There is a photograph circulating on Twitter of a teacher recruitment fair in Michigan, in a large room with many tables staffed and ready for recruits. But the room is empty. It is a sad picture, dramatizing the effect of the current policy atmosphere on the profession.
Please note that the empty job fair was held in Michigan. That is Betsy DeVos’s home state. Apparently in her dream school of the future, computers will replace teachers. That has long been the gospel of Jeb Bush. If you harass teachers enough, they will go away and everyone can go digital.
A new study was just released by two professors at Michigan State University analyzing what they call a new genre: the teacher resignation letter.
I have posted many resignation letters on this site. They are usually anguished, sometimes angry, always sorrowful. They come from people who had a calling to teach, but could not stand the demands on them by administrators nor the frequency of high-stakes testing. Working in a climate that requires compliance and subservience, one that expects you to abandon your professional ethics, is not appealing for most professionals.
I have posted many such letters. The one that got the most overwhelming response was written by North Carolina teacher Kris Neilsen. It was published October 27, 2012, and received 165,000 views. Nearly 900 people commented on it. It went worldwide.
Here is the report on the teacher resignation letter as a genre:
In a trio of studies, Michigan State University education expert Alyssa Hadley Dunn and colleagues examined the relatively new phenomenon of teachers posting their resignation letters online. Their findings, which come as many teachers are signing next year’s contracts, suggest educators at all grade and experience levels are frustrated and disheartened by a nationwide focus on standardized tests, scripted curriculum and punitive teacher-evaluation systems.
Teacher turnover costs more than $2.2 billion in the U.S. each year and has been shown to decrease student achievement in the form of reading and math test scores.
“The reasons teachers are leaving the profession has little to do with the reasons most frequently touted by education reformers, such as pay or student behavior,” said Dunn, assistant professor of teacher education. “Rather, teachers are leaving largely because oppressive policies and practices are affecting their working conditions and beliefs about themselves and education.”
Consider, for example, the open resignation letter of Boston elementary school teacher Suzi Sluyter, which was posted on a Washington Post blog:
“In this disturbing era of testing and data collection in the public schools,” she wrote in part, “I have seen my career transformed into a job that no longer fits my understanding of how children learn and what a teacher ought to do in a classroom to build a healthy, safe, developmentally appropriate environment for learning for each of our children.”
Sluyter, who had taught for more than 25 years, concluded the missive: “I did not feel I was leaving my job. I felt then and feel now that my job left me. It is with deep love and a broken heart that I write this letter.”
Such feelings of abandonment were common in the resignation letters, the researchers said in one of the studies. That paper, published in the April issue of the journal Linguistics and Education, is titled “With regret: The genre of teachers’ public resignation letters.” Dunn’s co-authors were Jennifer VanDerHeide, MSU assistant professor of teacher education, and MSU doctoral student Matthew Deroo.
Another study indicates that by posting their resignation letters online, educators are gaining a voice in the public sphere they didn’t have before. That paper, which will appear in the May issue of the journal Teaching and Teacher Education, was co-authored by MSU doctoral students Scott Farver, Amy Guenther and Lindsay Wexler.
“All of the teachers’ resignation letters and their later interviews [with researchers] attested to the lack of voice and agency that teachers felt in policymaking and implementation,” the study says.
Dunn said administrators must allow teachers to engage in the development of curriculum and educational policies so they do not feel like they have no choice but to resign (and then publicly declare it) in order to get their voices heard.
The third study, forthcoming in Teachers College Record, suggests the public resignation letters combat the “teacher blame game” and the prevalent narrative of the “bad” teacher. These are common claims – whereby teachers are blamed for school and societal failures – used by conservative education reformers to advance accountability measures to evaluate teachers, Dunn said.
But the resignation letters, rather than painting educators as disinterested and lazy, illustrate their intense emotion. “The letters are filled with emotion, with regret, and with an overarching personal and professional commitment to the best needs of the children,” the study says.
Ultimately, Dunn said, policymakers should heed teachers’ testimonies and support a move away from efforts to “marketize, capitalize, incentivize and privatize public education, in order to do what is best for children, not for the bottom line.”
“In the absence of such moves, teachers’ working conditions, and thus students’ learning conditions, are likely to remain in jeopardy.”
Here’s the paper to which the Michigan State article refers:
(accessible for free if you qualify in certain categories, or if you
pony up $35 if you don’t):
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0898589817300487
That’s a worthy study, imo. I do raise my eyebrows at the inclusion of “conservative” in the phrase “used by conservative education reformers,” as I consider the Accountability Movement to be a fully bipartisan effort. These resignation letters are a major part of Arne Duncan’s legacy.
I wholeheartedly agree.
I think a better term would be neoliberal – a belief that the government should support free-market enterprise. Neoliberalism is the prevailing ideology of both Republicans and Democrats, and it is quite damaging to public education.
Randi was and still is a big part of this to when she aligned herself with Duncan and Bloomberg!
Totally agree! I’m the author of the studies and they are all about neoliberal ideology. I just missed the inclusion of “conservative” in my university’s press release. Thanks for drawing my attention back to it.
Excellent, Alyssa. One of the great frustrations for the teaching community has been how there are almost NO politicians on our side (some rare exceptions including some Washington state legislators and the — maybe former — Indiana State Superintendent; not even Bernie Sanders) and yet not a single significant politician has lost office over their destructive education policies.
Very much appreciate your comment.
Why not? Why should teaching jobs be any safer than anyone else?
Computer controlled robots have already replaced millions of workers. A study estaimed that more than 80-percent of lost jobs since 1979 were lost to automation. Only 13-percent of the lost jobs moved to China, Vietnam, Mexico, Bangladesh, etc.
I’ve read that self-driving 18-wheelers will be replacing millions of truck drivers. Many tax accountants have already lost their livelhood thanks to programs that do your taxes for you.
With middle classes wages stagnant or decreasing, why would somoene pay a human $300 – $400 to do their taxes for them when they can buy a tax program at Costco, Target or WalMart for $50 – $70.
The capitlaist olgirachs are on the fast track to replace human labor with comptuers and robots. Since they are also on the fast track to have most of the wealth, they won’t need consuemrs and most of humnaity can starve and die off to get rid of most of the populaiton so the olgirachs and their slaves will have a cleaner planet.
Instead of 8-billion people crowding the earth and polluting it, there probably will be closer to 100-million left after the 800k oligrachs eliminate the rest of us. For instance, Trump will stock a high rise with lovely Russian and Ukraian women who are all 35 or younger. Robots will guard them so they will all be virgins until he arrives to grope them and then swallow that blue pill.
Eventually there will be no need for many comptuers to teach the children of the 0.1 percent who will probalby make sure to nueter anyone who isn’t a member of the 0.1 percent. That way, only Trump and his fellow oligrachs will be allowed to have children with all of the women they allowed to live.
Let’s keep the teachers and instead replace Sean Spicer with a robot: The Melissa 2000M.
Seriously, every bit of teaching in which I engage nowadays is a precious moment for which I had to take risks and fight administrators and colleagues to secure. So many are blind followers of the tech religion. I have to wiggle around calls to blend and flip for scripted, online close reading. (For those who may not know, close reading just means letting students figure everything out for themselves (not reading for detail), and blending and flipping just mean replacing class discussion with computers (not making margaritas and fried eggs). I have to wade through oceans of propaganda supported nonsense about “access” to corporate products being a “civil right”. But I stand firm that online instruction is hardly instructional. It may be good enough to replace the class you have to take at the Department of Motor Vehicles if you get a speeding ticket, maybe, but it’s very much not good enough for K-12.
The other day, I tried to convince a new teacher of the fact that our relatively progressive state is dropping the test score-based school rating system and replacing it with a more comprehensive system. She didn’t believe me. She insisted that our purpose was to raise test scores, period. She insisted that the Academic Performance Index was permanently fixed as the end all, be all. Until we regain the idea that education is more than computerized numbers, everyone in school will continue to degrade school. The knowledgeable will quit. The smart ones will leave. Why haven’t I quit? I’m crazy. (It’s all the fried eggs and margaritas.)
Where on earth did that teacher receive her education AS A TEACHER?
Guess. (It’s UCLA.)
Wait…..
We needed n academic study to tell us this?
Teaching has always been, at best, a career that afforded access to the nosebleed seats of the middle-class. In exchange for accepting the shitty seats at the middle-class ballpark, teachers got a job that was edifying, socially-relevant, had a humane schedule, had job security, and freed one from having to work daily with the worst of the corporate-capitalist crowd. As stated, it payed just enough that it enabled admission to the broad middle. It also goes without saying that teachers were also providing a public service that the rest of society by and large didnt want to do. In the end, it was and is a fragile balance. Disrupt any of those things and suddenly it’s a crappy job and not worth it. The reformers know this and have known it. A great way to bust organized teachers is to mess up that balance and get people leaving and not joining the ranks. Done. Floodgates open for reformero-corporate orgy on public education .
Don’t need studies to understand that. Our side isn’t so nimble that way. We need studies to know things are true. The other side…..nope….they run with anything that suits their purpose, truth be damned.
NYS Teacher,
You always say it so well! Agreed.
This is all part of the demonic corporate cabal designed to destroy public education. It is a war on public schools, teachers, women, children, the poor and middle class.
Hi NYSTeacher, Thanks for your comments. I’m the author of the studies here. I agree that teachers know this is happening and so teachers don’t need an academic study to tell them this… But it’s clear that some (many?) policymakers don’t listen to teachers’ voices. Sometimes it helps to have “research” to back up what teachers already know to be true. So, I agree, many people don’t need studies to tell them this information– it’s what teachers, including me when I was teaching, live every day! But I hope that by showing the pattern of teachers’ public resignation letters that it might draw some attention to the fact that it’s not just an individual issue, that it’s not just single teachers or teachers in one area or teachers with one political belief system, etc. that are living amidst these difficult working conditions. I really appreciate you reading and commenting.
I won’t comment on all your comments, Alyssa, but your study is a service to the teaching community, and you deserve gratitude for helping to bring this issue to the public. Much of the media is misinformed (bought?) on education policy, and any outside support expressing the truth of what is going on has extra benefit. Thanks again!
Allysa, You should become a member at Oped News. I began to write articles and post links to Diane’s blog and other great posts, years ago. I reach people int he general public who do not know about the war on teachers and have been fed fake news for decades.
I have an author’s page, http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
where you can read the articles that I wrote, and where if you click on my series button, you will see all the articles which Ilinked to on privatization, and many eduction issues.
Over 36 thousand people viewed my posts last month, and over 661 THOUSAND HAVE SEEN THEM SINCE I BEGAN. I actually have a huge presence on google.
WHODA’THUNK IT.”
Allysa, You should become a member at Oped News. I began to write articles and post links to Diane’s blog and other great posts, years ago. I reach people int he general public who do not know about the war on teachers and have been fed fake news for decades.
I have an author’s page, http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
where you can read the articles that I wrote, and where if you click on my series button, you will see all the articles which Ilinked to on privatization, and many eduction issues.
Over 36 thousand people viewed my posts last month, and over 661 THOUSAND HAVE SEEN THEM SINCE I BEGAN. I actually have a huge presence on google.
WHODA’THUNK IT.”
I posted this as a comment, as my third comment on the page where I posted the news about VIRTUAL REALITY SCHOOLS. IN my first comment is the plot and the ploy. Go there for the embedded links.
For 2 decades,I have been writing about the war on the INSTITUTION of Public education. My most important essays can be found at my author’s page,
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html as I explain how a ‘magic elixir’ is so easily substituted for professional practice when it comes to LEARNING
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
. (notice I always talk about LEARNING not ‘teaching,’…that is ‘their conversation.!’ http://www.opednews.com/articles/Learning-not-Teacher-evalu-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-111001-956.html
Bamboozling the people with fake news was so easy, and to this day, is not recognized for the destruction it caused. http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
With 15,880 districts in 50 states, http://www.opednews.com/Series/15-880-Districts-in-50-Sta-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-140921-34.html still hidden is the plot to end our democracy (which depends on shared knowledge) http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/hirsch.pdf and at the same time the road to income equality, which the deep state knows depends on education for all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
It began in the late eighties with its major assaults against the experienced professionals, removing their voices, so the billionaires of the EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX https://greatschoolwars.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/eic-oct_11.pdf Also http://https://dianeravitch.net/2015/10/24/the-educational-industrial-complex/ who own the media, could spread false news about ‘those bad, incompetent, tenured teachers.” it was a tsunami of abuse addressed at teachers.
Over one hundred thousand experienced, educated, dedicated and successful teachers (including me) met their doom and disappeared, as the school systems* collapsed; local systems which cared about the population were replaced as state legislatures took over the schools, with nary an educator on board.* and with them the VOICE of the professional who knows WLLL — my acronym for What Learning Looks Like.
The conversation was shifted from one about LEARNING, to one about teachers, and then with the foul NCLB act , the conversation became one about testing. Now we are in the end game, where our nations’ children are supposed to learn from machines.
If you are tired of fake news about the schools then for goodness sakes, follow the Diane Ravitch blog. Put vouchers, or charter school fraud , or privatization, into the search at the bottom of each post. Here is a great one about A Slick Campaign for Privatization, and one about the cost of all the testing
Then, I posted this piece about teacher letters. , because only with the teachers gone could they foist such crap on the public.. and callout choice. It is 1984!
I am sick of all these “I quit” letters being posted on the internet. Quitting is exactly what the ed-deformers want. They want cheap or no-cost labor. (Think brand new teachers or online learning) Veteran teachers cost a lot of money due to salaries and pensions, not to mention many have tenure which the right wing hates. As for me, I have been in the game for over 20 years. I am not quitting anytime soon due to what I have coming to me: a good pension and decent medical benefits after I retire.
What else are teachers supposed to do? Teachers cannot advocate for better conditions because they will be fired. They are forced to do things that they know are bad for students. They have no say in their own classrooms. They are punished for things that are not their fault (like test scores). They are attacked for trying to advocate for their students. They are brought up on fake charges. They are bullied and/or sexually harassed by incompetent administrators or fellow teachers with an axe to grind.
Teachers are truly suffering–depression, anxiety, stress-related illnesses, etc. For some, getting out is the only thing they can do so that they can get well.
I’m glad that you are in the for the long haul, and that you will get a “good pension and decent medical benefits.” Many of us have had our pensions and health care cut to the bone.
In other words, do NOT blame teachers for getting out. You are not in their shoes. If you were, perhaps you’d quit, too.
Hi Billy D. and Threatened Out West– Thank you for reading and commenting. I’m the author of the studies here. One thing I struggled with when reading all of these letters and then interviewing the teachers who wrote them was, as Billy said, what does this mean for teachers who STAY? Does it make look like the teachers who quit are “giving in” or “giving up”? But, as Threatened says, these teachers and many others feel like there is no other choice and that, by staying in the classroom, they are ALSO giving the ed reformers what they want: subservience and teaching to the test, etc. etc. I appreciated the participants being willing to share with me why they struggled with these questions, as well. Best of luck to both of you for however long you decide to stay in the classroom and for whatever comes after. Thank you again for reading.
Hi, Alyssa,
I’m glad you did the study and hope you get it to legislators in many states.
What do you say to the young person who wants to be a teacher?
Diane, Thank you again for sharing. You ask what I tell those who want to be a teacher. I think about this a lot, as I know other teacher educators do as well. How do we prepare people for the profession that we left? That might have burned us out and might do the same to our students? That might demoralize them and dehumanize them and their students? I don’t have one right answer, but I usually settle for telling them that I still believe that being a teacher is the most important job in the world and that we are privileged to be able to work with children for however long we can do it, and that I HAVE to believe that working and learning conditions can improve. Otherwise, what are we all fighting for?
Quitting may be what they want, but not all teachers quit. Some (like me) get fired and can’t find a principal who will hire them. My friends and fellow teachers agree that I am (was) a good teacher, but I’ve been blacklisted.
Some teacher are fired. In LA , on year 10,000 were fired. Over 2 decades 200,000 were sent packing and many never work again. I spoke to. hundreds.
They tried to throw me out. This happened to me, and every word is true
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
Have you never gone to the NAPTA site?
http://endteacherabuse.org/
Do you not know how they took out the
TEACHERS IN NYC http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2009/03/gotcha-squad-and-new-york-city-rubber.html THE largest of the 15,880 districts and discovered how easy it was to fabricate charges IF THE UNIONS LOOKED THE OTHER WAY.
http://www.perdaily.com/2013/10/why-does-utla-continue-to-support-lausds-violation-of-california-teacher-dismissal-process.html
The they went for the second largest, fabricating charges willy nilly.
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/LAUSD-OR-TARGETED-TEACHERS-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Deception_Evidence_Fired_Innocence-150720-360.html?f=LAUSD-OR-TARGETED-TEACHERS-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Deception_Evidence_Fired_Innocence-150720-360.html
Civil rights disappeared. http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/lausd-and-utla-collude-to-end-collective-bargaining-and-civil-rights-for-teachers-part-2.html
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/former-ctc-attorney-kathleen-carroll-lays-out-unholy-alliance-between-union-and-public-education-pri.html
This started in the late eighties, and for two decades they emptied the schools.
NO one cared that the teachers never worked again!
Fake news did the job!
Interestingly (or sadly) enough, there have been absolutely NO job postings in the two major Chicago papers for education jobs, & this has been going on for a long time.
In comparison, when I travel to other states (Iowa, for example), I’ve read up to four pages of education openings. Meanwhile, #s of students enrolling as education majors here are shrinking: universities are shedding many of their education course &, so, faculty.
Hi Retired– This is really interesting to me. I’m the author of the studies above, and I know a lot of my students (from Michigan State) want to teach in CPS. Do you think there are ads elsewhere, like online, where more “millennial” teachers might look for openings? Do you think it’s a resistance to CPS in general because of the coverage of union struggles? I’d love to know more. Thank you again for reading.
Insofar as I know (I never taught in CPS), CPS doesn’t post openings in newspapers but, in fact, they’ve pink-slipped so many teachers & other personnel that I don’t think they’re even hiring–in fact, they just offered an early retirement bonus which so few took (many teachers want to work longer, don’t want early retirement &, also, don’t have trust that they’d really receive the bonuses {because Chicago is “broke,” & because the state hasn’t released any bail-out money}) that CPS rescinded the offer. So, no, IMO it’s nothing to do with a resistance/news coverage. One would think that schools in the Chicago metro area (suburbs & nearby small towns) would place ads, but there aren’t any of those, either. Job seekers can look up available positions on the IL State Board of Ed. website.
In Feb., 2016, I went to an IL Ed. Assn. Mentorship Meeting. which involves retired teachers mentoring student teachers from all over the state, from colleges & universities throughout the state. At the luncheon, students were asked to stand up according to college year–frosh, soph, jr., sr. Now, the weather was bad, but the place was still packed. Of all the classes (&, sorry, can’t remember the #s for sophs, jrs, & srs), only FIVE freshman stood up. FIVE.
A local university (private) that is a major education school (known for its education training programs) has pink-slipped nearly all of its special ed. full-time professors, & has also gotten rid of a very large number of other education profs. Lots of adjuncts there, now.
Finally, also a big dip in guidance & counseling enrollments.
Did you read Diane’s earlier post about Mayor Emanuel’s new criteria for graduating seniors to receive their diplomas? There’s at least one comment on the post (think it’s mine!) talking about the news item that 20 new charter applications are coming into Chicago for next year, & that there may be more. (Pretty sure that news–if shared–would please DeVos at her meeting w/Rahm yesterday.)
Administrators have left the profession as well as we would not implement reforms.
This is VERY underreported, Kathleen. I’ve only heard of some isolated instances (like Carol Burris).
Perhaps posting resignation letters online is also a form of therapy. It’s a trauma to have to give up something you love and something you’ve worked and prepared for for a long time. It’s hurtful to essentially be told that what you are doing is unimportant and not worthy of a decent salary, working conditions, etc. Ohio, I wish we would hear more from administrators who have left their jobs and the circumstances surrounding their choice to leave.
Mamie, YES! I’m the author of the studies, and this is exactly what we found when looking across all of the letters. Even though people hadn’t looked at other letters as models or even seen other letters before, they approached the task in much the same way. As you said, writing was therapeutic and a last way to (re)claim their voice(s). Thanks for reading and for commenting.
Thank you, Alyssa, for this study.
Cross posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/New-Study-Why-Teachers-Cr-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Educators–Teachers_Experience_Mass-Teacher-Firings-170414-670.html#comment654602
With a comment containing MY story of my RE-TIREMENT, PLUS THE TRUTH AOBUT THE PLOT AND THE PLOY THAT IS RESULTINg IN THIS TRAGEDY FOR TEACHERS.
GO THERE. THERE ARE LINKS… I DO NOT HAVE THE TIME TO ADD HERE.
You have heard me say some the before, but not in this context… IT IS TIM
GO THERE… READ IT. Submitted on Friday, Apr 14, 2017 at 4:40:28 PM
Let me be very clear about this: in 1998 I was a celebrated NYC teacher, at the top of a forty year career, in my eighth year teaching the entire seventh grade at a new magnet school on the east side of Manhattan. That year, I was (NYSEC’s ) NYS English Council’s “Educator of Excellence”! My practice was selected as the NYC cohort for the Pew research on the Principle of Learning (Resnick, at Harvard thesis).
But, the assault on teachers had begun!
Go to my author’s page where this essay describing the scandalous deprivation of civil rights which happened to me (and thousands of other wonderful teachers) when the UFT abandoned me — as it had abandoned tens of thousands of tenured, experienced teachers in NYC.
My story (details later) is the same as that of 200,000 American teachers who were sent packing in a decade, so that the ‘reform’ movement could end public education and create a marketplace that enriched hedge funds and offered the scions of the wealthy ‘private schools’ financed with taxpayer money.
I was at the zenith of a successful career, when theWar on Public Educationbegan…but I did not know it. I sat down with Dan Rather –who knew my reputation for excellence ( I told you I was famous in NYC)– and could not believe what was occurring. I know now, seventeen years later.
The plot and the ploy is simple. If you took the professional physician out of the hospital, the institution would fail. Doctors, of course, would sue if blamed for the mismanagement of top-down administration. Pity the poor teacher — the target of ‘fake news’ which told the nation that the suddenly ‘failing’ schools’ were the result of their ‘bad teaching”. They turned the national conversationfrom one about LEARNING to one about ‘teaching’– and how-to-evaluate those bad teachers.
Duncan, Rhee, Klein, Walton and the EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX put out alternative facts, and promised,(like Trump) to make things better.
TOP-down destruction of the teacher’s autonomy in that room with those kids for 10 months. It is SOOOO easy to bamboozle the people when talking about education. Now, Betsy DeVos and company are circulating the idea that computers can replace teachers. This is the new magic elixir. sold to a public that is clueless as to what learning look like (WLLL)… something which all real teachers know by judging performance with authentic evaluation tools!!!!
The Bush test-the-kids-doctrine (NCLB)–left all the kids behind and gutted the profession, and now, with experienced practitioners GONE, the young novice-practitioner lasts a few years, and is then evaluated out the door by bogus tests of the students.
The experienced professional, teacher-practitioner that you all remember was replaced, in many places by trained TFA novices. When the schools failed, the legislatures took over, with not an educator on board. See my series here
MY PERSONAL STORY (SHORT VERSION) so you can grasp the collusion between the union and the school administration.
-I was removed me from my famous practice — with no explanation for six months, and sent to the ‘rubber room’ (the district office) where they gotcha’! The union ignored my grievances. Humiliation and despair wears teachers down and makes them want to retire.,
Because the union is the teacher’s legal voice and it was MISSING, I hired an attorney, and 25 thousand dollars later, I was back in the school, not in the famous 7th grade practice . Now, I was put in a storeroom, with no curricula or materials, teaching a few ‘pull-outs’– something that had never existed before!
The 1000 book library that I had purchased with my OWN funds, had been distributed to other classrooms, and 8 years of materials that I I had created for tmy curriculum, the one that had attracted the attention of Harvard, and Pew, had been trashed”. BUT that was not the end of it.
Now the new principal came in daily to ‘document my incompetence’ in letters she added to my employment folder–now emptied of the evidence of successful teaching. Gone were all the records of my stellar four decade career, All my awards, missing. (I was in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers, four times.)
Now, lies could replace truth. Only, I xeroxed EVERYTHING each year, and can prove who I WAS, and what THEY DID!
TO CONCLUDE:(hold on t your hats…wait until you hear what they said to throw me out , this time….)
But, even in a closet, I was successful, and children vied to get into my ‘program’. It aggravated them no end that I was still there, AND so THEY DID what ALL TOP-DOGS DO WHEN THERE IS NOT A SHRED OF ACCOUNTABILITY FOR LIES” they said I threatened to kill the principal, and sent me back to the rubber room.
Long story short: MY husband, distressed when my blood pressure reached 180, called Randi Weingarten, who got me a medical leave. While on leave, they put out charges for incompetence! So, Randi, knowing who I was and the evidence I possessed got me “into arbitration” where I was arbitrated out of my career, and into retirement” with my benefits, at least.. Thanks!
The END” of me, but the beginning of the plight that most new teachers discover soon. They are an easy target, and there is no support for them.
And this is how they destroyed NYC, the largest schools system in the 15,880,.
Then they went after the 2nd largest, LAUSD. Lenny Isenberg chronicled the end of LA’s schools at his site PerDaily.com, where it began OF COURSE with the TERMINATION OF TENS OF THOUSANDS OF TEACHERS –the voices of the professional. THEY HAD TO GO!. He tells the story of how they removed the teachers ‘en masse’ in LAUSD. Fabricated charges emptied the schools of the voices that would fight for the kids. If you have never visited th site that Lenny Isenberg put up when they took him away from his classroom in hand-cuffs for blowing the whistle on Social promotion.
He never worked again, but chronicled the demise of LA at his blog and is a HERO!