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Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and UFT President Michael Mulgrew at the DOE's new teacher orientation today.

An as-yet-unhired Teaching Fellow ambushed Schools Chancellor Joel Klein today, charging that it is unfair for the city to recruit new teachers and then deny them jobs.

Arah Lewis, a 28-year-old new teacher, stopped Klein as the chancellor left LaGuardia High School this morning after speaking at the city’s annual new teacher orientation. Lewis was hired this spring to join the city’s Teaching Fellows program, but then the city closed its teaching ranks to most new hires in May.

“To be here and to hear you speak is wonderful,” she told Klein. “But it’s also kind of a slap in the face.”

Lewis explained that she had found a middle school in the Bronx, MS 337, whose principal wanted to hire her as a math teacher. But the principal, Andrea Cyprys, can’t offer the position until the hiring freeze is lifted, something Klein warned recently isn’t likely to happen any time soon.

On the verge of tears and surrounded by other new teachers, Lewis protested to Klein that her situation is unfair.

“I don’t know an organization that would go out and recruit people and expect them to change their lives and then say you can’t work here,” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense.” (more…)

A late-afternoon e-mail sent by the Department of Education yesterday means that new teachers facing termination on Dec. 5 can enter the Thanksgiving weekend with renewed hopes for a career in the city’s classrooms.

Called Teaching Fellows, the teachers are brought into the system with no teaching experience but gain credentials through evening university classes. About 100 90* fellows who had not been placed in classroom jobs are slated to be removed from the city if they still do not have a job by Dec. 5, a deadline that had some lobbying for more security. Yesterday, they got a little bit, in the form of an e-mail from the head of the program, who said that they can be added back to the payroll if they find positions by Feb. 3 of 2009.

Those who don’t find a job by then can join next fall’s Teaching Fellows class, according to the e-mail, and all of the Teaching Fellows who finish out their required coursework this semester can work as substitute teachers for the rest of the school year. (more…)

People inside Department of Education headquarters weren’t the only ones fretting about the possibility of losing their jobs today.

Afraid they’re just a month from being laid off, a handful of new Teaching Fellows who still haven’t landed positions in schools gathered on the steps of Tweed Courthouse tonight to demand a meeting with Chancellor Joel Klein.

The teachers are seeking, at a minimum, an extension of the deadline to find a permanent position. Newly hired teachers without jobs on Dec. 5 will be removed from DOE payroll, a condition they agreed to when they accepted their job offers this summer.

A security officer stopped the teachers at the door, but a DOE employee spoke briefly with the group and instructed them to contact the chancellor in writing. She took a signed letter and at least one of the teachers’ signs, saying she’d pass their message on to Klein.

According to DOE spokeswoman Ann Forte, 115 new Teaching Fellows are still without jobs, down from 139 in mid-October. Teachers tonight told me they are working as substitutes and assistants while they seek permanent positions.

Earlier this week, the executive board of the United Federation of Teachers set Nov. 24 as the date for the delegate-mandated rally to support teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve. ATRs are experienced teachers who lost their positions when their schools were phased out.

The UFT says it has also filed a grievance on behalf of new Teaching Fellows without jobs, who are not technically ATRs because they have never held a job in a New York City public school. But a Teaching Fellow who has worked to organize Teaching Fellows without jobs said the teachers aren’t putting much stock in the UFT. “At this point, this is just about the DOE,” he said.