Friday, January 4, 2008

More on ATRs' from Pissed Off

Pissed Off Teacher after reading out item below about Klein going after ATR's has this report from the trenches:

Excerpt (go to her blog to read the entire item):

An ATR in my school came to the cafeteria today visibly upset about something. When pressed, she told us that she had been called down to the APO's office. It seems APs, deans and school aides have been complaining about her classroom management. It is interesting that this incident came about today, the day after the above story came out. This woman has been in the school since September and in all this time has only had two classes that she could not handle. The classes she could not handle are classes that give their regular teacher a hard time. Yesterday, she had the class from hell. One AP walked into the room and got the kids to settle down for a little while. Unfortunately, this pompous a** did not show his face until the last twenty minutes of the period and did not stay around for long.

A coincidence?

Last week we had our Shanker fest and talked about the '68 strike and how the UFT framed it as a fight for due process after a bunch of teachers were transferred. It is way more complex than that but the enormous amount of people under attack while the UFT sits by makes for an interesting contrast.

A follow-up comment from Ira on ICE-mail:

I really think this sums up quite succinctly exactly what they are doing -- ATR's can never be expected to control difficult classes so they are going to make sure they get them as often as possible and then they will probably be observed when they are in one of those classes.

2 comments:

Under Assault said...

Much discussion went on yesterday over at PissedOff on this issue, but to Ira's comment here, ATRs must document everything.

I was also thinking that there is something in the contract on being treated differently than your colleagues:

A “grievance’’ shall mean a complaint by an employee in the bargaining unit (1) that there has been as to him/her a violation, misinterpretation or inequitable application of any of the provisions of this Agreement or
(2) that he/she has been treated unfairly or inequitably by reason of any act or condition which is contrary to established policy or practice governing or affecting employees......


Not that grievances work anymore -- the fix is obviously in -- but if there is volume on this kind of thing, there might be reason for them to change things.

But, I'm not denying that with Unity leadership marching us into oblivion so thoroughly and successfully, it all seems like a lost cause.

Anonymous said...

I've been an ATR for 2 years and most of the time the APs. give me the hard classes to cover. I had a terrible class one day and the principal called the father and when he came, the principal called me to her office to talk to this father.

I was wondering if she was trying to confront me, test my abilities on how to deal with this incident or just she wanted to be the mediator between the parent and me. Very strange! At the end I realize that I could not complin to nobody because under the Unity leadership I have no rights.