It is condescending to say I’m lucky to have a job. I don’t feel lucky. ATR system is failing. Better to not have a job than stay and feel humiliated.
Please tell me.. where is MY protection that takes a HUGE chunk of my paycheck and tells me to sit back and obey.
Lucky not to get fired? At least if someone tried to fire me- I’d have grounds to find a lawyer and contest. You have stripped me of any rights. And now all I can do is hope that I will find something and feel like somebody before I lose myself.
I sat there all summer reading articles in papers not ONCE hearing any of MY story. The story of a 14 year award winning teacher that no one wanted. Where are those articles?Karen Sklaire delivered one of the most powerful and emotional speeches to the UFT Ex Bd I've ever heard. You could hear a pin drop. And Mulgrew was even there to hear it. Kudos to Howie Schoor for being so tolerant of allowing people like Karen, who was not on his sign-up list, to have their say. Howie has done a great job of moderating what could be difficult meetings and fostering a cordial relationship between the leadership and the opposition.
I am a member of 2 unions- Actors Equity and the UFT. I believe in public schools and I did not ask for this. You my union has turned a blind eye on these ATRS most of whom are not there because they are a problem. Where is the article that talks about people like me?
---- Karen Sklaire speech to UFT Ex Bd, October 16, 2017
Karen Sklaire—ATR—15 year teacher of theater—excessed. No theater positions available. Say UFT said there was no union representation for ATRs. Second excess in 15 years. First time alone in a room for three years. Left and came back when recruited. Won RFK award in teaching, excessed two years later. Had opportunity to sub for six months—rejected by DOE. Have been assistant in 1st grade, making copies. Told by DOE can’t be placed. Told by union lucky to have job. Am pro union, has been nothing but a heartbreak. I just want to say it’s heartbreaking and I’m ready to leave. Condescending to say I’m lucky to have a job. I don’t feel lucky. ATR system is failing. Better to not have a job than stay and feel humiliated. Schools won’t see me because I’m ATR with 15 years. Only people fighting for me are DOE theater program people.He also reported on other great statements (sorry I don't have a transcript of these remarks as I do of Karen's).
Gina Trent—English teacher for 17 years, mostly as ATR. Grateful UFT preserved salary and benefits. However, you should fight for more quality of life issues. Most of my colleagues envy ATR position. Disturbing. Many young people leave with health issues and stress. We need to try to get principals accountable where all teachers have no trust. We need to place pressure. We need to defend ATRs and senior teachers. Research suggests we are the most effective.And MORE associates:
Aixa Rodriguez—ESL teacher and ATR, rated HE—No vacancies for ESL in Bronx HS—CR Part 154 makes courses double counted so there are no vacancies. Asks that stereotyping FSF, be challenged by UFT. Leads to rampant ageism.
August Leppelmeier—NYT maligned character of ATRs. Very unfair. Most ATRs excessed for downsizing. Somehow city isn’t placing ESL teachers. Those charged have been cleared. If not, they’d be fired. UFT needs to stand by concept that people are exonerated. Expects union to fight in press with ads, speak publicly, use social media. Has been going on since June. We expect more.
Good Evening
My name is Karen Sklaire. I am entering my 15th year as a theater teacher for the DOE. I am the 2015 recipient of The Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Honor as a teacher and actor creating the first world wide theater lesson that has been translated in over 22 languages.
As a theater teacher I have created curriculum for K-5 theater teachers, was one of the original teachers who rolled out the Blueprint for the Arts, I created the first Robert F Kennedy human rights theater camp merging human rights education and theater as a way of teaching empathy in the classroom. The camp gave scholarships to underserved communities. I have merged with Broadway Theaters to bring students to their first Broadway production and directed many shows. My curriculum is significant in ESL, ELL and ENL communities as a way of teaching children to understand the language through their body and learn how to enunciate. I am currently on the DOE facilitator team for theater where I’ll be leading a workshop at the city wide Professional Development this coming November on using empathy in Playwriting.
I have been a highly effective teacher up until the last year. where my principal did not visit my classroom till March and gave me effectives across the board because she was told to not give out highly effectives. I am now an ATR. This is my second time.
In 2007 I was excessed within the first month of school and made to sit alone in a room only to sub very rarely at the school I was at at the time. I was forced to take the first job which was a high school in The Bronx that moved the principal to strategically punish me until I quit.
I came back a year later after being sought after because of my reputation as an excellent hard working teacher. My principal did not inform me of being excessed till the week before school ended. All really qualifiable positions had been filled already and budgets were in place. I spent the summer applying to as many jobs as I could but only ONE called me in as they needed a music teacher and could I do that. Which I cannot.
I was told the word ATR was like the scarlet letter of teaching. Either my salary was too high or they didn’t trust me because of my status.
I sat there all summer reading articles in papers not ONCE hearing any of MY story. The story of a 14 year award winning teacher that no one wanted. Where are those articles?
I have been kicked around this year in the most demeaning way. A principal told me that the DOE is trying to get me to leave which is why they said NO to any long term sub positions that would have had me actually WORK for my salary instead of being an assistant for a 24 year old first grade teacher. I remember sitting in a closet filing her papers in her portfolios crying and wondering why I was being punished.
The Union person I spoke to said that I consider myself lucky that I still have a job. I wondered if that person would say to a person who was in an abusive relationshop- your lucky your not alone.
It was not their fault- that is what they are told to say. And I have heard it over and over. I even have an award winning show about it. Every opportunity I had to possibly get placed the DOE stood in my way. The union said that's the rules. I have experienced a nervous breakdown and have still showed up to my demeaning position. I had the heads of arts and special programs and a current part time gig I have scream at the DOE saying they got the wrong person lost in the system. There IS NO job for me on this October 16 except a possible 3 day a week gig in Inwood. I’m currently subbing in a performing arts school in the Bronx. My commute for both is about one hour and 40 minutes. I am exhausted and I have too much talent and a huge resume and no one to hire me. I can't imagine enduring this for a whole year so it’s up to me to move my home so I can probably take a lesser paying gig to keep my sanity.
I am a member of 2 unions- Actors Equity and the UFT. I believe in public schools and I did not ask for this. You my union has turned a blind eye on these ATRS most of whom are not there because they are a problem. Where is the article that talks about people like me? How much emotional abuse must I endure before I break?
Please tell me.. where is MY protection that takes a HUGE chunk of my paycheck and tells me to sit back and obey.
Lucky not to get fired? At least if someone tried to fire me- I’d have grounds to find a lawyer and contest. You have stripped me of any rights. And now all I can do is hope that I will find something and feel like somebody before I lose myself.
Chapter Leader/ Delegate Election Campaign
From the MORE website:
“MORE’s central priority will be the development of a UFT caucus. Our aim is to reach UFT members with our message of a more active and democratic union that can effectively fight back against what we have called the “ed deform” agenda and for the basic union rights of our members”.
In order to achieve these goals, a union caucus must have some level of power within the union organization. We have gained 7 seats on the Executive Board with our High School representatives and we must continue to build on this success. The UFT will be holding Chapter Leader/Delegate Elections in the Spring of 2018 and this should be the next level in which we build our base and our power.
I propose that MORE engage in a Chapter Leader and Delegate Building Campaign.
This will be twofold:
1. Encourage and support all current MORE Chapter Leaders and Delegates to run for re-election in their schools and chapters.
2. Seek out our supporters in schools that are not yet represented by MORE and encourage and support these members to run for Chapter Leaders or Delegate in their schools.
Burns has set himself up as a self-appointed national therapist for interpreting U.S. history. This is hard to take at times, but the subject matter he covers usually rises above his paternalistic liberalism.... Burns' series outlines the deep roots of deception involved in U.S. foreign policy that I imagine a younger generation will find shocking....... there also frustrating limits and omissions to Burns and Novick's series. In the first episode "Déjà vu," narrator Peter Coyote tells us that "America's involvement in Vietnam...was begun in good faith, by decent people, out of fateful misunderstandings." Yet the whole series proves the opposite at every turn.The carping from the left began from the first frames of Ken Burns' documentary which for me exposed the entire lying and manipulative structure of the American power structure. Some if it was fair and some not --the SW review is very balanced:
.... in the first episode, I saw an extraordinary act of historical censorship. The U.S. plucked Ngo Dinh Diem out of obscurity in the mid-1950s and made him the president of the Republic of Vietnam, or "South Vietnam" as it was referred to. In all of the photos of the era, standing behind him clear as day, is the lanky figure of Edward Lansdale, the CIA's man in Saigon, the man who made Diem. Yet Lansdale is never identified....
Unfortunately, many people on the left in the U.S. seem to have watched only the first 20 minutes of this first episode. Disgusted by claims of "good faith" and "decent people," they didn't watch any further, though they did take to Facebook and Twitter to denounce it.
....... Socialist Worker, , author of Vietnam: The (Last) War the U.S. Lost.
The Vietnam War is a compelling, beautifully made and revealing documentary series. Burns and Novick have brought back the Vietnam War back to its proper place in our living history. Despite their limited critique of the war and their misplaced hostility toward the antiwar movement, this series should be watched and debated by all.Burns exposes how history continues to repeat itself in Afghanistan. And it will never end. The dumb strategies in 'Nam and what we see today are similar. Clueless. The minute we are out of Afghanistan we know the script of what happens to puppet type governments. Does that mean we root for the Taliban to win? Hell no. Every alternative is worse than worse.
Throughout the series, the Vietnamese national struggle is one that Burns and Novick can't make up their minds about. Was it a civil war, a national struggle for independence or an example of Cold War Communist expansion?People on the left also have some issues. I imagine Trotskyists would condemn the North Vietnamese as Stalinist variations.
... the real Achilles' heel of The Vietnam War is Burns and Novick's disdain for the antiwar movement.Worth reading is:
Veteran civil rights activist Bill Zimmerman is given a fair amount of screen time, but the movement against the draft is called a campaign of "self-interest" because the young men who could be drafted were at the core of it. When tens of thousands of antiwar activists attempt to shut down Washington, D.C., in one protest, Burns and Novick echo Nixon adviser Pat Buchanan in calling them the "crazies."
Barnard College antiwar activist Nancy Biberman makes a tearful apology: "It pains me to think of the things that I said, that we said. And I'm sorry."
What misplaced words could ever compare to the scale of murder, destruction and deception committed by the U.S. government? Yet what is now presented as excesses on the part of the antiwar movement is presented as co-equal. It should be pointed out that no government official ever apologizes for anything during the series.
Norm..If you work at the UFT, leave comments - I don't track people who comment - nor can I.This is in reference to my post, of last week, Making Merry at the UFT Citywide Chapter Leader Meeting.
In regards to the welcome center balloons and Windex comment, who paid for the expensive plants? Who purchased the new wooden furniture? Who paid for the painted walls? Who paid for the IT labor? Who paid for the new lighting fixtures? Who paid for new plumbing and plumbing fixtures? Who paid for the water fridge? Who paid for the water cooler? Who paid for the high tech coffee machine? Who paid for the banner? Who paid for the wiring? Who paid for the computers? Who paid for the fancy water bottles? Who paid for the signage to be removed? Who's paying the staff to work the extra overtime to staff the center? Who paid for the customer service training courses? We haven't even touched on who's paying for the new conference center in excess of 3 to 4 million dollars? How does all of this justify promoting an incompetent events manager to a position of higher authority who appears to be at the center of all of this out of control spending? Many people are forced to staff the welcome center even when they voice objections they are they do not have a choice. I don't remember this being brought up at any delegate assembly. How does a union that represents workers rights treat it's own staff this way? There are people that interested in working in the center that have been rejected by the UFT because of their background.... Concerned About Spending
I strolled into the brand new Welcome Center in the back of the lobby which was staffed by some heavy hitters of UFT officialdom, who posed for some photos on the condition they appeared in Ed Notes. Someone told me "they spent $70,000 alone furnishing that space when a desk is available right next to security." The price of balloons has certainly been going up.Which elicited these comments from someone defending the union:
I was glad to see they look pretty happy.
Someone is apparently not so happy and sent me this complaint that they are "Pressuring UFT workers to staff the welcome center during regular work hours and extending work days without pay." I pointed out that people like David Hickey and Janella Hinds seem to be there but this insider claims the staffing is often from the lower paid employees and comes from "An operator from administrative services, MBO and membership staff, accounting staff, David Hickey's secretary, print shop staff, IT staff ---- the big wigs usually have the administrative staff cover for the shift assigned to them."
the 70k figure is ridiculous. It cost nothing, except some windex and a few balloons.Our anonymous commenter is concerned about out of control spending and seems to have a finger on the button.
Cafe 52 has been closed for at least 3 years.
....we were struck by the name of the school at which this unfortunate event had occurred. The high school in question is apparently called The Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation. We'll be honest. The name sounded a bit improbable, possibly even a bit high-fallutin', for a public high school in the Bronx. Question! How many public school kids in the Bronx, or anywhere else for that matter, are actually focused on wildlife conservation?The Howler, a former teacher, touches on some fundamental truths.
Long ago, clueless elites fell in love with the high-fallutin' idea that low-income kids need to be challenged more at school. This reasoning has never exactly made sense: These under-served kids can't meet the traditional academic standards we already have—so we'll make the standards tougher? This unusual reasoning always sounds good—from a thousand miles away.
In truth, some low-income kids aren't being challenged enough at school—but many are perhaps being challenged too much, from their earliest years. We couldn't help wondering if that was occurring inside this unfortunate, oddly-named school.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2017Posted: 04 Oct 2017 08:35 AM PDTWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2017
Part 2—And a rather unusual name: Last Wednesday morning, a 15-year-old student was fatally stabbed during a class at his public high school in the Bronx.
On Thursday morning, Sarah Maslin Nir published the New York Times' first news report about the fatal stabbing. We were struck by an historical claim—and by the name of the school.
It had apparently been a long time since a student was killed in a New York City school. Headline included, here's the way Nir's report began:
NIR (10/28/17): Bronx High School Stabbing Leaves a Teenager Dead and Another One WoundedAccording to Mayor de Blasio, it was the first killing inside a city school building in more than twenty years.
A 15-year-old was fatally stabbed and a 16-year-old was critically wounded in their Bronx high school on Wednesday morning in what police say was apparently the culmination of weeks of conflict.
The killing, the first inside a city school building in more than two decades, according to the mayor, set off a lockdown that left hundreds of children cowering inside their classrooms, the older ones frantically texting parents for help. As word of the killing spread, parents desperate to see their children descended on the school building, which houses two schools—the elementary school P.S. 67 and the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation, serving students in grades 6 to 12.
For ourselves, we were struck by the name of the school at which this unfortunate event had occurred. The high school in question is apparently called The Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation.
We'll be honest. The name sounded a bit improbable, possibly even a bit high-fallutin', for a public high school in the Bronx.
Question! How many public school kids in the Bronx, or anywhere else for that matter, are actually focused on wildlife conservation? We were struck by the name of the school—and especially so later on, when Nir offered a cursory academic profile of the students:
NIR: The Wildlife Conservation school was started in 2007 by the Urban Assembly, a nonprofit organization that runs 21 small schools across the city, serving primarily low-income and academically struggling students.Say what? According to Nir, five percent of the school's students passed New York's statewide math test last year. A more impressive 13 percent passed the statewide test in reading.
Student test scores are low: This year 13 percent of the middle school students passed the state reading tests, and 5 percent passed the state math tests. In 2016, the school's four-year high school graduation rate was 73 percent. More than half of the high school students were chronically absent that year, meaning they missed more than 10 percent of school days.
Nir said that the students' test scores were "low;" they sound extremely low. Having said that, might we offer a quick observation?
Nir isn't an education reporter; there's no reason why she should be. That said, passing rates for individual schools should generally be placed in a wider statistical context.
The passing rates for this oddly-named school sound extremely low. That said, what were the passing rates for high school students in New York City as a whole? For the whole state of New York?
Absent such data, it's hard to know exactly how low those passing rates actually are. And no—there's no reason to assume that these statewide tests define a sensible standard for "passing." A reporter should always include the wider passing rates, just to provide basic context.
(What were the statewide passing rates? You'll have to go elsewhere for that. In the past decade, states have made it increasingly hard to access such basic information. We're tired of staging long, fruitless searches for such information, especially in a world where it's plain that no one actually cares about the school lives of students like the ones at issue.)
We were struck by the intersection between the high-fallutin' name of this school and its horrible sounding data. It sounded like the school's test scores were extremely low. Beyond that, its graduation rate was unimpressive, and it sounded like attendance problems were rampant.
Within this school, a killing occurred. We'll offer some observations, starting with a couple of questions:
Who the heck is the Urban Assembly and why is it running these schools? More specifically, why is it running a public high school which seems to be built around wildlife conservation, in the face of which its students refuse to attend?
We're prepared to admit that this sounded odd and unattractive. Quickly, we'll offer some thoughts:
The name of that school sounds wonderfully high-fallutin', in a way which tends to turn the heads of clueless, uncaring "meritocratic" elites. The capsule profile Nir provided had a different sound:
It sounded like the kids at this school might well need types of "remediation" more than they need to be concerned about what's occurring in the rain forest or on the plain. Might they possibly need types of help this school just isn't providing?
A quick bit of background:
Long ago, clueless elites fell in love with the high-fallutin' idea that low-income kids need to be challenged more at school. This reasoning has never exactly made sense:
These under-served kids can't meet the traditional academic standards we already have—so we'll make the standards tougher? This unusual reasoning always sounds good—from a thousand miles away.
In truth, some low-income kids aren't being challenged enough at school—but many are perhaps being challenged too much, from their earliest years. We couldn't help wondering if that was occurring inside this unfortunate, oddly-named school.
Nir was offering a capsule, first-day report about a deadly event. Absent the missing context for those test scores, she did a perfectly decent job. Eventually, she quoted the dean, Kevin Sampson. He explained what had occurred:
NIR: Shortly after they were released from the lockdown on Wednesday afternoon, Asia Johnson and Yanique Heatley, both 18, stood outside the high school at 2040 Mohegan Avenue in the West Farms neighborhood.Dean Sampson said the killing had resulted from bullying. He said that's what such incidents are always about.
The two were friends with all three of the students involved, they said. Ms. Heatley described Mr. Cedeno as ''different from the other guys.''
''He likes Nicki Minaj, stuff from H&M. He likes Kylie Jenner,'' she said.
''This hurts,'' Ms. Johnson said. ''No one should experience bullying but there's a way to handle it.''
''It's really sad,'' Ms. Heatley added. ''Two boys might lose their lives and our friend will never see the outside again.''
Mr. Sampson, the school's dean, stood, visibly shaken, outside on Mohegan Avenue. He had performed CPR on Matthew, he said. ''Two of my students got stabbed and one of them died,'' Mr. Sampson said. ''It was about what it's always about—bullying.''
The next day, in a front-page news report, the Times described the types of bullying which had allegedly occurred. But Nir had already begun to describe the horrid conditions which allegedly obtained within this school. The next day's front-page report would describe these conditions in much greater detail.
Was bullying at the heart of this deadly incident, or might the problems have run deeper? Tomorrow, we'll review the gruesome conditions being attributed to the school, and we'll ask a simple question:
If schools lives actually matter, why didn't the New York Times report on this school long ago?
Tomorrow: What the parents said
Friday: Do school lives actually matter? The two-year-old, nationwide test scores which you've never seen
