I know of a teacher in another district who really SHOULD be fired, but because her assistant principal didn't return her performance evaluation within five business days, she had to get RE-evaluated and all this other crap. I guess the union decided the paperwork needed to get done within a certain period of time and because her asst. principal was probably busy with other aspects of her job, it took three more weeks to get her in process of getting fired. It's dumb because 1) she's still going to get fired anyway for very good reason so it is simply delaying the inevitable 2) the asst. princ. now has to do more unnecessary work when she could be doing things that would actually help teachers and students 3) the students are the ones that suffer because of it.
In addition, the union decided that we couldn't have any meetings during our grading day. That means that we couldn't meet for ten minutes to discuss a school-wide discipline plan that we were supposed to implement right after break. This creates a delay in a plan that not everybody even knows about yet and means we can not immediately implement it upon return from a 2-week break which would really make everyone's lives a lot easier. I've heard that 2 weeks of break are like a reset button and we certainly need the new plan which a lot of people have worked really hard on for months. Because the union said we couldn't do meetings we'll have to delay this really kick-ass plan. This hurts the administrators, teachers, students and parents. Go union.
On the other hand, I have a friend who is a first year teacher in another district who got in trouble because of some controversial content in his history class. He did not bring a union rep with him to the meeting with his administrators. He came out ahead. I think they really respected that.
I guess I wouldn't want to work for anyone that I'd need to bring a buffer person with to talk to. Though I will admit that I brought two teachers with me once to a meeting because I wanted them to document it... I did get the changes I'd been promised but I think it just made people angry and I later found out (by putting two and two together) the very good reasons those changes weren't made in the first place and the (legal, confidential) reasons I was not told about it...
In addition, the union decided that we couldn't have any meetings during our grading day. That means that we couldn't meet for ten minutes to discuss a school-wide discipline plan that we were supposed to implement right after break. This creates a delay in a plan that not everybody even knows about yet and means we can not immediately implement it upon return from a 2-week break which would really make everyone's lives a lot easier. I've heard that 2 weeks of break are like a reset button and we certainly need the new plan which a lot of people have worked really hard on for months. Because the union said we couldn't do meetings we'll have to delay this really kick-ass plan. This hurts the administrators, teachers, students and parents. Go union.
On the other hand, I have a friend who is a first year teacher in another district who got in trouble because of some controversial content in his history class. He did not bring a union rep with him to the meeting with his administrators. He came out ahead. I think they really respected that.
I guess I wouldn't want to work for anyone that I'd need to bring a buffer person with to talk to. Though I will admit that I brought two teachers with me once to a meeting because I wanted them to document it... I did get the changes I'd been promised but I think it just made people angry and I later found out (by putting two and two together) the very good reasons those changes weren't made in the first place and the (legal, confidential) reasons I was not told about it...
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