Thursday, February 18, 2010

BloomKlein Reicht can Suck It

I am a 3rd year teacher who has gotten all satisfactory observations from all 3 of my admins since my first year. As a first year teacher, I'm not sure I deserved satisfactory, but they gave it to me. Now, I know I am a stand up teacher. I do everything my principal asks me to - even though it is a violation of contract since I am writing curriculum, creating pre & post unit assessments and quizzes with NYS Performance indicators labeled for each question, analyzing the data for EVERYTHING legitimately (My TAN is legit and no joke), never mind all the regular teacher stuff I try to do - like lesson plan and teach. However, last week, as a result of hearing gossip, my principal did an informal observation, but wrote it up formally and gave me a "U" citing a number of things that were an outright lie. I don't know what she heard, but I was telling my colleagues about a meeting where she looked me dead in the face (7th grade ELA teacher) and told me, "Teaching vocabulary is a waste of time because there is a 99.9% chance it will not come up on the test." So I repeat this, she regrets this, and now she is single handedly trying to sabotage my career and everything I have worked for over the past 3 years. Did I mention I was a NYC Teaching Fellow and I was in grad school while a 1st year teacher. Do you know how NOT EASY and MISERABLE that was? But I did it, and am still a great teacher. But no, under the BloomKlein Reicht she can single handedly destroy my life's dream because she is a sociopath who is obsessed with tests. And as an ELA teacher, I will be held accountable while PE, Art, Music, Spanish, SS, and Science teachers (up through 7th grade) are let off the hook completely. I have written a 2 page response that discounts all of her claims, but unless she reads it and suddenly stops being crazy and admits to lying, it is just going to have to get signed and go into my file. It's infuriating that someone like this is in control of my career. How do principals get like this? How do they get these jobs? And how does Klein continue to encourage this kind of behavior? There are bad apples, but I am not one of them. The entire educational system is a joke - in NYC and otherwise - and since we are switching to National Standards next year, the only option for me is to opt out. Life would be soooo much better as a bartender, and maybe then I would have a boyfriend or a social life!

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