We all know that teaching is a tough job, especially in a large urban school system like New York City’s, and that the success of our schools depends on educators having support and proper teaching and learning conditions.

That means lower class sizes, solid safety and guidance programs, the enforcement of student discipline codes, mentoring programs for new teachers, and peer intervention to help struggling teachers get back on track. We also need engaged parents, special education programs, extra help for English Language Learners, career training education programs, gifted and talented courses, a fair and accurate accountability system, as well as time to absorb all the new assessment data on our plates. And of course, little works without a real collaborative relationship between teachers and administrators.

But we need something else above all: respect and the support to do our jobs.

That’s why more than 1,000 educators participated in the UFT’s candlelight vigil outside DOE headquarters at the Tweed Courthouse on the evening of Nov. 26. Days earlier, Chancellor Joel Klein had announced the establishment of the Teacher Performance Unit, a legal squad targeting tenured teachers. Mind you, the old Board of Education always had lawyers and retired principals doing this, but you’ve got to wonder why the DOE made a big deal that the unit is led by a former prosecutor who made a career of going after criminals.

There is no dispute that every child deserves a qualified teacher and that the DOE has a responsibility to ensure this. No one wants teachers who don’t pull their weight, particularly the other educators in the same school. But there is a right way and a wrong way to make this happen. To set up a “gotcha” unit is a punch in the gut and a warning shot to a dedicated corps of professionals who deserve neither. We take seriously our responsibility to educate kids, and we want the DOE to take its responsibility to treat teachers with respect just as seriously.

The timing of the chancellor’s announcement — coming the day before the release of national reading and math scores that were essentially flat in New York City — was also suspect. Although the city denied it — and indeed has made several conciliatory statements — it seemed as though at the first hint of bad news about the school system, DOE officials reflexively resorted to blame-the-teacher mode.

This union has honestly and openly grappled with the issue of teacher quality for years. We addressed teacher competence head-on in our 2006 contract when we created an independent cadre of experts to work over a three-to-six-month period with educators who self-elect it or whose skills are questioned by their principals. The program is designed to help teachers who are struggling and, if it cannot do so, it assists them in a humane way with the discipline process. It supplements the Peer Intervention Program that we negotiated in the 1980s. That program helped identify tenured teachers who should not be in the profession and counsel them out. When the new program, which we called PIP-Plus, was announced, it was widely heralded as a novel and fair way to deal with teachers who were floundering. Part of my anger with the new unit is PIP-Plus hasn’t even been given the chance the work. By contract, it was just implemented this October, hardly enough time to judge its success.

A school system is only as good as its ability to nurture and sustain a quality teaching force. Given how word of this new Teacher Performance Unit spread like wildfire in the schools, it may very well backfire. Good teachers felt angered and incredibly demoralized by it, because it signaled their work is neither appreciated nor respected. And the one thing we can’t afford is more good teachers leaving. The number of teachers who resign (for reasons other than retirement or problems with licensure) is at a historic high already.

Those of us in the trenches know that there are many schools moving in the right direction. But continuing this progress requires that we stay focused on what works in education and that we work collaboratively with administrators and supervisors to pursue that goal as a team.

Teachers want to be effective. They wake up every morning knowing they have an enormous responsibility to help kids learn, and they work tirelessly to prepare kids for college and for life. It is just dead wrong to have them work in a climate of fear.

The afternoon of our vigil, the chancellor sent a conciliatory letter to teachers praising their efforts and expressing regret for the “confusion and concern that the public conversation on this issue has caused and, specifically, our role in it.” He said that his new legal unit was “mischaracterized” as “something bigger than it is.” A few days later, the chancellor and I joined together to start a “Thank-A-Teacher” campaign to recognize and show appreciation to our great educators.

By the week’s end, Mayor Bloomberg chimed in as well, spending more than half of his weekly hour-long radio show on WABC-AM talking about education and how tough teachers have it today.

“Things are different from when you and I went to school,” the mayor said to a retired teacher who had called in response to his comments. “I do remember having more respect for teachers than kids seem to have today.”

“The number of two-parent homes has diminished since we were kids. It used to be a Norman Rockwell type of thing,” the mayor continued. “Today kids are dealt a different hand: One parent or no parent, the parents aren’t home because they’re working. It’s tougher to keep things together, so the guidance at home isn’t as much as you would like.

“So the teachers have had to step in, and teachers today have a much tougher job than they had before. We can sit here and complain about it or we can do something about it. What we’re trying to do is make the school system better,” he said.

All of this gives me a glimmer of hope that the chancellor and the mayor heard us. It would be an appropriate holiday gift if the blame-the-teachers game ends and we can get back to the climate we thought we created at the start of this year: working together on the things we know help all children succeed. That’s the only way we’re going to make this school system better.

Meanwhile, I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday season, whether or not you and your family celebrate. May 2008 bring all of us peace, good health, joy and, given the presidential election year, a new beginning.