Posted on 10/19/2015 12:05:24 AM PDT by EinNYC
A Bronx principal ordered her teachers to give up their desks last week, and had the furniture dumped at the curb — telling staff she doesn’t want them sitting in class.
Donna Connelly, principal of PS 24, the Spuyten Duyvil School in Riverdale, also told teachers to empty their filing cabinets, which she then discarded. With class in session, teachers were told to push their desks and cabinets into the hallway. Custodians then hauled them outside and piled them like trash on the blacktop of a school across the street.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Principal goes insane, school and district comply
piled in the trash ? taxpayer dollars down the toilet.
Nevermind the lunacy of this...
Couldn’t the stuff have been sold or recycled ?
Plus there will be the additional expense of purchasing the replacement stuff when this experiment fails.
Blaming desks instead of bad teachers is like blaming guns instead of murderers. Liberalism truly is a mental disorder.
Performing a BING search, I found a lot of advise that interactive teaching is better than sitting behind a desk. I even found a survey of students who perceived mobile teachers as more effective than desk teachers. Although this advise instinctively makes sense, I could not find a study to confirm this. Opinion makes lousy science. I can recall some of my best teachers that sat at a desk or just lectured from a podium. Should my experience now be fact? Should I advocate for desks and podiums and remove smart boards?
What is hurting public education is year after year implementing the "new idea" or the "new method" without proven studies to show these gimmicks work. However, I believe most school administrations enjoy the constant change because it lowers accountability to measure their decision on curriculum and teaching methods.
I used to call it too many doctorates in Math Education. Everyone who got one had to come up with the next great idea, and then with "curriculum improvement" those ideas got imposed on others.
Teaching is both an art and a science. Teachers have the style that works best for themselves; classes develop personalities of what works for them. Some classes behave better and respond betther under the constant, watchful eye of the teacher/disciplinarian. Some are very self-motivated and do better with a teacher at the desk, and them coming forward if and when necessary. Others like a teacher who circulates around the room, watchful of the work and giving guidance.
What you said is correct. The problem is that nothing is individual and based on what works best. There's not enough creative space for teachers and students, and that includes intellectual creativity and intellectual risk-taking.
Removing the desks? I'd wager the desks aren't the only problem that administrator has!
It is just plain stupid and mean spirited to do this. It is disrespectful to treat professionals in this manner.
Maybe the principal has one of the insane zero tolerance policies where if a few teachers are lazy and sit around too much, all the teachers have to lose their desks and chairs.
But filing cabinets, too? Spending too much time organizing their material?
That's my interpretation.
All true but it is the tax payer who will really suffer in the end. The tax payer will pay the legal fees and the judgements.
Still tough to grade papers without a desk.
And for replacements for the file cabinets and desks that will eventually be purchased. In a weird way, that may be an underlying strategy to replace old office equipment.
They’re probably not allowed to grade papers, because grades are racist or damage self-esteem or something.
I loved it when my history teacher used to sit on her desk.
this principal is a conservative.
If they really are that bad you need to run for union office to get rid of the bums.
read your local contract, your local bylaws or constitution, your national constitution, and roberts rules of order. then show up to the union meetings with your coworkers and stand together for justice and against complacency. if they deny you you contractual rights appeal to the membership. if that doesn’t work appeal all the way up. They don’t like to do paperwork or to stand up against opposition.
They hate to work, make them realize there will be less work to do the right thing.
Force them to have a conscience!
The teacher union is so utterly corrupt that they make the Mafia look like upstanding citizens. The monopoly party, Unity, simply does not allow other parties in the union to speak at assemblies, or gives them the bum’s rush off the dais in just a very few minutes. Their minions do cute things like pull opposition election literature out of teacher mailboxes. The membership is unfortunately infested with a whole lotta lib loons who just go along. They put forward a contract which robs certain members of the union of their due process rights, and the duh members barely looked at the contract before approving it. They were afraid the city would be “mad at them” if they didn’t take the first piece of trash contact waved in their faces, bolstered by the completely corrupt union telling them sign it, sign it, sign it. The “raise” it gives doesn’t even keep up with the cost of living (really!). The retro pay for 2009-11 that we “won” will be meted out in tiny increments until 2020, meaning that people retiring, terminated, resigning, etc. will be robbed of tens of thousands of dollars. No other union in NYC settled for such a horrific contract. Not the firemen, the cops, etc. Only the libtard teachers union, who screwed us all. And, as I said, if you need their assistance, good luck. The phone will ring off the hook, you will get voice mail, messages are hardly EVER returned. And if they’re returned, it’s usually by some part-timer who knows nothing.
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