An ATR's letter explains the "Twilight Zone" farce that the NYC DOE's rotation system is; just consider also how ridiculous the ATR observation system is under these same circumstances.
March 8, 2014
Dear Chancellor Farina:
Picture this if you will: you are scheduled for elbow surgery with the renowned surgeon Dr. Robert J.
Meislin at NYU Langone Medical Center. Dr. Meislin is scheduled to perform an ulnar collateral
ligament reconstruction, otherwise known as a Tommy John surgery, on your right elbow. Without this
surgery, you may never be able to hold a pen again. But you’re not worried, Dr. Meislin is very
experienced.
The morning of the surgery, as you are being wheeled into the operating room, you find out that Dr.
Meislin was in an accident and will not be operating but they have found a replacement. A
fine proctologist will be performing your surgery but that’s alright, they’re both medical doctors.
Was that you we heard screaming as you hailed a cab, still wearing your hospital gown, on the corner
of 1st Avenue and 30th: “That OR scheduling nurse doesn’t know her ASS from her ELBOW”?
Sounds farfetched? Well, to parents in the NYC school system, that’s exactly what is
happening. Teachers who have been trained in one subject or at one level are being sent into schools
and being told to teach subjects (and then being observed doing so) in things they have no idea how to
do. They have no materials, no lesson plans, no IEPs, no training. High school math teachers teaching
pre-k; business teachers teaching science; bilingual classes being taught by teachers who don’t speak
Spanish. You get the idea. Is this in the students’ best interests, the teachers’, the city’s? If your child
was in this class, what would you think?
Cynthia Shub, ATR
Great job! If only the people in charge had as much common sense as the rest of us!!!!
ReplyDeleteNow if we could just get one of them to read this . . .
DeleteI have a reading license and I am told that I can't teach out of license. Yet every time I step into a classroom I am teaching out of license. I wonder if anyone else sees the contradiction here?
DeleteI am in this position almost every week, especially at one particular Manhattan school (in Harlem). For some reason the principal loves to put me in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. This week 3/24-3/28 the third floor (filled with these grades) looked like something from a CNN or 20/20 undercover special. The students were cursing each other out, cursing the staff out, and disrespected all subs and ATRs alike. The principal had to hold an emergency meeting in the auditorium for these grades to tell them they were disrespectful, and nothing helped. What kills me is how the principal knows that my license is in Early Childhood Education, and he will give a classroom of "little ones" to a substitute teacher before me. HUH??!! I am the licensed tenured teacher, but it goes to the sub? I was called every name in the book, I had pencils thrown at me, and kids cursing me out, letting me know they weren't going to do that S***T!--- meaning the class work. Mind you, ELA testing is next week. This is my fourth time rotating back to this school. I have had enough. I am in bed typing with a killer headache, so I am assuming that my blood pressure is sky high at this moment.
DeleteSomething has to give. Staff members were calling me names under their breath and laughing at me, because they assume that I am a sub with no classroom management who can't teach at all. I'm over it.