I taught at Harmony School of Innovation back when it was just called Harmony Elementary. The school had only been open for one year before I was hired.. I was hired on to teach third grade health, history, and handwriting, making just $32,000/year whereas my Turkish counterparts made about $50,000. We know this is true because there's some website where people with immigration jobs or something must report age and income. I worked on a team of two other white teachers...one taught Math/science, one taught Language arts. Anyway, the night before school began I still had an unfurnished classroom...no desks! I refused to put them together and another teacher had to do that for me. I had a broken Apple (yes, the orange screen) computer in my room to count as technology. We had no library or recess area. Basically the area was a concrete space by the dumpster. There were feral cats. We began the year with no teacher's editions, no school wide curriculum, no materials at all. I finally told the kids to go home and tell their parents they had no textbooks. Parents got pissed at ME of all things. Finally, I used the school account to purchase TE's, test guides, worksheets, overhead sheets, and about 30 student textbooks. At that point I didn't care if I got fired. No one ever said anything to me about it.........principal left mid-year and put a person who spoke little English in charge of the school. Discipline was non-existent although we supposedly had some kind of discipline point system. Several teachers in critical subject areas spoke little English. A math teacher (white lady) was subject to psycho-bitch parents who complained to the new-"principal" and she was fired. Her replacement was two full time guys who spoke little English. They had no math/science background and neither wanted to teach. They wanted to do human resources and asked to not teach...but the principal made them. Their "teaching" was photocopied math TAKS worksheets/packets. Nice! Every month I would find a newly enrolled random Turkish child in my class. The ESL teacher was clearly mentally ill and a drug addict and taught nothing. She was frequently absent. Most of these turkish children were actually refugees from Russia, had never been schooled and were wild. Since we had no birth records for several, we didn't know their age or how to spell their names. There was an online thing where we posted grades. The guy who called himself the superintendent had a non-English speaking son who was placed in gifted/talented despite being average, and the dad would come to me wanting to change grades and behavior/conduct grades. Since the entire school board was made of one family, there was no one to complain to. Mysteriously, all the non English speaking refugees made high scores on the Stanford test (it's like a baseline IW bullshit test, but still) even though the never took the test. It was suggested that I help students "correct" grades during testing and be on the lookout for state employees (they usually come out to schools to make sure we're doing things right.........like they walk around hallways, peek into rooms, etc). Math and Science grades for third grade were mysteriously high despite many clearly failing (as I walked around the room, I looked at their booklets and nearly all were marking wrong answers. Remember, the new math teacher spoke little English. About 75% of the staff was not hired back, including me and that math teacher, although I won some kind of excellent teacher award at the end of the year. Note--the math teacher was transferred to another department (HR). I just got let go. The thing is, aside from fuckking with teachers, the students suffer. Those kids cried during math cuz they had no clue what was going on. The refugee kids never learned anything due to the ESL teacher being high half the time. The kids had none of that robotics club, science club, etc etc. I admit that I was supposed to teach French club but not having any materials and not willing to spend more of my own money, I just turned it into a "hanging out" club. No library, shitty recess area with feral cats, gross as hell lunch...bad atmosphere all around. This was in 2006-07. I guess the school has changed since then.
No comments:
Post a Comment