04 July, 2009
02 July, 2009
Why Tony Avella must win for Mayor
This is right off his webpage. Link to his Homepage http://www.tonyavellaformayor.com/
Take Back Our Schools
Tony Avella's record shows his commitment to creating an education system that works for all New Yorkers. As a City Council member, he worked closely with Parent Teacher Associations in Northeast Queens to make his school districts the best in the five boroughs. And when the Mayor failed to provide money for classroom technology, Tony secured the funding to acquire state-of-the-art computer labs and to install Internet wiring in schools. As Mayor, the first thing Tony will do is fire Joel Klein and replace him with an experienced educator. He'll also allocate funds so that we're investing in our kids, not in bloated bureaucracies or corporate testing systems. Tony believes no one understands education better than the teachers, principals, and parents. He'll make sure these stakeholders have a voice and a seat at the table when planning the future of our schools. As Mayor, Tony will:
Fire Joel Klein as the head of the Department of Education and replace him with an experienced educator
Open up the Department of Education to the parents and teachers who know our schools best
Stop teaching to the test so that our kids can enjoy learning again
Ensure that every school and every child has access to the latest technology and computers
Begin the process of reinstating free tuition at the CUNY colleges
Take Back Our Schools
Tony Avella's record shows his commitment to creating an education system that works for all New Yorkers. As a City Council member, he worked closely with Parent Teacher Associations in Northeast Queens to make his school districts the best in the five boroughs. And when the Mayor failed to provide money for classroom technology, Tony secured the funding to acquire state-of-the-art computer labs and to install Internet wiring in schools. As Mayor, the first thing Tony will do is fire Joel Klein and replace him with an experienced educator. He'll also allocate funds so that we're investing in our kids, not in bloated bureaucracies or corporate testing systems. Tony believes no one understands education better than the teachers, principals, and parents. He'll make sure these stakeholders have a voice and a seat at the table when planning the future of our schools. As Mayor, Tony will:
Fire Joel Klein as the head of the Department of Education and replace him with an experienced educator
Open up the Department of Education to the parents and teachers who know our schools best
Stop teaching to the test so that our kids can enjoy learning again
Ensure that every school and every child has access to the latest technology and computers
Begin the process of reinstating free tuition at the CUNY colleges
The Graduation Rate Ponzi Scheme
Mayor Bloomberg claims our NYC public schools do as well as the State average and that our graduation rate has increased to 80 percent. He said that at the WFP Mayoral Forum. I simply don't see how that's possible and a new report indicates my hunch is right.
1) Take a school with 2500 kids and a graduation rate of 50 percent. 1250 graduate. 1250 do not.
2) Take that same school and break it into 4 small schools, 625 each. For the sake of argument, since most of these small schools hit 70 percent, some better, some worse, let's
say one of them has a graduation rate of 75, two have 70 and one has 80. That's 469, 438, 438 and 500 kids. That's 1876 kids. That's 75 percent -- granted, I picked percentages mostly below 80. But while you have graduated 1876 kids you still haven't graduated 624. It doesn't seem like it will be that many who haven't graduated when you look at it one little school at a time.
Now, that's today. I'm imagining this is the first cohort of graduates. A new report by the Center for NYC Affairs at The New School says that the trend is for graduation rates to go down at small schools and for staff to be in flux. In it's overall conclusions it points out that most students still attend large schools because there were many students whose skills were too weak to be accepted by smaller ones. So, in the end, this 70 percent graduation rate (which he said is 80 percent) is for less than half the kids who attend public schools. EVEN IF THE SMALL SCHOOLS HAD AN 80 percent graduation rate it would only represent less than half of our public school students. The larger schools, who have not been able to select which kids they accept are often overrun with problems the do not have the funds or manpower to handle, so their graduation rates tend to be lower than 70 percent. You can read the entire report http://www.newschool.edu/milano/nycaffairs/documents/TheNewMarketplace_Report.pdf
1) Take a school with 2500 kids and a graduation rate of 50 percent. 1250 graduate. 1250 do not.
2) Take that same school and break it into 4 small schools, 625 each. For the sake of argument, since most of these small schools hit 70 percent, some better, some worse, let's
say one of them has a graduation rate of 75, two have 70 and one has 80. That's 469, 438, 438 and 500 kids. That's 1876 kids. That's 75 percent -- granted, I picked percentages mostly below 80. But while you have graduated 1876 kids you still haven't graduated 624. It doesn't seem like it will be that many who haven't graduated when you look at it one little school at a time.
Now, that's today. I'm imagining this is the first cohort of graduates. A new report by the Center for NYC Affairs at The New School says that the trend is for graduation rates to go down at small schools and for staff to be in flux. In it's overall conclusions it points out that most students still attend large schools because there were many students whose skills were too weak to be accepted by smaller ones. So, in the end, this 70 percent graduation rate (which he said is 80 percent) is for less than half the kids who attend public schools. EVEN IF THE SMALL SCHOOLS HAD AN 80 percent graduation rate it would only represent less than half of our public school students. The larger schools, who have not been able to select which kids they accept are often overrun with problems the do not have the funds or manpower to handle, so their graduation rates tend to be lower than 70 percent. You can read the entire report http://www.newschool.edu/milano/nycaffairs/documents/TheNewMarketplace_Report.pdf
27 June, 2009
for Mary Pearce, her family and friends
John Donne
Hymn to God, My God, in my Sickness
Since I am coming to that holy room,
Hymn to God, My God, in my Sickness
Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,I shall be made thy music;
as I comeI tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.
Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my south-west discovery,
Per fretum febris, by these straits to die,
I joy, that in these straits I see my west;
For, though their currents yield return to none,
What shall my west hurt me?
As west and eastIn all flat maps (and I am one) are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.
Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are
The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar,
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them,
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.
We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ's cross, and Adam's tree, stood in one place;
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.
So, in his purple wrapp'd, receive me, Lord;
By these his thorns, give me his other crown;
And as to others' souls I preach'd thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:
"Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down." John Donne
23 June, 2009
Iron Maiden: In memory of Mary Pearce
Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.
--Proverbs 27:17, King James Bible
Whenever I describe Mary Pearce to anyone, the first thing I say is that "she has a core of iron," for, except for her daughter, Sharon, I have never met anyone more strong-willed. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being this way -- as Proverbs teaches us, we become "sharpened" by our strong friends. And Mary Pearce was an incredible friend to me, as well as a substitute parent.
What made Mary Pearce so tough, in fact, was her ability to accept people and ideas. She never gave up on anyone, even if the person was so contrary that he/she -- usually me -- made her head spin. Not that she didn't give me a very strong argument back, not that she would give in to my argument, either, no matter how loud or intense I became. But, she was always willing to understand the perspectives of others. In time, we grew to agree more on things, most recently Barack Obama. It's possible that Sharon and I are now both more conservative than Mary was -- she saw a lot of possibility in this young administration, just as she saw a lot of promise in me and some of Sharon's other crazy friends. She reserved her greatest acceptance and belief for Sharon, who, like she did when she was young, moved thousands of miles away and did what people call "God's work" -- teach. It is very easy for me to imagine Mary captivating kindergartners with trees magically made from paper, her fine intelligence and her beautiful nature. People don't realize that small children are as hard to teach as teenagers -- and I think harder because they don't know what to be afraid of, yet. Children, however, do respond to the kind of love that is both truthful and encouraging -- and Mary Pearce was one of the few people in the world who could be both.
Because she recognized the potential, the sincerity and the spirit in me and in everyone she met, Mary Pearce made all of us feel more hopeful about our futures than we did.
And she changed us -- made us wiser, better and more honest. In doing so, she will also never leave us.
--Proverbs 27:17, King James Bible
Whenever I describe Mary Pearce to anyone, the first thing I say is that "she has a core of iron," for, except for her daughter, Sharon, I have never met anyone more strong-willed. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being this way -- as Proverbs teaches us, we become "sharpened" by our strong friends. And Mary Pearce was an incredible friend to me, as well as a substitute parent.
What made Mary Pearce so tough, in fact, was her ability to accept people and ideas. She never gave up on anyone, even if the person was so contrary that he/she -- usually me -- made her head spin. Not that she didn't give me a very strong argument back, not that she would give in to my argument, either, no matter how loud or intense I became. But, she was always willing to understand the perspectives of others. In time, we grew to agree more on things, most recently Barack Obama. It's possible that Sharon and I are now both more conservative than Mary was -- she saw a lot of possibility in this young administration, just as she saw a lot of promise in me and some of Sharon's other crazy friends. She reserved her greatest acceptance and belief for Sharon, who, like she did when she was young, moved thousands of miles away and did what people call "God's work" -- teach. It is very easy for me to imagine Mary captivating kindergartners with trees magically made from paper, her fine intelligence and her beautiful nature. People don't realize that small children are as hard to teach as teenagers -- and I think harder because they don't know what to be afraid of, yet. Children, however, do respond to the kind of love that is both truthful and encouraging -- and Mary Pearce was one of the few people in the world who could be both.
Because she recognized the potential, the sincerity and the spirit in me and in everyone she met, Mary Pearce made all of us feel more hopeful about our futures than we did.
And she changed us -- made us wiser, better and more honest. In doing so, she will also never leave us.
20 June, 2009
The Children of Willy Loman
This is the beginning of a longer post I will work on for a while, but I'm putting it up in case anyone has any comments along the way.
Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in 1949, when my mother was nine year's old. One year earlier, she had lost her 38 year old father to a heart attack precipitated by pneumonia and a life working as many hours as possible and filling what remained with whatever it took to become an accountant. On the wall, next to the dinner table was a black and white photograph of an entire generation of Greenbergs who had been recently slaughtered, each one with a story more gruesome of how his/her death took place. One had her baby tossed in the air and shot before her own throat was slit, another starved to death and some of the rest followed the now familiar last walk into a gas chamber. At eight years old, my mother had accompanied her mother to her father's funeral because she was expected by that age to understand death and be ready. For all she knew, the Nazis were still waiting around the corner to grab her by the neck and march her into a pile of bodies.
The sense of expectation that your life could be ripped away from you by evil forces -- and that little would stand in their way -- took hold of children in the 1940's the same way it did Miller's Willy Loman. He held onto the idea of being "Well-liked" as his last armament against a city which had gone from being lush with space to one literally closing in on him. Industry had made it nearly impossible for him to do more than scratch out a living at a job he committed to because it held more practical promise, say, then being a carpenter or a bricklayer at the turn of the century. For that reason, he also dreamed repeatedly of his brother Ben's magificent and seemingly luck-driven landing in riches.
The "America" my grandmother knew when she came here in 1922 was a place you called, "charming," "enthusiastic," and "gay," and "full of opportunity." Whether you were 14 year old Benny Goodman playing with major Jazz bands or you sold paper or fur coats, you could put together a living and eventually you could rise in stature enough to have some kind of savings. The 30's took away the opportunity, but not initially, the promise it might be back. Benny Goodman's father never got to see his son perform because he did not want to be seen in shabby clothes (and he was hit by a car and killed early in his son's career.) In that refusal, lay the belief that there would be a time in which he would have the right clothes.
I don't know if it was the rise of Hitler or the mercilessness of unchecked capitalism or both which gave Americans, especially new immigrants, their first sense of themselves as corpses. Perhaps it was this sense that helped The New Deal to be passed and allowed the government to just create jobs in an economy which had been eager for cheap and disposable labor. Some of the audience who heard Willy Loman's famous complaint, "A man is not a piece of fruit!" had memories of a time, place and government which didn't tolerate the abuse Loman railed against. The children, however, grew up with the tension that remained around the frailty of the government created jobs at which their parents worked. This combined with growingly vivid pictures of mass genocide was part of their normal day.
For the baby-boomers, things were not the same. Their parents were coming home after a conquest and were eager to make things safe and pleasant and better for their children. A friend told me that the baby boomers were the first group of teenagers to be targetted as a specific market. Like my mother's six year old brother, they were kept from the photographs (which came down from the wall as my uncle got older). The American Dream was alive and well and was living in your washing machine, your soft serve ice cream, and in the whiff of her/his hair.
My mother found dolls like Ken and Barbie very frivolous. For her, the 60's were not a time to blossom and dream big, but a time to corner a piece of the stock market in male form and to guard your every posession in plastic or moth balls. The many elegant services of silverware remained in the closet. She said they were supposedly for me, but I knew intuititively that no one, not even I would use them. They remained as possible barter for hard times. Though she dyed her hair and she wore the full "Jackie-O" make-up, she could not and cannot to this day smile convincingly. Most of her life was spent with a simple cloth or vinyl had on her head, a "car coat," and bags and bags of food in her arms, on her hips and stomach. We stored food in our house in permanent fear of the inevitable day of either joblessness or homelessness or what we would now call, "the haters" appearing at our doorstep. "You can't trust anybody," and "Nobody will appreciate you," were two of the mantras in the tiny apartment across from the Belt Parkway, in which we lived. As though it were expected of her, my mother effectively killed the part of her that wanted joy, improvement, education, sex, physical activity -- any part of young life. At 8 years old, she'd been prepped for the life of Willy Loman. She worked a job in the civil service -- the one place left you couldn't be disposed of when you hit a certain age or lack of production. And she was forced to retire at 55, anyway because the mindlessness of the job contributed to the overall destruction of her mind that a life without pleasure induced. She had no hope of pleasure, except in prurient gasps -- in cheating. In taking me out of school to go to the theater (it was okay because it would be educational for me, so it wasn't just a joyride.). In looking too closely at the teeth or the legs of someone nearby. She clobbered through her days and her muscles stretched the skin around her broad cheekbones to their limits. No rouge could make her look anything less than a heavyweight boxer, too thick to move quickly enough to win, but strong enough to make people afraid and give her dominion over the tiny space within our apartment which was hers.
IT IS TRUE, AS SHARON PEARCE POINTS OUT, that what we could've learned from the baby-boomers' willingness to fight back. As a rule, the Lomans expect to be treated fairly for mostly playing by the rules -- or not deviating anymore than anyone else. The boomers were asked to do two completely hideous things -- to continue to repress civil rights even as African-Americans laid down their lives for basic freedoms and to fight in Vietnam. And mostly they refused. My unde went for the Loman reasons -- "America is this great country and I thought I should give something back." I don't disparage those reasons. They are the response of grateful immigrants who tried to be everything they thought that this country wanted them to be. I don't know what gave the boomers the power to protest, except for the heinous and un-American nature of what was being asked of them. I guess, also, having not been inundated with WWII and the Holocaust, they didn't have the sense that you can't stop a gigantic hate machine. At least, that's where I get that feeling from. That and my mother's insistence, "you can't fight City Hall."
The fervor left from her unqueched passion went into the chaotic raising of me -- the second generation of Lomans. I, too, became a civil servant. I've never expected to travel, own a car or a house. I snatch pleasure in the quick and cheap --- chocolate soy milk, soy pudding, etc. My fervor goes into my cats whose lives are built on simple pleasures, too. My education was carefully planned as Jews didn't let go of that trope within The American Dream publicly. Sure, we knew imbeciles who opened delicatessens and made fortunes, but the pristine nature of the intellect has not yet been fouled by the cruelties of industrialization. Look who beat Willy Loman? Bernard, the nerdy kid next door who went on to defend cases in The Supreme Court. How had he done so? By avoiding the "evil eye" of talking about what you do before you do it. Whether Bernard would be living now in a studio in Red Hook and could not afford a house in Glen Cove, Long Island will never matter. In Jewish Culture, as I'm sure in others, accomplishment gives you immortality and probably buys you a few meals and discounts here and there.
Never forget, however, how nervous Bernard is for Biff -- he sees the edge of doom coming toward him in the same way that Willy does. That Bernard is fortunate enough to have a talent which will help him elude the demons does not mean that he will not be aware of them always and that his children will not grow up with his fears.
To the baby-boomers, the expansion of the world still holds promise, though they are beginning to wonder for whose problems they are responsible. They'll soon retire and the idea that there will be more money in more poor places feels good to them, as it should. But, at what rate? How? At whose cost? To the children of Willy Loman, it is clear that what we have may be taken away from us and there is no logical argument against it. It may be taken immediately and without mercy and we were expected to to be ready -- though how when we were so busy studying, then working, I don't know. Even Bernard would be asked to take a pay cut or leave a firm. And still, and this is our failing, we do not know how to do anything but walk toward the car crash or the gas chambers.
Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in 1949, when my mother was nine year's old. One year earlier, she had lost her 38 year old father to a heart attack precipitated by pneumonia and a life working as many hours as possible and filling what remained with whatever it took to become an accountant. On the wall, next to the dinner table was a black and white photograph of an entire generation of Greenbergs who had been recently slaughtered, each one with a story more gruesome of how his/her death took place. One had her baby tossed in the air and shot before her own throat was slit, another starved to death and some of the rest followed the now familiar last walk into a gas chamber. At eight years old, my mother had accompanied her mother to her father's funeral because she was expected by that age to understand death and be ready. For all she knew, the Nazis were still waiting around the corner to grab her by the neck and march her into a pile of bodies.
The sense of expectation that your life could be ripped away from you by evil forces -- and that little would stand in their way -- took hold of children in the 1940's the same way it did Miller's Willy Loman. He held onto the idea of being "Well-liked" as his last armament against a city which had gone from being lush with space to one literally closing in on him. Industry had made it nearly impossible for him to do more than scratch out a living at a job he committed to because it held more practical promise, say, then being a carpenter or a bricklayer at the turn of the century. For that reason, he also dreamed repeatedly of his brother Ben's magificent and seemingly luck-driven landing in riches.
The "America" my grandmother knew when she came here in 1922 was a place you called, "charming," "enthusiastic," and "gay," and "full of opportunity." Whether you were 14 year old Benny Goodman playing with major Jazz bands or you sold paper or fur coats, you could put together a living and eventually you could rise in stature enough to have some kind of savings. The 30's took away the opportunity, but not initially, the promise it might be back. Benny Goodman's father never got to see his son perform because he did not want to be seen in shabby clothes (and he was hit by a car and killed early in his son's career.) In that refusal, lay the belief that there would be a time in which he would have the right clothes.
I don't know if it was the rise of Hitler or the mercilessness of unchecked capitalism or both which gave Americans, especially new immigrants, their first sense of themselves as corpses. Perhaps it was this sense that helped The New Deal to be passed and allowed the government to just create jobs in an economy which had been eager for cheap and disposable labor. Some of the audience who heard Willy Loman's famous complaint, "A man is not a piece of fruit!" had memories of a time, place and government which didn't tolerate the abuse Loman railed against. The children, however, grew up with the tension that remained around the frailty of the government created jobs at which their parents worked. This combined with growingly vivid pictures of mass genocide was part of their normal day.
For the baby-boomers, things were not the same. Their parents were coming home after a conquest and were eager to make things safe and pleasant and better for their children. A friend told me that the baby boomers were the first group of teenagers to be targetted as a specific market. Like my mother's six year old brother, they were kept from the photographs (which came down from the wall as my uncle got older). The American Dream was alive and well and was living in your washing machine, your soft serve ice cream, and in the whiff of her/his hair.
My mother found dolls like Ken and Barbie very frivolous. For her, the 60's were not a time to blossom and dream big, but a time to corner a piece of the stock market in male form and to guard your every posession in plastic or moth balls. The many elegant services of silverware remained in the closet. She said they were supposedly for me, but I knew intuititively that no one, not even I would use them. They remained as possible barter for hard times. Though she dyed her hair and she wore the full "Jackie-O" make-up, she could not and cannot to this day smile convincingly. Most of her life was spent with a simple cloth or vinyl had on her head, a "car coat," and bags and bags of food in her arms, on her hips and stomach. We stored food in our house in permanent fear of the inevitable day of either joblessness or homelessness or what we would now call, "the haters" appearing at our doorstep. "You can't trust anybody," and "Nobody will appreciate you," were two of the mantras in the tiny apartment across from the Belt Parkway, in which we lived. As though it were expected of her, my mother effectively killed the part of her that wanted joy, improvement, education, sex, physical activity -- any part of young life. At 8 years old, she'd been prepped for the life of Willy Loman. She worked a job in the civil service -- the one place left you couldn't be disposed of when you hit a certain age or lack of production. And she was forced to retire at 55, anyway because the mindlessness of the job contributed to the overall destruction of her mind that a life without pleasure induced. She had no hope of pleasure, except in prurient gasps -- in cheating. In taking me out of school to go to the theater (it was okay because it would be educational for me, so it wasn't just a joyride.). In looking too closely at the teeth or the legs of someone nearby. She clobbered through her days and her muscles stretched the skin around her broad cheekbones to their limits. No rouge could make her look anything less than a heavyweight boxer, too thick to move quickly enough to win, but strong enough to make people afraid and give her dominion over the tiny space within our apartment which was hers.
IT IS TRUE, AS SHARON PEARCE POINTS OUT, that what we could've learned from the baby-boomers' willingness to fight back. As a rule, the Lomans expect to be treated fairly for mostly playing by the rules -- or not deviating anymore than anyone else. The boomers were asked to do two completely hideous things -- to continue to repress civil rights even as African-Americans laid down their lives for basic freedoms and to fight in Vietnam. And mostly they refused. My unde went for the Loman reasons -- "America is this great country and I thought I should give something back." I don't disparage those reasons. They are the response of grateful immigrants who tried to be everything they thought that this country wanted them to be. I don't know what gave the boomers the power to protest, except for the heinous and un-American nature of what was being asked of them. I guess, also, having not been inundated with WWII and the Holocaust, they didn't have the sense that you can't stop a gigantic hate machine. At least, that's where I get that feeling from. That and my mother's insistence, "you can't fight City Hall."
The fervor left from her unqueched passion went into the chaotic raising of me -- the second generation of Lomans. I, too, became a civil servant. I've never expected to travel, own a car or a house. I snatch pleasure in the quick and cheap --- chocolate soy milk, soy pudding, etc. My fervor goes into my cats whose lives are built on simple pleasures, too. My education was carefully planned as Jews didn't let go of that trope within The American Dream publicly. Sure, we knew imbeciles who opened delicatessens and made fortunes, but the pristine nature of the intellect has not yet been fouled by the cruelties of industrialization. Look who beat Willy Loman? Bernard, the nerdy kid next door who went on to defend cases in The Supreme Court. How had he done so? By avoiding the "evil eye" of talking about what you do before you do it. Whether Bernard would be living now in a studio in Red Hook and could not afford a house in Glen Cove, Long Island will never matter. In Jewish Culture, as I'm sure in others, accomplishment gives you immortality and probably buys you a few meals and discounts here and there.
Never forget, however, how nervous Bernard is for Biff -- he sees the edge of doom coming toward him in the same way that Willy does. That Bernard is fortunate enough to have a talent which will help him elude the demons does not mean that he will not be aware of them always and that his children will not grow up with his fears.
To the baby-boomers, the expansion of the world still holds promise, though they are beginning to wonder for whose problems they are responsible. They'll soon retire and the idea that there will be more money in more poor places feels good to them, as it should. But, at what rate? How? At whose cost? To the children of Willy Loman, it is clear that what we have may be taken away from us and there is no logical argument against it. It may be taken immediately and without mercy and we were expected to to be ready -- though how when we were so busy studying, then working, I don't know. Even Bernard would be asked to take a pay cut or leave a firm. And still, and this is our failing, we do not know how to do anything but walk toward the car crash or the gas chambers.
14 June, 2009
Gritting it out
I'm going to hold on until I either
1) Get a permanent position I want
or
2) Am placed somewhere
I am NOT GOING TO PANIC.
1) Get a permanent position I want
or
2) Am placed somewhere
I am NOT GOING TO PANIC.
12 June, 2009
The ATR job market...same time, this year
So far, incentives and hiring freezes aside, all the experienced teachers I know over 40 seem to be getting the same cold shoulders they did last year. Teachers with 25 years of experience who are bilingual and can teach music and other things out of license are being asked, "Why should I hire you?"
I know one person with experience who was hired and he is 34.
I am "Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's" hopeful about one school which I adore and to which I hope I can be of use. Two more interviews loom at two other schools in which I'd gladly work and I plan to make big, cheerful presentations, full of aspirations, some student work, and concretely designed ideas. If my heart will not be sunk by the usual fear and sense of doom which comes from some of the continued grim realities of things, I should be able to do what I aim to do. It's amazing -- I can feel an influx of warm oil over the nerves and my brain sinks like a sponge full of jello. That's what it feels like when I think too much about the odds or the horrors my colleagues and I have experienced in downright disrespectful situations. None yet for me this year, and I hope (and I blow a full balloon inside my chest when I say that word) none too soon.
But, I know the removal of music and arts programs at certain schools is part of an effort to de-stabilize them so they can be closed. This ATR pattern is not going away.
If, in the end, 85 percent of the ATR's are not hired by finding their own jobs, but are sent by the DOE to be interviewed and eventually find work that way, why not start now? Klein initially called ATR's "undesireables" -- not many of the new principals have enough experience with older teachers to lose that first impression no matter how many times Klein now calls us worthy. Why not just place us now? Does Bloomberg think that in an election year he can negotiate a contract in which the UFT gives up job security? What would the UFT do, then, effectively? The 3020a process would dissipate as people could be excessed and then let go. Could they really justify their salaries just for a medical and dental plan (the latter of which I have spent my life avoiding using thanks to my uncle being a dentist. Since he retired, my teeth have been living in fear.) Would they just negotiate another raise? Would it just be about money? Then we would definitely be abandoning the children. No amount of money can replace acceptable working conditions. By acceptable, I mean ones in which the students and you feel secure enough to invest in the school in which you can be adventurous, challenging and creative.
I know one person with experience who was hired and he is 34.
I am "Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's" hopeful about one school which I adore and to which I hope I can be of use. Two more interviews loom at two other schools in which I'd gladly work and I plan to make big, cheerful presentations, full of aspirations, some student work, and concretely designed ideas. If my heart will not be sunk by the usual fear and sense of doom which comes from some of the continued grim realities of things, I should be able to do what I aim to do. It's amazing -- I can feel an influx of warm oil over the nerves and my brain sinks like a sponge full of jello. That's what it feels like when I think too much about the odds or the horrors my colleagues and I have experienced in downright disrespectful situations. None yet for me this year, and I hope (and I blow a full balloon inside my chest when I say that word) none too soon.
But, I know the removal of music and arts programs at certain schools is part of an effort to de-stabilize them so they can be closed. This ATR pattern is not going away.
If, in the end, 85 percent of the ATR's are not hired by finding their own jobs, but are sent by the DOE to be interviewed and eventually find work that way, why not start now? Klein initially called ATR's "undesireables" -- not many of the new principals have enough experience with older teachers to lose that first impression no matter how many times Klein now calls us worthy. Why not just place us now? Does Bloomberg think that in an election year he can negotiate a contract in which the UFT gives up job security? What would the UFT do, then, effectively? The 3020a process would dissipate as people could be excessed and then let go. Could they really justify their salaries just for a medical and dental plan (the latter of which I have spent my life avoiding using thanks to my uncle being a dentist. Since he retired, my teeth have been living in fear.) Would they just negotiate another raise? Would it just be about money? Then we would definitely be abandoning the children. No amount of money can replace acceptable working conditions. By acceptable, I mean ones in which the students and you feel secure enough to invest in the school in which you can be adventurous, challenging and creative.
I LOVE THIS GUY
He has talent and he hustles....tonight he said, "I just kept running. I heard the screaming and I just kept running." He never looked back. As Joe Girardi said, "We won this game because of Mark Teixeira's hustle."
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