A Matter of Principals

A lot of talk has gone back and forth about how to improve teacher quality, empty the rubber rooms, and solve the ATR problem. Unfortunately, almost all of the solutions involve firing 'bad' teachers.

Of course, 'bad' is hard to define and harder to measure. To me, 90% of being a good teacher is the ability to maintain discipline. You can write, or buy, the best lesson plans in the world but if students are dancing the rhumba on their desks and launching paper projectiles at you, good plans won't help.

Once you get the discipline down (no small feat, believe me), then the next step to teacher greatness is delivering those lessons. A lot of teachers with good discipline stink on ice when it comes to content. I pulled my own daughter from public school because she was going to be saddled with a teacher who had no discipline problems but also had no desire to teach the curriculum. This teacher was a diva, as I discussed here---a principal's pet who could teach whatever nonsense she wanted as long as it was flashy and reflected well on the school in terms of elaborate plays and multi-dimensional bulletin boards.

The third, and IMO, least piece of the puzzle is being engaging. It's wonderful if your students like you, but in truth, your job is to teach, not to be liked. Generally, if you have good discipline and you teach good lessons, your students will like you and be interested in what you have to say.

It's insane to believe that individual teachers have control over all these things all by themselves. Discipline, for example, depends to a great extent on the school. Teach at Stuyvesant, like our friend Matt Polazzo, where the kids are top notch and motivated, and the discipline is so easy that you have time to call for the firing your fellow teachers who aren't as blessed as you. I'd like to drop Mr. Polazzo into a school like the one I used to teach in--a school consumed by poverty and where gangs owned the neighborhood--and see how good he really is.

What gets lost in these discussions is how much principals can affect teacher quality. If we want to make schools better, we have to hold principals accountable in a number of ways:

• Discipline starts at the top. It's ridiculous to claim that a teacher is incompetent when the school is out of control.
• Principals should stop allowing Divas to infect their schools. Make them teach like everyone else does.
• Since principals can hire whoever they want, they should have their feet held to the fire when they grant tenure to someone who turns out to be a dud. Principals have three years to evaluate teachers before granting them tenure or firing them. Teachers can be fired for any reason in that time frame.
• Penalties should be instituted for principals who grant tenure to teachers who later are brought up on incompetence charges. It is extremely rare for a good teacher to turn into a lousy one just because they were granted tenure. What really happens is that teachers with tenure begin making more money as they get their master's and climb the salary steps. They become more involved in union activities and become more vocal--not the puppets they were in their probationary years. Principals often file incompetence charges against teachers who make too much or talk too much to suit them.
• Principals should be forced to tell the truth at 3020a hearings. As the law now stands, principals can flat out lie at a hearing and there is no penalty. What kind of fair hearing is it when one side can lie with impunity? Principals who lie at 3020 hearings should be charged with perjury and subject to civil penalties for slander.
• When it's found that rubber room charges were unfounded, principals should be penalized. Read the story of Daniel Smith and you'll know what I'm talking about. If it turns out these are trumped up charges, the administrators involved should be fired and hit with massive civil penalties.
• Principals should not be allowed to flaunt the contract by refusing to hire ATRs in their schools. There are many--mostly--high quality teachers in that pool, despite the outlandish claims of newbie teachers like Ariel Sacks. Yet principals refuse to hire them, preferring instead to skirt the rules and costing the city millions of dollars and priceless teaching talent.

I don't want to make more of this than what it is. Some principals are a part of the problem, as are some teachers, as is the mayor, the chancellor, and {{{gasp}}} some parents. Unfortunately, teachers, as the most visible face of education, are the sole scapegoats when things go wrong.

Teacher Bashing--It's Not Just for Politicians Anymore!

If you want your 15 minutes of fame these days but you can't think of anything other than claiming one of your students has commandeered a hot air balloon and is somewhere over the Atlantic, I have good news for you. As a NYC teacher, all you have to do is be a traitorous rat and dump on your fellow teachers.

Ariel Sacks just recently did that, and she got considerable attention for it. I thought she was pretty bad, but she was nothing compared to fellow attention whore Matt Polazzo, who recently had an opinion piece published in the Daily News (which he refers to as the NY Daily Post on his Facebook page, which speaks to how accurate the guy is). You can read the article here, especially if you're a fan of illogical arguments and limited vocabularies.

To save time, Polazzo basically says that incompetent teachers, presumably those unlike him, should be fired immediately, while good teachers, presumably those like him, should stay. He never defines good or bad, but I bet he can tell the difference pronto.

I was tipped off to Polazzo's Facebook page by an alert reader, and it tells us a lot about the guy. Other than being unable to identify the newspaper he was published in, we receive many other insights into his mind. For example, the page is called "Team Polazzo" and has a nice picture of a pirate instead of his actual face. What's really unusual is how many teachers have commented on the article, including one who says that they should all wear tee shirts with the words "Team Polazzo" written on them. Personally, I think they could save a lot of time and money by just buying a bunch of "I'm with Stupid" tees.

So, why did Polazzo write a piece trashing his colleagues? One can only guess, but attention whore suggested itself to me immediately. Also, I'd bet his physique isn't quite what Survivor (or even Tool Academy) is looking for, and he most likely flunked the exam for Are Your Smarter Than a Fifth Grader, so he had to look for another avenue for self promotion.

To be honest, Polazzo doesn't bother me that much. The education world has always had bottom feeding ass kissers who look to further their careers by smooching the wrinkled buttocks of the Kleins of the world. What bothers me is that he has followers. In a similar vein, I can understand why the world has Charles Manson types, but I'll be damned if I can figure out why others want to be part of the family.

Since Polazzo wants to tear up the teacher's contract, I assume he has the courage of his convictions. When his supervisor writes him up one day, I assume he will immediately resign. Right, Mr. Polazzo? When that day comes, I bet he'll wish he'd pulled a balloon boy stunt instead. But with that much hot air, he'd probably leave the Earth's atmosphere. Not that I'd object.

UPDATE: To clarify, the FB page mentioned above is a team page, and not Mr. Polazzo's personal FB page. Sorry for any confusion.

Open Letter to Ariel Sacks

If you aren't following the Ariel Sacks saga, you should be. She is (to me) a newbie teacher who has seen fit to disrespect ATRs and veteran teachers alike by claiming how incompetent they are on Gotham Schools. Read it for yourself.

I was one of the first to comment on Ms. Sack's unfortunate post, and I blogged about it here as well. Then Gotham Schools blogged about me blogging about it. It has taken on Balloon Boy proportions in the local education blogosphere, as I pointed out in a comment to this post. Ms. Sacks herself responded, which was quite kind of her, so I thought the least I could do was write a personal response. So here it is:

Dear Ms. Sacks,

Thank you for taking the time to post on my humble blog. First, I'd like to correct a few aspersions you have cast on it. You called this blog a ..."safe space where you have a group that is on the same page about enough things that you don't have to explain yourselves to each other." In truth, I've posted on many blogs where I have meticulously explained my views. Blogs tend to be places where like minded people gather anyway. Far from your implication that I am somehow cowardly for posting here, I would remind you that I was one of the first to call you out on your post on Gotham Schools. Furthermore, I have posted at least ten times about the ATR situation--all of them long before your post to Gotham. Everyone has the opportunity to refute my views on this blog--including you. I don't delete opposing viewpoints.

Now, please allow me to address some other issues. In your comment, you tell me: "You're (sic) "scathing," or perhaps just rude, remarks make this into a personal not professional debate, which weaken your arguments." If that makes my arguments weak, yours must have positively atrophied by now. In your Gotham post, you call 37 ATRs unqualified to teach at your school (what your qualifications are that exceed theirs remains unclear). You smear these veteran teachers by presenting an ad hominem and a false choice argument in one (quite an accomplisment, BTW): "Are these teachers really the dregs of the profession? Or is it that they’ve become all too comfortable being ATRs with no teaching position and do not want to go back to the classroom?" Can you enlighten me, Ms. Sacks, on how calling veteran teachers the "dregs of the profession" elevates the level of discourse? You proceeded to say that ATRs are not welcome at your school, and that they "behave like incompetent substitutes". Would you not consider that scathing and rude? You say they are like "refugees" in the teachers' room. How should they feel, given your attitude towards them?

You wonder why you get negative reaction when, in addition to the above slurs, you appear complicit, or at least in total agreement, with the decisions of your administration to skirt the terms of the hiring freeze and education regulations. Your school passed on 37 candidates and numerous subs for a math class while "...we attempted to wait the hiring freeze out." (emphasis mine). How long did you plan to violate the terms of the hiring freeze? How long did you intend to allow a math class to be without a regular teacher because of your distaste for ATRs? You seem in full agreement of your principal's decision to pull a special ed teacher from a CTT class in order to avoid hiring a senior teacher. Do you really feel it was appropriate to deny mandated services to children with special needs because you prefer not to have any of the "refugees" mingling with you in the cafeteria? Shouldn't their education come first?

You seem to be resentful that teachers like me don't work as hard as teachers like you. In truth, I probably don't work as hard as someone like you. I don't need to. I know what I am doing. I've taught every grade numerous times and I know my subject area inside out. I have written plans for every type of class for every type of reading and writing assignment imaginable. I have a stockpile of tried and true lessons that I can adapt for any class and which I have refined over the course of several decades to be as effective as possible. Perhaps you work so hard because you lack the experience to draw upon when writing your own lessons. When I was as new as you, I had to work much harder, too. The difference is that I didn't resent senior teachers; I reached out to them to learn how to become the best teacher I could be.

You also seem resentful that veteran teachers make more money than you do. You specifically mention an out-of-license ATR who, while adapting to the class, irked you because " I feel like I’m training her, while she gets paid twice my salary." Perhaps you are unaware that teaching has never been a well paid profession, and it used to be much worse. I made about $18K in my first year--how about you? Do you resent the fact that I achieved my master's plus 30 (plus much more) and put in more than two decades of dedicated service?

I do have a question for you. As a young teacher, what gives you the right to judge all of your fellow teachers and paint them with such a broad brush? Did you sit in on the 37 interviews your principal conducted? Did you personally observe each one teaching? If so, what qualifies you to make an evaluation as to what you saw? What qualifies you to say that ATRs have an "apparent low ability to teach"?

I suppose we should give you a break. Being lead teacher and department chair are heady things, after all. Your principal must think a lot of you. I can only hope for your sake that this principal stays around forever, because with a change of administration in a few years you may find yourself working in a school where you are considered the pariah for being one of those over paid veterans who soak up too much of the school budget. Should that ever happen, you may just find yourself standing shoulder to shoulder on the interview line with your fellow ATRs, avoiding eye contact with all the newbie teachers who consider you one of the dregs of the teaching profession.

It shouldn't happen to anyone. Not even you.

Get Out the Barf Bag

The latest post in the community section of Gotham Schools is so alarmingly inaccurate and deceitful that it deserves special mention here. One Ms. Sacks writes about the ATRs in her school and proceeds not only to smear them, but virtually all veteran teachers in the process. She obviously has her head up her principal's ass, as she condones his attempts to thwart the hiring freeze and subvert the contract. Read the piece, and please comment. Let Ms. Sacks know what you think.

Here's my comment:

This article is a disgrace. We have here a teacher who obviously resents other teachers who make more than she does (one assumes she thinks she is worth more). She accepts the principal’s assertion that not ONE ATR was qualified to teach at her school as the gospel truth. She implies that she thinks these teachers are the “dregs” of the profession based upon…what? Hearsay? Obviously the author is in league with the principal–”WE’ tried to subvert the hiring freeze…”WE” found a way around it. As a teacher and a union member, do you really feel that you should be on your principal’s side as he violates the spirit and letter of the contract?

There is no such thing as a teacher who is licensed to teach all subjects in a middle school. Did anyone fact check this piece? In truth, that special ed teacher is teaching OUT OF LICENSE in violation of the teacher’s contract and Klein’s hiring freeze.

There is an assertion here that TFAs are “more committed and faster learners” than ATRs. That is nothing but a bald faced slur on a group of teachers who have put in more years than the author and all the TFAs in her school combined.

Finally, I don’t think it’s the twilight zone you’re in, although I have no doubt, Ms. Sacks, that your head has wandered to some nether region and has somehow made it up a passageway vertically.

Gotham Schools–you should be ashamed to print such nonsense. Ms. Sacks, I sure hope your principal promised you some plum job for writing it.