Ms. Life in Limbo, our wildly popular contributor, recently reported that an interviewer asked her why she hadn't been "picked up" by either of the two schools where she had been sent to substitute as a member of the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR).
Before I expand on Ms. Limbo's answer, allow me to take offense at the term "picked up." Are ATR teachers like hookers waiting to be "picked up" in a hotel lobby? Or are they like criminals who are "picked up" by the cops?
Members of the ATR are teachers. They are employed by the DOE, and they have done nothing to justify a termination of their employment. They are looking for a regular appointment within one school, where they can use their talents for the benefit of the students.
When the DOE sends an ATR teacher to a school as a substitute, it does so more or less randomly:
*Early Childhood teachers are sent to middle schools;
*Early Childhood teachers are sent to middle schools;
*Reading teachers are sent to schools that have just closed their Reading programs;
*general education teachers are sent to work with a Committee on Special Education;
*high-school teachers are sent to elementary schools;
*Science teachers are sent to cover for Art teachers;
These haphazard placements are a disservice to the students, and are certainly no help to the ATR teachers who are looking for permanent positions.
*You might be the most wonderful Reading teacher, but the principal who just excessed all his Reading teachers has no interest in you;
*you might be a great Science teacher, but your new principal will never get to know that by watching you struggle to teach art;
*you might be a great Early Childhood specialist, but a total failure at trying to control a room full of 7th-graders.
These are some of the major reasons that ATR teachers are not often hired by the schools where they substitute. They might want to be "picked up," but they are sent to the dance in ugly-duckling costumes and find themselves hugging the walls. Anyone who thinks otherwise has never been a member of the Absent Teacher Reserve.
Disgusting. We all know that this is done because they gave the spoiled children rights over their budgets. Who cares about student success, it's about money with these frauds. This is horrendous union busting and we all need to wake up in our respective municipalities and smell the coffee. Devaluing and dehumanizing teachers is not the answer.
ReplyDeleteAn Observation about NYC DOE Hiring Fairs from the NYTIMES but we ATRs knew it since 2006.Note that the ATRs have been observed by NYC School supervisors systematically in the schools they were.Then why further interviews as if they were news to the system? Waste of human capital...Trivial pursuit are all standards of the NYC DOE...
ReplyDeleteFSMEDU
Aug.23 2011
Please read the nytimes piece below:
Source URL: reporting.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/education/24excess.html?ref=michaelrbloomberg
By FERNANDA SANTOS
Jessica Bell contributed
NYTIMES
“The biggest joke about this whole thing,” she said of the fair, “is that there are all these excessed teachers, but they keep hiring all these new kids.” As part of the agreement between the union and the city that averted teacher layoffs, the teachers in the reserve pool will be called upon more frequently as long-term substitutes for a particular school, replacing colleagues who might be on leave for health reasons, for example, or be moved among schools in the same district from week to week. Previously, principals often hired substitutes who were not in the pool. As of Aug. 19, there were 1,940 teachers in the reserve pool, including 454 who have been there since last summer, 155 who joined it in the summer of 2009 and 68 from the summer of 2006, months after the pool was created."