Welcome To The No Fun Zone

WCT realizes that CPS is currently a no money zone, but we didn't realize the beginning of the 2015 school year was also the start of the no fun zone. 

Students at some schools were greeted with following rule changes:

• No outside food, even food brought from home, may be consumed (good luck to students trying to avoid fried, breaded foods, Aramark must be paid!)

• No visible celebrations of birthdays (i.e., balloons) are permitted

• Policing of footwear to exclude flip-flops and sandals

Really? 

CPS Engineers, Beware

From the comments:

"Rumor has it that CPS is planning on laying off all of the engineers in November, at which point, they will have to reapply for their jobs. Rumor also has it that Mr. Cawley is looking to eliminate 200 engineers, as per his "brown bag lunch" webinar (is this the correct term). The feeling that Mr. Cawley has, is, that 300 engineers can take care of some 600 buildings, based upon his suburban model. That model means that, according to him, the engineers who are rehired will be pulled out of their schools and report to the high schools, then fan out to the elementary schools for work orders.

It's funny that a company that hasn't been relevant since the mid-90s, Motorola, is suddenly the blueprint for an aging guy from Winnetka who does not live in the city, never really got out of middle-management, to implement changes for the school buildings."

CPS management, and Tim Cawley specifically, appears hard at work, yet again, dismantling any and all facets of a functional school system. In the process, they seem dead-set on destroying any vestige of union involvement in any part of our schools. Local 143 has been part of CPS since 1863, and if Tim Cawley has his way that tradition may be greatly altered. Time will tell...

Teacher Pee Time, Really Atlantic?

The Atlantic began as a literary and cultural commentary magazine, and morphed into a publication aimed at serious national readers and thought leaders (their words). In 2015, this means discussing--ad nauseam--the bathroom habits of teachers to discredit a study the AFT and BATS commissioned to gauge the quality of worklife for working teachers.

30,000 respondents weighed in on: job enthusiasm (little to none); respect given by others (little to none); job stress (a lot); workplace bullying (too much). WCT agrees with all of this, and sees first hand a lack of enthusiasm, lack of respect, increased stressors, and especially bullying and intimidation in the workplace.

Highlighted as another job issue in the survey is, yes, lack of adequate bathroom breaks. This is included along with other health-related issues like depression, the ability to see a doctor when needed, and the ease with which one can stay home when ill. All valid, but the Atlantic chooses to focus on bathroom breaks. As if having bodily functions gone over with a fine-tooth comb isn't bad enough, author Alia Wong throws around some snide teacher bashing, too.

The Atlantic's opinion of the study in general:
"The survey results should certainly be taken with some skepticism." Skepticism? Teachers who respond to a survey about their experiences on the job apparently can't be trusted because...unions?

The Atlantic's opinion of the commissioning bodies of the study:
"As the second-largest education union in the country, the AFT clearly has a vested interest in advocating for better working conditions for educators...". No shit, for lack of a better term. Alia Wong, must not have consulted Wikipedia to discover the function of a labor union. Otherwise, she would have discovered the very purpose of a labor union is to, among other things, advocate for better working conditions for its members.

The rest of this 1,800 word treatise on the toilet goes on to glibly discuss all sorts of bladder issues, yet manages to include two links that cite teachers as big whiners and over-exaggerators. Again with the teachers being too clueless to know about their own experiences.

Channeling Chicken Soup for the Teacher's Soul, Ms. Wong comes to the trite conclusion that, "Part of teaching is being able to adapt and make sacrifices."

The Atlantic's cultivated readership takes to Twitter to join the teacher-bashing fun, too:

@BeauABlackwell is the angriest respondent who rants: (1) because they get 3 months off in summer, a Christmas break, and a spring break. I don't feel sorry for them. (2) Then get a new job, and (3) As I said before, I don't get any breaks--holidays, vacation, nothing

@twitslovetotwit opines: Research has shown that teachers give better lectures when their pants are full of shit and piss.

@CaptAmerica1787 says: More apt title: Unions only want money - don't give a shit - literally!

Thanks, Alia Wong and the Atlantic for your hard-hitting journalism and think-piece on number 1 and number 2. You and your editors are regular fucking Woodward & Bernsteins.

Truth Time

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Whiners, Swine and ... Beggars

The public's perception of CPS teachers is that we're whiners, pigs and greedy thugs, thanks to the media's effective manipulation and the complexity of our district's financial problems.  However, we at WCT would like the public to know that we are also beggars.

Donors Choose is an online charity where American public and charter teachers can post "classroom project requests," and if they're lucky, their project will be funded.  Funding donations are completely tax-deductible. If you're imagining that teachers are hoping to take students to France or to purchase top-of-the-line microscopes, you're wrong.

Some current requests posted on Donors Choose:

• $264 for ink cartridge replacements, Lindblom Math Science Academy
• $354 for calculators, Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy
• $309 for a carpet, Dawes Elementary School
• $356 for a nurse's office refrigerator, Dawes Elementary School
• $1,230 for projector and screen, Gage Park High School
• $269 for pencils, mechanical sharpener and caddies, James Otis Elementary School

Meanwhile, Heather Y. Anichini, President and CEO of the Chicago Public Education Fund, makes $292,833.00 per year overseeing the Fund's funneling of cash to the usual racketeers, kick-back artists, cronies, and ed reform profiteers.  They claim that their "inve$tment portfolio has improved outcomes for the children they serve."  Right.

Here A Cut, There A Cut

Photo credit: WBEZ

WBEZ posted this memo from CPS to their Twitter feed today.

While WCT does not have the benefit of 9 data strategists at our disposal, here are some "takeaways" (admin-speak for conclusions) from this release:

*Two groups of schools are virtually untouched: magnet schools (save for how students are transported to and from) and selective enrollment schools. How plutocratic that the best resourced schools--like the kind Governor Rauner clouted his kid into--get to stay that way. 

*Neighborhood and elementary schools seem to be disproportionately affected since they often have a greater need for Special Ed services. 

*Newspeak alert: the the Orwellian terms "transform" and "rightsizing" are used to explain how Special Ed services will be delivered.

*Funding has also been cut for turnaround schools--those schools whose entire staff has been fired because of chronically low performance--which is at odds with providing resources to help failing schools improve their performance.

*Hope everyone puts a toolkit and plunger on their back-to-school shopping list as many repairs in buildings will suddenly be D.I.Y. thanks to a 25% reduction in repair and maintenance. What's a botched $260 Aramark contract between friends, especially now that engineers will be shared.

Rahm, ever the steadfast blowhard, says he does not regret his decision to close 50 schools. Clearly. He's making fast moves to put schools into such turmoil, collapse, and chaos that he will get free reign to do just what his buddy Ken Griffin suggested: close 125.

Non-economic Ask: Don't Be A Jerk.

It's widely noted that the contract impasse between CPS and the CTU stems from non-economic asks that would improve the quality of life in schools. WCT hopes a few simple clauses sneak in the contract that boil down to administrators not being allowed to be complete jerks to those in the building. 

Such jackass behavior WCT witnesses: reducing female teachers to tears, belittling male teachers, intimidating most everyone.  

Some administrators we know are self-appointed visionaries who feel they have the license to treat people however they want to get whatever results they feel are necessary. In Sunday's New York Times, the DealBook blog looks at bad behavior of visionary leaders in the tech industry.

Writer Tony Schwartz notes, "What disheartens me is how little care and appreciation any of them [Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos] give (or in Mr. Jobs' case gave) to hard-working and loyal employees, and how unnecessarily cruel and demeaning they could be to the people who helped make their dreams come true." While we're unsure if teachers are making administrators' dreams come true, we do know that teachers are working their asses off to make sure all the work in the classroom gets done so the doors stay open and students are in the seats. WCT sees time and again grand, yet empty gestures of thanks accompanied by yelling at and bullying of the most experienced, forthright teachers in the building. 

There doesn't need to be a fancy, no-bid contract awarded to ask administrators to treat the people they work with like human beings and not a malfunctioning machine whose output is down. Perhaps simple signs that say, "Hey, knock it off!" will do the trick and they will realize what Mr. Schwartz concludes, "Our research at Energy Project has shown that the more employees feel their needs are being met at work--above all, for respect and appreciation--the better they perform."

A Real MisMatch

Hey, David Kirp, you left something really important out of your article about Foreman High School: any mention of real teachers working at the school! The exclusive focus on Match Education and their tutors' alleged lone efforts to improve student achievement in math would lead the casual reader to believe there aren't 15 math teachers already on staff at the school.

Match Education's tutoring program uses, "intensive support, providing a safety net for students who have fallen far behind." Hmm, that description sounds suspiciously like what teachers would do, were it not for overflowing classes and days of test prep, or if they were employed at the Lab School where there's a 10:1 student-teacher ratio. We're told Match Education's tutors even, "individualize instruction." Again, much like a teacher. What else do these latter day Miracle Workers do? They also are, "not only trained to teach math but also in how to relate to these teenagers." Teaching and relating to teens are also what our counselors do.

The real allure of Match Education for Mayor Rahm Emanuel: cha-ching! The tutors earn $16,000 year plus benefits, that's just above the 2014 poverty line. And, no nasty, complicated unions to deal with either. 

Another bonus for Rahm is that Match Education is the brand name of several different entities all aimed at privatizing public education, most notably Match Charter Public Schools, currently invading Boston. Looks like the Chicago invasion has begun since Match tutors already work at Foreman and Match Board member Matthew Vettel used to work for Bruce Rauner's $6 billion dollar a year private equity firm GTCR. 

Chicago's Newest Grinch: Mary Weaver

 

The above pictures bear a striking resemblance to each other, don't you think? While one of these images is a fictitious character described as, "a bitter, grouchy, cave-dwelling creature, with a heart two-sizes too small..." the other is an image of an actual bitter, grouchy, cave-dwelling creature with a heart two-sizes too small (no, not Rahm Emanuel) who resides not on Mount Crumpit, but at Scammon Elementary. 

The alleged grinchiness of Scammon's principal, Mary Weaver, was outlined today in a Federal complaint charging the Board of Education with discrimination based on pregnancy. The complaint alleges that Weaver targeted teachers who became pregnant with lower evaluations and derisive remarks, such as: "I can't believe you are doing this [having a baby] to me!" While WCT tires of the Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work bullshit we're treated to on a regular basis, this seems a little too angry parent.

Eventually, the teachers either quit or were fired. We wonder if this behavior falls under Pillar Four--Committed and Effective Teachers, Leaders & Staff-- of CPS's five pillars? If so, much like the ousted teachers, we'd have to E3 Ms. Weaver's entire tenure at the school.

Weaver is just one of many bully principals within CPS who intimidate employees at their whim to remain in positions of power and to win high ratings within a discredited system.

We'd suggest some reading for Weaver and her ilk which suggests being a nice boss is better than being a horrible boss, but something tells us photo-ops with Rahm far outweigh any need to be liked.

We're baaaack.

Much like meaningless edu-acronyms, buildings with cockroaches a-creepin',  and babble from Rahm & B3, WCT is back!

Blaine's principal Troy LaRaviere proudly states in a SunTimes article that neighborhood schools aren't has-beens, "Public school students learned far more in one year than charter school students did." He helpfully provides our mayor with some next-steps, "In the face of these results, the mayor’s next press conference on schools should be much different from his last. He should announce that CPS will cease its effort to divert funding from public neighborhood schools into his failed charter experiment. An immediate surge of investment in public neighborhood schools should follow." We couldn't agree more.

It's a good thing we didn't spend our weekend waiting for such an announcement. Instead, B3's bleh email arrived to our inboxes this morning with this rousing fact: "Their [teachers] success in the classroom is evidenced by a slew of recent data, including improved NWEA scores, rising attendance levels, and a District-high graduation rate of X percent, all of which moves us closer to our goal of preparing every student for success in college and beyond." X percent? That's quite a feat!

Further, we were informed of, “...the investments we have made in your schools, including facility upgrades, increased technology, and expanded programs like STEM and IB will provide you with the supports you need to rase [sic] the bar higher and help students thrive.” WCT has heard of lots of malfunctioning copiers, computers, and unusable facilities, all in time for the first day. That must be what B3 means when she issues this spoiler alert: “It [teaching] requires maximum effort and can be fraught with daily challenges. Yet the rewards are staggering…”  We hope to be around to see such staggering rewards if only CPS let’s us do our jobs correctly in the first place.

To the teachers who succeed in the face of all that’s happening in CPS: right on! It’s good to see you in the hallways and classrooms again this year!

Conscious Uncoupling

The Internet has been abuzz for the last 24 hours trying to figure out what Gwyneth Paltrow meant by the phrase conscious uncoupling. WCT only hears such mystifying terms during professional development sessions with our Thought Partners. It turns out, psychotherapist Katherine Thomas is a Thought Partner to the stars because conscious uncoupling means saying goodbye, but feeling okay about it.

Perhaps our elected school board retains the services of Katherine Thomas. The school board seems to have no problem uncoupling themselves from money to buy new office furniture. $5 million dollars worth of new furniture. That's in addition to the $4.5 million dollars they already had earmarked for new furniture. Herman Miller chairs for one and all! That's close to $10 million dollars to move into new offices while over 50 schools were closed this year, and 3 school turnarounds closings were just announced. 

The stellar decision-making from CPS just keeps on rolling.

Thanks, Karen!

Barbara Byrd Bennet's response to the polar vortex descending upon Chicago was predictably indecisive and confusing, angering Chicago parents city-wide.  Perhaps BBB's SUPES Academy training teaches that there are no excuses for the effects of a polar vortex.  Her official statement was that "while all district schools are slated to be open on Monday, I strongly encourage parents to use their own discretion in deciding whether to send their child to school." Furthermore, "all student absences will be excused."

So basically, schools scheduled to be open, but students kinda/sorta don't have to come.

Thanks to Karen Lewis, however, for being the voice of reason.

Stay warm at home, CPS students and teachers!

TOOT Your Way To Excellence

What have some administrators been up to over break? If you guessed crafting Dickensian policies about bathroom usage, you'd be right. While CPS uses many metrics to rank schools, restroom frequency is not yet one. However, one school's administrators, and perhaps their Thought Partners, have struck upon a new way to measure high standards and academic excellence: T.O.O.T. (Time out of Toilet).*

A friend shared the following:

Dear Faculty,

Welcome back and Happy New Year! In order to maximize student learning and reduce the loss of instructional time, we are implementing two new restroom policies.

1. Designated Restroom Times - Take your class to use the restroom only during your allotted time so that multiple groups of students are not competing to use the facilities. Also, the expectation is that the restroom break should last only five minutes. Before leaving for the restroom, clearly communicate the behavioral expectations and the time limit. Use your watch or stopwatch to time the students and praise them when they meet the behavior and time expectations.

Sign up for your restroom time slot in the main office by Tuesday, January 7. 

2. Restroom Passes - In addition to scheduled restroom breaks, students will be given restroom passes to use if they need to use the restroom outside of the scheduled time. Students will be given two restroom passes to use between now and the end of the quarter. They can choose to hold on to them and trade them in for a reward at the end of the quarter. Following these guidelines:

Have students fill in their names as soon as they receive them. Passes are invalid if names are crossed out for another name.

For the upper grades, students can use one teacher's pass in another classroom, but they still only get the same number of passes per quarter.

Use a class roster to have student initial next to their name to indicate that they received the passes.

Have students fill in the "time out" and "time in" and then turn the pass in to the teacher when finished. This will help them practice the CCS of telling time with both digital and analog clocks.

Promote the benefit of not using the passes by reminding students that rewards will be given for left over passes at the end of the quarter.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Thank you,

WCT notes a few problems (besides the continued employment of the administrative dolt who drafted this):

• Designated restroom times. Teachers must now possess telepathic qualities on an unparalleled level to predict when the optimal 5 minute go time window for each class might be.

• Stopwatch usage. We wonder if administrators--who we're told get private bathrooms in many schools--tried and succeeded with the five minute rule they're imposing on students.

• Rewards for not using the restroom. 

• Linking bathroom usage (via telling time) to CCSS. We doubt Arne Duncan and Bill Gates had the john on their minds when they rolled out the CCSS. Then again, Bill Gates is investing in the development of a urine powered cell phone so one never knows.

While the school goes unnamed, WCT has learned the following about the crack administration who's developed this:

• The principal has only two years of classroom experience and is friends with Rahm.

• The newly hired Assistant Principal is an "intern"...perhaps SUPES?

•  Extra security has been hired to manage frustrated parents.

The entire memo generates many practical questions, among them: 

• Why must students be monitored so closely by their teachers let alone the main office?

• If a teacher does not follow this complicated set of instructions, will their REACH evaluation be negatively impacted?

• If extra security has in fact been hired to manage already frustrated parents, how will a policy like this make any parent happy?

• Since the principal is Rahm's clout hire, are these the types of "reforms" he expects to see at other CPS schools? What about the school his kids attend?

• What unfortunate soul will need to track this? In the time it takes them to track an entire school's bathroom use, what could they have done instead?

*WCT is happy to sell this acronym to the administrative team searching for a way to cleverly capture their new policy. Cha-ching!
                                                                   ***
Teachers: does your school have any policies approaching this ridiculousness? Is this what passes for reform? Leave a comment or email wct.tips@gmail.com

Boot Lickers

We're taking about boot-lickers in general terms:  people who are excessively subservient to authority figures and who participate in the oppression of their own group. In schools, some teachers kiss administrative ass thoroughly, effectively, and reflexively. Like all boot-lickers, they generate disgust amongst non-ass-kissers because of their flattery and their obsequiousness.  Furthermore, urban school boot-lickers usually show a strong thirst for corporate tran$formation ideas.

After observation, we have identified some qualities common to boot-licking teachers:

• Students don't like them
• They like talking about data, norms, cultures of excellence and our favorite, rigor
• They like to disapprove when other teachers appear to be enjoying themselves excessively, particularly if the revelry seems unconnected to success in the classroom  
• They like to martyr themselves, Christ-like, to the job of generating and evaluating data
• They like meetings, meetings about meetings, and administrative direction of their prep periods
• They perceive their own boot-licking as honorable and heroic

For further assistance in spotting a boot-licking teacher, look for someone who:

• Has an assertive yet confrontational personality; a wanna-be Alpha
• Has questionable eye contact (either shifty eyes or uncomfortable, steely contact)
• Spends a lot of non-meeting time with administration
• Normal teachers avoid 

CPS teachers, are you aware of any boot-licking teachers in your school?  If so, comment on this post or email us at wct.tips@gmail.com.

A Work Culture of Bleh

As you know, we at WCT have chosen to remain anonymous; we love our students and would like to keep our jobs.  While we are engaged in a variety of research and documentation regarding corporate educational profiteering in CPS, we also have a few gripes regarding the work culture at our school.  It's pretty joyless.

Sure, we have posters promoting a "culture of excellence," and we like to think that we ourselves have pretty high expectations for the quality of the teaching and learning that's going on.  Nevertheless, our workplace could use a few shots of fun.  The current conditions are about as fun as a glass of room-temperature tap water.  For example:

• When they're not looking at the ground, most teachers wear either pained or blank expressions as they scuttle through the halls
• New non-tenured teachers spout edu-babble in every conversation to appease administrators
• Very little friendly socializing
• Non-directed teacher time kept to the absolute minimum
• No common room for staff
• Nowhere to buy something to eat or drink except the student line -- not even a vending machine
• No more holiday parties 
• Meetings about meetings
• Forms to be filled out for every conceivable reason
• No laughing; smiling is polite, appropriate, and controlled

Bleh.

Teachers, how's the work culture at your school? Leave a comment or drop us a line at wct.tips@gmail.com.

Rank and Yank REACH

Stack this!

Microsoft made big news today when it abandoned its controversial, largely destructive employee ranking system called stack ranking where employees are pitted against each other to earn gold stars from their bosses. Sounds an awful lot like CPS's REACH. 

Stack ranking, or rank and yank, requires managers to rate employees against each other and assign a numerical rating.  These ratings usually follow a bell curve: 20% receive the highest rating, 70% receive a good rating, and 10% are rated lowest and shown the door. Critics argue this system is unfairly rigid, so we can see how it sounds like the ideal strategy to account for a dynamic, ever-changing school system!

Among the negative attributes of stack ranking are:

• Employees unwilling to work with each other for fear of others receiving a higher rating.

• Employees openly sabotaging co-workers so they maintain a top rating.

• Short-term individual focus of getting the highest ranking versus a long-term focus of working toward a common goal.

As formal observations begin, we can already imagine the pitfalls of REACH:

• Teachers who are unwilling to collaborate for fear their colleagues will get a better rating.

• Teachers who begin volunteering for everything to score brownie points with the admin.

• Teachers who are increasingly paranoid about the constant surveilling of their teaching practices, grades, room appearance, and attitude.

• Teachers who no longer share a once-common goal of advocating for and helping students improve, but instead feel they must advocate for themselves first.

If schools can no longer follow the outdated model of "helping teachers teach" and must pick a corporation to follow, then they should at least follow Google's lead (and high stock price! Cha-ching!!) and encourage teachers to take time to pursue what they're interested in. However, this approach assumes that teachers are people whose thinking is valued, not just parts of the corporate education machine rolling over everything in its path all the while helping profiteers add to their bottom line.

Readers: has REACH changed your school? For our parent readers out there, have you noticed any change in teaching, good or bad? Click anonymous in the comment section and let us know!

Perks for teachers?

The most commonly-held "perks" associated with teaching usually include:

1. Paid summers/Christmas off (but not anymore, CPS teachers!  No more deferred pay for us!  And no more "summers off" if you're non-tenured or working for a principal with his hopes up for getting rid of "tenured do-nothings")

2. "Shorter" work day (Not if you want to keep up with your day-ta!)

3. The opportunity to enrich young people's lives (Yes, of course, but isn't that the JOB THAT WE'RE PAID TO PERFORM, rather than a "perk"?)

We all know that educational experts everywhere are embracing corporate models for schools, giving teachers myriad opportunities to attend meetings about meetings, and also to generate, inspect, and - ahem - manipulate data.  We also know that new urban reformers love "corporate churn," the idea that high staff turnover and constantly changing administrative demands leads to higher productivity.  And of course, we all know about the opportunities out there for corporate educational profiteers to a$$ist in generating new ways to inspect teachers' failures.

But what about the corporate perks?  We've heard about corporate places where staff members get awesome things at work.  In fact, Career Builder did a survey and found out about five awesome corporate perks that keep staff members happy and productive:

1. Catered lunches
2. Massages
3. Nap rooms
4. Snack carts
5. On-site daycare

Boy, do those things sound great!  We know that it's unlikely that urban educational reformers will put the corporate perks into the corporate models for schools, so we've created an alternate list of perks that we'd like to see at our school:

1. Non-roach-infested storage space
2. Non-developing-nation staff bathroom conditions
3. Food available to buy -- even in a vending machine -- during our 25 minute lunch
4. Somewhere comfortable to sit down during planning periods

And last, but not least, maybe a cup of coffee (we'll pay!)?  And a thank-you from the boss every once in a while?

Leave a comment or email wct.tips@gmail.com with perks you think teachers might enjoy.

Horrible CPS Bosses

Even though National Boss's Day was in October, it's never too late to note all of the ways one's boss can make life miserable. Yes, we all know about horrible bosses all over Chicago who are horrible in conventional ways, like sexually harassing their employees, refusing to let people have a day off to take care of a sick kid, or handing out the layoff notice.  But what about horrible CPS bosses?  Are they really very different from their corporate counterparts? Yes and no, readers.

Forbes published a list of behaviors horrible corporate bosses might share, and sure enough principals we know have picked up on bad corporate behavior like:

• Never being wrong about anything (check!)
• Constant staff turnover (check!)
• Being the Micromanager of micromanaging. With 100 teachers in a building, your principal has a hand in what everyone is doing (check, check, and check!)
• Turmoil in one's personal life due to "the job." (double check!)
• Never saying thanks (check!)

Here's a starter list of some horrible things we've seen and heard administrators doing:

• Sneaky "re-definition" as a way to fire tenured teachers
• Keeping a special bathroom just for their own use
• Making female teachers cry at meetings
• Standing by the time clock as staff are punching in and out
• Getting rid of staff rooms 
• Sitting in a teacher's room for "quiet" while a class is going on
• Cryptic advice that means nothing, yet is expected to be followed
• Self-congratulatory "inspirational" quotes that are doled out at every turn
• Disapproval of teachers enjoying a life outside of the school building

Readers: what horrible boss stories do you have? Use the comment link to share!

Welcome back, friends!