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No way to treat a new teacher

by Ellie Spielberg

Nov 3, 2005 12:43 PM

Rookie’s dismal experience evidence of an uncaring system

She had finally learned their names: all of the many students in her high school classes. She had just organized her grade book. The brand new teacher was starting to “feel good about my lessons and teaching persona,” had figured out how to help Ralphie get his thoughts on paper and finally tamed an unruly class.

Then she was excessed.

“Bimsmile” — the blog name of this articulate young English teacher who is keeping her real name under her hat for now — felt shocked, angry and dissed.

And so did the kids.

What’s more, Bimsmile was excessed six weeks after her first day at the large comprehensive high school where she was hired, a violation of state Law 2588, which prohibits excessing after the first 15 days of a school term.

“The reason for that law is to avoid precisely what happened to this new teacher and her classes,” said UFT High Schools Vice President Frank Volpicella. “It’s supposed to limit the disruptions to students and staff. Here we are in mid-October. What is the Department of Education thinking?”

Added Volpicella, “There is a trap door in this law in that under emergency conditions, administrators can get special permission from the chancellor to waive the 15-day time limit, but there is no evidence that local superintendents or the regions made a case for hardship; they just did what they wanted and assumed no one would take them to task for it.”

UFT President Randi Weingarten said the story of Bimsmile is outrageous, and that she feels the deep demoralization teachers feel.

“Retention of newer teachers should be one of the highest priorities for the city, but clearly this is more evidence of an uncaring system. What’s more, given the trend to cut new workers’ wages in this city, it seems like the trend is going in the opposite direction.

“This is no way to treat new teachers.”

Weingarten added that anyone excessed after 15 days of the school year should contact his or her chapter leader or district representative immediately.

Just like this case, the union will not hesitate to file a lawsuit based upon the legal right not to be excessed in any situation where the facts warrant it.

“I really feel for this new teacher and others like her who were excessed,” said Rona Freiser, UFT Queens high schools representative. “But I also feel for the students who are hurt by these disruptions.”

The impact on students bothered Bimsmile from the start.

“All in all, my being excessed is not about me. It’s about the students, and the message it sends to them when they walk into class on Monday to find their teacher is gone,” she wrote.

By the time the administration was done, Bimsmile and her students took a hit not once, but twice.

About a week before she was excessed, Bimsmile was informed of a “program change.” She lost two of her favorite classes, replaced by new students who were feeling just as displaced and dissed as their new teacher.

She spent the afternoon and night in tears. “How can they do this?” she asked a friend.

Her students didn’t understand either.

“They didn’t understand why they had to switch classes,” the first-year teacher wrote on Edwize, the UFT blog. “The kids are confused and angry, and it seems they take it out on me. It’s not a good situation for them nor is it for me …

“I don’t know if I love my job so much anymore.”

Her uprooted new students began acting out.

Bimsmile said she had to call the dean twice: once when the class kept talking and completely ignored her and again when two kids were hanging out the window trying to get a bottle of whiteout that another student had thrown.

“I feel like I’m fighting a battle for kids who don’t want to be fought for,” she wrote in an end-of-her-rope entry titled “Feeling Defeated.”

But the defeat was only temporary for this resilient young educator. Her next entry, “My Teaching High,” soared with optimism.

“Last Monday, things just all of a sudden clicked … I really felt like I was teaching. It was a moment I don’t think I’ll ever forget. My first thought was, ‘Wow, I’m really doing this. They’re all looking at me … I’m teaching.’

“I almost stopped mid-sentence. I all of a sudden had this realization that I was the teacher. That I was teaching. People were looking at me as I once looked at my teachers. I had a class full of seniors and was introducing a persuasive essay project. It was a feeling I’ve never had before … an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment …

“I was so sure of myself and enthusiastic about my lesson, it made me tingle. This feeling was a product of everything that has gotten me to where I am right now — my work, my nerves, my hopes and my struggles — and so I can honestly say, I hope all of these feelings continue just so that I can have that high of teaching again.”

Then the administration pulled the plug. Bimsmile was a goner.

She was taken out of one of her classes, given the news that she was being excessed, and was out of the building 20 minutes later.

She was not asked to give an update of the academic status or attendance records of any of her students.

“It makes me angry to know that my [former] students have to start over and never have to be held accountable for the work they did or didn’t do for the past six weeks. I didn’t grade them, so who did? Some students were failing because they were absent 75 percent of the time, walked in late, and are now on par with students who worked hard, never missed a class and rarely arrived late.

“At the end of the marking period they will receive the same grade as the students who participated in class and were conscientious. No wonder many of the students act as if nothing matters to them, as if school is a meaningless institution. It’s what they’ve been taught!”

Although very happy in her new school — after a call from a union official “they welcomed me with open arms” — Bimsmile says she is still trying to untangle the bureaucratic mess that landed her at another school. Mysteriously, the name of a younger male colleague from her former school was written on top of all her attendance rosters at her new school, as if he were the teacher initially targeted for transfer to that school.

That former colleague, one of the first teachers to get a program change at her first school, “was an English teacher and they gave him Social Studies classes with one English class,” she said. “I was told that all my classes were going to be dissolved and sent up to other classes. Then I heard that he was going to be taking over my classes.”

Go figure.

Among the reasons Bimsmile was given for being excessed was that the DOE did not send all the students they promised to the school, so administrators had to cut down on the number of classes and therefore teachers — a common problem, she was told, at large high schools.

But UFT Special Representative Ken Lubetsky isn’t buying it.

“A large high school knows that every year, there are, say, 4,000 students enrolling,” Lubetsky said. “They certainly ought to be able to estimate their enrollment with a good degree of accuracy, short of any major housing shifts in the area.

“There’s no reason why new teachers should be put through this.”

Excessing is a battle fought every year by the union.

Weingarten said resolving the issue at the school level is always priority number one, but she said the union encourages its members to allow it to grieve or litigate where the employer fails to abide by the state law.

“When the DOE breaks the rules, it hurts both teachers and kids,” Weingarten said. “It certainly has made it very tough for this one new teacher, and her students have suffered as well. But my plea to this young teacher and to all newer teachers reading this story is that you are not alone, and if anything happens to you that doesn’t make sense please reach out to your chapter leader and your mentor.

“Help will be on the way.”

In Manhattan, UFT District 6 Representative Marty Plotkin is in the midst of fighting for 20 teachers who were excessed after the 15-day limit.

Plotkin says the reorganization of the school system has made the DOE even less nimble and less sensitive to handling an issue like excessing.

“There is no coordination between the schools that have excessed teachers and schools with vacancies and the ROC (Regional Operations Center). When there were district offices, there was a personnel director in charge, and it made it a lot easier,” he said.

If it’s any consolation, UFT bloggers have responded to Bimsmile with outrage and compassion.

“The DOE treats new teachers like dirt,” commented “Teachercoach.”

“You’ve now been hazed, which is (regrettably) part of the standard new-teacher package, and has been since time immemorial,” [but] “you will land on your feet and this will, someday, be part of your war stories,” wrote “Institutional Memory.”

“No wonder NYC loses half its teachers in the first five years, considering the shoddy way they’re treated. It won’t make you feel any better, but the same things happened to me, and many of your colleagues, too,” wrote “NYC Educator.”

Blogger “Todd” commented that the impact on students “is not something that an entire level of administration thinks about so much when they never see a single student in their entire day.”

And “Teachercoach’s” comment that “in any other profession, they nurture and care for their newcomers” was shot down by several bloggers.

“Don’t be sure that other professions are pampered,” countered “JennyD.” “Look at first-year medical residents. They had to go to court to get their working hours down from, say, 48 in a row.”

“If you are smart you will size up your chances for medical school, law school or dental school. Otherwise stay in the Department of Education and receive a lifetime of insults!!!” wrote “Shouldhavegonetomeds.”

And so the online comments keep flowing, from bitter to hopeful, all adding up to a flood of support for this new teacher who, as “Teachercoach” writes, seems like she has “what it takes to really make a difference.”

“Assume for a moment that in addition to your students, there are students in another school in need of a teacher,” added “JennyD.”

Today, those students in another school in need of a teacher have a good one now, a teacher who has what it takes to really make a difference: Bimsmile reports that she’s thriving at the smaller high school she was assigned to and wants to work with the administration to start a basketball team.

Meanwhile, she’s busy learning the names of the new kids in her classes and is setting up her grade book.

Again.