11With all of the problems that teachers in today’s classrooms have to deal with, they certainly do not need to be constantly lambasted by the media.
Most, if not all, teachers are very hardworking, dedicated, and very professional in their everyday dealings with students, parents and administrators. Teachers work very hard to help each and every student realize his full potential, and given that the academic strength of each student is different, that is no easy task.
Overcrowded classrooms, students who are unruly, a lack of necessary teaching materials, and lack of support from administrators, as well as from some parents, make teaching a very stressful and physically taxing profession.
All teachers everywhere in this country need to be treated with the utmost courtesy, respect and professionalism. Teachers are working to help mold their students to be the future of America — treat these hardworking, dedicated professionals with the respect that they deserve, and pay them a fair, livable salary.
John Amato
Fresh Meadows
Ms. Mueller, while I second your challenge to the Mayor & DOE. I would NOT hold my breath.
Dear Mayor and media, Teaching is the most difficult job, they educate the future of this country without them our kids will have nothing. Most of the parents they work and a teacher is father,mother,brother, and sister for the students. the Mayor using his connections and his money to get away by misrepresent the teachers, it is very easy to close a school but to solve the problems that exists it takes brain not money or power. let him come for one day and try to teach and see how it feels. I have great respect to all teachers in this country
Teaching is something I do. Teaching is who I am. I wake in the morning, strap on my suit of armor and come to work. I am ready for anything. Often, “anything” includes (but is not limited to) being told to go to hell by a student who is angry at the world, being asked for advice by a pregnant 14 year old, being confided in by the student whose family has lost electricity for lack of payment in the dead of winter. I am vomited on. I am cursed at. I am disrespected on a daily basis. I come home each day and I am covered in the sweat and tears of children. But my suit of armor is strong. It can handle these battles. I shine it before I go to bed each night.
What it can not handle is the assertion that I am not enough for the students I teach. That I am not worthy of the measly salary I make because my pregnant, 13 year old Special Education student did not pass her English Regents on the first try. That I must change student grades and pass a student I have never met because no one cares he has been in El Salvador all year, saying goodbye to his dying grandmother. That the effort I put into my students is for naught if there is no data driven evidence to calculate it.
My suit of armor is full of holes and dents. And they were not put there by the students. The needy, vulnerable and lost students who, instead of worrying about who they are taking to the prom, are wondering where they will go to school next year and where their favorite teachers will be. These chinks in my armor are battle wounds imposed upon me by lawmakers and policy makers who have never set foot in a classroom. They have never taught a 17 year old who just got out of jail to relate to a novel. They have never encouraged a child to tell her parents she’s been taking drugs. They have never watched a brilliant and talented student drop out at 16 in order to support his family.
And most disturbing of all, they’ve never asked. The assumptions and expectations come from above and ride through my school like a freight train with no one to pause and pull the brake. If you were to ask, I would answer like this. I can truly say, from the bottom of my being, that I do my best. I am smart and I am capable and my worth is not reflected in your arbitrary parameters. It is not written on the bulletin board of the third classroom I teach in each day, that I share with four other teachers. It is not reflected in the English test scores of a second year immigrant who is working two jobs and desperately trying to stay awake in school each day. My best is not calculated by the disconnected expectations you have aggressively imposed upon me. My best is in my heart and in the heart of my students. It is in the knowledge that no matter how poorly Mayor Bloomberg has treated me, I would never treat my students the same way. That I will learn from his mistakes. My best is in the suit of armor that bares the scars of the children whose lives I’ve touched.
And if my best is not good enough for you, Mayor Bloomberg, then I challenge you to borrow my armor, and attempt to do better yourself.
Kudos to you and your colleagues for all that you do that is NOT measurable by standardized testing scores or other parameters set in place by those who have never or will never know what itis like to touch a life in a way that few else can.
Kudos to you and your colleagues for all that you do that is NOT measurable by standardized testing scores or other parameters set in place by those who have never or will never know what itis like to touch a life in a way that few else can.
I can’t help shed tears of solidarity my dear. Whether we shared similar students or not, you have said the absolute reality in which we live through day in and day out. I could not have expressed myself any clearer or as professional as you have without including words of anger, pain and disappointment to a man who calls himself a leader. Like many of our colleagues, we have been born, raised and educated in NYC public schools. We know first hand what our students are going through and continue to support them empathetically without judgement and focusing on empowering them to reach their potential. As the change agents that we are, we are at the front lines on a daily basis more positive than the day before because we are prepared to battle defeat with HOPE, negativity and hate with LOVE, and ignorance with EDUCATION. I have always admired teachers for having to deal with the challenge of raising, nurturing, and teaching 30-35 students as if they were his/her children. However, everytime I see a student of mine smile or tell me how much they look forward to my class is enough to keep me moving forward. If Mayor Bloomberg only knew how much work, time, sweat, tears, and dreams are involved in this line of work, I don’t think he would last a day. I too second your calling out to him.
Mayor Bloomberg, how about you come and teach my five assigned classes plus the sixth class I agreed to teach because we are understaffed, create graphic organizers so you can differentiate the lesson, implement the Depth of Knowledge vocbulary to heighten students’ critical thinking skills and scaffold tasks so they become empowered future contributing members of society with less than 30 minutes for lunch and no bathroom breaks. Let’s see how long you last.
I can’t help shed tears of solidarity my dear. Whether we shared similar students or not, you have said the absolute reality in which we live through day in and day out. I could not have expressed myself any clearer or as professional as you have without including words of anger, pain and disappointment to a man who calls himself a leader. Like many of our colleagues, we have been born, raised and educated in NYC public schools. We know first hand what our students are going through and continue to support them empathetically without judgement and focusing on empowering them to reach their potential. As the change agents that we are, we are at the front lines on a daily basis more positive than the day before because we are prepared to battle defeat with HOPE, negativity and hate with LOVE, and ignorance with EDUCATION. I have always admired teachers for having to deal with the challenge of raising, nurturing, and teaching 30-35 students as if they were his/her children. However, everytime I see a student of mine smile or tell me how much they look forward to my class is enough to keep me moving forward. If Mayor Bloomberg only knew how much work, time, sweat, tears, and dreams are involved in this line of work, I don’t think he would last a day. I too second your calling out to him.
Mayor Bloomberg, how about you come and teach my five assigned classes plus the sixth class I agreed to teach because we are understaffed, create graphic organizers so you can differentiate the lesson, implement the Depth of Knowledge vocbulary to heighten students’ critical thinking skills and scaffold tasks so they become empowered future contributing members of society with less than 30 minutes for lunch and no bathroom breaks. Let’s see how long you last.
I can’t help shed tears of solidarity my dear. Whether we shared similar students or not, you have said the absolute reality in which we live through day in and day out. I could not have expressed myself any clearer or as professional as you have without including words of anger, pain and disappointment to a man who calls himself a leader. Like many of our colleagues, we have been born, raised and educated in NYC public schools. We know first hand what our students are going through and continue to support them empathetically without judgement and focusing on empowering them to reach their potential. As the change agents that we are, we are at the front lines on a daily basis more positive than the day before because we are prepared to battle defeat with HOPE, negativity and hate with LOVE, and ignorance with EDUCATION. I have always admired teachers for having to deal with the challenge of raising, nurturing, and teaching 30-35 students as if they were his/her children. However, everytime I see a student of mine smile or tell me how much they look forward to my class is enough to keep me moving forward. If Mayor Bloomberg only knew how much work, time, sweat, tears, and dreams are involved in this line of work, I don’t think he would last a day. I too second your calling out to him.
Mayor Bloomberg, how about you come and teach my five assigned classes plus the sixth class I agreed to teach because we are understaffed, create graphic organizers so you can differentiate the lesson, implement the Depth of Knowledge vocbulary to heighten students’ critical thinking skills and scaffold tasks so they become empowered future contributing members of society with less than 30 minutes for lunch and no bathroom breaks. Let’s see how long you last.
I can’t help shed tears of solidarity my dear. Whether we shared similar students or not, you have said the absolute reality in which we live through day in and day out. I could not have expressed myself any clearer or as professional as you have without including words of anger, pain and disappointment to a man who calls himself a leader. Like many of our colleagues, we have been born, raised and educated in NYC public schools. We know first hand what our students are going through and continue to support them empathetically without judgement and focusing on empowering them to reach their potential. As the change agents that we are, we are at the front lines on a daily basis more positive than the day before because we are prepared to battle defeat with HOPE, negativity and hate with LOVE, and ignorance with EDUCATION. I have always admired teachers for having to deal with the challenge of raising, nurturing, and teaching 30-35 students as if they were his/her children. However, everytime I see a student of mine smile or tell me how much they look forward to my class is enough to keep me moving forward. If Mayor Bloomberg only knew how much work, time, sweat, tears, and dreams are involved in this line of work, I don’t think he would last a day. I too second your calling out to him.
Mayor Bloomberg, how about you come and teach my five assigned classes plus the sixth class I agreed to teach because we are understaffed, create graphic organizers so you can differentiate the lesson, implement the Depth of Knowledge vocbulary to heighten students’ critical thinking skills and scaffold tasks so they become empowered future contributing members of society with less than 30 minutes for lunch and no bathroom breaks. Let’s see how long you last.
Dear Ms. Mueller (my dear niece),
The devotion felt by most teaching and helping professionals has been devalued and misunderstood for a very long time. The legislators of our state do not understand that the reason you work in your noble profession is so that you can make a difference in the life of a child. The decision made to grade your work according to an arbitrary rating system based on productivity alone, surely misses the mark of the significant difference that you make every day. Please continue to take the time to make the important and life changing contributions that you do.
Linda E. Huber
Suffolk County, New York
I find it more than just a little bit disturbing that everyone has sat back and watched while the mayor is performing a systematic genocide on the teachers of NYC. I am not an educator, nor would I condescend to imply that I could be one. I would never have the patience, skill or more importantly, sense of humor required to perform such a vital role in a young person’s life. But many of the teachers of NYC possess those qualities and exercise them every day, more often than not to a thankless audience who usually doesn’t realize how much care and attention they are given until after the fact.
The mayor is planning to close 33 schools this coming June 2012. This was spurred by the UFT’s unwillingness to participate in a ratings program for teachers that would essentially leave them open to unfair scrutiny, judgment and potentially the loss of their jobs at the whimsy of their superiors, who in some cases could have personal agendas with their own best interest in mind – a point which is never brought to light or taken into consideration. Rather, teachers become vilified in the media as spoiled lay abouts who are unwilling to be judged or critiqued no matter what the cost and protected by their tenure. Understand, I don’t doubt at all, that in certain cases this is the truth. I myself had teachers in high school that should certainly not have been allowed to receive a paycheck from the city under the guise of molding young minds. They sat back and were virtually ineffective. But this was a fraction of what made up the whole. In no way was it 50% by any stretch of reality. It wasn’t even 85-90%. Nor do I believe that is the case now.
I am proud to say that I have many close friends who are educators for the city and the idea that they are being treated in such a gross and distorted fashion disturbs me more than I can say. Anyone who would take the time to discuss with a teacher why it is that they are opposed to the rubric being presented to them, would have a much clearer understanding of the idea that teachers are not fearful of being critiqued on how to be more effective, but rather becoming the victims of political corruption. Which in this case is evident, and being mastermind by a politician who has purchased his way into office and through the system more than once.
Keep in mind, the mayor’s motivation in all of this stems from MONEY that the state will not fork over to the city unless there is a mutual agreement with the UFT. And this course of action is basically saying that anyone not willing to fall in line with Bloomberg’s agenda will be extracted by the laws he modifies to suit his needs.
Sounds far-fetched? How do you think he got a third term?
At the end of the day, it is deplorable that our educators are being bullied into unfair ultimatums by questionable politicians. The mayor wants his legacy to reflect that he changed the school system for the better, but at whose expense? His career and the differences he’s making are his only concern. What about the careers of teachers who have put nearly 20 years of hard work in, only to find that they are ungraciously being shown the exit door for less expensive and less experienced new teachers? How is this a fair course of action? And more importantly, a point that should be strongly considered by the 50% of new teachers that are scheduled to be hired, as well as every other teacher in every other school in the city. It’s 33 schools ejecting their teaching staff today, but your fools to think it’s not you tomorrow. I would hope all the teachers would band together in a unified stance and make your voices heard. Walk out! Go on TV! Go to the news! Make people aware by burning down the house while you’re still in it, so to speak. Because what’s the worst that could happen? You’re losing your jobs anyway.