First NYC Mayoral Debate just over a week away……..
Politics is a dirty business but someone has to do it. Tune in or attend the Mayoral debate October 13th and make up your own mind as to who you think possesses the cleanest pair of hands. We all saw in November what an informed and active group of voters can accomplish nationally and there is no reason not to apply those mindsets on a local scale.
All your debate info is here: http://www.nyccfb.info/debates/debateProgram.htm. One more thing to look forward to – this debate will feature a lightning round.
First NYC Mayoral Debate
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
El Museo Del Barrio – 5th Ave at 103rd Street
TV – NY1 Radio-WNYC
paul schroeder on Sun, 11th Oct 2009 10:14 am
As a teacher in NYC for over 35 years, I’ve noted that teacher morale is at a new low. For one reason, it is virtually impossible to manage and educate grossly overcrowded classes. (what DO you say to yourself, looking at a class of over forty pupils; “I shall give that child one minute of attention and that pupil four minutes and that one thirty seconds?). Having nearly forty pupils or more per class in a high school setting nullifies the individualized attention often needed for pupil success.
monsters in suits
In addition, administrators except in rare cases seem predominately and uniquely unqualified to administrate the teaching of teachers. They have been trained specifically in only one regard and that is to perceive administration as the use of gross and harsh bullying tactics towards teachers often using tactics that we as teachers would come under fire for if they were used in our own classroom management. Administrators are also uniformly the poorest role models for new and even seasoned teachers as they unerringly conduct inane, tedious and boring faculty meetings and teacher training workshops lessons that would surely fail in the classroom and quickly lose our pupil’s interests if we endeavored to employ them.
a failing system with 50% dropout statistics
The insoluble problems to New York City education persist in badly outdated curriculum, crumbling school infrastructures, an a priori pupil ennui, widespread parental carelessness and untrained and inept assistant principals and principals who are unprofessional as well as untrained except in a new tactic of widespead mean -spiritedness.These principals are taught in closed workshops and secretly encouraged by the Mayor’s office and the Chancellor’s office to rule by such bullying. Under the Mayor’s new total control, these principals have new found medieval powers over teachers in the New York City educational system.
bully tactics
A teacher interviewed by me recently had spent many months in a rubber room after being falsely and unfairly accused of insubordination by such an unscrupulous principal. And this, after 35 years of unblemished service. Removed from the classroom and sent to Linden place in Queens he was suddenly aloft and facing pending charges, sent to a holding cell crowded with teachers from all walks, also charged with similar frivolous and goofy charges. It was truly a illegal detention of a professional Union.
The psychological damage of sudden detention for months and for some, years, in a crowded holding pen with dozens more, locked in a rubber room, with many more such rooms hidden away around the city, did enough damage to those around him, all accomplished and dedicated teachers.This daily inglorious restraint destroyed all of his teaching muscles and challenged his morale. Eventually, it forced him and other senior teachers to resign. “We can make these charges all go away,if you resign”, is what DOE attorney Fox told him and others; where’s the due process in that?
guilty before proven unfairly guilty
These suddenly burgeoning rubber rooms are illegal violations of Civil Liberties and due process. He observed that swift fair adjudication and fair treatment was given to much younger teachers accused of similar charges.They didn’t languish for long months or years for adjudication that strove to prove them guilty ; it was odd that younger teachers were treated fairly. Senior teachers as a group were forced out ; could this reflect a systemic move by the State Legislature and State Senate to balance the State budget by removing senior staff everywhere, or is this Mayor Bloomberg’s rancor at the UFT? These teachers have been abandoned by their union and are forced into a semblance and a cynical facsimile of due process.
865 teachers awaiting charges
Whoever has ordered this sudden unfair treatment that bounces teachers antiseptically from schools into “rubber rooms” and paints them all with the same punitive brush has doubled the rosters of detained and tightly corralled teachers for similar charges of insubordination.This is unprecedented in the history of New York City.
Bloomberg’s fascism
Why does the teacher’s union, the UFT, allow these rooms to exist and persist? No other so-called professional Union would tolerate such treatment of its members. But principals continue to remove teachers who show any personal unionized initiatives in questioning principals or their new bullying tactics and clearly the blame rests at the Mayor’s door.