You should read this post. It is the story of a teacher who—in the telling of her story—is a dedicated, beloved teacher. She did her job, and she cared for her severely brain damaged child. The system punished her for taking too many personal days.
If she worked in the private sector, she would have been given the rights to which she was entitled. The school system treated her shamefully.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you for posting this, Diane. It’s important that it reach as many people as your blog does.
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I agree. I hope that your reposting, along with that of Mercedes Schneider will muster some tangible support– pro bono legal–and a job where she is not paid as if a beginning teacher. Talk about courage…of the teacher and the teller of her story.
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Real progress. Back in t he dark ages when I was teaching one of our teachers got Lou Gehrig’s disease. Our school system then let her use all her sick days and in any way they could helped her in her fight. What a difference. As teachers we were respected.
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Gordon: When I started my music job in Berwyn, IL [two schools as a traveling music teacher] I found that the music room in one school was filled with Christmas presents. The teacher before me had gotten cancer and was keeping it from the principal who wouldn’t want anyone sick to work at her school. She managed to stay until Christmas and then never came back again. I believe the rest of the year was filled by subs.
At the International School of Kuala Lumpur I came for the beginning of the 2005-06 school year but never started the job. I was diagnosed with a rare nerve disease and couldn’t work. The school paid me full salary for 6 months and then gave me disability insurance which paid me $36,000 a year until I reached the age of 65. That meant I got this insurance money for two and a half years.
Which school treated ill people better? The US can be very backward.
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That is a sad, sad, story.
Below, pls find an interesting point about using Arne’s boycott idea to turn it into something like the Opt Out movement.
https://theconversation.com/could-protest-curb-school-violence-lessons-from-the-opt-out-movement-96975?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20May%2024%202018%20-%20102519015&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20May%2024%202018%20-%20102519015+CID_3eb1b4e703eaded736ab8d7ca1579a34&utm_source=campaign_monitor_us&utm_term=Could%20protest%20curb%20school%20violence%20Lessons%20from%20the%20opt-out%20movement
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Speaking of Arne, on CBS Sunday Morning today…
https://www.cbs.com/shows/cbs-sunday-morning/video/K9jMXeUn_b7zopyOHQMnVPcG_3RprVXj/arne-duncan-on-addressing-inaction-on-gun-violence/
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I can’t bear to watch him.
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I posted a link to cbs, and offered this on the Post Dispatch current affairs forum.
NRA members….can you even bother to criticize this bozo?
“Arne Duncan was, in many ways, more damaging to public education than the woman who cannot possibly be as stupid as she sounds, which is the only rationale for taking her seriously. (Devos)
With Obama blamed for virtually everything imaginable by the right wing…how come his appointment of this guy can be given a pass? Has Bill Gates sent out checks to beg you not to say anything about him, because he is too valuable to you just being himself?”
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I am not sure she would have better treatment in the private sector. The whole country sinks back to the times of robber barons.
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Thank you for posting this. I’ll try to tweet it.
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I would like to say that I retired from a large urban school and this story is not the exception but the norm. Years ago when my mother was ill but well enough to teach I would drive her to work and then go to my school. Two to three times a week she would have a seizure (brain cancer) and I would take her to the hospital then home, then go to work at my school. Needless to say I was late a lot. I had a very understanding. principal who just did not report my latenesses. Of course, he did not have to get a substitute and could deal with it in house. Years later when I had my son he developed bad asthma and my husband and I took turns rushing him to the dr. That year I was written up for excessive absences (disciplinary formal hearing), then unfortunately was transferred to another school. That same year in the same school another teacher who had received an award for taking no absences the year before was also disciplined for taking too many personal days because her preemie twins were always in the hospital due to breathing issues. Petty, mean and incredibly disrespectful is the way we all were treated unless we had a normal, reasonable kind principal. And yes. our school ratings were tied to absences and other stupid things.
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Back in 1996, which was supposedly “the good old days,” I went into pre-term labor (17 weeks early) and three days later, delivered a daughter who lived for six hours.
The district didn’t give ANY bereavement leave, and I only had six days of sick leave, because it was my first year of teaching.
I had to take an unpaid leave day for the funeral, and went back to work exactly a week after having the baby, still bleeding and lactating. And I was teaching in an alternative school at the time.
Some areas have ALWAYS treated their teachers like garbage.
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Oh, TOW! I am so sorry for the loss of your child and for the way you were treated.
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Any career today is often about survival of the fittest. This is the way of the “gig” economy. Unfortunately, this teacher did not have tenure so her employment was totally dependent on the district. If she had had tenure, then at least she would have been entitled to due process. If this teacher had worked in a smaller district where her work was known and understood, the district may have been more compassionate.
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This from Arne Duncan might seem unrelated….I hope somebody recognizes why it is not:Arne Duncan’s reply: “This is brilliant, and tragically necessary. What if no children went to school until gun laws changed to keep them safe? My family is all in if we can do this at scale. Parents, will you please join us?”
After Duncan tweeted, Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, said she was on board. So did Jim Manly, the superintendent of KIPP public charter schools in New York City. WHY WERE THEY THE FIRST TO JUMP ABOARD?
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Could it be they jumped on board because boycotting schools won’t affect them? They want public school students to boycott so they can scoop up more for charters. Do you think KIPP wants its students to boycott school for a year or two? They would go bankrupt. They want public schools to go bankrupt. They will pick up the students.
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Yes, it sounds like a prime example of Duncan, TFA and Kipp doing the old “Let’s you and him fight” con.
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The principal of the first school said that he would recommend her for tenure. Then the school went into takeover by the University of Rochester. Certainly, U of R had all the flexibility it needed to make appropriate decisions to accommodate the needs of an exceptional teacher struggling with a terminally ill child. The takeover rationale, after all, is the district can’t be flexible due to those damn union contracts. Then, U of R blamed the Rochester school district and chose to extend her term of tenure for an extra year.
“The next June she was called down the the Superintendent’s office. (Now that a university runs the school, they have their own Superintendent.) She was told that she wouldn’t be getting tenure because ‘The RCSD School Board would never approve her tenure with her absence record.’ She was told that she’d get an extra year to prove herself and to sign a paper.
She was offered no union representation, given no written documentation of what the problem in her performance as a teacher was. In fact, every year she received excellent evaluations.”
It becomes clear that takeovers are intended to wring whatever is possible from teachers while offering the minimum in the way of job security or protections such as FMLA. Not that any of us here are surprised by that.
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Don’t ever confuse what is legal with what is moral. It’s not specific to teachers.
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The light in the darkness is the several comments telling of specific jobs available & an inquiry from a local TV news manager.
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Thanks for telling us. Sadly, I have heard this a lot, especially lately, especially about older teachers or teachers with children.
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All of us were punished for doing our job. Tens of thousands of teachers were trhown out. IN LA, thousands were charged and fired with no recourse.
The needed to end the voice of the genuine educator who knows what real Learning LOOKS LIKE , so they could MANDATE CURRICULA for ‘TEACHING’, testing as evaluation.
It i 20 years since it happened to me, and I was the NYS Educator of Excellence.
Dedicated teachers were cast aside.
Utter contempt!
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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It’s an important story, but doesn’t lead me to the conclusion there’s no dignity in teaching. To me it says that a lot of school administrators neither encourage nor respect human dignity. I wrote a response here:
http://nyceducator.com/2018/05/the-dignity-in-teaching.html
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Arthur: “If you measure your dignity based on what crazy people think of you, you’re bound for disappointment. ”
I agree up to a point. I’ve lived with administrators who dumped pounds of worthless hoops to jump over. They wouldn’t talk with any respect, or if they did it was totally phony and it would become a matter of time before someone on staff got stabbed in the back. This wears a person down when it occurs day, after day, after day, after month, after month, after year, after year.
I’d never measure my worth by anyone else but I’d see myself degraded in an environment in which I wasn’t given respect. It becomes extremely hard to live and be joyful when all your peers in the schools are exhausted and weary also.
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I know administrators whose opinions I value a lot, and others whose opinions mean nothing to me. You’re right, it’s very hard to get around an abusive supervisor, and you’re right, it can wear you down. The thing is, though, that someone has to get in the faces of these people and speak the truth. I’m a union rep and that’s sometimes my job. It would be much better if we all made it our job. I’m sorry you, or anyone, has to go through such things.
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Hi all,
I’m Gretchen, the woman Kelly wrote the blog about. I wanted to say thank you
all for sharing my story. I also want you to know that what Kelly said was true. I was treated horribly by the school that I loved. It’s really hard for me to put myself out there, but I need stories like mine to be told so that it doesn’t happen to anyone else. I’m not the only one who carries a heavy load.
I know that people from the school are saying that we’re disgruntled employees. I guess I am disgruntled, but for good reason I think :). There’s a lot more to the story and to steal what someone commented here ” Don’t confuse legal with moral.” I’m not sure how those things will shake out. I’m not a lawyer, just a regular teacher.
This whole thing has been overwhelming. I’m still not totally ok after the loss of Tristen. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone commenting here and on facebook. You have no idea how much it means to me to know that I’m not alone anymore.
What happened to me can’t be swept under the rug. One person didn’t fail me or wrong me. The whole system has failed all teachers, I just happen to have a really good friend who writes well. 🙂
❤
Gretchen Kress
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Gretchen, I am so sorry for the loss of your son. Your strength in caring for him as you continued to work with vulnerable ESL kids while also teaching yoga at the prison is simply beyond my comprehension.
We may not be able to get your job back or remedy the terrible lack of compassion with which you were treated, but we will certainly hold you in our hearts so that you do not feel alone.
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My heart truly aches for you and this horrible situation. May your son’s memory be for a blessing. Thank you, in your grief, for sharing your story. You are truly brave for sharing this.
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Hi, Gretchen,
Thanks for writing. I’m sorry that you did not get the dignified and kind treatment you deserve…that every person deserves. I’m sorry too for the loss of your child. I understand your grief. Don’t give up. You are a talented teacher and you should find a setting that is considerate of its employees.
Diane
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