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I got the first call Thursday afternoon. A recording asked if I could volunteer at a shelter during the hurricane. Press 1 for yes or 2 for no.

I felt a wave of the familiar not-working-but-still-getting-paid-teacher-in-summer guilt. I thought about the fact that I didn’t have kids and what my mother would say. I pressed 1, mentally crossing my fingers I wouldn’t be called to volunteer. That evening a voicemail message told me to report to Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn Friday morning for my 12-hour shift. I was in shock. I played the message for my roommates and they howled with laughter, especially when the awkward automated voice said “12-hour shift.” At this point, I didn’t know these calls were only being made to city workers.

The next day I made my way to Clara Barton. I knew it was the right thing to do, and honestly, feared I might get in trouble if I didn’t show (the message was unambiguously in the imperative). There were about 15 of us that day — an industrious bunch — and we got to work unpacking the large bins that had been stored at the school for years for an event like this. They were filled with instructional videos and books, forms, walkie-talkies, flashlights, notepads, signage, batteries, tape, markers, pens, and more. Along with the three other teachers in the group, I drooled over this abundance of brand-new school supplies — particularly the oodles of Post-It brand poster paper (with the sticky back!) that every teacher knows cost 30 bucks a pop. Our schools might stop just short of putting campus safety in charge of supplies, but apparently the city’s Office of Emergency Management had plenty to go around.

We were to be an evacuation center: a place for evacuees to check in before heading to a “satellite” hurricane shelter. I ended up with the job of entering information on the website OEM uses to keep track of its staff and evacuees. By now I knew of course, that only city employees had been asked to volunteer. I wondered why there were so few teachers — most people were from the Human Resources Administration. Eventually I heard back from the teacher friends I had texted. Many of them had been contacted; they had all said no. Two were away, the rest were just not interested. I didn’t get the sense that anyone had refused out of spite for the Department of Education or the city; it seemed more that they weren’t keen on spending a hurricane working at a shelter. (more…)

Ama Nyamekye taught high school English in the New York City public schools from 2004 to 2007 and now works as a communications consultant for nonprofits. This post originally appeared in the Commentary section of Education Week.

In college, I pumped my fist at a rally against standardized testing. I’d never seen the exam I was protesting, but stood in solidarity with educators and labor organizers who felt the testing movement was an attack on teachers, particularly those working in poor public schools. My opposition grew when I became a teacher in the South Bronx, one of America’s poorest communities. I wanted to uplift my students and resented the weight of a looming high-stakes test.

Besides, I thought good teachers should be left to their own devices. And, I was certain that I was a good teacher. For the most part, my students were punctual, respectful, and engaged. It wasn’t until my second year in the classroom that I began questioning this assumption.

In a routine evaluation, my principal praised my organization, management, and facilitation, but posed the following question: “How do you know the kids are really getting it?” She urged me to develop more-rigorous assessments of student learning. Ego and uncertainty inspired me to measure the impact of my instruction. I thought I was effective, but I wanted proof.

In my third year of teaching, I put myself to the test. (more…)

When I announced to my three classes during the second week of June that they would be responsible for reading two books over the course of the summer, a riot nearly ensued. Amidst the cacophony of groans, deep sighs, and loud complaints, I was the recipient of a populist anger not seen since the Grinch was around stealing Christmas. In fact, I was charged with a similar crime: stealing summer and forcing my students into the no-fun zone of intellectual hard labor.

With summer reading assignments of my own a less-than-distant memory, I chose the two books with empathy to the agony my students would surely endure if assigned a pair of less than captivating novels. Thus, I was genuinely excited about my choices of “Copper Sun” by Sharon Draper and “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, and assumed my students would be as well, which paved the way for either a huge letdown or an epic battle of wills. I presented the novels to my students with great fanfare and as I responded, first calmly, to the barrage of attacks with statistics on summer learning loss and the importance to prepare for high school, I lost my cool when a student defiantly declared that I could not make him read in the first place and that he could choose not to read at all. A battle of wills was at hand.

As I hurled threats towards him of serious academic consequences such as failing the summer reading test and hurting his chances at a good grade, I was most frustrated by the truth in his statement. I really could not force him or any other student to read. As a teacher that strongly cares for his students, thinking that their minds going to waste over the next two months was agonizing for me. That was the real reason behind assigning summer reading in the first place — to prevent the learning loss that typically afflicts low-income students during the summer time because of limited exposure to activities, resources, and experiences that would provide academic stimulation. I feared all the progress we made over the course of the year would evaporate as quickly as water spilled on burning pavement during a hot summer day. I had witnessed this phenomenon before with this same group of students as they returned to school after the previous summer. Those that participated in an enrichment program I offered at my school were adequately prepared for the rigors and expectations of seventh grade, while those that languished by the poolside or in front of the television returned mentally sluggish and in poor condition to begin the yearlong academic marathon that would follow.

Although I may have suffered an initial defeat in the war of summer reading, I would not be overcome by my students’ intransigence. (more…)

Mayor Bloomberg’s comments on his Friday radio show that tenure “may have been necessary in the McCarthy era” but is now a relic of the past highlight how out of touch he is with the current realities of the school system.

Bloomberg argued that protection for academic freedom was not necessary for public school teachers because we are “not writing papers about things that are very controversial.” However, in some schools, advocacy for students or for the employment rights of teachers can result in witch-hunts from school administrators that can border on the McCarthyesque. Tenure is meant to shelter teachers from the whims of these administrators.

As two New York City teachers who have both been targeted with unsatisfactory ratings because of our union activity, we know from firsthand experience that tenure is one of the few protections for whistleblowers and teacher advocates.

One of us, Rachel Montagano, as a union representative at MS 216 in Queens, experienced a repeated pattern of being scrutinized for her teaching practices immediately after conducting union activities. For example, after she refused to sign off on a safety plan that was written without teacher input, she was accused of insubordination. That began a pattern that has resulted in Montagano, a veteran reading coach who helped develop curriculum for the school, receiving her first-ever unfavorable reviews and facing incompetence charges. Administrators entered union meetings, or stood outside, sometimes writing down who showed up; a clear force of intimidation with the message, “we are watching you.” Without tenure due process, Montagano and some of her colleagues would already be facing unemployment because of her willingness to stand up for the safety of her students and for the rights of her colleagues. Meanwhile, their principal, Reggie Landau, set fire to his office with an illegal hotplate but has not faced sanction from the Department of Education.

The other of us, Peter Lamphere, as a union delegate at the Bronx High School of Science, participated in a harassment grievance along with 19 other colleagues from the mathematics department. Shortly afterward, he received unsatisfactory ratings for the first time in his career, and other teachers were subjected to various forms of harassment. A neutral fact-finder later supported the grievance and found that administrators’ belief that Lamphere was a ringleader of the grievance played a role in the harassment. Without tenure rights, Lamphere would have been fired long before the grievance was heard. Five of the six untenured teachers who signed the math department grievance had left the school within six months, either after being fired or fleeing before their careers would be destroyed.

We join a long list of educators who have been targeted because of their union activity or for aspects of their identities. (more…)

As a high school special education teacher and adjunct instructor of education at Pace University, I was deeply concerned by with the nature and content of this month’s Global History and Geography Regents exam. The exam reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of teaching Global History in public high schools and revealed that the New York State Board of Regents is at best conflicted about the purpose of the exam, and at worst wrong in its concept of  what history should be taught.

The recent results of a 2010 NAEP assessment in U.S. History have rightfully been damned by leading figures in the school reform movement as evidence of a startling lack of student knowledge about the history of our country. My experience administering the exam this year showed me that there is a disconnect between the State Board of Regents and teachers on history teaching. The victims of this disconnect are the students who deserve to be appropriately assessed on their understanding of global history but are not.

My main concern about this year’s exam lay with the “Document Based Question,” or DBQ, which asked students to synthesize primary source material into an essay that addressed the concept of human rights using three examples: the Ukrainian famine of the 1920s and 1930s, the Cambodian crisis of 1970s, and the conflicts in Rwanda during the 1990s. (more…)

I work for the city Department of Education. I am also the author of a guide that advises teens to take ownership of their learning by leaving school. Here’s why.

I have more than a decade’s worth of experience in educational innovation. I spend my days working with administrators, teachers, and students finding ways to innovate learning in an effort to establish student learning environments that are more engaging, authentic, and connected to real life. I’ve worked in various capacities such as technology coach, literacy coach, and educational technology professional development manager, and I currently serve as a technology innovation manager at the DOE. Before that I did similar work for Teachers College Innovations at Columbia University.

I am fortunate to work for an agency that focuses on and embraces technology and innovation. Despite outdated constraints involving issues like seat time, student funding, and resource allocation, we are making progress toward bringing more personalized and engaging learning opportunities to students through a handful of efforts, such as the iSchool and the Innovation Zone. But while students are doing better in a more innovative climate, ultimately, we are just using updated tools to meet narrow and outdated measures on which our students, teachers, and school leaders are judged. It is not enough to personalize learning for everyone to go down the same path — to college, without consideration of what comes next. Instead, schools need to embrace the many alternatives to the traditional college route that would better meet the needs of many learners today. What is missing at the DOE is the important work of letting students discover, define, and develop their own passions, talents, and interests and determine personalized, meaningful, and authentic measures of success.

This is why I have published an online guide that helps teens leave school. Recognizing that I am no better than a high school dropout, I created ”The Teenager’s Guide to Opting Out (Not Dropping Out) of School” because for many students, school has become a barrier, rather than a sanctuary, for learning. (more…)

The Department of Education recently announced that it plans to close the Khalil Gibran International Academy’s middle school, NYC’s first Arabic dual language program. There’s an important backstory.

In August 2007, New York City’s then Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott called Debbie Almontaser, then the acting principal of KGIA, into his office to tell her that Mayor Michael Bloomberg had lost confidence in her and wanted her to resign from her post. But that wasn’t all. Walcott also told her that the mayor wanted the resignation immediately because he intended to announce it on his radio show the next day. She was told that if she did not resign, KGIA would be closed. Knowing how much the school meant to the Arab community and to so many others, Almontaser submitted her resignation.

She brought suit soon after, charging that the city and the DOE had discriminated against her by bowing to anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry in demanding her resignation. In March 2010, the federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission upheld Almontaser’s charge of discrimination. It ruled that, in demanding her resignation, the DOE “succumbed to the very bias that the creation of the school was intended to dispel, and a small segment of the public succeeded in imposing its prejudices on the DOE as an employer.”

In a recent statement, Communities in Support of KGIA, a coalition of racial justice, immigrant rights, and peace groups and Muslim, Jewish, and Arab groups that formed after the DOE and mayor forced Almontaser to resign (and with which I have been intimately involved), outlined what happened and described the DOE’s four-year process of killing the school: (more…)

Amidst the shouting, recriminating and celebrating attending Dennis Walcott’s designation as chancellor, even a keen follower of education politics could have missed the news that New York State Education Commissioner David Steiner is stepping down. Steiner cut a low profile in the mass media, so it’s ironic, yet consistent, that his announcement and its implications provoked little discussion in the broader ed reform community.

Steiner struck me as a man with a long-term vision of what it means to be educated, something glaringly absent from the reform debate. At a sparsely attended talk on the Upper East Side last October, Steiner asked how we expect to make the long journey to a “better educated” student population without a detailed map for the trip. Last weekend, speaking at a state teachers union event, Steiner reflected on his tenure, pointing out that if we want to develop such a vision “we do not start by yelling at each other.”

Unnamed “education insiders” say Steiner’s “superstar” deputy, John King, has the inside track. King’s prior work draws hosannas, but his career doesn’t suggest he’s a visionary in Steiner’s mold.

When I heard Steiner speak last fall, we were in the midst of being bombarded with the news that Davis Guggenheim had “cracked the code” in “Waiting for ‘Superman.’” I was fighting apocalyptic thoughts after the New York Times profiled a new middle school suggesting that having failed to engage teenagers, our only option is to have them play video games. And we learned that the average Atheist knows way more about the Bible than the average Christian. A friend neatly captured my concerns when he said, “I weep for the Republic.”

In an essay accompanying his profile of a Bronx middle school this past weekend, Jonathan Mahler neatly channeled Steiner. We shout that only class size matters or the key is accountability, or we need more school days, or we must focus on teacher quality, or grant more charters. As Henry Longfellow wrote (and Barry Manilow made popular), we’re like ships that pass in the night, “only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.” Our current ‘debate’ is not some Hegelian dialectic leading to a vision for the future; it’s a twisted mashup of Rush Limbaugh and Rachel Maddow, a tale “full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.”

Back in October I foolishly hoped Steiner would bring some balance to these debates. (more…)

On Monday, my colleague and mentor Steve Lazar wrote a letter to Mayor Bloomberg about the city’s release of a list of possible teacher layoffs by school. In his letter, Steve discussed the impact that the announcement had on the young teachers at our school, including me, “the third-year history teacher who is on the border.” After reading his post, I decided to give a little insight into what my day was like on Monday. Here’s what I wrote.

My friend the mayor released a list of potential teacher layoffs in New York City this morning. After I woke up, trying to will myself out of bed after a week off, I heard the news report and was suddenly even less excited to start my day.

Then I went to work …

… and taught 60 ninth-graders in my civics classes how to contact their representative concerning proposed gun control legislation in the House of Representatives.

Then, I took a look at the city’s school-by-school list of possible layoffs and saw that my school has five teachers that could be laid off if the mayor doesn’t get his way. Best part? It was just a number so maybe it’s me but then again maybe it’s not. I spent a small part of the remainder of the day wondering if I was one of the unlucky ones. I didn’t necessarily appreciate the suspense of it all.

Then I taught English to 30 ninth-graders. Well, kind of, anyway. Midway through the day, all of the outlets in my room blew, rendering useless the PowerPoint that I was going to project onto my board to teach my mini-lesson. Can’t win ‘em all … or apparently any of ‘em.

Then I came home, had dinner with my wife, and watched our friend the mayor on the news. I’m not too sure if the mayor thought about me and my fellow teachers today — maybe he did; after all, he made up a nice list! — but I know he didn’t think about my wife, and the grief that his list caused her today.

This is my third year teaching in New York City and my third year of hearing that I might lose my job. (more…)

As Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Cathie Black are pushing to be able to lay off senior teachers on “merit” grounds, my experience at the Bronx High School of Science raises questions about how teachers’ ratings are handed out.

The national education debate has centered on how to increase “teacher quality.” New York City Chancellor Cathie Black, for example, has called for first laying off teachers who were given “unsatisfactory” (U) ratings (along with those in the Absent Teacher Reserve pool). But there are more than a few cases in New York City that make clear that U-ratings are not always an indication of teacher quality, but sometimes are a result of retaliation against whistle-blowers and union activists.

The recent disciplining of Fordham School of the Arts principal Iris Blige for ordering her assistant principals to U-rate teachers whom she had never seen teach reveals a few important things about the DOE’s process of determining merit. First, U ratings can be arbitrarily ordered by a principal. Second, the penalty from the DOE for doing so is a slap on the wrist — a $7,500 fine for Blige, the same amount charged to teachers who used sick days when they were actually on vacation.

I was unfortunate enough to have witnessed this process firsthand at the Bronx High School of Science. In the fall of 2007, the math department welcomed a new assistant principal, Rosemarie Jahoda. Soon, however, we found that the newer teachers in the department were being subjected to a level of scrutiny and paperwork that was excessive. As soon as I spoke up about the issue, which was my responsibility as a member of a UFT consultation committee that met with the principal, I immediately began receiving unjustified disciplinary letters.  These were quickly followed by groundless unsatisfactory lesson observation reports. I had had a spotless teaching record for my entire previous career, including at Bronx Science.

I was not alone. (more…)