"I've been in detention for years - and I'm a teacher"

[tonysam]

I picked the Norms Note's blog repost of the article rather than the Financial Times because the headline was more catchy.

Excerpt:

When I began teaching in New York City 37 years ago, if you were reported for serious misconduct, you were sent to a Board of Education office until the matter was resolved. But as the system grew, removing teachers from the classroom became standard for even the most trivial offence. The board’s offices got so crowded they began leasing buildings around the city to use as “reassignment centres”, nicknamed “rubber rooms”.

As many as 800 to 1,000 teachers are in rubber rooms on any given day; it’s an academic Guantánamo Bay. Many go stir-crazy. Brooklyn’s Chapel Street rubber room is huge but so crowded that people are almost falling out of the windows.

When I was first sent to one of these rubber rooms, it took me six months to establish what the complaints were. Meanwhile, like everyone else, I turned up every day, kept the same hours and received my salary. But there was nothing to do except wait. It’s known as constructive termination.

In the worst rubber rooms, there are people who’ve been there for up to five years.

Norm's Notes

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. OMG

In 2004, the term had just started when I saw a woman setting up a music room. I assumed that my complaining had paid off, but the class was for the adjacent primary school – they were expanding into our building.
I couldn’t believe it. I filmed the class, with the teacher’s permission, to document the fact that kids from another school were being taught a subject in the place where our own students were denied it. The next day I was handed a letter telling me “pending an investigation following an allegation made against you, you are to report to a temporary reassignment centre until further notice”.

I finally discovered that the reasons for my being sent to the rubber room were “fundraising activities and collection of money from students”. The allegation was thrown out, but the board of education has a right to send you for a psychiatric exam regardless. It took me a year to force the city to agree to an impartial medical arbitration. I was vindicated but by then everything I had built was torn apart. There was no one to take my place and, from what I’ve heard, some of my pupils never fulfilled their promise.

I was sent to a new school as a day-to-day substitute but soon they pulled me out again. It took a year before I found out what the new charges were: bringing plants to school without permission and giving watches I had designed myself to students on the honour roll – which constituted promotion of a private business. But the kids wouldn’t have been able to afford to buy them themselves.

I’ve been assigned to a rubber room in Harlem for the past two years – with no available drinking water, no natural light, no plants and poor ventilation – just waiting to clear my name.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. Good to see that Pakter is at least getting exposure.

Financial Times of London.... OK.

Pakter: he's at top salary scale so there's plenty of incentive to get rid of him. Also , he won't keep his mouth shut.

Give the guy mega-credit: most people would have retired ( or died) by now after being subjected to this kind of ordeal.

Sounds like Pakter won't give them the satisfaction of doing either.

Cool guy, imo.

[tonysam]

3. I hope Pakter writes a book about his experiences.

I know I could; it damn near defies belief.

I STILL shake my head over what I went through.

[Smarmie Doofus]

4. Our advocacy groups are not good at getting these stories out.

Our advocacy groups are pretty much limited to teachers' unions... and the modest vision that that implies.

We don't have publcists and PR people getting stories in the MSM about atrocities such as yours and Pakter's. Brill's anti-teacher rant in the New Yorker... in which he took the cases of a couple of crazed ex-teachers and falsely implied that they were typical of rubber room denizens..... appeared mysteriously and conveniently in the middle of Bloomberg's election year campaign and in the middle of contract negotiations with the UFT.

You will not convince me that Bloomberg's influence in the NYC $$$ media community was not a factor in getting that hatchet-job published just when it was. And that piece did a lot of damage. Media know-nothings endlessly reference it in their scribblings about the need for school "reform".


We need to be more sophisticated in using the media. Don't ask me how... but we need to be more sophisticated.

[tonysam]

5. It's so tough for teachers and former teachers to organize

for real reform. Current teachers are afraid of losing their jobs, while former teachers who were fired think they are alone. Unions are intimidated because of political reasons and really don't help teachers, especially individual teachers wrongfully dismissed.

Karen Horwitz, who founded NAPTA, has found it really hard to get teachers' issues off the ground. She also tends to focus much on whistle-blowing teachers, and while they are important, they aren't the only ones who have been abused by the system. Simply being over 50, being at the top of the salary schedule, having health problems, or simply having personality conflicts with a sociopathic or egotistical principal can and will cause a teacher to be abused and ultimately fired.