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Saturday, March 8, 2014

Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association:



The Minion’s that Run BATs
By Marla Kilfoyle, General Manager of BATs
 Melissa Tomlinson, Asst. General Manager of BATs
 
Recently, in a contentious thread on BATs, we were referred to as  minions, and in another thread a few weeks back, we were referred to as “womenfolk.”  In both of those threads there seemed to be some insinuation that Mark Naison ran BATs on a day to day basis.  We assure you he does many wonderful things for BATs, one of them being he Co-founded the page with Priscilla, but we can reassure you HE does not run BATs on a day to day basis. We know this because we do.   Now the definition of a minion is :  a follower or underling of a powerful person, esp. a servile or unimportant one.  After reading this definition we decided it was time for folks to understand who really runs BATs on a day-to-day basis .  Mark and Priscilla started the page but rest assured, teachers run the day-to-day operation of BATs, and teacher/parent voices drive the BATs agenda.
 
Marla Kilfoyle, General Manager of BATs
I have been teaching for 28 years.  I still teach a full schedule (5 periods a day).  I am a high school/middle school teacher and I am also the advisor for National Honor Society (115 members).   I was elected the General Manager of BATs on June 16th  by 29 of the 30 administrators.  I haven’t taken a day off since that date. I work on the infrastructure of BATs 6 hours a day, 7 days a week. I do this because I have to.  I do this because I know too much. I have never taken a dime from anyone for the work I do or the places I speak.  I do it for free because I have to. I wake up at 5:00 a.m. every day to work on BATs before I go to school. When I wake up I check my personal email, my Facebook messages, the twitter messages, and the BATs Gmail accounts.  In total, I have, on a busy day, over 50 messages to return and answer.  Most of these messages are thanking BATs, some are hateful, and some ask