ATR Hub
Absent Teacher Reserve
Ambassador Teacher on Rotation (ATR)
Citywide ATR Meeting!!!!
This event is being organized by certain groups and individuals within the UFT but not the UFT leadership. I helped with planning it and will be there.
I can't make the meeting, but I'm there in spirit:
ReplyDeleteIt is an undeniable fact that ATRs are second class citizens. “Oh, but you shouldn’t feel that way,” is a response that implies that we need to be told how we should feel. Every day we are reminded that we are the ones chosen for professional humiliation. If we do not reply, “How high,” when the principal tells us to jump, we, unlike anybody else in the worlds largest school system, we become eligible for an expedited 3020a Hearing. In the classroom, the most effective means for survival is to know the students’ names. We are denied that life-buoy. Experienced teachers know that if you say, “Good morning Johnny,” that Johnny has a better chance throughout the school day, and when Johnny comes to class, later on, he enters a domain where he already feels he can belong. Helping kids through the anxiety of learning what is unfamiliar is what we do, as teachers. Nowadays, deprived of that sense of belonging in unfamiliar schools in each rotational assignment, my only defense is to wear a tie, so I look the part of someone who isn’t accustomed to being bullied by children and adults. But before the day begins, before I throw myself into the deep end with only the mask to keep me afloat, and after 3 o’clock, when the mask comes off, I know that I am a second class citizen and am reduced to disguises of convention to hide behind. I know, and live in the fear that inevitably, I will be found out. Even if others don’t think of me as a second class citizen, the memory of what it was once like to be an equal participant of the community of educators, with a shared experience, haunts me and chases me back into remembering the truth about my current status as an ATR. Nobody has to tell you that you are second class when you can look honestly at the fact that that is how it is. I only have to pretend for the duration of the school day, but then, on the way home and after I get home, I remember that I have been reduced to the level of someone who has to pretend and who lives in the fear of being found out.
Great comment on what it feels like to be an ATR.
ReplyDeleteATR is an acronym for A TOTAL REJECT
ReplyDeleteATRs...
ReplyDeleteBeware the Queens HS for Teaching.
They really do have two way mirrors, and they will not tell you about them.
A word to the wise, watch your back!
Pan American HS, Monroe campus, principal Bye gives every teacher 6 periods. Mandatory after school and Saturdays for all teachers. All ATRs who go there are treated like slaves, if they complain they are brought up on charges.
ReplyDeleteNominate Principal Bye to our Administrators in Need of Improvement (ANOI) list. www.DTOE.org/anoi
ReplyDelete