There is No Dignity in Teaching

I rarely reblog others, but this is a story that must be retold over and over again.

Administrators have forgotten that teachers (and the kids they work with) are in fact human beings and not numbers. Instead of standing up to government officials and defending their teachers, they uphold unfair—and frankly discriminatory— evaluation practices.

Read this…  https://urbanesl.wordpress.com/2018/05/26/there-is-no-dignity-in-teaching/comment-page-1/#comment-77

 

Change or Power Play?

Today the administration decided to shuffle the personnel in our very successful district. Our small K-6 district (New Hyde Park- Garden City Park) has 4 buildings and 145 teachers. I am the local President ( full disclosure).

Take a look at our NYS report card. Even though I am totally against this type of data, the data shows that we are extremely successful.  With this success, one would think that our new Superintendent and our 4 brand new building principals would look towards our successes, collaborate with staff and look to build on them.

Unfortunately, they have chosen to do the exact opposite. They announced a major shake up of most of the teachers here. They changed our grades we will teach, changed rooms and have us even changing buildings They are taking teachers who have spent many years in lower grades and assigning them to upper grades and vice a versa. They have refused to share the rationale for this upheaval.

I am well aware that every year there needs to be some changes, due to enrollment and other needs. Those changes are often rational decisions with some teacher input. Not this year! We have been told nothing except this is your new assignment.

As our Local President, I believe my new assignment in another building is due to my position as President. That will not stand. I have has a successful 19 year career  and I will be damned if they will get away with this.

To make matters worse our new Superintendent  comes to us from a district where she was the director of curriculum. I have been told, by those in charge, that it is unfair to compare her old district’s report card with ours. I disagree,  the truth must be exposed.

When we look at her report card we discover that our scores are 50% higher! When we take a close read of the data and look at the demographic we also discover that our population has many more immigrants and more ELL students.

So what does this show?  It shows that we are successful and we have a right, a duty and a need to sound the alarm! It shows that we need to be wary of change for the sake of change or change because that’s the way she has done it in her old district.

As President of our local. I requested that our local participate in the selection process for a superintendent. We were told no!  So this is the result. We are heading blindly into an abyss.  I feel sorry for the children our hands have been tied.

Stay tuned.