The Best PD Ever: A Day With Former Students 37 Years Later

Sept. 10, 2016

 Every teacher should be so lucky to see how the lives of their students turn out even if 37 years later.  I had the immense pleasure yesterday of spending an entire afternoon with 5 students from my 5th and 6th grade class from 1978/79 at the home of Deborah, one of the students who graciously hosted the event at her lovely home in East New York in a newly developed area right behind the Gateway Mall off Erskine St.

I hadn't seen Debbie in all these years but recognized her instantly.

Debbie had been only in my 5th grade class while the rest had me for both years - I looped with them. I guess about 60-75% of the kids suffered me for 2 years. How did they manage to survive a teacher who ignored data, took them on too many trips instead of doing test prep and generally wanted them to have some fun in school. And they said yesterday that the most memorable times were those trips and other activities.

To hear them say I wasn't boring was the best evaluation I could have ever received.

I also learned that the stairway outside my room was "kissing" territory. And the gals learned who Herbie, the only guy there, had a crush on back then. (I won't tell).

This was a followup to a reunion back in February 2016 that I wrote about: Where a Group of My Former Students Pass the Highest Stakes Test of All - Life

I can't think of a better professional development experience for a teacher or even a retired teacher. Hearing about their lives as students and parents and work and so many other issues was enlightening.

They are all approaching 50. One has fairly young children. Three are grandparents. One became a grand parent at the age of 36. I heard amazing stories of perseverance in the face of the crack culture of the times, teen pregnancy and raising a child as a teen while working and going to school. Another a widow who lost her love while she had young children. Heroic.

Some brought their kids and one brought a grandchild. Another one still lives across the street from the school and keeps an eye on her grandchild who goes there where she sent her own kids. Three generations at PS 147.

Ahhh, the old soon to be lamented concept of a neighborhood school where most local kids attend and mingle and for better or worse manage to get an education.

Most of them work in areas connected to health care - as secretaries or admin assistants or hospital administrators.  One is back in school for a masters in health admin. Most own a home of condo. Many found spouses or partners from the neighborhood. When one of the gals couldn't attend the others pleaded with her to bring her wife next time.

Oh, what stories and memories of growing up in the projects in Williamsburg on Bushwick Ave, of what was then considered one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods. Most of them either still live in the neighborhood or have roots there. They all attended the zoned middle school, which was considered a horror story at the time (while the kids in the top class were funneled away from that school to the one MS in the district where the top students were sent.) I tried to explain some of this to them yesterday - the tracking and sorting based solely on reading scores. Almost all of them attended Eastern District, the local high school or another high school in the area.  Some dropped out at one point before finding their way back.

Some of them told how their parents when they were born had given them a Spanish name and the hospital ignored them and they have lived under the way the person in the hospital named them.

They talked about a dangerous but real community, a spirit they felt growing up in those projects. One who still lives there told me how the drug culture had lessened but the hipster gentrifiers had ironically brought some of that drug culture back. 

We are planning another one as they search for more students from those classes. The principal of PS 147 told me a few months ago she would love to host some alumni.

The February reunion and my poor attempt at a selfie

Some NYC principals use 'Limited Access Letters' to ban activist Parents

A little-known letter that's supposed to be used to protect schools from unruly parents in the wake of aggressive incidents is actually being used to unfairly silence outspoken parents in low-income black and Hispanic schools, critics say. "Limited access letters," which an Education Department staffer advised should only be used in case of a “serious incident at the school that required the involvement of School Safety Agents,” have been given out without any apparent oversight or supervision to parents across the city, DNAinfo New York has learned. The letters, which effectively serve as temporary restraining orders against parents, can be given out by principals or superintendents who feel a parent has threatened them or a staffer in some way..... DNAInfo

Much like the power principals have over untenured to make them disappear through discontinuence, they can do the same to parents.
This fits totally in line with the Farina authoritarian model of "my way or the highway."

The blueprint for principals to gain total political control of their schools includes controlling and removing resistant parents and teachers. While they have enormous power over teachers, parents who don't go along either have to be bribed or removed. Now you can't make them move though you could try to get their kids out by ising charter school tactics - harass them until they leave. But if they won't then they can resort to this tactic as reported by Amy Zimmer at DNAInfo:

How some NYC  principals use 'Limited Access Letters' to ban activist Parents from their kids’ schools

http://dnain.fo/2ccbyLp

Trump and Putin - Assassinate Opponents, Matt Lauer Savaged Over Trump and Clinton Treatment

Liberal lambs, can we talk? The notion that Clinton is disqualifyingly corrupt has been the essence of the press corps' framing of her over the past several years. Those "questions" define an aggressive attack. They land in a well-scripted sweet spot.

Has Candidate Trump ever committed an act which might be seen as "disqualifying?" We think it's astonishing that someone like Lauer would inject such a suggestion into a presidential forum. But if we agree that sauce for the goose might sometimes be sauce for the gander, we can think of at least one offense with which Trump might have been confronted:

Didn't he once spend a year lying about the birth of the reigning commander-in-chief? Had there been any truth to the various claims he advanced? Had everything he said been a lie? Was the entire thing slander?
----- Daily Howler

How Trump is never held accountable for the birther shit is beyond me.

Before I get to the above, let me address the Trump/Putin story.

Don't you love the people who say Trump is just being rhetorical and democracy is safe because of congress and the constitution and the Supreme Court. Trump loves Putin because of how he runs Russia - obliterate the opposition and if necessary hire hit men to remove opponents. It was no accident that Trump hinted at using  the same tactic to stop Hillary after she got elected.

And of course he will fire all the generals and put people in to run the army who would back him when he suspends the constitution for emergency reasons.

There was once this funny guy with a little mustache running around not being taken seriously. He promised strength they and to make his country great again and used the big lie every 5 minutes.

Krytstallnacht for Muslims:
I hear people wanting Trump to take strong stands on Muslims every time we have a terrorist act. If you don't know what this is click the link. What excuse did Hitler use to send out the brown shirts and the populace one night to destroy every Jewis business?

The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born Polish Jew living in Paris. Kristallnacht was followed by additional economic and political persecution of Jews, and is viewed by historians as part of Nazi Germany's broader racial policy, and the beginning of the Final Solution and The Holocaust.^[8]

Yes - a terrorist act of sorts by one Jew.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't trust Hillary but I don't expect we will end up in a dictatorship.

There is the flap over both the Paul Krugman column chastising Hillary critics (Hillary Clinton Gets Gored) and leftist Glenn Greenwald chastising Krugman, accusing him and other Hillary backers of trying to do their own version of Trump in going after Hillary critics even if from the left.

• Glenn Greenwald: Liberal Bias For Clinton Is 'Journalistic Malpractice'
•  
• Glenn Greenwald to Paul Krugman: 'The Last Thing Required to ... Defend Hillary Clinton Is Bravery'
• Truthdig‎ - 3 days ago
• Left-Wing Journalist Glenn Greenwald Criticizes Liberal Pundits for Trying to Delegitimize Negative Coverage of Clinton

Finally, the Daily Howler takes his shot at biased reporting especially after Matt Lauer has been savaged

(Matt Lauer Fields Storm of Criticism), (The bashing of Matt Lauer: Why many of the attacks are driven by partisanship)

over his favorable treatment of Trump compared to Hillary the other night. His target is the press and the so-called liberals in the press and how their reporting in essence gives Trump so many breaks. He can say anything no matter how outrageous "Trump says Hillary is an alien from Mars" and they will report it.

Lauer astonishes. So does Chait!

...it finally occurred to him (Chait) that Candidate Trump might win the November election. Welcome back to earth!

We think Trump has an excellent chance, and we think that people like Chait have helped create the world in which that might happen. Meanwhile, have you tried to fight your way through Josh Marshall's account of last evening's forum?

Sad! For now, one last rumination:
Lauer started Clinton off with a lengthy set of questions about the email matter. The questions have all been asked and answered about a million times by now. Perhaps for that reason, Lauer gave his initial question on this topic a bit of a booster shot:

LAUER (9/7/16): The word “judgment” has been used a lot around you, Secretary Clinton, over the last year-and-a-half, and in particular concerning your use of your personal email and server to communicate while you were secretary of state. You’ve said it’s a mistake.

CLINTON: Mm-hmm.

LAUER: You said you made not the best choice. You were communicating on highly sensitive topics. Why wasn’t it more than a mistake? Why wasn’t it disqualifying, if you want to be commander-in-chief?

We'd have to say that's amazing. In his first real question of the night, Lauer directly suggested that Clinton's conduct may have been "disqualifying."

Lauer burned almost forty percent of Clinton's segment with this topic, asking questions which have been asked a million times by now. When his own inquisition was done, the first question from the audience concerned the same topic.

We assume that the audience questions were screened. The first audience question was this:

QUESTION: Secretary Clinton, thank you very much for coming tonight. As a naval flight officer, I held a top secret sensitive compartmentalized information clearance. And that provided me access to materials and information highly sensitive to our warfighting capabilities. Had I communicated this information not following prescribed protocols, I would have been prosecuted and imprisoned.

Secretary Clinton, how can you expect those such as myself who were and are entrusted with America’s most sensitive information to have any confidence in your leadership as president when you clearly corrupted our national security?

We assume the questions were screened. That said:

In Lauer's first question, he suggested that Clinton's conduct may have been "disqualifying." In the first audience question, Clinton was told that she had "clearly corrupted our national security." It's suggested she should be in prison.

The Case of Eva and the Disappearing Sucess Academy Clueless Training Videos

....taking down of 430 out of 485 videos is an extreme — even paranoid — response to the analysis of one blogger about four of their videos.  I hope they put the videos back up soon but I’m assuming they won’t.
Update:  On Thursday September 6th the videos, for a brief while, temporarily reappeared, all of them, but a few hours later every video became password protected.  So we went from 485 to 56 to 485 and then to 0 all in 24 hours.....
these videos were posted originally, presumably, to help the public schools learn what they can do to be as high performing as Success Academies.  These videos were a public service.  If this is true, it seems very harsh, cruel even, to take them down just because some blogger links to four of them and criticizes them. If they’re going to do this, why leave up 56 videos?  The truth is that I did not sift through the 485 videos looking for incriminating stuff.  Basically, I can pick pretty much any video they have and the issues I had with the other videos I wrote about are all clearly there... 
 
One thing about this video is that the teacher seems to have some warmth while in the videos that were deleted, the teachers were somewhat hostile.  The other videos had teachers doing some very bad things, for example, making kids raise their hands to reveal to the entire class that they got a poor score on an assignment. Another deleted video had an assistant teacher putting a sticker on a child’s face as the assistant teacher circulated around the room.
The videos seem to show that Success Academy is a place where students live in fear of their over-controlling teachers.  It does not look like a place where kids get the opportunity to be kids.  I do think there there is a subset of kids who can do well in this environment, but most, I think, can’t.
........Gary Rubinstein

Gary Rubinstein is on the case. There were 500 videos up and Gary was critical of the 4 he watched. So Success took them all down. And then they put back their "best of" 50. And then they took those down and then.... well, let Gary tell the story:

Success Academy Scrubs Their Public Video Page: Updated

There’s a famous saying, I think it originated with Watergate, “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up.”

My last two blog posts have been based on videos I found on Success Academy’s public video site on Vimeo.  This is the collection of videos that they promised in The Wall Street Journal back in May after a few very public scandals.
Now Success Academy is very private about what happens in their schools so you’d figure that all their videos contain things that they are proud of.  Surely they spent considerable money producing these videos and there were many people involved in what sorts of things would be permitted to be in these videos.

There were 485 videos on the page when I first came across it a few days ago.  Randomly clicking on a few of them I found four videos among the nearly 500 that I analyzed, three in the first post and one in the second post.  I noticed in a comment today on the most recent post that the video I wrote about was taken down from the site.  Then I looked at the first post and found that two of those three videos were also removed from their site.  I went back to their site to find that all that remains of the 485 videos that were up just 24 hours ago is now down to just 56 videos.

 more at  Success Academy Scrubs Their Public Video Page: Updated

NYS Senate candidate Micah Lasher Has Been a Dishonest Slug Since High School

Robert Jackson is the obvious choice over Lasher and other candidates. But for me Lasher, former head of Students First, is as despicable as Trump. And a chorus of people agree with me.

Retired Stuyvesant HS teacher charges Micah Lasher charged with ageism, dishonesty and crookery going back to high school days.

Posted to FB group “Upstate Manhattan: Inwood and Washington Heights” by a retired teacher at Stuyvesant HS.

"I have had a chance to know Micah Lasher, since he was a teenager, when I taught at Stuyvesant High School. He was not in my class, but his reputation was notorious as editor of the school newspaper, and, even then, he was a despicable human being, a hack in every way. Unfortunately, the principal at that time let him get away with so much that she would never let other students get away with. The worse was when he slandered a teacher, the academic adviser for the Student Union, on the school newspaper, who was very well respected and popular with both students and his colleagues. However, when this teacher thought he was going to get the backing from the principal, she sided with him, so I blame this principal, as well as others, for enabling this unforgivable hack. 

Since then, he has demonstrated that he has no morals and will slander anyone if it helps advance his career. Starting from the cartoon of Freddy Ferrer kissing the behind of Al Sharpton and circulating it to voters in the Upper West Side for Mark Green to negative campaigns against long time activist, Sylvia Friedman, to cause her to be unseated by Brian Kavanaugh for the Assembly race, calling her an Albany insider, even though she was only in office for a few months, and making fun of her age and then working for Students First New York, the hedge fund-backed charter school lobby that only cares about measuring student success through standardized tests.

 Micah Lasher cannot be trusted. His ageist campaign against Sylvia Friedman unfortunately is what he used do to the older and more experienced teachers at Stuyvesant, whom he called "dinosaurs". There are teachers, current and retired, who still despise him. Former staff members for Eric Schneiderman, when he was State Senator for this district, came to me to express their disdain for him and told me how much they do not trust him. Unfortunately, Eric Schneiderman, whom I have always had a great deal of respect for, have also either failed to see his character or just do not care. I also blame the staff at Working Families Party, whom I am also a proud member of and have served as a ranking officer for, who have also given him a free pass because he volunteered for them since he was 16. WFP has remained neutral in this race. I am equally upset that the Times has also endorsed him, too, but, unfortunately, I am not surprised."

Labor's Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm syndrome: Feelings of trust or affection felt in certain cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim towards a captor...

An interesting article from early August at Truthout about union capitulation to their own destruction ------ the frog in the boiling water. That goes along with a recent ed notes post: Jacobin: Labor’s Neoliberal Caucus Capitulation - Randi and Crew Are Charter Members.

This is a traditional left analysis calling for union solidarity instead of narrow unionism looking out solely for the interests of its members. This is tricky ground.

An extreme example is the Wisconsin trooper and firefighter unions endorsing Scott Walker's 2010 bid for governor, and being subsequently carved out of Walker's infamous, union-destroying Act 10.

Interesting -- police and fire make a separate deal to screw everyone else.

Some more excerpts:
Wednesday, 03 August 2016 00:00 By Andrew Tillett-Saks, Truthout | Op-Ed

In the 2016 Democratic primary, US labor unions overwhelmingly endorsed Hilary Clinton and invested millions of dollars in ensuring her nomination. Few eyebrows were raised, despite Clinton's questionable record and platform towards workers. Why not? Organized labor's support for political enemies of unions and workers is so common it has become expected. The labor movement suffers from a political Stockholm syndrome, embracing the very politicians who attack them. The embrace of Hillary Clinton, openly hostile to the current campaigns of some of the very unions who endorsed her, exposes the self-destructive absurdity of the situation. An intervention is needed or unions will be hard-pressed to reverse their current decline if they do not shake the Stockholm syndrome and adopt different political strategies.

The second rationale used for endorsing anti-worker candidates like Clinton is a narrow transactionalism -- unions cut a deal with the candidate, exchanging their support for a concession to their individual union. An extreme example is the Wisconsin trooper and firefighter unions endorsing Scott Walker's 2010 bid for governor, and being subsequently carved out of Walker's infamous, union-destroying Act 10. Other common examples include building trades unions securing Project Labor Agreements, service sector unions extracting guarantees of organizing neutrality agreements on forthcoming development projects, and public sector unions obtaining concessions in their contract negotiations.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/37081-labor-s-political-stockholm-syndrome-why-unions-must-stop-supporting-anti-labor-candidates-in-primaries

 the pro-Clinton labor leaders argue that electing a genuinely pro-worker candidate is impossible in the current political context, so better to support the moderate candidate and pray for some reciprocation than to be left with nothing but powerful enemies when the pro-worker candidate inevitably loses. They are simply being "practical." Second, labor leaders often negotiate a concession for their own union in exchange for their endorsement, celebrating a narrow victory while claiming a realpolitik strategy of transactionalism. Both rationales are misguided.
Many unions took up the first rationale and endorsed Clinton in the primaries on the premise that Sanders couldn't win. A closer look at the evidence unveils a self-fulfilling prophecy; labor itself likely could have swung the nomination to Sanders.

The second rationale used for endorsing anti-worker candidates like Clinton is a narrow transactionalism -- unions cut a deal with the candidate, exchanging their support for a concession to their individual union. An extreme example is the Wisconsin trooper and firefighter unions endorsing Scott Walker's 2010 bid for governor, and being subsequently carved out of Walker's infamous, union-destroying Act 10. Other common examples include building trades unions securing Project Labor Agreements, service sector unions extracting guarantees of organizing neutrality agreements on forthcoming development projects, and public sector unions obtaining concessions in their contract negotiations.
The narrow transactionalism rationale exhibits the same shortsightedness that has haunted US unions for over a century. Failure to think as a class, as the proponents of working people in general, and focusing instead only on the narrow interests of their immediate members, is the misguided strategy that has repeatedly weakened unions and brought about its current near-death experience.

Selling out the rest of the working class in the name of a union's own members -- the essence of the "narrow-transactionalism" political strategy -- never has worked and never will. Ironically, when unions only "look out for their own members," they doom these very members to eventual slaughter. As unions fight only for improvements on an ever-shrinking island of union workers, they eventually drown in the rising tide of non-union poverty and powerlessness.
Unions must stop supporting politicians who brutalize working class communities, gut public education, abolish social welfare programs, redistribute wealth upwards by fighting higher wages and raising corporate subsidies, privatize public services and criminalize Blacks and Latinos.

Ed Deform Racist Policies Attack Black Teachers - a Civil Rights Issue for Our Times

In Philadelphia, the number of black teachers fell 18.5 percent between 2001 and 2012. In Chicago, it dropped 40 percent... 26,000 African American teachers have disappeared from the nation's public schools—even as the overall teaching workforce has increased by 134,000. .... Mother Jones

At the very same time as Joel Klein branded his "reform" of the NYC school system a response to the civil rights issue of our time, as did many ed deformers at the time, he was also instrumental in forging policies that led to a reduction in the number of black teachers being hired in the NYC schools -- a policy based on bringing in mostly white Teach for America and Teaching Fellows instead of the teaching programs coming out of CUNY and the career ladder that allowed paras to become teachers.

When I retired in 2002 and turned Ed Notes into a city-wide newspaper Sean Ahern, a high school cooking teacher, saw a copy in his school mailbox and sent me a snail mail letter and after that we began hanging out -- our meeting was one of the sparks of that led to the founding of ICE. Since that time Sean has often focused on the disappearing black educator issue - even being instrumental in getting the UFT DA to pass a reso on the issue, though nothing very much has been done about it.

Jacobin: Labor’s Neoliberal Caucus Capitulation - Randi and Crew Are Charter Members

Service Employees International Union (SEIU), both major teachers’ unions — the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) decided to caucus separately [from the other unions at the DNC].

At this year’s DNC, four major unions solidified some of the most concessionary tendencies within the labor movement... The caucus break represents the culmination of a long, steady trend in American trade unionism toward neoliberal unionism — a unionism that espouses collaboration with corporations instead of conflict and upholds free-market capitalism as reconcilable with labor’s interests..... Jacobin

Mike Schirtzer found this article which delves into the capitulation of our union on so much of the neo-liberal ed deform movement, among other issues.

...the breakaway caucus unions represent a new way of dealing with these types of politicians, shifting from strategic alliances to sycophantic servitude. In pledging allegiance to Clinton so immediately and so fervently, the four breakaway unions appear to have lost the ability to identify labor’s own interests and enemies.

The NEA and AFT, for their part, have also continued to donate profusely to Democrats (over $30 million in the 2012 election cycle alone) while much of the party leads the charge of anti-union and anti-public-education “reform.”

The proliferation of this model of unionism would spell disaster for the American labor movement. Our movement’s success depends on how widely and how militantly we can organize workers to fight corporate power and the 1 percent, not embrace them.

What I find funny about this piece is that it tries to make a case that this is a new thing when those of us in education know that our AFT/NYSUT/UFT capitulated to neo-liberalism a long time ago. Our union was founded almost 60 years ago on the basis of defending the essentials of capitalism even as it devolved into the essentials of free-market, non-regulatory, privatization of government services based neo-liberalism  - as opposed to the FDR New Deal model neo-liberalism aims to destroy.

Also read in the DN: Richard Greenwald: How labor unions lost their way

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/richard-greenwald-labor-unions-lost-article-1.2776359

Labor’s Neoliberal Caucus

Warren Heyman & Andrew Tillett-Saks | 09.02.16
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/labor-unions-clinton-stern-bernie-seiu-democrats/
 

John Oliver take down of charter schools - Over 5 Million Views - Charter Lobby on Attack

I'm sure ed notes readers have seen the John Oliver charter school video take down.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=12&v=l_htSPGAY7I



Leonie had some comments on her blog. Here are excerpts with links.

Saturday, August 27, 2016

Charter privateers on the defensive but not giving up on their Orwellian takeover schemes

It's been a hard few weeks for the charter lobby.  First, members of the NAACP overwhelming approve a resolution calling for a national moratorium on charter schools.

Then, the Black Lives Matters movement called for an end to the privatization of our schools:

John Oliver on HBO's Last Week Tonight did a terrific take down of the corruption and chaos that charters bring to our public school system.

John Oliver's satires can be quite influential.

See how his critique  of testing companies in 2015, including the infamous Pearson Pineapple, helped influence parents to turn against standardized testing in a nationwide survey:

But don't feel too bad for the charter lobby. Backed by millions of dollars of "dark money" from right wing corporate interests and Wall St. hedgefunders, they aren't giving up.

Predictions: Hillary Impeached, Beyond Trump

If Hillary weren't damaged goods she would win in a landslide. But she won't and if the Republicans maintain control of both the Senate and House we will have 4 more years of stalemate. When people bring up the Supreme Court as a reason to vote for Hillary they laugh when I tell them the Republicans are willing to wait out the 4 years since they think they can win for sure in 2020.

But then again when we think of the flimsy Bill Clinton impeachment fiasco why not double down by impeaching Hillary using email crimes and Benghazi as reasons.

So imagine the scenario - sometime in the 3rd year, especially after the mid-term elections in 2018, they tie her up in impeachment.

Now that may be dumb in some ways in that wouldn't they prefer running against her again in 2020? So why put her in a position where she might not run again and have the Dems come up with a better candidate?

While some people assumed there might be a movement from the left in the Dem party what we have is a party totally controlled by the old guard -- the DFER types.  That is where the money is coming from.  With the Bernie movement fizzling and fighting with each other, the future of the progressives doesn't look good as an organized force. It can only happen outside the Dem party and Green has not caught on enough or evidence the ability to organize much.

In the meantime, the Republicans will also undergo some post-Trump issues. There is a good comprehensive piece with the 4 scenarios from Trumpism taking over the party to status quo.

Beyond Trump

Where will the Republican Party go after 2016?

http://www.nbcnews.com/specials/donald-trump-republican-party/gop-future

They have some other interesting articles:
United States of Trump A Party Divided 

Peter Lamphere on Rosemarie Jahoda: What Does It Take To Get Promoted to Principal in NYC?

A UFT with guts would be picketing over the appointment of Jahoda as principal. And should contact the parents to protest. She is in the same vein of Monika Garg at CPEI  -- a prototypical Farina rewarding people with a history of bad behavior and anti-unionism toward teachers and especially chapter leaders.

Over at NYC Educator, Peter Lamphere, one of the key players in MORE, has some story to tell about his former vicious supervisor, Rosemarie Jahoda, recently appointed acting interim principal at Townsend Harris High School - one of the premier public high schools in Queens.

Read his entire piece at: http://nyceducator.com/2016/08/what-does-it-take-to-get-promoted-to.html#disqus_thread

Peter ended up with 2-U ratings under Jahoda and Bronx HS of Science principal Valerie Reidy. He fought one off successfully and had to hire a private lawyer for the other. The UFT "solution" was to parachute Peter out of the school, not to engage in a hand to hand combat with Reidy and Jahoda. Peter was the chapter leader and these two engaged in a direct assault on the union.

Today, the UFT should be picketing Farina for this appointment.

One of the roles MORE needs to play is in exposing these people and putting pressure on the UFT to take stronger stands.

Jahoda is a criminal in my mind for destroying the careers of so many teachers and harming so many students in the process.

Peter is leading a MORE initiative to strengthen the ability of school chapters to organize themselves to fight back against abusive principals. Tomorrow MORE is beginning that effort:

With the MORE caucus this coming year, I plan to help run a series of chapter organizer training workshops, to help support educators mobilize the power of their coworkers to defend themselves against the insanities of our education system, and their abusive representatives.  Please join us at tomorrow's forum about the nuts and bolts of chapter organizing, and share your own stories of organizing against abusive administrators below.  Collectively, we can work toward building sanity into this system.

Daily News: Former Bronx High School of Science teacher Peter Lamphere gets ‘unsatisfactory’ rating reversed in Supreme Court

Lamphere was among 20 out of 22 math teachers who filed a special complaint in 2008 against assistant principal Rosemarie Jahoda, alleging repeated harassment. They also charged that Reidy wrongly denied them tenure and gave arbitrary “U” ratings. An independent investigator found that the teachers were being harassed.

And this quote from the brother of a supreme court justice:

“It was understood at Bronx Science that Reidy used ‘U’ ratings and denials of tenure for nonpedagogical reasons,” said Mark Kagan, a social studies teacher who left the school this year.

A Conversation With a Young (do they have anything else?) Charter School Teacher

"One of the main attractions of my charter school is how much more I am paid than a public school teacher: $64,000 starting salary vs. $49,000 for NYCDOE."... 2nd year charter school teacher

I find it funny to be in a position of defending a system that I always thought was not a good one and desperately needed reform. 

At the beach yesterday we were hanging out with friends and some of their kids and their kids' friends. One of the young ladies is a 2nd year teacher in Brooklyn at a charter chain - she is a former Teach For America. Her first words to me were that she teaches in a charter school but wants to teach in a public school eventually. Why? "Because the charter school model is not sustainable." Neither is TFA the felt.


Here is the good, bad and ugly of our conversation.

She said she likes the school, a grade 5-8 school. It is well-run and she feels they do not use harsh discipline measures. I mentioned KIPP and SLANT. She knew what I was talking about. In fact I think I have heard similar negative stories about her chain but not sure of my facts didn't challenge her.

She teaches a non-testing subject so there is no pressure on her like people teaching tested subjects and she didn't think she could handle that kind of pressure. Her bosses say as much openly. Reading and math are all that count.

She exhibits some of the TFA and ed deform propaganda. "Public schools do not serve black and brown students and charters do." She said that white students were well served by the public schools.

Interesting pulling of the race card that I imagine charter school proponents are using in certain communities which eventually leads to the charge that opponents of charters are racist.
 
I explained the basic lack of resource issue in public schools where charters, especially chains have enormous funding sources in addition to the public money they get - that I had taught for 30 years in a school of only black and brown students and felt that we had served a lot of them to the best of our ability. She asked me if I thought the school was well-managed. In some ways it was but the leadership was also narrowly obsessed by test scores and it was a top-down situation but that we had a very experienced staff that mostly knew what they were doing.

I raised the issue of the disappearing kids from grade to grade - I asked if she sees classes from 5th-8th grade shrinking. She acknowledged that. I asked if the school back filled and she did not seem to think so. Meaning: The lowest performing students disappeared into the public schools.

We were interrupted and I never got to tell her that our top students were "served" but now they are being lured out of public schools and into charters by the propaganda mill. That the ultimate goal is to extract the highest performing students and leave the rest in the resource-starved public schools.

I find it funny to be in a position of defending a system that I always thought was not a good one and desperately needed reform. For decades before the ed deform attacks I fought that system and the UFT that supported it. So I have to temper any enthusiasm for what was and still is a corrupt public school system because what is being offered is so much worse. It is like the Trump-Hillary story. People feel forced to defend Hillary to stop Trump.

She loves her job with caveats. Her chain has a path to a Masters degree program - maybe with some financial support - an important way to retain teachers - another major charter advantage.

So what's not to like? Why does she want to end up teaching in a public school? The much longer hours and time commitments - her $15000 higher salary to a public school starting salary is really to cover some of those extra hours. Both public and charter teachers still have to put in a lot of extra time in addition to the salary but with a longer day, charter school teacher days are even longer.

"I am very tired at the end of the day," she said. "The charter model is not sustainable." She loves teaching but even with a weak union over the long run she prefers a job with some protections even it means working in the NYCDOE.

Follow-up: Tenure Numbers Climb Under de Blasio - 64% granted in 2014-15

Under Bloomberg, who promised to move toward “ending tenure as we know it,” tenure approval rates plummeted from 89 percent in the 2009-10 school year to 53 percent the year before de Blasio took control of the city school system.  ...

The number of teachers whose tenure prospects were deferred fell slightly to 34 percent, down from a high of 44 percent in Bloomberg’s final year. Under both administrations, rejection rates have hovered around 2 percent….

Six percent of teachers whose tenure decisions were previously delayed faced outright denial, up from 4 percent the previous year, which a department official emphasized as a sign of a rigorous tenure process…

....Chalkbeat

A recent post on Ed Notes Vergara be damned: NY Tenure Unofficially Undermined by DOE and UFT Silence
primed some comments, including this one:

Do we know for what percent of teachers tenure is postponed until the fifth or sixth year? 

I assume UFT should have that number - but maybe they don't care enough to track it.

Leonie sent this link to a Chalkbeat piece on tenure numbers that does fill in some blanks.
 

http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2016/05/06/exclusive-teacher-tenure-approvals-tick-up-continuing-a-de-blasio-era-shift/#.V8HKK62b5Zo

New York City teachers were more likely to earn tenure last school year than at any point in the previous five years, but approval rates remain far lower than they were just a few years ago, when virtually every eligible teacher won the job protection.

Sixty-four percent of the 5,832 eligible teachers were granted tenure during the 2014-15 school year, up from 60 percent the year before, according to data released Thursday to Chalkbeat. Another 34 percent had their decisions deferred, and 2.3 percent were rejected, effectively ending their teaching careers in the district.

The numbers show that eligible teachers are slightly more likely to receive tenure under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s watch. But they also show that the de Blasio administration has not reversed the approach of his predecessor Michael Bloomberg, whose administration made attaining tenure dramatically more difficult not by rejecting tenure applications, but by delaying a larger share of those decisions to a later year.

Under Bloomberg, who promised to move toward “ending tenure as we know it,” tenure approval rates plummeted from 89 percent in the 2009-10 school year to 53 percent the year before de Blasio took control of the city school system. Bloomberg argued that too many teachers were earning tenure too quickly, and the city began delaying decisions for a large portion of eligible teachers.

Over his first two years, de Blasio has slowly changed course. In his first year, tenure rates inched up to 60 percent, a 7 percent increase that de Blasio said reflected his administration’s interest in rewarding and retaining top teachers. And last year, the approval rate increased again to 64 percent.

Create line charts

The number of teachers whose tenure prospects were deferred fell slightly to 34 percent, down from a high of 44 percent in Bloomberg’s final year. Under both administrations, rejection rates have hovered around 2 percent….

Six percent of teachers whose tenure decisions were previously delayed faced outright denial, up from 4 percent the previous year, which a department official emphasized as a sign of a rigorous tenure process…

The education department only released the tenure numbers — which have historically been distributed months earlier — to Chalkbeat after multiple requests. Observers say that reticence could reflect the political reality that both union supporters and advocates who want stricter tenure rules can use the data as a political bludgeon…

A key feature of the national debate is how long teachers should be in the classroom before being considered for the job protection. U.S. Secretary of Education John King recently waded into that conversation, saying that two years is not enough. Under a recent change to state rules, teachers can be considered for the job protection only after four ‘probationary’ years.

Meanwhile, New York City school leaders are already making the next round of tenure decisions. Most of this year’s recommendations were due from principals April 30; teachers should be notified of those decisions by late June.

Memo From the RTC: La Cage… Denouement, Cheri

My last column in The Wave on La Cage... I promise. The love between the cast members goes on though, with some people saying this was one of the greatest experiences of their lives.
Photos by Rob Mintzes.

Friday Aug. 26, 2016
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Memo From the RTC: La Cage… Denouement, Cheri

By Norm Scott

A woman in a hot yoga class said, “I would have paid $100 to see the RTC production of La Cage on Broadway.” “Can’t beat 18 bucks and  free parking,” I said.  “And the chance to see a fellow-yoga class member speak French.”

And there was a heckuva lot of French being thrown around during the 10 sold-out performances of the RTC production of La Cage Aux Folles. RTC master yogi and master set builder Tony Homsey, turning from carpentry to acting, epitomized linguistic par excellence with his “ze feesh are rrrrunning well monsieur” as he walked across the stage with his partner in crime, Curtis Wanderer, who was carrying “ze feesh” on “ze feeshing pole”. The appearance of the Tony-Curtis dynamic duo on the RTC stage in their cute French striped tee shirts resulted in peals of delightful laughter among RTC regulars. I had been hoping to see them appear as members of the female-impersonating Le Cagelles. Maybe next time.

We also heard palatable French accents from Jacob the maid, played by Matt Smilardi who brought down the house with every appearance on stage in yet another outfit and  Jaqueline, played by the lovely Jodee Timpone, who adds grace and elegance to every production. Some audience members thought Jodee was really French. Jodee has always been one of my all-time RTC favorites even before I had the opportunity to appear in productions and hang out back stage with her.

“A mother and 2 daughters” theme was played out by the East New York-by way of Trinidad trio of mom Denise Eversley and her singing daughters Renee and Jannicke Steadman, both of whom appeared as part of the chorus in A Little Shop of Horrors. I found out Denise can also sing like a charm when she was saddled with the task of being my dance partner in the “Best of Times”. That I dared try to dance is a tribute to chorographer supreme Nicola DePierro Nellen (whose beautiful year old daughter Shea often graced us backstage, a child whose expressions are so vivid she can stop traffic).

I’ve said it before and I will keep blasting it from the rooftop – the great Chaz Peacock’s performance as Albin/Zaza, a “transvestite/homosexual” blew people away. I didn’t think he could ever top his hysterical Zero Mostel role as Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum or the deep and dark Jud Fry in Oklahoma. Chaz can act and sing in any role and as a stout 30ish black man his talent overrides any hesitancy on the part of directors. If they were casting the role of the Yiddish Tevye for a production of Fiddler, Chaz could pull it off.

He made a wonderful speech in the dressing room before we went on for our final performance last Sunday, thanking co-star John Heffernan who played his lover and life-long partner, Georges (who identifies himself in the play as “just one plain – non-transvestite homosexual”). Chaz said the compliments he has been receiving for his performance were great but John as a stage and acting partner helped make that possible. I haven’t said enough about the professionalism of John Heffernan who held his own as an actor, singer and dancer next to the Chaz powerhouse.  What a pleasure John is to work with. John, appearing to be in his mid-forties, is tall, blond, and a handsome leading man. He is also straight playing a gay man in love with a much shorter, 30ish, stoutish black man who is supposed to be over a dozen years older.  And he/they pull it off superbly. John is the founder of “The Rhapsody Players,” a group of singers who have raised 10s of thousands of dollars each year for charity.

Think of the guts it took not only to put on this daring play in Rockaway but to cast these two together. And the man with the guts is RTC founder and artistic director John Gilleece who managed all aspects of this production with a massive cast superbly. John has been around since the creation of the RTC so at times we take him for granted. A neighbor of mine asked me to introduce her to John and she was not only gushing about the show but also about how  her daughter as a child was in the original RTC on Beach 116^th street. Think of that. How John Gilleece’s vision has morphed a tiny theater into a major powerhouse, not only in Rockaway, but attracting talent and audiences from all over the Metro area.

In Tony’s speech in the dressing room he made it clear that none of us would have been there without John and his producing partner Susan Jasper. They not only know how to pick a cast – other than continuing to put me in their musicals – but also choosing immense behind the scenes talents. Musical director Richard Louis-Pierre is a great musician, band leader and musical coach. No one puts in more time and effort for a show than Rich, a selfless unsung hero. Choreographer Nicola DiPierro Nellen does double duty as one of the hair dressers backstage, along with her mom, Phyllis De Pierro, who also appears in the Ensemble. When La Cagelles got standing ovations for their dancing, it was Nicola’s work being cheered. And let’s not forget the professional jobs in the lighting (Andrew Woodbridge) and sound booths (Daniel Fay and Andrew Feldman), along with the mother-hen stage managers Nora Meyers and Jenna Tipaldo, RTC jack of all trades Suzanne Riggs and costumiers Matt Smilardi and Susan Corning.

I can’t close my series of columns without listing the awesome Cagelles – 5 men (Erech Holder Hetmeyer, Anthony Melendez, Max Lamadrid, Atsushi Eda, Brian Sadowski) and 3 women (Kacie Reilly, Jacqueline Caruana and Gabrielle Mangano). And of course their great make-up artist Karlos Roman who made men look like women and women look like men looking like women. The cast bought Karlos a professional make-up case, the kind of thoughtfulness RTC people are known for, bringing Karlos, who had dressed up in drag for the cast party, to tears. Turns out he is a great performer himself. Truly the love flowed over the past 3 months and even days after the cast can’t stop posting on FB how much they love each other.

By Monday afternoon, Tony and crew had the stage clear and ready to build the set for Wait Until Dark. Karlos stopped by to work on Frank Caiati’s makeup as the villain for that show. Trust me – if you saw Frank walking down the street in this make-up you would run the other way.

Driving Down Teacher Salaries: NYC Teacher Erik Mears Unravels Ed Deform

I hope that TFA proponents will grow to regret their snobbish belief that graduating from a good college and interviewing well are better qualifications for teaching than ... actual qualifications and experience..... Public school teachers' relationship to charter teachers is thus analogous to the relationship between US auto workers and Mexican autoworkers.... Erik Mears, Truthout, Education Reformers' Core Beliefs Are Objectionable

I came across this piece on Truthout by NYC teacher Erik Mears who brings an interesting perspective to teaching. A West Point 2003 graduate, he spent five years in the army through 2008.

Education Reformers' Core Beliefs Are Objectionable

Monday, 22 August 2016 00:00 By Erik Mears, Provocations Blog | News Analysis

Vergara be damned: NY Tenure Unofficially Undermined by DOE and UFT Silence

A lot has been made of the overturning of Vergara in California as Randi and crew celebrated the victory while the UFT remains silent in the face of stories of years of extensions of tenure here in the city.

At the MORE retreat last week the issue of forcing the UFT to address the extension/discontinue issue was raised as a project to take on this year.

Chalkbeat makes this point "state lawmakers have actually changed some of the disputed laws: They lengthened the period needed to earn tenure to four years, and altered the statewide teacher-evaluation system." (They still managed to dredge up a quote from scuzball Moaning Mona Davids whose 15 minutes expired a long time ago.) In California tenure was received in 18 months while in NYC it had been 3 years, now extended to 4.

What Chalkbeat is not reporting is that beyond the 4 years needed for tenure (during which time probably 40% of the teachers have already disappeared) in NY, principals have the power to extend/postpone people with no time limit -- we have heard people are in their 6th or 7th year without tenure, all the time under the threat of instant discontinuance.

A MORE teachers recently was completing her 5th year without tenure and was told by the principal she would not get tenure once again. Having been accepted to law school she decided she had had enough. When she told the principal she was leaving to go to law school in Sept. the principal told her she had to resign immediately (thus losing summer health care benefits) and if she didn't she would be discontinued and lose her teaching license.

At one DA about 2 years ago someone asked Mulgrew what the union was doing if a teacher was extended for a 2nd or 3rd year. He acted surprised as if he had never heard of that.

Principals withhold tenure for political and career reasons - to show that they are tough -- "I don't give tenure to everyone -- some aim at a 50% rate or less. But then again it was they who hired the teachers. Or what happens when there is a change in principal for a teacher say in the 4th year? That principal may automatically extend tenure, claiming he/she needs another year to evaluate the teachers. Or teachers are extended based on Supt. recommendations. I heard one case where most of the entire core of 8 3rd year teachers were denied because the school was a "failing" school -- according to my contact who was the CL these people had worked their asses off to keep the school afloat.

One of the things the MORE Ex Bd  members need to do this year is force the union leadership to address the tenure, or lack of, issue.

And when the scuzballs like Campbell Brown and Moaning Mona go to court the unions can site the tenure denials and extensions that they have allowed as proof there is in effect a weakened tenure law in NY.

Frantic Binge at The NYC Fringe Festival: Favorites so far - Jack Fry's Einstein and Richard III

King for a half hour

I love the quirkiness of the Fringe where you find all kinds of performances and types of shows ---- shows like Seeger, Zuccotti Park -see the full list here.

'Emily Carding’s portrayal of the king who murders his way to the English throne is in a league of its own.' ***** (broadwaybaby.com).

I was lucky to fall into this show. Wednesday night, after seeing a 7PM show and having a late night 9PM slot to fill I saw Richard III (A One Woman Show) at a theater on East 4th St.  I could get to it with a short walk from Suffolk and Rivington. This is Shakespeare in an hour so I knew I could handle it. There were about 25 people on line and we were told to wait until Richard III himself (who is a herself) personally escorted each of us to our seats and then would assign you a role in the play. When it was my turn, Richard took me to my seat, put a crown on my head and dubbed me King Edward VI, his brother. I don't know my Shakespeare but have read enough about Richard III to knew I didn't have long to stay alive. On the way in I did comment to Richard, who had his hunchback on and was limping, that he (she) looked marvelous after spending 700 years under a parking lot.

There were 2 rows of white chairs facing each other and every member of the audience was a character in some manner. A delightful hour spent and I would see this again. You can see it too at it's final performance today at 5.

Every year for most of the past decade I've volunteered at the NYC Fringe Festival which takes place over 17 days in the heat of August - 200 shows (each performed 5 times) at 16 venues, all below 14th street at some pretty funky theaters. By volunteering, for each shift, most lasting only 15 minutes, you get a voucher to see a show for free as long as there is room.

Some of my experiences in my 3 days in the city at the Fringe Festival last week, broken up by the 6-hour MORE retreat on Wednesday (which I'll report on separately. I got to interact with so many people from all over the world -- which is one of the major reasons to do the Fringe. I'm going back  Wed through Friday this week. We have tiks with old friends for Murder at the Food Coop on Thursday and another show followed by dinner.

Over the years I would have spent most of the 2 weeks in the city but over time the traveling back and forth from Rockaway every day in the heat of summer became a bit too much. I mean leaving Rockaway in the summer is practically a crime. So the past 2 years I rarely went to Fringe. Besides, over the years I had developed loyalty to the volunteer director, the amazing Tati Sena, and since she had her baby she hasn't been as active so I lost a personal connection.

But now with a place in the city to stay I decided to jump back in. The major problem is that last weekend and this I have to be here in Rockaway for La Cage.

So after missing the opening weekend last week I went in on Monday before returning to Rockaway Thursday afternoon. I took the endless A train which because I need to take the shuttle first and walked to 116th St from my house, was almost a 2 hour trip each way. But who's in a hurry?

I bought tickets to see an old pal's show -- Jack Fry who did the teacher-based show "They Call Me Mr. Fry" years ago which I helped promote - even inviting Jack to come to the Delegate Assembly and stand downstairs to promote his show.

Jack is back with a new show, "Einstein" which he was performing Monday night at "Under St. Marks" performing space at 8:45. My wife was supposed to go but she is feeling the heat and decided to pass.

I really liked Jack's show where he comes back as Einstein and interacts with the modern audience in so many creative ways. Jack is a great performer (he still has his LA teacher license) and outside after the show I met some people who are filmakers and performers themselves who loved the show. Jack thought he might come out to Rockaway to see our show this weekend but he needed to promote his final 2 performances, VENUE #7: Under St. Marks  MON 22 @ 2:30  ||  FRI 26 @ 5.

Definitely worth seeing.

I signed up Monday to work 3 shifts before Jack's show - one at a theater on E. 4th St - where there a whole bunch of venues and 2 at Under St.Marks. Basically that involves handing out a program to people going in (ticketing is basically online now so there are no real will-call tiks to give out like in the past.)

Tuesday I signed up for a 2PM shift at the venues on Suffolk and Rivington where there are 4 theaters. It can be difficult to sift through which shows to see so I figured with 4 venues and 3 or 4 shows at each up to 9PM I could just hang out there for the day and use my vouchers. But a couple of shows I wanted to see were sold out -- The Company Incorporated looked right up my ally.

I began to meet people who were involved in the shows.

I met a South Korean actress named Ji-Young Choi, WHILE OPHELIA'S KOREAN DRUM WEEPS , looking to fill the seats, she handed me a ticket and asked me to come - so I did. She was captivating. Read a good review here. The last performance is today at 1PM.

She is a Columbia grad who speaks perfect English and was looking to fill the theater for her one woman show where she was doing a riff as Hamlet's Ophelia communicating through a drum - a unique perspective -

Another performer I met was a woman named Shyam Bhatt from London who is of Indian descent and was also doing a one-woman show called "Treya's Last Dance" - see review. I went the next day after the MORE retreat and found her enchanting. So interesting to chat with someone one day and then see them transformed when on stage.

Tuesday evening when I got shut out of a show I had wanted to see I was sitting around the Fringe lounge near a couple at the next table when a young woman came over all excited over a 4 star review her show had gotten at Time Out NY.  Her show was The Box Show. The couple were parents of

her friend and we began to talk. They had extra tickets and gave me one. Soon we were joined by 2 ladies who were mothers of some guys involved in the show and I felt part of the family. The show by Dominique Salerno where she does the entire show in a box with different vignettes is so creatively done.

I enjoyed the serendipitous nature of not making too many plans at the Fringe and being willing to go to shows where I meet people.

(Get tickets at Einstein! Einstein!
Sew and Sew Productions
Writer: Jack Fry
Director: Tom Blomquist
War-torn Berlin, 1914, ambitious young scientist Albert Einstein awaits news from a solar eclipse that will finally prove his controversial Theory of General Relativity. Instead, Einstein is sent sideways in a spiral vortex due to professional and personal life disintegration.
1h 20m   Local   Los Angeles, CA
Solo Show   Drama   

      

More details on Show-Score

VENUE #7: Under St. Marks

SAT 13 @ 2:15  ||  MON 15 @ 8:45  ||  FRI 19 @ 8+  ||  MON 22 @ 2:30  ||  FRI 26 @ 5

War-torn Berlin, 1914, ambitious young scientist Albert Einstein awaits news from a solar eclipse that will finally prove his controversial Theory of General Relativity. Instead, Einstein is sent sideways in a spiral vortex due to professional and personal life disintegration.

Memo from The RTC: The Air Beneath a Soaring La Cage

Final weekend tonight and tomorrow afternoon. Arthur Goldstein and his family are coming tonight. We are sold out but there are always people who don't show - so I told some of my friends if they show up before 7PM and get on the wait list they have a good chance of getting in.

Great audience last night - I could tell from the first moments based on their responses. They got most of the jokes and were laughing and singing along. A standing O. I would say this is the most loved show

Photos by Rob Mintzes

Memo from The RTC: The Air Beneath a Soaring La Cage

By Norm Scott

Last Sunday night when I left the post matinee cast party thrown by the incredibly gracious Susanne Riggs and her husband John many members of the cast of La Cage Aux Folles were still frolicking in the pool. It was almost 9:30 and the non-locals, of whom there are many, still had a long trip home, some up to 2 hours. Many of them had arrived up to 2-3 hours before the 2PM show began to get their extensive make-up and hair done and do all the other essentials in the hours before the show goes on, thus spending 10 hours or more in each others’ company. Oy! You might say, but not to this crew.

So here are a group of performers and support people who make the show work from behind the scenes, many of whom had not met before the show began rehearsals almost 3 months ago seeming to not get enough of each other. Apparently bonding that makes super glue look weak has taken place. The cast and crew of La Cage Aux Folles, which is heading into its final sold-out weekend, are having a magnificent time. Some of the newcomers to the Rockaway Theatre Company say this has been the best experience of their performing careers – the support of the production team and their fellow performers has been taken to new heights. The evening shows end around 11PM and people are still mulling around an hour later, with whole batches going out to a diner after the show. I believe it is not only the opportunities to perform that attract so much high end talent to the far away reaches of the RTC at Fort Tilden but also the support and a bonding where life long friends are made and even some romances – if I tell you about those I have to kill you.

At every show members of the growing RTC alumni show up to see their colleagues perform and they are the very best of audience members, hooting and hollering and cheering everyone on. As an ensemble member I get to sit on the stage at 3 different points in the play and get to surreptitiously observe audience reactions. Even these RTC vets were blown away by Chazmond Peacock’s performance as Albin and raved about the antics of Matt Smilardi as Jacob.

The other night the front two rows were filled with teenagers who have been part of the RTC but are not in this show and they were so excited at what they were seeing, especially when the Cagelles, of mixed men and woman, all dressed up as women, were dancing. They were also there to cheer their friends from the Young People’s RTC Workshops:  Their amazing choreographer and dancer, Gabrielle Mangano, one of the Cagelles and herself a former teen RTCer, and a Kacie Reilly, recent grad of the young people’s workshop and one of the most elegant young dancers I’ve seen on stage. And of course the delightful Dante Rei (you’ll recognize him as his injuries in the show mount) who has aged out of his teen years into manhood so quickly but has not lost that sense of play he always brings to any show he is in.

Then there is quadruple threat (musician, singer, dancer, actress) Leigh Dillon (Anne), a soon to be senior in high school, who graduates to the main stage big time in this romantic grown-up role. Her fiancé, Jean-Michel, is played by the Dorian Gray-like Frank Caiati (now 30), who apparently has a portrait of himself hanging somewhere that is aging. Frank has been a driving force at the RTC since his teen years. When Anne and Jean-Michel in the show smooched it up, the giggling from the front rows couldn’t be contained. Seeing these wonderful kids, the future main stagers at the RTC who will be the Manganos and Caiatis of the future, being so into the theater is as exciting as anything the RTC has managed to accomplish.

I’ll have more to say about the other performers and the backstage crew in my final column on the show next week – at last you must be thinking- which I will write on the day after the show closes as I join Tony Homsey and crew in the sad task of taking apart the set (and beginning to build the next set for the Susan Corning directed “Wait Until Dark,” opening Sept 16 and running for only 2 weekends - so get your tickets early.)

Norm blogs at ednotesonline.org when he is not staggering out of cast parties.