I joined the NYC Department of Education in September 2013 and benefited from the amazing retirement plan it offers. The Teacher's Retirement System (TRS) is one of the few defined-benefit pensions still in existence in the United States. When I joined I was told that as long as I worked for 10 years in the DOE I would be vested in the pension system and earn money from TRS starting at age 63 until I die. This is one amazing benefit and definitely keeps people in the system for 10 years. 

All that changed with the new NY State Budget approved last week. According to the UFT news, Tier 6 of TRS (of which I am a member) is now officially vested at 5 years, meaning I am vested right now in year 9, along with a lot of other teachers. While I am very happy to have a guaranteed pension, this does worry me considering the potential of many teachers across the country who say they are leaving. I wonder what will happen to our vulnerable students who need their support.

That being said, there may be completely valid reasons for them to leave and we as a country should be concerning ourselves with what would entice new people to the profession. I would argue banning books and limiting curriculum choice is not a good way of doing so. 

Not everyone realizes it but unions involve regular elections to determine who will lead our group of workers for the upcoming x years. My union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), has an election happening right now in which all current members as well as retirees are allowed to vote for the caucus they want to be in power. There are two groups vying for control: the Unity Caucus, run by the current leadership who has been in power for decades, and the United for Change (UfC) caucus, which is a conglomeration of other groups that banded together because they disagree with how the UFT has been run during that time. 

I find myself on the side of the underdog in this election because I have experienced firsthand how undemocratic the Unity caucus can be. When I was a UFT Delegate for my building I regularly attended the Delegate Assemblies, monthly meetings that lead to decisions for the UFT in general. Ideally, there is time for a president's report, some other reports, then periods for questions as well as motions for the group to vote on. What regularly happens, however, is that the presidential report lasts over an hour and instead of having a lot of time to debate and discuss policies (for example, if the UFT should endorse certain candidates for elections) we have to rush at the end to vote on smaller proposals. 

I once made a motion that turned into a proposal to restrict the amount of time the president's report could take. Ironically, there was about 3 minutes of debate on this proposal and it was shot down immediately without due consideration. I found that to be quite undemocratic for a union that prides itself on its members' voices.

I also struggled with the decision the UFT made when the Unity leadership agreed to extend our previous contract by a few months in order to pay for paid parental leave a few years ago. Since this involved such a massive change to our contract, I would think it would make sense to bring the issue up for a vote by the entire membership. Instead, Unity made decisions behind closed doors that meant our raises were significantly delayed. People may have been expecting a bump in November but then it was delayed until February. 

Overall, I think the Unity caucus has done a so-so job at protecting our rights and working conditions. I think the UfC caucus will be more transparent and allow more rank-and-file engagement, so I have supported them and am running on their slate as a convention delegate. It is not anything glamorous but it means I want them to win.

I hope you will read more about what each side believes. Even if Unity says they "do the work" that is because no one else has been allowed to - they have made sure of that. 

​Thanks for reading.

A few days ago I received this email from DonorsChoose:

I'm very glad to be supported by them in matching funds and now I need some support from all of you. Starting RIGHT NOW your donation to this project will be doubled. That means instead of $750 I only need $375. I hope you will give some money so that I can get the supplies I need for my computer science students.

Thanks in advance!

Teachers spend a lot of their out of pocket money to buy supplies for their class. This is shown time and time again from articles in the Washington Post to shows like Abbott Elementary. On average, we spend over $500 a year on our classrooms. Sometimes I tell people 'I need to see if there is money in the budget for paper' and they don't understand because in the corporate world paper is just, well, there. 

Well, this has been happening for so long that organizations like DonorsChoose have popped up to help us out. They facilitate and advertise projects that teachers post for supplies that they need. Well, I am about to post a new project tomorrow and am asking for some support. It is for my computer science students so they can learn how to program Microbits (awesome chip-based devices). Stay tuned for the project posting tomorrow as all donations will be matched!

​Thanks for reading.

Because I am partially working in a 7th grade math classroom this year I supported the proctoring of the state exam yesterday. While I have done this type of thing for high school ELA regents exams and the PSAT/SAT before I wondered what would feel different about doing it for younger students. I was placed in a room with students who could have the test read aloud so it was a smaller group.

As expected, it was somewhat as boring as proctoring other tests. Mostly, the students were just working away after I read some introductory instructions. What was fascinating to me was the amount of instructions dedicated to restricting electronic devices (my guess is around 35% of what I read had to do with that). We collected student devices (as we always do) and returned them at the end of the test. I had one student who read slower than the others (I learned later he probably was reading at a 1st grade level) so I read most of the passages to him and he answered the questions as best he could. 

These tests usually take six days of second semester but this year are taking only four. Even with that, it seems relatively unnecessary to me. If the purpose is to help teachers be aware of their student's needs, we already knew going in what the students were going to have trouble with. On the parental side, I think it would be more useful to have teachers spend time working with students instead of administering a test that is biased and won't necessarily give information the parents don't already know. On the student side it just seems like a task to complete when they may rather be in their classrooms. 

There is an argument to be made that students need to 'practice the skill of standardized testing' because it exists in our world. I think that could be accomplished in the classroom instead of disrupting the entire schedule. During these days, only some students take the test and the rest are in their regular classes. But, they cannot learn new material because that would unfairly affect the kids in the testing rooms. They also cannot run 'clubs' or some such because that would be unfair to the students who are testing as well.

In summary, proctoring this exam confirmed what I thought already: it would be more useful to teach the students than take these exams, especially this year.

​Today I had a half day with students and a half day for professional development. This is a fairly normal thing for a teacher to experience but I haven’t written about them in a while so I thought I’d debrief some thoughts. 

Half day with students

These days have the possibility of being useful and often are not. This year I’ve been working in a 7th grade math classroom 1st period (8:45-9:30), whose attendance is stellar. I would say 80-85% of the students are there on time and we have 95% within the first 10 minutes. This makes it possible to use the entire class period for content teaching and the absent students could be caught up later or we try to find our way they are not on time and deal with it accordingly. In contrast, today I had what is normally my 4th period geometry class (10:21-11:10) at the beginning of the day. I had three students on time and by the end of the period I had less than half. This class is a mixture of grades 10/11 mostly with some 9/12. I tried my best to teach about the sine and cosine functions and have my students play a game that uses them but I had to reteach twice because of latecomers. So I’m going to have to do something very similar on Monday to catch everyone up. 

Even the next two periods were sporadically attended. Luckily I teach computer science during these periods and so my students are working on a project where they know what to do already. But I hear from others that students don’t bring their bags or notebooks on these days, making it really difficult to have substantive teaching taking place. To top it all off, we ended the day 10 minutes before we normally would to have students leave at 11am because that is what we have done in the past. I disagree with that policy and wish we could have had the extra time to teach our students.

Half day with staff

We have had three half days in March to learn together. Today's focus was on deficit thinking and how to get out of it. The idea being if we only think of students as being ‘low income’ or ‘having a single parent’ that might negatively influence how we view them and act towards them, leading them to internalize these interactions.
​
I was impressed with my principal for sharing a story of her upbringing; she doesn’t often get that personal. It was quite motivating for me to hear how she interpreted her life’s arc and how it relates to what we do as educators. Essentially, her teachers didn’t pigeon hole her into certain boxes just because of how she looked or her family background and that allowed her to have a positive self-image and do well in the future.

We spent a significant amount of time in pairs talking about when we have experienced or seen certain types of deficit thinking. Then we looked at some examples of things staff members might say and tweaked them to think about our role in supporting them. I liked the re-framing of ‘those kids fail because they are always in the hallway’ to ‘what is the reason those students see the hallway as a better option than the classroom?’

The only snag to me is resources. Maybe those students in the hallway only get to socialize during that class period. Maybe a student comes late to ​​school because they have to help their grandma in the morning. Those are important things. I want to know how I, as a classroom teacher, can provide the support those students need within the confines of school so that it doesn’t overwhelm my life. Certainly, I could host a club before or after school for kids to socialize but when would I get my work done or socialize myself? I could try to connect a student to resources so their grandma gets help in the morning but when do I make those calls? Sometimes it feels like the system is broken at a level so deep that we don’t have the time to fix the things we recognize need fixing. 

Anyway, it was an interesting day to ponder. 

I haven't written much on this blog in the past few years. Of course, part of that is the pandemic, sucking a lot of the energy out of me after I spent most of it trying to educate young adults. But another part is maybe a lack of desire or seeing a benefit of what I write, for me or for the world around me. I would like to change that mindset and get back into reading and writing about education policy. 

I am not sure how much longer I will stay in the classroom. Certainly, the past two years of pandemic teaching have not been the best for me (nor many other teachers out there). But I still try to do my best every day. I think I am realizing the gap between what I am able to do and what needs to be done is widening. Even with the extra money coming in from the state and federal government to try to assuage the issues of 'learning loss' or whatever you want to call it, it is not enough. Or, maybe it is not being used in the correct way.

In any case, I am getting less joy and meaning out of working in the classroom than I used to. And before I become that jaded old white teacher who is only in the room for the paycheck, I want to reinvigorate myself.

When I began teaching 13 years ago I said that I did it because I wanted to make a difference in the lives of young adults. I still feel that to be true but maybe the time has come for me to shift where I do so. A lot of the gripes I have about what happens in my classroom come from higher than I can influence in my current position. It is people making education policy, negotiating budgets, and generally making decisions without teachers present to offer our critique. It might be time for me to enter into those ranks and influence things in a positive way. 

One of the first things I want to do is begin writing on this blog again. I want to read about education policy, the history of math teaching, current trends in computer science pedagogy, and more. My plan is to get back into the swing of writing about what I am passionate about and maybe that will get my engine revving again. We shall see.

A federal appeals court reversed a decision made over the weekend regarding the vaccine mandate for Department of Education staff: now employees have until Friday, October 5 @ 1pm to get their first dose of the vaccine, otherwise they will be removed from payroll and the DOE will figure out what to do over a weekend. I received an email from my union president about this half an hour ago and wonder exactly what will happen next Monday. 

The mayor has said there will be enough substitute teachers out there to take care of the students who need them. I am somewhat skeptical of the quality of those folks but recognize that this may be the only way to get the stragglers vaccinated. I do support it and the science seems more than justified to me to make it a mandate. We'll see what happens.

Last week I received two email updates from the UFT sharing various agreements they have crafted with the DOE. Some I think are good and useful (when used correctly) and others I'm not sure sure about.

The first was an official list of escalating consequences for students who do not wear masks. During my first week of school I was very happy that the advisory-type class I had (called Crew) did not have any mask refusers. There were some students who kept forgetting that it fell off their nose, but were very careful to put it back when asked. The consequences they could have received make a fair amount of sense (talk to student, sending a student to talk to a counselor, etc.). The first one on the list: document the incident with OORS (Online Occurrence Reporting System) seems a bit harsh to me as the first thing to do. I would assume we should talk more to the student and family before officially reporting something like this. But, I guess the UFT feels they wanted it that badly. 

The next item I'm not sure how to react to: we can do instructional lunch at schools across the DOE in order to shorten the schedule and have fewer students in a cafeteria eating food together simultaneously. I suppose it is good but I'm not sure how well it will work. Last year at the high school I work at we had instructional lunch and basically used it as a period to show documentaries (sometimes) and try to talk about the news. Much of the time, though, it was just quiet eating. I can't imagine much 'instruction' will take place while students are eating.

Then, any unvaccinated staff member is ordered to get tested between September 13 and 27 when the vaccine mandate goes into effect. I'm not sure if this is still in effect as the vaccinate mandate seems to be on pause for now (this was in a different update sent this week from the UFT). But there is a court date set for September 22 so we will see what happens then.

Finally, there are all kinds of ways for staff to not work for the DOE this year if they want to avoid the vaccine mandate. From taking an unpaid leave to actually leaving the DOE and getting severance pay, this is a pretty extreme part of the negotiations but I suppose necessary for those who feel the need. I wonder how many people will actually leave because of teaching conditions this year.

I am not going to lie, it feels REALLY weird to be in such a large class with masks as if things are sort of back to normal. I haven't taught my academic classes yet (we'll see how that goes next week) but I don't think it'll be much different. Perhaps more anxiety-inducing as I'll be with more kids throughout the day. We'll see.