ATR = Absolutely Teaching Ready

Below is a leaflet that has been prepared by the GEM-ATR Committee, to be distributed at the UFT meetings for members of the ATR.  NYCATR humbly suggests that every teacher who attends those meetings should read this leaflet first, and use it as ammunition during the meeting.  

We Are ATRS: Absolutely Teaching Ready –

but denied the opportunity by the Department of Education.

They’ve closed our schools, reduced the student population through charters, excessed us through outrageous budget cuts and made it illogical for a principal to hire us because we are experienced, well trained adults who insist on respect and are more than a few steps up the salary schedule from new graduates.

Demand Respect & Justice for ATR Teachers

The "hiring" freeze was not a freeze at all: ATRs must be placed before any new teachers are considered with no salary penalty to the school: The DOE claim to lift the hiring freeze this summer was bogus as principals were only required to interview 2 ATRs and then were free to hire newbies and less experienced teachers. Ex: one large HS in Queens has 5 newbie math teachers.

2,000 excessed teachers have swelled the ranks of the ATR- teacher pool as ATRs are obligated to waste time at Job Fairs that for the most are exercises in futility. This is an injustice that:

• Is unprofessional, disrespectful, demoralizing and humiliating to teachers who have dedicated years of satisfactory service to our school communities. Both a “no layoff/firing guarantee” and a permanent classroom job are what all teachers deserve.
• Is an unconscionable waste by the DOE of taxpayer money in these lean budget times, costing the city from $80 to $100M yearly.
• Discriminates against students, parents, and schools by denying adequate quality staffing.
• Foments larger class sizes and a deterioration of the quality of teaching.

The attitude that "We are lucky to have a job" is not acceptable

ATRs demand that the UFT:

• Insist on no new hiring until all ATRs are placed.

• Call for ATRs in "obsolete license areas" (like Reading) to be allowed to recertify in a new license or get the summer crash course that TFA and TFs get to allow them to fill vacancies shortage areas.
• Create ATR Chapters with elected CLs in each borough to provide fair representation: ATRs shifted from school-to-school do not have a permanent Chapter Leader to represent their interests.
• End the agreement that forces ATRs to be wandering substitutes at different schools each week: parents, especially women with young children will face child care issues due to unpredictable assignments. The UFT must recognize that the DOE aim is to drive many to the brink of quitting.
• Publicize the plight of ATRs to all teachers and the general public in all media.

Every teacher is a potential ATR through excessing, closing schools and charter school growth. We refuse to be swept under the rug by the DOE and the UFT. We need to organize ourselves since the UFT refuses to do so. We need an outreach campaign to our fellow teaching non-ATRs (but possibly soon to be) to get them on our side.

Our strength is growing. The bigger we get the better the chance the DOE and the UFT will be forced to respond in a positive manner.

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What you can do: Attend meeting we are calling for ATRs on Oct. 20, 5PM at Skylight Diner (34th St. and 9th Ave)

• Attend one of the UFT borough office meetings and distribute this leaflet and ask people to join this committee.
• Join the GEM ATR Committee sponsored by the Grassroots Education Movement: Email - gemnyc@gmail.com.
• Follow updates and post your stories at: nycatr.blogspot.com & ednotesonline.blogspot.com.
• Support and sign the resolution at the UFT borough ATR meetings (see reverse side on some leaflets or check the blogs).

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Long-term demands:

• Restore rights of excessed teachers lost in 2005 UFT/DOE contract when ATR pool was created: bring back guarantee of right to vacancy in license area at another nearby school. Put an end to current open market "principal choice."
• End fair funding formula: schools get charged for teacher salaries giving principals incentives to NOT hire higher salaried/senior teachers.
• Protect LIFO (Last In First Out), seniority and tenure contractual rights: Privatization advocates are pushing hard to eliminating tenure/seniority rights guarantees as they've done in Chicago (ATRs get 9 months) and Washington, DC (ATRs get 6 months) before they are fired.
• Fight for a diverse teaching force: ATR ranks are filled with a high proportion of Black and Latino experienced teachers. Last year, the UFT passed a resolution to protect and promote “diversity in the NYC teaching force”. Ensure that the UFT uphold the spirit and letter of that resolution.
• Stop the charter-privatization of our schools: The nation-wide and local City drive to dismantle, close public schools and replace them with non-unionized charters helped precipitate this massive ATR pool. End mayoral control of schools: none of the above happens without turning the system over to the mayor.

NEXT STEPS: ATRs will gather October 20 at 5PM at the Skylight Diner (34th St and 9th Avenue)

RESOLVED:

• No new hiring until all ATRs are placed.

• Publicize the plight of ATRs to all teachers and the general public in all media.

• ATRs in "obsolete license areas" (like Reading) get the summer crash course that TFA and TFs get to allow them to fill vacancies shortage areas: (If a newbie can walk into a classroom after a five-week crash course, then wouldn't a seasoned veteran be able to do at least as well, probably better?)
• Create ATR Chapters with elected CLs in each borough to provide fair representation: (ATRs shifted from school-to-school do not have a permanent Chapter Leader to represent their interests.)
• The UFT conduct an investigation of the DOE Open Market and Excessed Teacher website and find statistics on its use in hiring by principals.
• The economic advantage of hiring new teachers must be eliminated to level the playing field.
• The UFT shall carefully investigate and publicize complaints by ATRs about their hiring experiences.
• The UFT leadership shall make a solemn commitment to seeing that ATRs are hired and that no concession be made to the city to eliminate ATRs.

Sign the petition below if you agree with these demands

Name (print legibly) Signature Email (not DOE)

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Overweight ATR Teacher Finds a Job!

The following was sent to us by a teacher who would like to be known as Overweight and Way Over Forty.  It is a rags-to-riches story of an ATR teacher whose prayers were answered.  We hope that it will inspire others to keep the faith. 

  

I was excessed in June as a math coach. I am many years over 40, overweight, overopinionated, and expensive.

Like Ms. Life in Limbo, I panicked about being flung around each week due to child care issues. I spoke to the Brooklyn UFT office and the gal there did not even know how many districts composed the superintendency I could be tossed around in. I told her it was her job to know this and call me back right away. When she did my suspicion was confirmed--my fate was defined as the old BASIS superintendency. I live in Manhattan and could now be sent to the south side of Staten Island on a whim. Brooklyn Unity gal was indifferent to this.

Well, I didn't go to any job fairs. I went camping with my daughter. But, I did register right away with the Open Market and post my resume. I also did follow up phone calls. I applied to 7 schools that were reasonably convenient.  I also faxed my resume to a few schools and sent emails to the principals on DOE email to make sure they looked at my application. 

The results: 

1. One very prestigious school that I hadn't even applied to called me for an interview based on my on-line resume.

2. One school said they would get back to me and didn't.

3. A very wonderful, supportive alternative school demo-lessoned and interviewed me. The school is 6 blocks from my daughter's school in Manhattan. I am now hired there under Open Market transfer on their galaxy table. BUT MOST IMPORTANT, I HAVE A PARKING SPOT! 

The principal stated that my credentials coupled with my persistence of politely calling, faxing, and emailing made me stand out. I also had written letters of recommendation from supervisors and a "Brag Book" about me that I would open to relevant areas during the interview. 

I was in constant prayer on this one, and several friends were also hoping for Divine Intervention, I think I may have had It on this one, and frankly, that is what it takes. My situation is somewhere between lucky and blessed or both.

I'm praying for all of you now.

Image credit:  http://www.dbpuppet.com/images/Pic_Gallery_OldLadyCU.jpg

New York City Ronin Teacher, by Marc Epstein

The following was sent to NYCATR by Marc Epstein.  Mr. Epstein was a history teacher at Jamaica High School; he is now a member of the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), stationed at a "re-start" school in Richmond Hill.

Mr. Epstein's articles have been published in a wide variety of first-rate publications.  After reading this article you'll agree that Mr. Epstein has deserved to be published by the New York Sun, the  Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and now, by NYCATR.

http://www.episodeguide.us/episodeimages/ronin-warriors.jpg

About six weeks ago I received a letter informing me that I was now a member of the Absent Teacher Reserve pool of the New York City Department of Education. That meant that because my school was being phased out and wouldn't be accepting new students my services were no longer wanted. Approximately half of the remaining faculty at Jamaica High School received the same notice.

We've now joined the pool of approximately 2,000 "ronin" teachers who were instructed to find jobs by entering an "open market" that lists available teaching positions on the internet, and attend "job fairs."

The term "ronin" (literally, "floating men") originally described samurai in medieval Japan who for one reason or another no longer had a lord to serve, and, hence, lost their employment. It's estimated that around 1600, the number swelled to over 400,000. (Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Kodansha, p. 1275 vol. 2, ISBN 4-06-931098-3)

For those unfamiliar with Japanese history, the ronin genre of movies became famous worldwide in the 1950s and 60s. Arguably the most famous of which were The Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, directed by Akira Kurosawa.

I dutifully followed the instructions on the Department Of Education website and applied for jobs in my field. So did my colleagues. We didn't receive a single call for an interview.

I received an email informing me that a "job fair" was taking place at the Brooklyn Museum last week. Four Jamaica High School ronin piled into my car with our bar-coded invitations and traveled to the museum.

Faceless bureaucrats with name tags and Blackberries greeted us at the door. We were told to take the elevator up to a magnificent rotunda with desks arranged in a circle. School representatives were seated at the tables with signs indicating their school and positions available.

We ran into other ronin who had been dropped from our school the year before. They told us that all of the job fairs that they had attended had been a waste of time.

Our group consisted of two English and two Social Studies teachers. Although many positions were listed on the Internet during the "open market," there wasn't a single job interview in our field at the museum.

If you don't live in New York, you can read tales of Ronin-Teachers at a website devoted to chronicling their travails.  [NYCATR: I guess that's us.] Aside from acting as a samizdat for people in our predicament, it reveals the dirty little secret that New York City really has no public left in the political sense anymore. That's because in another era an earsplitting roar would have erupted over the deliberate misuse and abuse of qualified public servants.

I felt like I was an extra in Chushingura, a Japanese play about the forty-seven samurai who took revenge after the forced suicide of their lord Asano Nagamori. Asano had drawn his sword in the Shogun's castle after being humiliated by the chief of protocol. Forty-seven of his samurai who had become ronin after Asano's death, waited two years to exact vengeance. (Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Kodansha, p. 404 vol. 1, ISBN 4-06-931098-3)

They found employment by taking on all sorts of demeaning occupations until they were sure that the secret police were no longer watching them, then they carried out their vendetta.

When I was doing my graduate work in Japan, I observed that the story would be performed annually. 

Every Japanese person knows the story. It's been presented in Bunraku puppet theatre, Kabuki plays, movies, and television series, in countless revivals for the past three hundred years. Nevertheless, everyone remains riveted by the story and enjoys the play for the staging and the performance.

In the end the ronin get their revenge and assassinate the chief of protocol, but the Shogun, not knowing what to do with these loyal samurai, at last offers them the only honorable Japanese solution. They are allowed to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) en masse.

Feudal arrangements have displaced rational bureaucratic function. Increasingly, the twenty-first century business model for running the country's largest public school system resembles something out of a Japanese medieval play. 

Rather than the high-tech model that was supposed to usher in the new age of education innovation, we have an authoritarian regime bent on holding the teaching profession responsible for ten years of meaningless doctored test results. In addition to the human cost of a decade of poorly educated kids, the budget has doubled to $22 billion a year!

A kind of kabuki-charade plays out with a script that talks about "business models," "open markets," and "job fairs," while no honest method of staffing schools with qualified teachers who have become ronin is put in place.

With the start of the new school year the editorialists will once again rail about unemployable teachers who are living on the taxpayer's largesse, while the mayor revives his campaign to terminate us.

Our union leaders celebrate when Mayor Bloomberg's phony threat to lay off thousands of teachers isn't realized. But when the Department of Education lifted the hiring freeze this summer so that schools can hire cheaper inexperienced teachers at precisely the same time that the ronin teacher pool is being stocked with older experienced bodies, nobody says a word. That includes the union and New York's vaunted press. 

At the end of the day the teacher-ronin are expendable. After all, when you go to the movies and buy popcorn, does it matter who puts the popcorn in the box, or if there is a new person behind the counter every three weeks?

The MBA types who now run our schools will tell you that if you can manage a muffler shop you can manage a McDonald's, a bowling alley, or a movie theatre, so why not a school? In this corporate universe teacher experience is as irrelevant as is the size of the classes.

But in our society ritual suicide is not an honorable solution. So I don't expect a mass suicide of ronin-teachers even if the mayor offers it as an option.

All of the teacher-ronin have received email notification to report to various schools the day after Labor Day. We can be utilized in any capacity, and have no idea if we will be teaching in our subject area.

The Department of Education reminds me of the "man on the street" who was asked by a reporter whether he thought it was worse to be ignorant or indifferent? He replied, "I don't know and I don't care."

The pity is Kurosawa is no longer around to make a movie about the New York City ronin-teachers that would give Davis Guggenheim's Waiting for Superman a run for its money.

Breaking News: An ATR teacher finds a job!

An ATR teacher we know has found a permanent teaching position in the New York City public schools.  

This teacher had been a member of the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) since he was excessed from his original school in September, 2008.  In his three years of exile, he did what many others have done:

*he attended numerous job fairs, few of which had any openings in his license area;

*he applied for hundreds of positions on the DOE's online Open Market Hiring System;

*he was interviewed tens of times, often for positions that would have required him to switch to a different license area and return to probation; 

*he served as a substitute in three different schools, usually receiving little or no support from administration, but always receiving a Satisfactory rating at the end of the school year;

*he cringed whenever the Mayor or the Chancellor threatened to fire all the ATRs;

*he worried that this coming year, 2011-2012, he might be shifted from school to school on a weekly basis.

This particular teacher recently had the good fortune to find a regular position.  It is in a location that will necessitate considerable commuting, and it is in a special program that some would consider undesirable.

Nonetheless, this teacher is thrilled and grateful to have found a position.  He is none other than yours truly, the one who goes by the aliases NYCATR, brooklynatr, and Joseph Moses.


For the moment, he plans to continue this blog, but he needs help.  He will no longer be on the ATR front line.  He needs ATRs to contribute by email (at brooklynatr@gmail.com) and by comments to the blog.  


Anyone out there??