We are all Innocent part 2

I have been speaking to a lot of people in the room lately about why they are here. There are the older people who seem to be here primarily because their principal didn't like them and figured out how to get them. My school had the famous case of the teacher who allegedly told a student that if they needed to go to the bathroom they should pee in the wastebasket. This women was no more guilty then any other teacher. She was guilty of being old and annoying, so the principal waited and then pounced. I don't know every ones story but a lot of them sound like this.

The young people are here because they do young things. They get caught with dope, they drive with suspended licenses or they get caught with someone who has drugs. These are the kids that fall into the category I call, "there but for the grace of god go I". If any teacher thinks that they have never done anything illegal then they have probably forgotten.

Then there are the sex cases. Mostly these are young male teachers who are accused of having inappropriate contact with female students. They are almost never accused by the student they are supposed to have been with. They are accused by other students or by a parent.

We work in a world where kids, particularly girls, get into fights for almost no reason. Barbara Walters came to my school to do a special on girls and violence. I think one of the biggest surprises she had was how much violence seemed to be random. It was not based on long standing disputes. Violence often happened just because one girl decided that they didn't like another girl's sneakers or t-shirt.

Given what happens between teenage girls in our schools it is no surprise that young male teachers get accused of all kinds of things. If they are good looking they become objects of all kinds of rumors. Students who have it in for the teacher or another student make accusations. This is not a surprise. What is, is the reaction of the DoE. One teacher told me that the investigator on his case told him that it did not seem to be a big deal, and that he would be exonerated in a few weeks. This was 4 months ago. Why does it take so long. Is it a lack of investigators or is it a lack of DoE lawyers. From the DoE's point of view it is easier to throw someone into the rubber room and forget about them. Rather than figure out a rational way to deal with these cases the DoE and the UFT has let them fester and has let good teachers get destroyed.

I think that one of the ways to make the rubber room really a place to hold people who have seriously done something wrong is to somehow penalize people for making false accusations, particularly Principals and AP's. It is not good that these people can make accusations with almost no downside. The UFT needs to go after students who make false accusations and Principals who do a poor job of investigating these accusations. The DoE takes the position that as long as you are being paid than you can not complain. The truth is that we have moved to a situation where you are guilty until proven innocent. This is not right.

One of my comments about my blog about the Las Vegas culinary unions disputed my facts. My facts came from Hal Rothman's book. The strike at the Frontier hotel was certainly the countries longest strike. It happened because the individuals who controlled the Frontier chose what they felt was a "moral" position against the union. This is what happens when people do that instead of making business decisions. The UFT and the DoE keep making these types of decisions.

If one of the goals of the DoE and the UFT was to create an environment in which teachers liked what they did then the whole system would change. You do not create teachers who like what they do by making less work, you do it by making it more rewarding. You do it by respecting good teachers. I was trying to make the point that the UFT has to think about more than just salary and job protections. The UFT needs to think in terms of job satisfaction. I would like to point out that it was an ex chancellor who unilateral got rid of teachers punching a time clock. Somehow it never dawned on the UFT that punching a time clock was a bad idea.