Acting As If: The 13 Week Trial

Here's a new piece by our contributor Dumped ATR.  Her name fits her experiences, but she is trying to be positive.

It wasn't a bad spring, though my UFT Rep said I had a rough year. He and others have been trying to help me find a position after doing a good job at my spring "leave replacement" position. Here's how it went.

I took what turned out to be a leave replacement position this spring at a large, but pleasant high school on the other side of the NY Planet from where I live. It was the first time I had taught five, maximum-sized classes (my entire career has been spent in small schools, up till now.) All of these classes were well-attended, with students doing homework, extra credit--practically anything I assigned. Nobody thought I had a great shot of getting hired, though the coordinator of my department really wanted to bring me on board. However, in my mind, I believed I would be hired, and I tried my best to allow that belief to guide my work--to "act as if." Well, I wasn't hired permanently, though I was told I could apply for the job on the open market. As I don't want to feel doubly beaten, I chose not to do so. 

There are pros and cons to having been provisionally hired. If I hadn't done well in the position, I would be glad to leave it. However, I invested my abilities "as if" I were a permanent member of the staff. I'm not sure if my principal took the time to imagine me with quite the same interest. Of course, he doesn't have to do that. In fact, once he was asked by the DOE to make a decision about me (at 13 weeks in to a position I took over in the middle of the year) he made his decision, and that was it. (The DOE did this everywhere, don't ask me why.) To be safe, as he told the UFT Rep at the school, he "kept his options open." I had thirteen weeks in which there was one key observation by the principal, plus several "snapshots." The two department chairs who hired me, observed me and fought to keep me, to no avail, though I was honored by their efforts.

To be fair, I choked during that one observation, causing my class to basically ask me the next day, in polite terms, "WT--." They were stumped by what was, arguably, the most pretentious "Do Now" I had ever asked them and they had a hard time making connections to the follow-up questions. I panicked and thought, "Maybe they haven't understood anything I've said." The truth was, I had created a lesson designed to impress the principal and not really in the style in which I teach, or speak. The coordinator figured this out. So did my students (who also confessed they froze because the principal was there. No, I did not tell them in advance that I was being observed.) The next day, we completed the task that I had wanted them to do the day before in our usual rhythm with time to spare for good discussions. But, the principal would never return, despite attempts of administrators and senior faculty to get him to do so. Colleagues said that they had never seen so many people rally for one person. I'm very grateful. My supervisors were very complimentary and pleased with my work. They also knew, as one said, that I felt like "my entire career rested on the principal's observations"--and that it was difficult for me to keep my nerves from jumping out of my skin in his presence. For that reason, they sometimes popped in on me, to get me used to people walking in, and to emphasize to me what I did well, so that I might be less nervous should the principal come again. 


He didn't, unfortunately. I tried to act "as if" everything was okay, regardless, but the more time passed that he didn't return, the more, inside anyway, I felt like the chances of staying in the school were over. My colleagues were extremely understanding and supportive and I made many friends among them. They continually reminded me that they saw how hard I worked and that they knew I was a good teacher. But, the days passed. Oh sure, he came by for "snapshots." Walked in for less than five minutes during a discussion here and there. Asked my students what they were writing about. I was told that, unless he saw something he didn't like, he usually didn't stay long on these little surprise visits. He must've liked some of what he saw as he didn't stay. The one discussion I had with him directly after a snapshot (I got feedback from my coordinator) involved him saying I was "brilliant," but should try to let the students who are late pick up their handouts instead of passing them down to them. I took too much stock in the compliment, as it became clear to me later, that he didn't really have much of a handle on who I was or what I did. Certainly not enough to want to give me a second chance. I did get an "S" rating at the end of the year, and since everyone continued to rally for my employment until the end, I am secure in the idea that I did not do a terrible job. 

Nevertheless, the teaching experience was exhilarating. It was incredible to find myself "just teaching." My students were welcoming, sensitive and enjoyed challenges. I know the principal has no obligation to work with me or get to know me. I guess I simply wish he did. I would have committed to working with him. That wouldn't have been acting.

Buyouts for ATR teachers? Anyone Home?

Chancellor Dennis Walcott

Just about two months ago, 974 readers saw an article in this blog  about Chancellor Walcott's plan to offer retirement buyouts to ATR teachers.  The UFT, though, doesn't seem to know anything about it.  Here is a message from an anonymous ATR teacher:

No offer.  I called the UFT and spoke to a nasty woman who said, "We don't have a buyout."  I asked about the negotiations and where they stand and she repeated, "We don't have a buyout." Does anyone know what's happening? 

Former Bloomberg Henchman Turns on the Boss

Eric Nadelstern

Eric Nadelstern used to be the second-in-command at the NYC DOE, until he retired in January, 2011.  Now, however, Nadelstern has issued a paper in which he attacks the Bloomberg education administration: 

[they see] their primary role as creating opportunities for Bloomberg to step onto a national political stage after he [leaves] city government. Education reforms [are] now...evaluated on the basis of whether they contribute capital to the mayor’s political aspirations.

Click here to read Nadelstern's full report, and a summary thereof by Gotham Schools. 




Photo Credit: http://www.nypost.com/rw/nypost/2011/01/21/news/photos_stories/032309Education17WCL160149--300x300.jpg

What is an ATR?

Diane Ravitch

If you're looking for one great blog to follow (other than this one) I recommend Diane Ravitch's Blog.  The Divine Diane has her gentle finger on the pulse of education issues from New York City, the U.S.A. and the world over.

In a recent post, Dr. Ravitch responded to some readers from outside of NYC who wondered what an ATR is. Here is her response, together with a long quotation from one our colleagues:

I have explained that {an ATR} is a teacher who used to work in a school that was “phased out” and replaced by new schools. This is the Bloomberg administration’s central strategy of school reform: close and replace, close and replace, repeat and repeat. 

The teachers who lose their jobs have not been evaluated. They may be great teachers. They just happened to have the bad luck to teach in a closing school. If they are experienced teachers, other principals may reject them because their salaries are too high. So they become wanderers in the school system. They become members of the Absent Teacher Reserve, floating from school to school, a week at a time in each. They are lost souls in a soul-less system run by the greatest minds of our generation. 

I heard from an ATR today. He or she can tell you what life is like for an ATR:

Dear Diane, 

I am a 21 year veteran atr teacher. I truly appreciate your blogging. I have been subjected to the most ridiculous and hostile work environment this past year. As it stands, any teacher can become an ATR at anytime. 

The troubling thing is that my “colleagues” shun us as though we are lepers. I guess its just not cricket to be seen talking to us. The prevailing meme is that we must be “bad” teachers. 

The administration treats us like subs and even calls me a sub to my face. Imagine being informed in your email each week where you will be working the following week. At each school there is a different schedule, so forget dealing with your own children, holding a second job, going to school or even per session. The algorithm that the NYCDOE claims to use in the placement of the ATR underclass, includes distance from home as a major factor. For thirty of the thirty four schools I was sent to, the travel time each way was two hours minimum. 

As an ATR I have no democratic rights. We have no chapter. The only proper description of the treatment we have recieved at the hands of the DOE and its HR enforcement arm, the UFT has been constructive discharge.

Click here to read the full article. 

Big News: Thousands of Teachers Saved by Arbitrator From Falling into ATR Cesspool

The prospect of thousands of teachers falling into the ATR cesspool has been averted, at least temporarily, by an independent arbitrator.  The arbitrator ruled that the Mayor's plan to "turnaround" 24 schools is a violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Gotham Schools reports:

An arbitrator has ruled that the city’s plans to reform 24 struggling schools by overhauling their staffs violated its collective bargaining agreements with the teachers and principals unions.

The arbitrator’s decision adds a new and abrupt twist to the six-month-long shakeup at the schools. It also virtually guarantees that the city cannot claim more than $40 million in federal funds for the schools that the overhaul process, known as “turnaround,” was aimed at securing.

The turnaround rules require the schools to replace half of their teachers, and the city was trying to use a clause in its contract with the teachers union, known as 18-D, to make that happen. In recent weeks, “18-D committees” told hundreds and probably thousands of teachers and staff members at the schools they could not return next year. 

Under the arbitrator’s ruling, all of those staff members are now free to take their jobs back.

Click here for the complete article.

A School Too Far: Is School Choice Unraveling Education Reform In New York City?

A Ronin, or masterless samurai, lunges forward.

Marc Epstein, the Ronin Teacher, is once again a wandering warrior. After being plucked off the ATR rolls for a position at Jamaica H.S., Mr. Epstein has recently learned that he will be excessed once again.  The reason?  Because Jamaica H.S., like almost all of the city's once-great large comprehensive high schools, is being broken up into several mini-schools--schools that will be staffed, of course, by young, cheap, inexperienced teachers. No room for expert veterans like Mr. Epstein.

In the meantime, Mr. Epstein scours the Open Market for positions, and contributes insightful articles to publications like the Huffington Post.  Here is his latest:

It would appear that when students don't attend school, they don't get educated in ways that are productive for them in particular, and society at large.

Teachers have long known this to be the case. Now the issue is being joined by politicians, fueled by a Johns Hopkins study that found that 15% of American school children have been labeled chronically absent for missing one school day in ten. In New York City the number is 20%.

With only a few weeks remaining in the current school year, New York City has launched a multi-million dollar advertising campaign that asks, "It's 9:00 AM Do You Know Where Your Kids Are?"

Prior attempts at reducing truancy have included celebrity messages and "robo" calls made to the homes of the chronically absent by famous rappers to encourage attendance. Parental responsibility remains a touchy issue. While Bloomberg pointed his finger at parents, he maintained that it's up to the schools to ensure that their students are in attendance.

The problem isn't unique to New York City. Buffalo's teachers refused to have students who were chronically absent factored into their evaluations. The state refused to release Race To The Top monies until an agreement was reached. But there were no solutions that offered any real hope of reversing the staggering number of truants, save the tired nostrums of increased counseling and more parent outreach.

"Alexander the Great Cuts the Gordian Knot," by
Johann Georg Platzer (c. 1730)

At the end of the day, neither public service messages, nor increased cooperation between schools, police, and social welfare services will cut the truancy Gordian Knot.

That's because the truancy statistics are a fairly accurate reflection of the number of students who don't want to be in school. They don't want to be there, especially high school students, who represent the largest percentage of truants, because they arrive in high school incapable of performing on a high school level.

Click here to read the complete article. 

The Waiting Game, in which the Former ATR Wonders About September

After a long absence, our star contributor, Life in Limbo, is back.   She has spent the year out of the ATR frying pan, but into the fire of an out-of-control school.  Her life, we're sorry to say, is still in limbo.

So it’s June. And so far, it appears that I will be spending my first summer in three years NOT wondering where I will end up in September. I should be happy. I should be relieved. I should be relaxed, but this is not the case.


The school to which I am appointed is out of control. There is a complete and total lack of discipline which, of late, has become downright dangerous. Forget the constant cell phone/iPod visibility and usage (one student even brings his laptop to school every day and plays games on it constantly. When told to put it away, he responds, “Touch my f***ing laptop and you won’t have no arm no more, B****.”) When told to put the laptop away by a dean or AP, he does. At least until the dean/AP leaves the room. Then the laptop is back out and he resumes his games. Administration refuses to confiscate any of the electronics. Most of the time they are nowhere to be found.

Fights in the hallways and classrooms happen several times a day. Students smoke pot in the stairwells and often come to school drunk at 8:00 in the morning after drinking in a local park before school. Line-of-duty injuries are common due to unruly students physically assaulting me. I have sustained more than one this year. Both incidents were deemed “accidents” and the consequences to the students were minimal. The teacher next door is out on a line-of-duty injury resulting in a dislocated shoulder as a result of a student slamming a door shut on him (another “accident”). Another teacher has been out for some time with a neck, back, and knee injury when two students running in the halls plowed into her and threw her to the floor. The hallways double as jogging tracks and we teachers are constantly jostled and bumped as we stand in the halls during passing. Hall roamers run into the classroom several times a day to harass other students, randomly shout obscenities at the teacher, perform hip-hop dances, hide from administration, or fight students in the classroom. 

Administration’s response to this has been anemic at best– student removal forms are never acted upon, incident reports are filled out and submitted, but fail to elicit even an “in-house” suspension. Students who fight are removed from the room, but are returned to class ten minutes later after being told that they “are making poor choices.” Students who curse at and threaten teachers are taken out of class for a few minutes and returned to class because “there is nowhere to put them and they need to be educated”.


I am fully appointed to this school, which means unless I am excessed, I will return here in September. Rumor has it that the administration is to be replaced, and while I have no concrete news on this, I think something is up, as we have a Quality Review coming up and the administration is noticeably quiet. A week before a QR would have them poking into classroom libraries, data binders, file cabinets, and scouring Post-it notes on bulletin boards for “actionable feedback.”  But nothing. It is as if they have thrown up their hands and left it all to fate.


I wonder about this. For all their faults, the administration in this building is not a “Gotcha Squad.” I don’t tremble with fear when they walk into the classroom and I have had extremely positive observations and interactions with them. However, the fact that I did press for suspensions for the students involved in my line-of-duty injuries may have caused them to lose face in the safety arena and I know they try hard to keep everything quiet. Since I am currently teaching out of license (sort of), I can easily be excessed if I become a “problem” and replaced with a newbie teacher in the appropriate license for the position. So I may very well be back in the ATR pool in September.

So as the end of the year approaches, I find that the ATR pool may not be as bad as returning to this dangerous school, especially if the administration IS replaced and we end up with reptiles from the Leadersh** Academy.

Either way, I lose.

Unassigned Teachers of the World, Unite!

The geniuses at E4E recently reported on the Chancellor's latest attempt to "solve" the ATR problem:

How to solve the problem of unassigned teachers has long been a battleground issue for city education officials and the union, the United Federation of Teachers.

If you're unassigned, try twiddling your thumbs. Or
try out some of the tips at www.wikihow.com/Waste-Time

Tell me, brothers and sisters of the Absent Teacher Reserve, how often have you been "unassigned"?

Weren't you assigned to a different school every week this year?  And didn't you always go where you were told to go?  And didn't you always teach the classes you were assigned to teach (except of course when the students wouldn't let you teach them)?

And if, on occasion, you were not given anything to do, was that because there's no work to be done in our overcrowded schools?  And was it because you--with your degrees, certificates, and years of satisfactory service--weren't able to do the work?  Or was it because some knucklebrained administrator couldn't take five minutes to identify some struggling students who could benefit from your expertise?

10 Necessary Questions for Michael Mulgrew

"Moses showing the Ten Commandments,"
by Gustave Dore' (1865)

Moses brought down the tablets with the 10 commandments. Philip Nobile, admittedly a lesser luminary, merely has 10 questions to ask our UFT President, Michael Mulgrew.  

If the worst one could say about Michael Mulgrew is that once upon a time at Grady High School he fulfilled the adulterous fantasy of many teachers, then I’m not throwing the first stone. The boys of the Unity Caucus are famous for having a good time. Whether Mulgrew and Emma Camacho-Mendez did the lust and thrust in his shop several years ago is relatively small potatoes, even if there were evidence. But I would have preferred faster and more furious denial.

If the sex never happened at Grady, then Hochstadt’s grand conspiracy-blackmail-extortion theory wrapped in a suicidal lawsuit collapses. So why didn’t Mulgrew come out swinging in Sunday’s Post, at least to defend the honor of his good friend Ms. Camacho-Mendez? Instead, he told paid spokesman Dick Riley to say that Hochstadt’s “lawsuit was a catalog of absurd, false charges which we expect the court to dismiss."    

Bill Clinton proclaims, "I did not have sexual relations
with that woman."

Mulgrew’s Monday email to members was similarly bloodless in reference to “false and absurd claims of a wide-ranging conspiracy and personal misconduct, without stating any actual proof of either.” But why not a simple, case-closing statement: “I did not have sex with that Guidance Counselor at Grady.” Wouldn’t you rush to say that or its equivalent, if you were Mulgrew and you and your good friend were maliciously accused in the Post? Wouldn’t you have announced a libel suit against your greatest enemy in the press?

That’s what bothers me. Mulgrew is not acting like an innocent man. If he was spied in flagrante at Grady, it follows that there was a cover-up of some kind. So far, evidence goes in the other direction. The Daily News reported on Tuesday that “the city has confirmed Mulgrew was never removed from the classroom for any investigations during his teaching career, contrary to the lawsuit’s allegations. He also was never found to have committed wrongdoing by any investigators.”  Even Donald Herb, the retired custodian who supposedly saw the grappling lovers told the News that Mulgrew was a “good guy…We could tell he was a fighter back then. Now he's got some power and they're trying to take him down. That's all this is about." And Ivor Neuschotz, the former Grady Principal allegedly in the know, has kept silent.

Emma Camacho-Mendez's comment about
her alleged affair with Mulgrew was "clueless," says
Philip Nobile. 

Despite this cold trail, I’m leaning in the direction of the original sin---until Mulgrew and/or Camacho-Mendez convince me otherwise. The rumor is too widespread and robust to discount on Mulgrew’s tepid denial and Camacho-Mendez’s clueless comment in Sunday’s Post: “I have no comment on that. It’s the first I’ve heard of such an allegation. I have nothing to say to you.”   

The court of public opinion is not the same as the court of UFT opinion. Randi was compromised when she was in the closet and covered up Klein’s secret swiftboat campaign against her, only to be protected by Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon who also covered up Klein smear operation at Tweed. That’s what Randi told me,  Michael Mendel, Jim Callaghan, and NYSUT lawyer Chris Callagy in 2008.  Mulgrew needs to come clean with members, to assure us that he is not compromised. 

Herewith are ten questions to set the record straight:

1. Did you have a romantic relationship with Camacho-Mendez when you were both at Grady? Have you had a romantic relationship with her at any time? 

2. Did you have sex with her within Grady? 

3. Comacho-Mendez told the Post that she had never heard the Grady rumor before; what about you? 

4. The rumor has surprisingly long legs despite lack of confirmation; did anything happen at Grady that might have started it? 

5. Granted the circumstances, the appearances, and your and Camacho-Mendez’s less-than-indignant denials, you can understand why some members like me are skeptical and want a detailed response to the Hochstadt suit, even though it lacks proof. Will you hold a press conference and answer questions? 

6. Will you sue Hochstadt, Betsy Combier, and the Post for reckless disregard of the truth? If not, why not? 

7. Norm Scott mocked Hochstadt’s grandiose claims while expressing contempt for Unity’s entrenched leadership: “The idea that the UFT had to be blackmailed to sell out the teaching corps is ludicrous when we know it is in their DNA to give away decades of hard won rights and pieces of the contract, whole chunks at a time. The interesting part of the charge was that Mulgrew took his supposed lady up the ladder with him to a juicy full-time patronage job at UFT headquarters. But really, does anyone expect people in power to function differently?”  Your response? 

8.  Randi came to your swift defense against Hochstadt, but you were silent last month when the Daily News, with the connivance of Walcott, smeared Eric Chasanoff  as a pervert teacher. Why did you let Eric twist in the wind? 

9. The 10-minute “open mike” at the start of Executive Committee meetings is the only chance that rank-and- file members have to confront you and your cabinet. But you allowed Secretary Michael Mendel to censor that small window of opportunity, forbidding dissenting members to speak more than once a term. Is this your idea of democratic process? 

10. One more thing: Are you sorry that you cynically killed the DA resolution to endorse Bill Thompson against Bloomberg, thus assuring four more years of teacher bashing?  

Does the UFT leadership betray its members?

Sheikh Abdulaziz al-sheikh, the
 Grand Mufti of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

It's really none of our business what UFT President Michael Mulgrew may have done with a female guidance counselor on a drafting table at Grady H.S. (click here to see the allegation).  What does concern us is the possibility that Mulgrew promoted his paramour to an important union job for which she was not qualified, and that he may have been compromised by his scandal when he negotiated with the DOE.

Leave it to NYCATR's ace commentator Philip Nobile to formulate the issue with just the right mix of clear reasoning and biting cynicism.  Here's what Nobile wrote as a comment to a Gotham Schools report about the scandal:

Would our UFT leaders betray members to protect their own interests? Is the Grand Mufti Moslem?

Click here to see Nobile's full comment.