My Favorite Math Problem

This was originally posted as a comment over at Russo's District 299 blog. Click here to read the whole thing.

That said, I think this might spark some good comments. Have at it if you will.

Here is my favorite math problem; maybe you might enjoy it too.

Since 20 minutes is the contractual amount of time a principal is required to observe your teaching, try this on for size.

Multiply 46 minutes by 5. That is the # of minutes you teach a day. Then multiply that # by 5, that is the number of minutes you teach a week.

Then, multiply that by 33 (we will just throw 6 weeks out the window to be fair to management, lots of half days, lots of assemblies, and lots of ACT testing, etc.). I picked 33 as the # of weeks and I think I am being generous to administration with this number.

The result is the number of minutes you teach a year.

You teach 37,950 minutes a year.

Divide 20 minutes of observation by the # of minutes you teach.

That infinitesimal percentage is the amount of time administration actually observes you doing your job.

So, one might ask one's self how can management possibly know if you are doing a good job based on the percentage of time they observe you?

Let's be honest, a factory worker gets more observation from a foreman than a teacher gets from a principal.

An even better question would be how your principal, as an “instructional leader”, can help you be a better teacher as your career matures over time. What valid advice can they offer, seeing as how they observe a tremendously small percentage of the time you actually spend doing your job?

Your thoughts? Who has helped you be a better teacher more, the union or CPS? Fire away.

Nude Statue in Dallas Art Museum gets Veteran 5th Grade Teacher Fired.

Found this post over at DailyKos.

Here it is in it's entirety (be sure to click through on the link to read the whole story) :

Thu Sep 28, 2006 at 06:19:28 PM PDT

You're a veteran teacher of twenty-eight years. You get permission from your principal to take eighty-nine fifth graders on a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art. Some kid sees a nude statue. Well, duh, it is an art museum, that should be no biggie, right?

No.

When the kid gets home and talks about it to the parents they complain. So what does the principal do? The same principal that approved the trip. Does he stand up for his staff. Does he even stand up for himself? After all he authorized the trip. No. He fires the teacher!

I'm sorry if this has been blogged already. I'm mad and I want to blog it.

Read it for yourself here.
Jeff Wegerson

There is nothing quite like the experience of working in a "right to work" state. If this doesn't comvince you of the need for unions, well I sure can't help you.

If I was Dick Cheney, I would be angry enough after reading this story to shoot someone in the face. They sure got themselves some kinda principals in Texas. Your thoughts?

Secret Stewart-Duncan Deal to Change Tenure Law

In what appears to be one of the biggest lies and betrayals of the Stewart team to date, CTU and CPS have agreed, in writing, to go to Springfield and change our tenure law to permit peer evaluation/peer review in our schools.

The Stewart team never shared this with CTU delegates or members--and, in fact are lying in the press by calling it a less controversial “peer mentoring” program. Any changes to our agreement must be ratified by CTU members.

This secret deal goes even further by jointly agreeing to change the tenure law in Springfield. The following are just a few quotes from the document PACT received under a Freedom of Information Act request. It is signed by Ms. Stewart (on 5/30/06) and Michael Scott (on 7/25/06).

"Whereas the Board and the Union wish to amend the CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) and the Fresh Start agreement to provide for a pilot peer review teacher evaluation and retention system…the Union and Board’s joint mission and purpose are to…fairly and respectfully identify, remediate and/or discontinue the services of teaching personnel…the parties recognize this as a radical departure from existing teacher evaluation and teacher removal methods…In or before the Fall 2006 veto session the Board and the Union will jointly sponsor legislation to amend Articles 24A and 34 of the Illinois Code…to allow the Board and the Union to create pilot alternative evaluation, remediation and dismissal procedures for teachers who have completed the probationary period…a tenured teacher intervention program shall commence on July 1, 2007...”

If this is a priority for the UPC team, why the secret deal? Why not run on it as a campaign issue and be open about it? I just don't get it.

What is the sense of the members out there?

Would you vote in favor of having colleagues in on decisions to fire you or not?

UPDATE: Check out TeacherX's thoughts here.

Accountabilty for Hiring?

Well, one would hope.

Check out the stories from the Trib and the Sun-Times on how CPS wants to change teacher recruitment here.

Here is what I think: 40 or 50 years of framing the issue as teacher inability comes to a crashing end.

Finally, finally, someone asks "who hires?" the people everyone loves to complian about.

Administration has 4 years to decide on the viability of a teacher before they are awarded tenure (3 years in previous contracts). How did this work in the past? Did they simply hire and hope it will work out?

For the last few eons, the issue has never been about who is responsible for putting us in this mess, no one asked who did the hiring. Not once. That would mean accountability for adminstrators.

The frame has always been that teachers (and by extension their unions) are to blame for all problems. What are the solutions when you look at the issue from that point of view?
Charters.
Reconstitution.

I don't know who is to thank for this move by the board, but for once they got it right. Train people to make good hiring decisions and things just might get better (of course that means they have to look at who they have in place to make those decisions...maybe even ask themselves who hired the principal who makes bad choices?)

What next? Will the board revise how professional development is used in the district and make strides towards improving who they already have working for them?

Will wonders never cease?

What do you think?

DPS loses 25,000 pupils...Departures could cost Detroit $190M

You read right..$190 million.

Full story from the Detroit News here.

Eduwonk is all over this story here.

Here is an excerpt from the Det. News article:

A 16-day teacher strike may have cost Detroit Public Schools 25,000 students, district officials said Thursday, a potential loss that would mean a cut of $190 million in state aid and almost certainly another dramatic downsizing of schools and employees.

The gloomy estimate, which school officials acknowledge is not exact, comes in advance of Wednesday's official count day, when enrollment numbers are used to determine the amount of state funding to be allocated to districts across Michigan.

The district is embarking on a massive campaign to woo students back, with phone calls and letters to every student's home, enlisting the help of community groups and churches, in addition to count-day pizza and ice cream parties to make sure students are in school Wednesday.

"The situation is grim," said Jeff Mirel, author of "The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System," a chronicle of the district through 1981, who suggested staff and school cuts would be certain to follow.

There appears to be no upside to a strike. Kind of a damned if you do and damned if you don't thing. No strike and teachers would face a 5.5% pay cut. Strike (and get sold out with a crappy contract anyway - see here) and lose 100's of job positions.

I mused before if Detroit was a harbinger. Many told me it would be very different here in Chicago due to differences in the tax base, etc.

But I must confess, things don't look good. And my confidence in UPC getting a great contract is low, very low. Will CPS and UPC finally work together to organize "pizza and ice-cream" parties to get student numbers up? How inspired the teachers of Detroit must feel about now.

And Here's The Rest Of The Story...

The last post showcased a letter from a union delegate to the staff of GPHS about the spin being handed out by the CTU executive board.

Here, for your reading pleasure, is a letter from Gage Park Social Studies Chair Andrew Martinek that was distributed to all staff in our mailboxes. I reprint this section with the permission of the writer. It is titled And here is the rest of the story:

On the day that Marty McGreal was fired, I called the union office and spoke with directly with President Marilyn Stewart. She assured me that the people downtown just didn't care and that the union would be contacting me and monitoring our situation very closely.

I did receive a call the next day from Nate Dixon, who told me pretty much the same thing and assured me that he would be in touch once school started after taking my cell phone number.

I HAVE NOT HEARD FROM OUR UNION SINCE! Actually, that's not true. They did see fit to disseminate lies and accusations about OUR elected union delegate. How does that help us lower class sizes? How does that cap our enrollments? How does that provide us with more books and resources to effectively do our jobs?

I want everyone to know that I am speaking as a non-aligned union member. I believe that a union should be just that, united, not a set of factions [Ed. - Yeah, that works until even non-aligned members get sick of cronyism and incompetence, then you take sides.]

As a union, reasonable people should have reasonable discourse about how to confront and solve problems. What has been the most disappointing thing to me about our current union leadership, is that it makes a habit of bashing union members. Just look at any edition of the union rag, the front page trashes Debbie Lynch or some other PACT official and page three calls for unity.

The priorities are obvious. Winning re-election is clearly more important than serving our needs. I haven't seen my working conditions improve in my six years as a CPS teacher, but I have witnessed plenty of griping and infighting. The Mayor and the Board don't need to break our union, it is already broken [Ed. - I prefer to think of it as in a coma until we throw the UPC incompetents out on their ear.]

It is up to us to fix it, or we will lose it.

For the record, I want everyone to know that Susan Steinmiller has been and continues to be an extremely dedicated and effective union representative. When I called her during the summer about the over-crowding issue, she responded immediately. [Ed. - to see her dedication in action, click here to see her interview with ABC7 at our informational picket]

She even drove in from Rockford to meet with Marty [McGreal], myself, and some community leaders. Even today, she is staying late to help us grow and build our community organizing effort. Just recently she helped negotiate overtime pay opportunities for teachers on staff here [at GPHS] in an effort to alleviate over-crowding issues. Where has the union leadership been on this issue?

Why does our delegate, a teacher with 5 classes just like the rest of us have to bear this burden alone, or worse, with the added weight of a smear campaign? Susan has served us well, and usually runs unopposed for the position. She deserves thanks and appreciation, rather than disrespect from the union she so dutifully serves.

A union that now seems willing to sacrifice Gage Park if it will help re-elect the union president. We should all let Marilyn Stewart know how we feel about that.

Sincerely,

Andrew Martinek, NBCT Mentor
Social Studies Department Chair

Well, that just about sums it up doesn't it? Your thoughts?

More News From Deep Inside The House Of Delegates!

Since we are primarily a blog by and for union members, I think we need a big healthy dose of union news and views.

Here, for your reading pleasure, is a letter from the Gage Park delegate that was distributed to all staff in our mailboxes. I reprint this section with the permission of the writer, Delegate Steinmiller. It is titled Here is the rest of the story:

By now, most of you received a letter from CTU President Stewart reporting her progress solving the over-crowding issue at Gage Park. She further commented how I failed to report about Gage Park's informational rally and that's why she didn't attend. [Ed. - To view the video of the rally click here and here.]

What you don't know is...I was the one who invited Field Rep Nate Dickson to come to Gage Park for our Sept. 1st meeting. I told him we were discussing the plans on how to fight the over-crowding, which might include an informational picket. I asked him for help. He did not call me until two days later. Then he left me a message that he couldn't attend our meeting since he would be in arbitration hearings. He said he would get back to me with a possible replacement.

He never called me back. In fact, I thought no one from the union was coming, until I walked in the auditorium when low and behold there was six members of the CTU executive board!

At the meeting, I was met with rudeness, as Vice President Porter asked me "Why wasn't this meeting started when it was supposed to?" At that time, I presented VP Dallas and Field Rep Dixon with our meeting agenda which included discussion of our rally.

Please note, by this time there were several articles and news stories about Marty [McGreal] being fired and our over-crowding situation. NO ONE from CTU called me or any of our associate delegates about how they would help us.

On another note, last Wednesday at the Delegate's meeting the Executive Board slammed Debbie Lynch for being at our rally as "she's the cause of our over-crowding."

When it was my turn to speak at the house meeting, a member of Stewart's caucus motioned to adjourn the meeting. Again, no one from the CTU asked what they could do for the teachers and staff of Gage Park.

I know this is an election year for the city, state, and union, BUT there's a time and place for politics and it should not be at the cost of our jobs and our students' quality education.

Respectfully submitted,

S. Steinmiller

Well, this has moved people, mostly un-aligned union members (a response to this letter is coming soon). Many members of the GPHS staff are understandably upset at this treatment of one of Chicago's hardest working teachers (and our delegate to boot). Maybe UPC needs to change their name to CYA, since that is what they seem to be concerned about.

Do other schools get the same brush off and disrespect from the UPC team?

Makes Sense To Me (Or How Russo's 299 Rocks...Again).

"Why free a group of schools from bureaucratic oversight? If that oversight is harmful, free all schools. If it is supportive, don't "free" any. If it is harmful, change it. It's like Cunningham is saying, "we not imposing our stupid rules and regs on everyone, just the bad schools.""

From a discussion at Dist.299 blog. You gotta love that. Cuts to the quick doesn't it? Nub of the issue...Core of the problem...and any other cliche you can think might apply about now.

I bet politicians must really hate people who make sense, especially those who can make it clear to anyone listening.

You can catch the conversation here.

P.S. - Whoever you are who wrote that...Would you like to use our blog as a platform to speak out more regularly? Email me here.

first year, first post, first few weeks...

As a first year teaching, there are just a few things I would like to post on this blog. I just graduated in May of 2006 and being my first year teaching, I know that I have my hands full in the CPS. I am excited to meet the challenges that all teachers face and am blessed to be able to work with the students of Chicago's southwest side. There are so many good people in CPS, I am not having any problem turning to any of my department members for support and everyone has really been more than willing to help me out. For that, I would like to thank all of my fellow teachers at Gage Park High.

I have had some very scary encounters with students already, threats and what not that have set me thinking about many different issues. I am lucky and unlucky to have recieved the first year teacher's nightmare schedule (all freshmen with a tenth period class ending at 4:25 pm), but so far I have found many postives. I have been working relentlessly trying to involve the student's parents and so far I have had a lot of sucess in that department. Aside from the disconnected telephone numbers (which is a constant problem for me) the parents I have spoken with have been concerned and more than eager to assit me with their children's education. Granted I know this is only the middle of the third week, but so far the parent's enthusiasm to help their children is very comforting to me. I just need to find a way to reach the parents that have no phone...

As a 22 year old teacher, classroom management has become my most important issue and I am slowly learning the ins and outs of creating the ideal learning environment. Once again, I owe a tremendous thank you to the faculty for helping me withtheir advice and wisdom. I am glad to see that there are no teachers that have sunk to showing up, follwing the routine, leaving, and taking their paychecks. This is one of the most postive aspects of the school I have witnessed thus far. The other first year teachers (and there are many) are also experiencing this wave of excitement and progression with me, all while keeping the most hopeful and optimistic views. I can feel a change occuring in the attitudes of the teachers, the students, and the parents causing me to be extremely excited and hopeful for the future of the Chicago Public Schools.

Thank you for your time and to all the teachers out there reading this post, keep up the positive attitude. If you have any great advice with classroom management (other than do not smile till x-mas, which I have heard thousands of times and I have already completely blown... I wish I could do that, I am just having too much fun) please leave me a comment with some advice. Take it easy

also, I had a blast at the Sox game last night, probably one of the most fun games I have ever been to. Hopefully they can still pull it out... I am keeping the faith.

Union Action Alert

The AFL-CIO blog has some great stuff.

I found the following over at Firedoglake and thought everyone should read it.

Here is a snippet to get you started:

When Your Gall Bladder Gets Sent to India, Have You Had Enough?
By: Jordan Barab
Guest Blogged By Tula Connell

Carl Garrett, a paper mill technician in Canton, N.C., needed gall bladder and shoulder surgery. So his employer, Blue Ridge Paper Products, came up with an increasingly less- than-novel solution: Send him overseas for surgery.

India, in this case.

Garrett volunteered to go. But let’s face it, how much of an option did he have? Let’s see: Agree with your employer and take your chances overseas, or risk paying out-of-pocket costs for the entire surgery in the United States? Duh.

But Garrett has a union, and the union didn’t stand for what the media and others have euphemistically dubbed “medical tourism.” The USW International Union (USW) persisted until management backed off the plan. The USW and Blue Ridge will work together to find an alternative within the United States.

Really, read the whole thing. It's quite inspiring.

Teacher Night With The Sox

7-0.

Gotta love it when even sports teams do their best for the hard workin' teachers of their city.

Did you go?

Oops. Sorry About That.

Last week I changed the blogger settings on comments to moderate.

I thought it would let me delete abusive or off-topic comments.

Instead it stopped all comments from publishing until approved, an activity no one here has the time for. This was an error. I did not realize that comments needed to be approved to show up.

So, we are taking all comments again and apologize for the blocking of previous comments.

Be nice to each other.

No Words Necessary

I know there is a joke about Ms. Stewart and the UPC in here somewhere...but I will leave it up to you.

Calling I.M Stillanoptimist! (And Russo, too)

Interesting discussion going on over at Kevin Drum's Washington Monthly blog.

I read it and some of the comments. It made me think of I.M. Stillanoptimist discussing the role of poverty, etc. and why schools struggle so much over at Mr. Russo's District 299 blog.

Below is the post in full. Go and read the comments. Some good and some weird stuff there.
Here is Mr. Drum's post:

DO YOUR HOMEWORK!....Conor Clarke writes today about a rash of back-to-school articles suggesting that homework is a sham that does nothing to help student achievement. In fact, he says, it's worse than that:

It would be a mistake to view this as a surprise, or even an isolated failure. After all, it's not easy to find a connection between academic success and most educational policies....What if academic success is so overwhelmingly predetermined by outside factors that schools can do little to change the situation?

The recent spate of homework hatred raises this same question, and it should produce the same answer: Educational debates should focus less on education policy as such, and more on socioeconomic inequality.

The connections between inequality and academic success are well-documented. As a recent report in The American Journal of Sociology found, early social context is so important that children are "launched into achievement trajectories when they start formal schooling or even before" that are "highly stable over childhood and adolescence." These trajectories, in turn, create achievement gaps that are evident in early grades and grow with age, so that "even a slight edge in test scores during the early years can predict long-term advantage." And this isn't just because wealthier students go to ritzier schools: the trajectories are almost as predictable even when well-heeled students end up in economically disadvantaged institutions.

I'll confess that I have a lot of sympathy for this view. The education world seems to be perpetually riven by fantastically shrill battles between traditionalists and progressives, and in the end it's hard to see that either side ever manages to win decisively in any area. These battles have swung back and forth for decades (the traditionalists seem to have won the latest round in the math wars, for example), but there's precious little evidence that kids today learn any more or less than kids in the 40s and 50s. Or the 60s or 70s. Does any of this stuff really make a difference?

Maybe. But I think Conor is probably right: simple socioeconomic inequality is such an overwhelming factor that everything else combined is barely a blip on the radar. Unfortunately, addressing that requires lots of money and an enormously intensive effort. A year of two of Head Start just doesn't do the trick. There's not much hope of anyone making a serious push on this front anytime soon.

I thought this was a good way to start an argument with teachers of every political/philosophical stripe. Tell them homework is a sham and stand back and watch the fur fly.

I think that Conor Clark's assertion that "After all, it's not easy to find a connection between academic success and most educational policies...." is something I think the good folks over at the Education Trust can quickly refute. They have all the data on the importance of teacher quality and its impact on student achievement (check out The Real Value of Teachers at their site).

Your thoughts Mr/Ms. I.M. Stillanoptimist?

How About Some Good News?

Ok,

Two weeks. Classes still over the limit, kids restless and antsy, I could find 100's of things to complain about.

I want to hear a couple of good things. We do this job for lots of reasons, but most of all for the payoffs you can't get anywhere else.

Anyone have one of those yet?

Don't be shy. I'll start it off ok?

I had a young woman transfer into my class just a couple of days ago. I had her as a freshmen at my old school (CVCA) and now here it is years later and she walks into my class.

She said she transferred over into Gage. She saw my name on the teacher list and asked if it was me and insisted on being in my class.

Makes you feel good, eh? It did me.

So, how about a couple of nice stories today to get over all the difficult things going on right now?

Fire away.

Detroit Teachers Agree To End Two-Week Walkout

Full CNN story here.

The financially struggling district initially sought a 5.5 percent pay cut over two years, part of $88 million in concessions it wanted from the 7,000 teachers and 2,500 other unionized professionals. The district has a $1.36 billion budget and is trying to close a $105 million deficit.

The union wanted raises after years without them.

The two sides eventually agreed on a one-year pay freeze, followed by increases of 1 percent the second year and 2.5 percent the third. Veteran teachers will start paying 10 percent of their health insurance costs, something that only those hired since 1992 had been doing. Teachers will lose three days' pay for three preparation days that were canceled because of the strike.

Someone please tell me this is not the future. Freeze for a year, and paltry 1 and 2% raises? CNN posted this story at 10:52pm on the 13th.

Just for some perspective, the following story was printed in the Detroit Free Press on the same morning, Sept. 13:

Foreclosures soar
35,000 Metro Detroiters lose homes so far this year
Dorothy Bourdet / The Detroit News

Metro Detroit homeowners are skidding into foreclosure at nearly three times the rate as they were last year as a slumping economy, falling home values and risky mortgages leave more household budgets in the red.

From the manors of Bloomfield Hills to the bungalows in south Warren, Metro Detroiters in every walk of life are having trouble making their house payments and fending off the repo man.
According to figures to be released today by RealtyTrac, foreclosures shot up 137 percent, from 14,789 to 35,041, in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Livingston counties from January through August, compared to the same period last year.

I am speechless.

My Daily Dose

District 299 Chicago Public Schools Blog
All about Chicago schools -- all the time.

If you haven't checked out Russo's blog, it is a must read.

Kids Suspended Over Free-Speech T-shirt Protest

Full story from the Detroit Free Press here.

It was Gandhi's philosophy of peaceful, nonviolent protest that inspired Kelly and Todd Galley's children to revolt against the Lincoln Park School District's new, stricter dress code.

But it was the text of the First Amendment -- ironed onto their T-shirts -- that got them suspended.

I have always thought that uniform policies made little sense. The rationale is always shifting, kinda like why we are in Iraq. One year it is gang affiliation, next it is parents want it because it makes shopping for clothes easier, one time someone told me it was a good thing because it helps blurs class lines, last year someone said it is about maintaining order in hallways and discipline.....the answers to the question keep changing.

So I'll ask you. Why do we have a uniform policy?

P.S. Kinda of a cool story about kids suspended for wearing the first amendment, yeah?

Where's My $1 Million?

Remember this from September 1 of this year?

The Associated Press

September 1, 2006, 9:24 AM CDT
SEATTLE -- The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is putting $16 million into a new high school improvement program that's to be launched this year in eleven high schools in Chicago and two other districts.

Well, It's been over two weeks. 1/11th is well over a million dollars. Why isn't this money flowing into my building? Are our students undeserving? Where is it going?

Did your school get any of this cash? Did it have any impact/make changes?

What would you do with $1 million dollars if you could use it to "improve" your school?

Teacher X Goes To The Mat

There is a serious smackdown of the whole Charter concept going on over at Teacher X.

Read the post in full here.

Money Quotes:

"Once again, if Urban Prep had their own building, I wouldn't be so outraged - but I am completely outraged at this quote. First of all, I ask the same question that I asked again - WHY IS HE THERE? What model is Duncan talking about? Overcrowded schools? 30 students in a classroom? Firing principals with principles and installing bureaucrats to do the boards dirty work? Since he is Daley's man, is he signaling that CPS is going to further Charterize the system? Where are all the "surplus" kids going to go? Eventually they are going to put kids in McCormick Place because they have nowhere else to go."

Snip...

"This whole dog and pony show over at Lindbloom is crazy. It's ridiculous and a parody of what responsible school administrators should be doing about the system that they are (unfortunately) adminstering."

Don't you wish your kid was in this person's classroom?