NYC Educator: Idiots at Tweed Expect Us to Concurrently Teach and Take PD

NYC Educator: Idiots at Tweed Expect Us to Concurrently Teach and Take PD

Idiots at Tweed Expect Us to Concurrently Teach and Take PD

Evidently Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have determined that teachers now have plenty of time even as we offer remote learning. That's why, just yesterday, after schools like mine had already begun planning for next Thursday, they decided that we could somehow teach even as we were taking whatever PD they'd placed on their website.

My students expect me to give them classes, and I'll be there doing so. Let them put a letter in my frigging file. I'll frame it and hang it near awards I've received.

I'm a language teacher, and verbal and aural interaction, for me, is non-negotiable. I have students who've studied English for years in China, passed, and arrived here unable to speak. It's my job to help these kids with what they need. Who knows better what that is--me, or the people in air-conditioned Tweed offices?

I won't set my kids up with busy work, which would be what not showing up would entail for me. Even if I could figure out how to make that click, the assumption that any teacher can somehow offer something of value that involves neither time nor work is insulting, demeaning, and astonishingly ignorant.

My students expect me to check the work they send in, and I'll be doing that too. The chancellor, evidently, thinks after doing whatever work he wants me to set up, I have time to read his PowerPoints, or whatever crap they have posted up at DOE. I'm sure it will be as useful as the sexual harassment seminar we all wasted our time with after having spent months trying to even get in.

Other teachers may not be offering live classes, but are nonetheless providing assignments, communicating with students, and checking and correcting their work. I suppose this is what the chancellor expects of us. For me, that model doesn't work. However, if it did, I'd still be expected to do not only my regular work, but also attend whatever crap the DOE has posted. Unacceptable, unacceptable, unacceptable. Despite what the chancellor may think, any worthwhile activity entails time and work from teachers.

It's ironic, because we could've taken the day off from teaching, given our students a much-needed break, and done something worthwhile. I'd been negotiating for some of my CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Idiots at Tweed Expect Us to Concurrently Teach and Take PD