For all my teacher friends...

One of my teacher friends just emailed this to me. I want to put it up on a billboard!!!

Day 16

I knew my exit from CPS wasn't going to go smoothly. We got paid yesterday, and my check is short 3 days. After a series of phone calls, being put on hold for way too long, way too many times, and being transferred about 3 times, I finally think I know what happened. Unfortunately, no one I spoke to could really help me, they could only tell me who to try and contact. I shot of an email, so we'll see if she responds Monday. I have a feeling that my next check will also be screwed up for the same reason this last on was. Great. I'm already getting a headache thinking about having to deal with this for the next several weeks. :(

Day 6

Wednesday, June 6, 2012
What is something you'd like to jump into if you had more time/money?

I know I've mentioned it more than once, but if I had the money, I would open my own preschool/daycare.

Today was a big day for CPS teachers. I won't bore you with all the details here. If you're that interested, you could always Google it.

This was posted on the Chicago Teachers Union blog today. I loved it, and just had to share.

A Letter to CEO Brizard from a Teacher

06/06/2012

CEO Brizard,

Thank you for sharing your concerns about the upcoming CTU strike authorization vote. I think a teacher's perspective may help you better understand why we will overwhelmingly vote yes to the authorization this week.

Though you often tell me how much you respect me and how much you support me, Board policies and CPS contract proposals do neither. If I felt respected and supported, in actions not words, if the thousands of other CTU members felt respected and supported, we would be at a very different place in our relationship, wouldn't we.

Unfortunately, the fact that you feel that you and CPS respect and support teachers and staff only serves to highlight how massively disconnected CPS leadership and the Board of Education are from classroom teachers, career service personnel, and the students we serve every day.

When my CEO cannot be bothered to attend a single session in negotiations, a process for which dozens of teachers and career service employees have gladly volunteered, I do not feel respected or supported.

When selective enrollment schools serving 1% of CPS students receive 24% of TIF funding spent on schools and I work in a neighborhood school, I do not feel respected or supported.

When CPS contract proposals indicate that experience, education, and training are unimportant or even undesirable, I do not feel respected or supported.

When 4% of my pay is taken (for the rest of my career - not just for one year) even though the Board budgeted for it, I do not feel respected or supported.

When charter schools dump their least desirable and least successful students into my neighborhood school, I do not feel respected or supported.

When CPS attempts to mandate a scripted curricula that has nothing to do with the needs of my students, I do not feel respected or supported.

When CPS closes 100 schools since the start of my career with threats to close 100 more, I do not feel respected or supported.

When privatized, non-union charter schools receive a disproportionate share of CPS capital funds and I work in a neighborhood school, I do not feel respected or supported.

When entire swaths of the city of Chicago are left without access to a neighborhood school, I do not feel respected or supported.

When Board policy terminates or pushes out the door thousands of our most valuable and veteran teachers (I'll be one of those some day), I do not feel respected or supported.

When CPS completely ignores my Union's positive agenda and its vision for publicly funded public education (The Schools Chicago's Students Deserve), I do not feel respected or supported.

When CPS takes enormous pension holidays and then complains about later balloon payments required to make up for it, I do not feel respected or supported.

When the Board asks me to invest 15-20% more mandatory hours in exchange for 2% more pay, I do not feel respected or supported. (By the way, a recent U of I study found that Chicago teachers average about 58 hours of work per week.)

When students coming in to my high school have never had the opportunity to take a music class in elementary school, I do not feel respected or supported.

When my field trip request to a CPS sponsored event is rejected by CPS, I do not feel respected or supported. (Yes, this has actually happened.)

When I am paid inaccurately over and over and over again and invest hours and hours into getting it corrected, I do not feel respected or supported.

When CPS has offered teachers for years an embarrasingly meager 250 MB of online storage and a decades old communication and collaboration platform I do not feel respected or supported.

When I cannot access GradeBook or Impact for hours on end, or I wait 13 minutes for a computer to boot up, I do not feel respected or supported.

When wave after wave of unproven education reform initiatives du jour are foisted upon teachers, I do not feel respected or supported.

When the temperatures hit 100 degrees on the third floor of our building at the beginning and end of the school year and over the summer, I do not feel respected or supported.

When the district is so unstable it cannot even keep its most senior leaders in place much less retain outstanding teachers, I do not feel respected or supported.

When grades are due a week before school ends, or we spend days on end on high stakes exams, or when other large portions of learning time are wasted but CPS wants to extend the school day and year without improving it or funding it, I do not feel respected or supported.

When counselors and special education teachers are woefully overworked with caseloads far beyond those recommended by respective professional organizations, I do not feel respected or supported.

When the Board dictates without discussion decisions on important issues like a longer day, a longer year, the number of classes I teach, the number of students I teach, class sizes, narrow test-prep curricula, etc., I do not feel respected or supported.

I am sure other teachers and employees could add on to this short list and make it a long one, but for the sake of brevity I will stop here.

Thank you for your respect and support and for sharing your concerns, but I have no choice but to vote yes. Though I expect to be fired or have my school closed or turned around or privatized or transformed or whatever else CPS intends to do to neighborhood schools next, I am confident I will still be teaching in CPS long after you and your team have moved on to greener pastures.

Sincerely,

Eric Skalinder, NBCT

Kelly High School

Interesting read...

Just a teeny peek into the crap we deal with.

A Must Read

Just a tiny little peek into why I love my job. Not.

Why, oh why, did I have to check my email?

One of my besties just sent me a link to this article. VERY interesting, yet infuriating, reading.

Why so much disrespect toward teachers?

Lifted from FB

Salary of retired US Presidents .............$180,000 FOR LIFE
Salary of House/Senate .......................$174,000 FOR LIFE
Salary of Speaker of the House ............$223,500 FOR LIFE
Salary of Majority/Minority Leaders ...... $193,400 FOR LIFE
Average Salary of a teacher ................ $40,065
Average Salary of Soldier DEPLOYED IN AFGHANISTAN.......$38,000
I think we found where the cuts should be made!

Thanks right back at ya, Tiff!

My buddy, Tiffany, reposted the Matt Damon video that I posted yesterday, but also added a few more. Check them out.

You go, Matt!

Thanks, Vodka Mom, for sharing this!

Random crap...

...to make up for the fact that I'm such a screw up.

This post is LONG overdue. My sweet friend, Tiffany, sent me an awesome package a while back, and I had intended to share it with you all.

Look what was inside!!
Tiffany's mother-in-law has a hand-made soap business, and she and her hubby sent me a HUGE box of goodies! I can't believe their generosity.
I had to take some close-up photos so you could see what the various scents (or as my sister says - flavors!)



How cute are these 'fancy' soaps?

I wish there was some kind of "smell technology" that would allow you to smell these awesome soaps!! Tiffany had gifted me with a bar of this fantastic soap when I was a guest in her home last fall. Imagine my delight at receiving an entire box of these beauties. Thanks, Tiffany and Ben!!! (I'm sure if anyone is interesting in gifting their friends and/or family with these awesome soaps, Tiffany can hook you up. Click over to her place!)

Things at the Hell-Hole have been just awful lately. I've made a concerted effort to not come here and bitch every day, like I have in the past. Truthfully, that's really how this moved from being a "teacher blog" to just a "random ramblings of a crazy lady" blog. I didn't want to come here every single day and complain. I certainly didn't want to focus on all the negativity, or give it any more of my time and energy. I really just wanted to try and forget about it, and writing here became my escape.

That being said, let me just share a teeny bit of what's been going on here in ChiTown recently. Some of you may know that we had a new mayor take office yesterday. He's bringing in a new superintendent of schools and a new superintendent of police. Like I said, I don't want to use this place as a outlet to bitch, but let me just say, I know LOTS of unhappy teachers and police officers.

One of the things we just found out about yesterday is that there is going to big changes to the length of our school day and year. We were told that our school day is going to be increased by 2 hours, and our school year by 2 weeks, all without ONE CENT of an increase in our salary. Nice, right? There has also been a bill passed making it nearly impossible for us to strike, as we would need a 75% majority vote. Convenient how this was passed right before we were told about all the extra UNPAID time we're going to be expected to work. Some of my other friends who are teachers have told me that their union reps have already told them to prepare for a strike. Once we were told about all this added, UNPAID time, it didn't seem so impossible to get 75% of the group to vote to strike.

I can feel my blood pressure rising, and I think I should just stop now. Let me end on a positive note. There are only 19 days of school left for the kids. Woo hoo! The teachers have 21 days, but that's a post for another day. I'm trying not to stroke out tonight. :(

'Nuf said...

(I picked this little beauty up over at Pissed Off's place, who got it from Etc. Thanks to both of you for sharing this!)

A must read

I just HAD to keep sharing this. I found it over at Ricochet's place, and immediately knew I had to share it. She found it over someone else, as well.

------------------------------

Mamacita says it best
This is not mine - I stole it from Coach Brown.His column follows (but you will notice he reposted someone else's.)

-------------------------------

This is from the great Mamacita. It is not my post, but it needs to be said, now more than ever.

-----

Most teachers who leave the profession leave because almost all of the attention, most of the perks, most of the privileges, and most of the allowances are given to the students who least deserve it: the disruptive kids. In other words, these loud, bratty, obnoxious kids are being rewarded for their disgusting behavior, so why should they clean up their act? I wouldn’t. Not if doing my own thing meant I’d still get to have and do everything little goody two-shoes next to me got to have and do.

Secondly, many of the parents who are involved with the school are the parents of these same brats. School administrators fear negative PR, and to a principal or superintendent, negative PR is when a loud-mouthed parent with a shitty kid calls the newspaper office. Entitlement is the bane of our society’s existence, and it’s alive and well in our public schools.

“You WILL accept my child and you WILL give him/her a special lunch and you WILL treat him/her on a different level than all these other peon kids and you WILL hold his/her hand and you WILL allow him/her to break any rules we as a family do not believe apply to us. . . .” Lovely mentality, yes?

Or this:

“Trailer for sale or rent, or possibly just someone else’s the family is mooching, no phone, no pool, lots of pets, chain smokin’ beer-guzzlin’ shacked-up, in and out of jail, booze, grass, if that damn school tries to call me one more time I’m goin’ down thar and kick me some ass. . .” Lovely mentality, yes?

Or this:

“My kid will play in that basketball game tonight and I don’t CARE that the rules say a kid who’s failing any subject is ineligible. Your rules are stupid, because that game is more important that a stupid subject like English or science, and I’ll go straight to the superintendent and school board if I don’t get my own way with this issue.” Lovely mentality, yes?

What’s even worse is the fact that more often than not, going over the heads of the teacher and principal will all too often give these people their own way.

Me, personally, I think that if there are any perks to be handed out, they should go only to students who have earned them. No earn? No get. Ever.

Why should a student bother to behave himself if he knows he’s going to get a limo ride and a Pizza Hut lunch for bringing a pencil three days in a row? I wouldn’t.

Why would a student exert himself to do any work, or allow anyone else in the classroom to do anything either, if he knows he’s going to be passed to the next grade anyway? Yes, I am a firm believer in holding back any student who can’t do it, won’t do it, or any combination thereof.

I don’t want my tiny second-grade-size daughter seated next to a hulking ballistic cursing disruptive 15-year-old, but if everyone is REQUIRED to behave properly, there wouldn’t be any problems even then, now would there? Because while a student can’t help the “hulking,” there are no viable excuses for being ballistic, cursing, or disruptive. EVER. Any person of any age who behaves in such a way should be removed immediately, not at the end of the day but IMMEDIATELY, escorted out by the police if the parent can’t be reached, and locked away where he/she can no longer deny other children their right to an education. That our schools have lowered themselves to becoming daycare centers for kids who are not required to behave themselves is a national disgrace. The schools who allow it are a disgrace, the parents who allow it are a disgrace, and the kids themselves are a disgrace. That’s right; I’m labeling children. After a certain age, they know how nice people behave. Life is full of choices. CHOICES. Door #1: Thank you for being a nice person who behaves properly. You may stay and be educated, that your life’s choices might increase. Door #2: Are you sure you want this door? Absolutely sure? Very well. Get out and do not set foot near the school grounds ever again. You are bringing down the entire population of students. Good riddance. Billy Madison speech. Door #3: Whine. Scream. Curse. Threaten. Hire a lawyer. Make promises. We don’t care. Get out. And take your obnoxious kid with you.

If only.

In other words, disruptive bratty obnoxious kids are mostly a product of their home.

Teachers who say things like this are few and far between. Not because they aren’t thinking such things 24/7, but because it’s dangerous to speak out. Ethnicity, race, gender, and social levels have nothing whatsoever to do with this issue, but teachers who recognize the actual problem and try to do something about it are often accused of being racist, sexist, un-PC, heartless, “in possession of inappropriate knowledge,” etc. And often the biggest brats belong to the parents with the most political pull. Just as often, the biggest brats belong to. . . . nobody. In either case, brats are brats.

In other words, somebody screams “prejudice,” when the truth is, these teachers are speaking truth.

Until the bullies and the disrupters and the violent and the kids who have no respect for learning are removed from our schools, our schools can not be what the free public schools were meant to be: places where all who wish to learn, may learn all they wish.

It’s hard to learn when 25 of the 38 kids in your classroom have important Letters of the Alphabet in their files, prohibiting the teacher from requiring any work or proper behavior. It’s hard to learn when it’s so loud you can’t hear yourself think, and that awful boy next to you keeps stealing your stuff and hitting you on the arm and laughing. He can’t help it, poor thing, it’s in his IEP that nobody may do anything that would lower his self-esteem. I do not believe that ANY child who is disruptive or violent for any reason should be allowed to prevent other children from learning. Inclusion will only work for students who work at it.

On the first day of school, let the few simple rules be known and let the penalties for disregarding the rules be known. Let there be no exceptions to these penalties. Require a signed document from every family, admitting understanding of these policies. Require an additional signature under the paragraph that spells out the “no exceptions” policy. From Day One, Period One, expect and require good behavior from all students. Instantly remove any kid that chooses to be an ass. Ass-behavior is always a personal choice.

No document from home? No privileges for the kid. Not until it’s signed and filed in the office. Several copies, and one to the superintendent. Why should the child be penalized because the parents can’t get their act together for thirty seconds to sign a damn paper? Because that’s the only way some people can be persuaded to do much of anything. Life is hard. What if some parents don’t LIKE some of these rules? Enroll your over-privileged kid somewhere else then, losers.

Where should these kids be removed to? To be perfectly honest, I don’t care. Just get them away from the good kids. Don’t good kids have rights, too? I’m sick and tired of disruptive kids having the most rights. SICK AND TIRED of it. It’s long past time to give the majority of attention and all things positive to kids who choose to behave properly and kids who want to learn.

This is why most teachers who leave while still young, leave. If you are not a teacher, it’s hard to comprehend the heartbreak these teachers feel: they love their students; they love teaching; they love every single thing about their jobs. . . except for the fact that they are required to endure what nobody else in any other profession would ever consider enduring. They’re required to watch the bright and promising students injured and taunted and threatened by “other kinds” of students, and they’re required to see those “other kinds” of students rewarded for things the nice kids do daily. They’re required to give exceptions to the undeserving and nothing to the deserving. After a while, their nerves are shot and their own self-esteem is in the dirt. Decisions they make are overturned, their authority is questioned and shot full of holes. Daily. They’re not paid enough to put up with this crap. Nobody is. This kind of thing should not even EXIST in our public schools. In the olden days, students were expected to behave and required to behave, and any kid who chose to “act up” got punished at school and punished again at home for disgracing the family. Kids who continued to “act up” were expelled. Life is full of choices.

I taught public school for 26 years and my salary peaked out at 49,300. After 26 years. It became sooo not worth it. A hundred thou a year would not have been worth it. The constant disruptions, the constant expectations that certain kids would not be held accountable, the constant accusations of favoritism and wrongdoing and the 23-minute lunch at 10:30 a.m. and the study hall with 48 non-participatory boys, many of whom had to sit on the floor because the room was too small for that many desks, the indignant parents who demanded. . . actually, demanded ANYTHING. Nice people do not DEMAND. And if someone is DEMANDING an exception, he/she is not a nice person. Teachers don’t leave because of the money. People don’t become teachers for the money. People become teachers because of the dedication and the love, and teachers leave because there is absolutely no support any more.

When teachers walk out the door, they don’t usually do it because they hated teaching. They do it because the peripherals made it impossible to be a teacher. In some schools, administrators don’t even call their instructors “teachers” any more. It’s “facilitators” now. That’s because we are no longer allowed to really teach. We spend most of our time trying to maintain order in overcrowded rooms full of disruptive kids who don’t want to be there and don’t want to learn and don’t intend to allow YOUR child to learn, either. Why do we put up with it? WHY?

I make not quite 16,000 now, and even though we’re one sheet of cardboard away from living in a cardboard box under a bridge, I’m far, far better off. Why is that? Because teaching is what I love, eager students are who I love, and now I can do what I was meant to do without putting up with disruptive students or parents who demand exceptions. And when a student gives us any kind of disruptive behavior at this level and refuses to leave, we call the cops.

It took me almost a full year to ‘catch on’ to the fact that I no longer had to ‘deal’ with that kind of behavior any more. It comes as quite a surprise to some students that after a certain level, disruptive behavior is no longer allowed. After a certain level, the facilitators no longer allow it on the facility.

Perhaps if our students were taught that lesson in fourth grade, we wouldn’t have any obnoxious hoods keeping our good kids from learning in any of the higher grades.

In a perfect world.

Yes, I mean every word of this post. Some of you will find fault with the fact that I do not believe our nation’s schools and our nation’s children should be required to put up with disruptive and violent behaviors. After all, some of those kids can’t help it. And so they can’t. Get them away from the other kids because frankly, anything that prevents the good kids from learning doesn’t belong there. Tolerance? I’m all for it. How about some of that for the good kids, too!

I do not believe that all of the disruptive students are Special Education material, either. Our Special Ed programs are usually excellent, taught by the most dedicated teachers of all, overcrowded, underappreciated, and too full of kids who don’t belong there, which takes those teachers’ time and attention away from the kids who DO belong there.

An IEP does not take the place of discipline. Sure, it’s easier to claim that your child has Authority Defiance Syndrome than to require good behavior and enforce the rules yourself. Quick fix for Mom and Dad, huh. These people are taking time and attention away from kids who genuinely need and deserve special treatment.

We as a nation had better be very, very careful about what kind of behaviors we tolerate and even encourage with stupid reward systems for behaviors that ALL students should be practicing daily, because it’s already happening that many people are trying to enter the workforce without the necessary skills. Some of these people were busy texting and checking their email on their cell phones instead of paying attention, sure; I hate those people, too. But some of these people graduated with good grades that mean almost nothing because their teachers were so busy trying to corral the wild animals in their classrooms and keep them from actually harming the good kids, so busy trying to placate parents who expected the schools to not only feed, clothe, and babysit before and after hours but also to teach the behaviors and manners that are actually the responsibility of the parents, that at the end of the long, long day, there simply wasn’t time to teach anything. The schools should not be responsible for teaching your child to behave properly. If that is what you’re counting on, forget it. It’s not going to happen, parents. That’s YOUR job. I know you’re busy, but if you’re too busy to raise your child, perhaps you’d best be thinking about letting somebody else do it, not the school.

I’ll say this again: If an adult can afford cigarettes and beer and DOG FOOD, that adult should be able to buy socks and jeans and a hot lunch for his child. I’d say, the child should come before ANY of those other things. When those free-lunch, free books, free before-and-after-school-care parents would stand before me, reeking of smoke, whining with their beer-breath that they just plum couldn’t afford no shoes for the child, cough cough cough reek, it was all I could do not to tell them off for being just generally bad, bad people. Bad people who bought cigarettes, beer, dog food, and shoes for themselves instead of taking decent care of their child.

There are no exaggerations in this post. If your child’s classroom is a place of calm, peace, cool, and learning, please fall on your knees and thank God or your lucky stars, whichever one rows your boat, because your child’s school is an exception.

I’m not kidding, either. I only wish I were.

PLEASE do not assume that I am attacking special students here; that is NOT the case at all. I am merely saying that no student who keeps another student from learning should be allowed placement in a regular education classroom. Our public schools, bad as so many of them are, are still one of the main reasons many immigrants come to our country; it’s too late for them, but they have hopes for their children. Without education, there can be no hope. Without education, people are easily fooled, easily led, and somehow less of a person. Educated people are the hope of everyone’s future.

That’s why it’s so important to make sure that our public schools are places where students can be educated, without disruption, without fear, without “putting up with” anything that interferes with that education. That so many students fear for their very lives when they go to school is a sad commentary on our society. That those who give other students just cause to be afraid are tolerated is a disgrace. Those who sanction it are the biggest disgrace of all.

Are we really so afraid of harming the self-esteem of a thug, or a bully, or anyone who puts another at risk or in any way prevents another from advancing forward in knowledge, that we have shunted the deserving to the back burner, and expect them to be content with the dregs of our energy and resources?

Apparently we are.

Jon Hearts Teachers

Some of you may have seen this a couple weeks ago:

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

(Vodka Mom and a few other teacher blogs had it posted, and Bestest Friend sent it to me directly.)

Well, Vodka posted this one today:

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

I'm quickly become a MAJOR Jon Stewart fan!!!!

NOW do you get it?!

Click here to donate to St. Baldrick's.

Thanks, Tiffany!!!

Teachers make too much money!

Teachers make too much money!

by Sarasota Values Education on Friday, February 18, 2011 at 8:32pm

Are you sick of high paid teachers? Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - baby sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan — that equals 6 1/2 hours).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.

Now how many do they teach in day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET’S SEE…. That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 peryear. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 childrenX 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here! There sure is!

The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student–a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!

WHAT A DEAL!!!!

(I just lifted this from Ricochet. Thank you for sharing!!)

Parent Teacher Conference

I watched this at 6:30 this morning over at Tiffany's place, and almost pissed my pants!! It was the perfect way to start my day, before heading over to the Hell-Hole.


The sad thing is, I've heard most of this first-hand, as have most of my teacher friends. Don't worry, I'm not gonna climb up on my soap box, I just wanted to share the funny.

Tiffany Week continues...

Today, my sweet friend sent me the link to this article. I think most of you will find it interesting, especially my teacher friends, and MOST especially other kindergarten teachers.

***UPDATE***
I just read through my favorite teacher blogs, and I see two others have posted the same article today!

For my teacher friends...

Tiffany posted this over at her place. I had to share, as I'm sure most of you will read it while nodding your head in agreement, just like I did.