You know you can dislike the district for a number of
different reasons.
Maybe a district staff person came through and complained
you didn’t have some artifact on your wall and your principal instead of
standing up for you or pointing out all your good work said, yeah, where is it.
Maybe you dislike the district because at some future point
you may have to teach reading so now you are told to get 5 60 point reading classes,
and you better get them quick and not expect any help or time to do so.
There are lots of reasons why “you” may hate the district but
let me tell you mine.
As an ESE teacher I have to write IEPs long reports on my
students, they are complicated and take hours to write. Well this year the
district brought in a new program and its had glitch after glitch. It’s definitely
a step down from what we had which quite frankly wasn’t that great.
Well the district told us earlier this week, that if we have
to do an addendum to the IEP, adding something supplemental and what we generally
do for all our students not aging out so they can attend the ESY, and the IEP
was written on the new program before November, instead of doing an addendum,
we had to do a completely new IEP, another glitch has prevented the program
from being able to clone itself. This means I have three more IEPs to write and
my neighbors have between 5 and 7.
One of my colleagues had finished their IEPs and only had
the IEP addendums to do now has to rewrite all their IEPs.
Reading back I don’t think my words are describing this debacle
correctly. They have just added a ton of work to a lot of teachers.
Do they say, so sorry, omg we’ll keep trying to fix this, or
anything approaching what a human with empathy would say. Nope, it’s just so
sad to bad, get to work easily replaceable cogs.
It gets worse too. The district is spending wheel barrels
full of money on this new program, while the state has an IEP program which is
more streamlined (less work for teachers) and I am told its free. Wait what,
free. Maybe if we used it we wouldn’t be trying to save nickels by under paying
subs and bus drivers.
I get it the state sucks, they really do, but time and time
again when the state puts us in a hole it’s the ivory towers instinct to keep
digging, and the staff are the ones given the shovels.
You know under Pratt Dannals and Vitti communication with
teachers and attempts to treat them as professionals weren’t priorities and a
year and a half into Greene’s reign, I am starting to feel like, new boss same
as the old boss. Nobody at the Ivory Tower ever seems to think, well how will
this affect the staff or how can we help them.
When will the powers that be realize the better things are
for teachers the better they will be for students, and if the district treats
people like easily replaceable cogs, those cogs will find another machine, and
most likely make more money there as well.
So yeah, what a Merry $%^#ing Christmas the district laid on
its ESE teachers.
Ah, my friend, you're catching on. I've felt like a cat rubbed the wrong way up its back since Greene arrived. Everyone wanted to circle their wagons around her because of the shabby treatment dished out over the sales referendum by the city council, but frankly, on a scale from Vitti to Willis, she is definitely on the Vitti side. This mind-boggling special kind of stupid where every day every teacher has to write out the standard in full on the white board, every admin has to walk into the classroom, read the standard, decide if what he/she sees aligns, interrogate the kids to see if they can explain it all ... mind boggling special kind of stupid. But this is what she did in Manatee. In fairness, in her last two emails to teachers, she didn't want us to do something. Before that, sandwiched between the compliments, was a desire for us to do something for her. As I said above, she tends to the Vitti end of the scale.
ReplyDelete