, Dad?” or “This is a high school, Dad, how about here?” and he kept answering, “No, they don’t want me, they don’t want me.” My heart broke for this man, and my anger flared at a system that throws people on the trash heap like day-old bread.  
she was behind me, shouting. “Move over here! Yes, YOU! I’ll speak slowly. MOVE…OVER…HERE."
But do you know who there was an abundance of? TEACHING FELLOWS! Brand new, shiny, sparkling Teaching Fellows! Everywhere! Even though the invitation e-mail specifically stated that this “job fair” was for ATRs exclusively.
Life in Limbo over at NYCATR has been chronicling the indignities that exist in the ATR world. Here is a post on the hiring hall at the Brooklyn Museum this past week.
I wasn’t going to go. 
I’ve become tired of dancing to the same old song and, sorry, I was just going to sit this one out. And I’ve already seen all of the paintings in the European Masters room. While I love Rembrandt, THSC, could you please move the fairs to a different gallery? I think the Surrealists make a better backdrop for this, anyway. 
But my inner masochist had been looking forward to this all week, and she’s such a whiner when she doesn’t get her way, so off I went.
MORE at  Job Fair Tale #3: Fine Art and False Hopes

The work being done over at NYCATR has inspired us at GEM to gather some of these folks together to start getting the word out to other teachers and the general public as to what this game is all about.
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1 comment:

burntoutteacher said...

I feel so badly for the ATR's (I was one for several months) but please don't forget to continue to chronicle the fate of those of us older teachers, with years and years and years of nothing but S ratings, exemplary teaching records, who suddenly find ourselves being U rated and forced into early retirement by principals with little teaching experience. There are so many of us out here!
We can't transfer out of our schools because of the U ratings and our lives are being made miserable each and every day. The union has been no help to us and the DoE is NOT reversing any U ratings even when the hearing officers recommend that they be overturned!