What a difference one election makes! For a dozen years, New York City had a Department of Education and a Mayor who viewed teachers with disdain. At best, they were checkers on a checkerboard controlled from “downtown,” doing the bidding of business-school graduates or TFA wonders who had little regard for veterans. Now, with a new mayor and a chancellor who is an experienced educator, the tone has changed. Tone matters. Respect matters. Words matter. Here is a message from Chancellor Carmen Farina to every teacher and principal in New York City.
Chancellor’s Memo
This week’s Chancellor’s Memo is a message for your teachers; it was sent via email to all principals and teachers on May 6.
Dear Colleagues,
Few of us remember the teachers who made us spend hours memorizing and spouting back facts. But none of us forget the ones who, with a gentle nudge or a kind word, convinced us that we could achieve endless opportunity. Sister Leonard, my English language arts teacher, was one of the memorable ones.
As a sophomore in high school, I decided to become a teacher. But unbeknownst to me, I was on a non-academic track, taking typing and stenography instead of math and other credit-bearing courses like many classmates. My advisor had apparently decided that a daughter of Spanish immigrants lacked the aptitude and wherewithal to attend college. Sister Leonard made my cause her personal mission. With her support, I caught up on all the math classes I’d missed, took the Spanish Regents exam—and became the first person in my family to go to college.
One great teacher can transform a life.
On this Teacher Appreciation Day, I want to recognize you—the City’s 75,000 public school teachers—for the countless lives you transform. Thank you for showing up every day, bringing joy to our classrooms, and working tirelessly to provide all of our students with a first-rate education.
I know this isn’t an easy job. As a New York City public school teacher for 22 years, I have walked thousands of miles in your shoes. As Chancellor, it is now my privilege to walk alongside you. My focus will always be on the critical work you do in the classroom.
As we embark on this journey together, I encourage you to think about teaching as a craft and a profession. Whether you are beginning your career in the classroom or are a veteran in our schools, our 1.1 million students rely on you. We want to help you cultivate your passion, achieve excellence, and take your skills to levels you never dreamed possible.
Thanks to our proposed contract with the teachers union, we will be able to deliver unparalleled professional learning: teachers will have a 75- to 80-minute block of time every week to share successful practices. You will have more time for parent engagement; you can even schedule appointments. In addition, the new contract offers excellent educators formal opportunities to hone their classroom practices, develop their leadership skills, and collaborate with and support other educators to improve student achievement. These are monumental changes that will help return dignity and respect to the profession. Going forward, we will give you more tools you need to succeed, including Town Halls just for teachers, and unprecedented on-the-ground support.
In honor of the hard work you do for our school children, I ask you to take some time today to remember a student whose life you have changed: the student who, like me, became the first person in her family to graduate from college; the student who has a career because you cared enough to see the potential others missed. These are the reasons we teach.
Thank you for making a difference in our children’s lives.
Warmly,
Carmen Fariña
Chancellor
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I remember Carmen, and her cadre of principals when they were not so grateful to the hard work and careers of veteran teachers, and helped them OUT the door to lower the school budgets…but one must overlook the past, and look at the good such an intelligent NYC educator can do for the profession now that she has the reigns.
Sigh.
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ugh!
you have a set at the table.
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“As we embark on this journey together, I encourage you to think about teaching as a craft and a profession.”
This is kind of rich. For the past decade it’s been teachers who have been pointing out that teaching is (supposed to be) a “craft and a profession”, but it has fallen on deaf administrative ears. As a new administrator, it should be up to Ms. Farina to demonstrate her understanding of teaching as a craft and a profession.
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Trading 2 1/4 hours a week of intensive 5:1 / 10:1 academic intervention (not just test prep, as has been erroneously claimed on this blog) for the most at-risk students in exchange for PD/parent engagement time with no quality or quantity control and an “out” clause that’ll more often than not end up being used as prep time.
Heckuva job, DOE/UFT.
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I am not in NY, but hey, tutoring in small groups will not stop. How it is funded and organized will change. In Michigan, these organizational changes happen all the time. NY’ers, help me out here.
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Detroiter, this certainly will spell the end of this particular type of intervention–see the comment by “Cc” immediately below mine. This was a special block of time reserved exclusively for kids who were deemed most at risk, and there is really no way to replicate it during a normal school day, even if massive sacrifices are made by teachers and kids.
The decision was seemingly made without consulting any elementary schools with an appreciable number of struggling kids–it’ll probably work out just fine at PS 6 and PS 29.
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On the other hand, experienced educator. Plus, wonderful tone.
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I love the letter but an a New York City Public School teacher. I will miss the extra time with my students. I barely have enough time now to get everything done that I want to accomplish with them. Also I remember when we ha PD afterschool some of it was a nightmare and a complete waste of time so yes myself and others are concerned.
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Actions speak a lot louder than words as the cliché goes. So for NYC teachers, I am sure they are looking to how the words TRANSLATE into ACTION and action that shows respect for the profession. Across the country, so many teachers have heard way too many nice words but the equivalent actions just are not there. How many times have we heard from the powers that be (even from our president) that there is too much testing for ex and then we get reforms that add up to more testing. I hope NYC teacher’s superintendent will not just be another corporate bureaucrat who focuses on “digestible PR” before the masses that doesn’t add up for the teachers.
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My question…why don’t school principals send letters to their own teachers?
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Benevolent tones are nice, benevolent actions mean much more.
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commentators on this blog continue to lie about the new contract. any school can continue to implement the small group after-school learning time with a school-based option vote. problem is that in many middle schools and in most high schools the time was a waste since the students would not show up.
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Sounds great, how do I set up one of those school-based option votes for my kids’ school? Thanks!
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You can land a teaching job there and convince a minimum of 55% of your colleagues to vote for the option. Mere parents, principals, superintendents, PAs/PTAs, SLTs, etc. are SOL in having a say.
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Everything I’ve heard suggests that this third option (which is not yet spelled out in the MOA) will also contain elements of PD and parental engagement and thus far less instructional time. Then 55% of the staff will have to vote for it rather than the other two options, both of which will have them home nice and early three days a week and give them extra prep time on Mondays and Tuesday with a little bit of PD and parent engagement thrown in. I hope people will do the right thing, even if it’s only for 80 minutes a week of extended day.
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Not me, my dear, I meet teachers at my gym who are being traumatized by the lawless assault on them, because nothing, in the 16 years since the process worked to take out a teacher such as I was, has made the administration at the schools and in the offices, accountable:
not the media which hides the hideous behavior of the principals and the unethical behavior at the top…
nor the law which is represented in the form of a union rep who knows what DUE PROCESS looks like but ignores the grievance process which make slander impossible.
We saw how that worked with Libor and the hedge funds. No accountability, and no punishment.
Did you read that The 25 highest-earning hedge fund managers in the United States took home a total of $21.15 billion in compensation in 2013,
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/hedge-fund-moguls-pay-has-the-1-looking-up/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Well, principals and top administrators are not accountable for criminal behavior, let alone by any ethical body, and what they do is hidden, to boot. They go off to better jobs, collect their pensions, too, but the teachers are ‘disappeared.’
There are good people in every union.
Unions are a good thing, a necessary one and the reason the countries workers can profit from their toil… the captains and the kings want it all for themselves and nothing for anyone else… did Carlin say that?
But we have to put in leaders in the mode of Al Shanker, whom I remember because I became a teacher in 1963, when teaching was a profession and the teacher’s word was the only word when it came to what it takes to enable learning in the classroom practice… for a PRACTICE IT WAS, AND IS. Teachers who see this contract as a change for the better, have no comparison to the past. Lacking prior knowledge with which to contrast and compare, no analysis is possible.
Look, The national narrative of the Billionaire’s Club which owns the media, was facilitated by the blind eye that the union turned when a veteran teacher was being harassed and, in fact, humiliated. At the end of a stellar and exemplary career of great service to the citizenry, my union, the one I trusted, who had overseen by contract* betrayed me, and I wouldn’t say this if I did not have a trunkful of evidence, and tons of folks who saw it happen.
(*which BYW I have right here at my desk!)
So, my dear, that contract is only as good as the people in charge, and the devil is in the details. For those ‘on the job’ who know the ‘score’… the way it is… this contract is hardly what will change anything important… too many holes and escape hatches for those who like it just the way it is!
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Thank you for pointing out the holes in the wording. This is exactly what happened in 05 and Randi’s background was Labor Law??
The first thing that went wrong was the bulletin board provision. It seemed that Klein put forth a different interpretation and won. Then the ATR provision was doomed the minute Klein issued the order that no ATR can be hired. This after many principals set up jobs for their excessed teachers. They also got their own job fair which was a joke. They were not allowed to be part of any major job fair. This turned into a civil rights issue, and when ATRs threatened to take it to court, Randi promised changes so it got dropped. The changes were horrible. Even if all ATRs are horrible, they shouldn’t be judged on their craft when week after week they are in a new situation. They don’t know the students which is also a major disaster and effects control. The fact that any DoE or Union will allow any classroom not to have a full-time teacher is criminal in my book. Where is the continuity these students deserve?
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The real story of the ATRs is one that will make people weep. But the trauma and the stories of teachers appear no where. It isn’t as if the truth were not OUT There. Sites like www. endteacherabuse.org tell horror stories of hundreds of teachers, but tens of thousands have been subjected to the lawlessness.
The ATR I know was a fabulous teacher. First, they took her room away,and made her carry her supplies as a reading specialist, on her back, up and down stairs, ruining ghee health. Then they emptied her employment folder of records of excellence, and began to write her up, documenting her incompetence. Her husband is too ill to work, and she refused to give in, and after years of waiting for a hearing, the kangaroo court did their thing. She sued, and years later, exhausted and ill, she is an ATR, now in one school, but still just baby-sitting for her salary. She has applied for permanent positions but who will hire a senior with her history.
It is a HOAX and the union KNOWS IT.
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Was this written by Bloomberg’s Manhattan Institute for her?
I shudder to think of her plan to have one school telling another school how to teach with her Lucy Calkins “turn and talk” model?
These sentiments were forgotten when she “encouraged” 80% of her teachers to leave. What we won’t do to sit at her table. As I say to my students, there is a “tear in my eye” to see what lengths she will go.
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This is what she presided over:
Skills of the 21st Century
In the twentieth century, teachers and student were involved in the “writing process.”
Writing was an activity that moved across the subjects of the curriculum.
Writing may even be as important as reading in literacy development.
Not all writing needed to be assessed, the process itself had benefits.
Students had “portfolios” where teachers could garner progress and make assessments.
Students were able to “process” what they learned as individuals, or in partners, or cooperative settings. Grammar skills and spelling were introduced within this writing process as well as outside of it. Every student had a daily journal.
Sometime around the turn of the century, if not before,
the role of the State’s English Language Arts (ELA) test
became paramount to measuring schools and teachers and a four point “rubric”
was introduced with “cut off scores” introduced. These “rubrics” were related
to the writing “skills” that would be the subject of instruction. The skills became
paramount to instruction and “evaluation” by these rubrics, instead of the writing process itself.
Teachers were intimidates into posting these “rubrics” around their rooms for fear an administrator
would not see them readily. Writing itself began disappearing from the walls of classrooms.
The most important grade level for judging schools by the State became the Grade Four ELA test, and any love for reading and writing that survived the third graders’ entry into standardized testing
might be expunged by fourth grade.
With “No Child Left Behind” legislation, (Bush) circa 2000, and later Race to the Top (Obama), there was a new push for “21st Century Skills”. Teachers with master degrees were now obliged to attend “staff development” by the publishers in order that “skills” would play a more dominant role in the classroom. These were considered the skills that would help the students “compete” with low wage workers in foreign lands. Some of these skills were manufactured in order to create events for evaluation with the rubrics. pressing teachers away from alternate ways of education and learning. Publishers were now selling “skills” books in the form of “Close” reading passages, decontextualized “stories”, in order to do test prep for the skills. In many cases bound writing books and loose-leaf have been replaced by publishers handouts. Students no longer owned their own literacy development.
What are these “Skills for the 21 Century” that are taking children from a rich literacy experience?: “compare and contrasting”, “inference”, “sequencing of events” and “main idea” are just a few.
This reductionist approaches to the enjoyment of literacy (and math) is used much of the time in the classroom and teachers are routinely pulled from their duties in order to listen to the importance of each “skill” by a mercenary “staff developer”, who is selling the programs and preparing the testing.
Teachers and administrators have been conditioned to these developments that limit the chance for challenging learning experiences and are now tortured by their own evaluations by these skills. Many teachers were not around before 2000 to develop an authentic teaching style. They will now be reduced to tech support as computerized instruction and evaluations continues to invade their classrooms.
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School-based options
SBOs — in accordance with Article 8B of the contract — allow staff the flexibility to collaboratively modify contractual articles and/or create positions that the contract does not automatically allow for. An SBO is adopted in a school when 55 percent of the UFT members who vote support it.
More than half of all city schools make use of SBOs.
What is an SBO?
The following are some examples of the SBO modifications to the collective-bargaining agreement or Department of Education regulations that you and your colleagues can make:
Change the configuration of the extended time.
Use extended time for inquiry team work.
Move evening and afternoon parent conferences to the same day.
Create a block program.
Start the school day before 8 a.m. or end it after 3:45 p.m.
Decrease the contractual class-size limits for lower-achieving classes.
The SBO remains in effect for only one school year. It must be renewed every year to continue. The only SBO modification that does not sunset at the end of the school year is for elementary schools that are changing from an eight-period day to a seven-period day. If your elementary school wishes to return to an eight-period day, another SBO is required.
Who can propose an SBO?
An SBO can be proposed by either the principal or the chapter leader on behalf of the chapter. However, a principal cannot force the chapter to hold a vote on any SBO.
In addition, a principal can neither conduct a vote nor implement an SBO without ratification by the chapter and approval by the chapter leader, UFT district representative and UFT president.
The ratification process
Before any chapter holds a vote on proposed SBOs, the chapter leader should contact the district representative. Do not wait until the process is completed to ask questions or voice concerns.
The chapter leader should survey the school’s staff to gauge interest in the SBOs under consideration. The survey, which should be conducted on paper using the same language as the language that will be on the SBO ballot, helps the chapter leader decide whether to pursue those SBOs and whether to put a particular SBO up for a vote.
The purpose of the vote is to ratify a proposed SBO. It is at the sole discretion of the chapter leader whether an SBO goes to a formal vote. Voting, if it occurs, is by secret ballot following the procedures used in chapter leader elections. Only UFT members in the school are eligible to vote on SBOs; agency fee payers are not. Chapter leaders must notify members of the date, time and place of the vote and where and when ballots will be counted. Absentee ballots are not permitted.
Ballots must specifically describe exactly what modification is being proposed, including the contractual article being modified. Each SBO proposal must be voted on separately.
If an SBO proposal fails to win the support of a majority of those who voted, the school reverts to the collective-bargaining agreement. A new SBO, however, can be proposed and voted on.
The description of the compensatory-time jobs in an SBO should include the duties and time allotted. Each compensatory-time job must be voted on separately.
An SBO is ratified when 55 percent of the UFT members who actually vote — not 55 percent of all UFT members at the school — support it. All SBOs must be signed by the UFT district representative and UFT president, as well as the chancellor.
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Thanks for letting me know the additional hoops a school will have to jump through if they’d prefer to keep the four-day-per-week, 37.5 minute extended day sessions rather than one of the 3 preordained SBO choices offered in the new contract.
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That is really nice to read. Nothing from the Darth Vader of Education BBB in Chicago.
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“A Department of Education and a mayor who viewed teachers with disdain.” Is there more we need to know?
Are you a person who wonders why our educational system is not what you would like? Well, there you have it: the “reformers” in our country view teachers, the people who deliver instruction to our children, with “disdain.”
Yes, indeed, tone matters. Now that New York City is once again expressing appreciation for its teachers from a qualified and experienced educator, expect to see some authentic improvements.
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a wonderful letter
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