Speakout Columns
Intimidation as a personnel practice
Mar 29, 2007 2:37 PM
I’ve been a teacher for many years, at various school levels, yet I could stick it out in the New York City school system for only a short time last year. Why?
The beginning was bright enough: colorful balloons in a grand ballroom — follow the color to your designated area.
Then, a series of August workshops, many of them useful, though anxiety mounts as the majority in the audience of international teachers hasn’t yet found apartments or teaching positions. But the workshops plod on: Citywide standards for kindergarten through grade 12, levels of infraction-insubordinate behavior, itemized and categorized. Happy reading right up to level 5. Foreboding comes slowly.
The compulsory child abuse prevention workshop follows, presented by a knowledgeable educator. A useful workshop, it builds teachers’ skills in helping students in this critical area. Suspicions of abuse? Report them. Along with all the useful information come the warnings, the job-ending circumstances. We discover that it’s a trend! Present the procedures and then the dire consequences for educators. This seems to be a worst-case scenario approach to training teachers.
The graduated approach to teacher tardiness follows. We all agree, lateness is, well, not a sin, but certainly highly undesirable, but what about that punch-the-time-clock solution? Late once, a warning, late three times and you’re punching a clock, a hangover from the great days in assembly-line manufacturing. Then there’s TOT, the intricacies of Theft of Time. There’s no trust anywhere, it seems.
How have the staffs with whom I’ve worked previously managed without these? Truly, I can see little difference in the students themselves, in my country, Canada, compared with those in New York City. High achieving, low achieving, economically and emotionally stable, poverty-stricken, abused and traumatized, refugees from one thing or another. Public systems have it all. While teachers everywhere find it difficult at times, we welcome these students because the public education system is the foundation upon which the future is built. In my country or New York, we do our best, with the help of support staff. I don’t recall, before New York, experiencing intimidation as a personnel practice — ever.
In spite of the numerous directions and instructions, booklets and workshops, New York struggles with student behavior. Bring on the security guards, a new phenomenon to many of us. I had come from a school of 1,800 students in a low-income area, with one part-time security staff person who was visible mostly at lunchtime. (Lunchtimes themselves were handled very differently from those in New York.) Other than that, APs handle discipline, with teachers and counselors, and district multicultural liaison workers.
New York student behavior, accompanied sometimes with staff discouragement, is puzzling. As one experienced teacher, having started teaching in the city the previous year, said to me, “Oh, the behavior! I lost so many pounds.” Another commented, “[You must] plan your lessons down to the second and get observed every second day. For me it was a stifling environment.” This experienced teacher left to continue his career elsewhere.
One hears about schools where the tone seems to be more open. I was in one that appeared to be like that. Still, there’s that nagging suspicion and so many directives, so many overseers to a teacher’s day. As one interviewer said at the balloon-festooned placement fair, while explaining his school’s instructional program, “and this is non-negotiable.” That was without even being asked any questions. That was the starting point.
Fear! Three strikes and you’re out, with time clocks, standardized tests and Regents exams. Schools are working hard to build literacy and numeracy skills in their students but under threat of school disbandment if students fail to do well. And many students, for a variety of reasons, fail to do well. Given the focus on building achievement, I was, I must admit, rather surprised to learn of the low graduation rates in New York schools. Is the focus on clocks and exams counterproductive? New York has schools that are among the best in the world, schools that pick their high school students from those seeking entry. And then there are others.
What is seen as a major source of these systemic difficulties? Teachers! The search is on for just the right teachers to work in New York schools. Is this the reason that with a teaching staff of 78,000, New York hired 50,000 teachers between 1999 and 2005?
So, hats off to those New York City educators who are staying with it, and bringing their commitment and skills to their students.
Betty Anne Rivers Wang taught in Canada for many years, first as a regular elementary school teacher and then as an English Language Arts specialist in French Immersion classes. Later, at the secondary level, she was an English and Learner Support teacher. As an adjunct instructor, she has taught Language Arts courses at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. She has also taught the Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) program to teachers in China. She worked in the New York city school system for a few weeks, resigning when she “saw what lay ahead.”
