MULGREW-REALITY BASED EDUCATOR RESPOND TO FARINA LEAVING

On Tuesday we wrote about Carmen Farina's imminent departure as NYC Schools Chancellor.In response, Reality Based Educator, a famous now very part time blogger, commented. UFT President Michael Mulgrew also put out a statement. Read them both and see whether a teacher in the schools or the UFT President has it right.

From Mulgrew:
UFT President Michael Mulgrew issued the following statement:

Carmen has a lot to be proud of during her tenure. Her decades of experience in the system gave her a deep understanding of how our schools work. She managed the historic introduction of universal pre-K and oversaw significant gains in student achievement from test scores to high school graduation rates. We wish her well.

From Reality Based Educator:

Carmen Farina said she wanted to bring "joy" back to the classroom.

Has there been any time that schools have been more stressful environments than they are now?

We are under constant Danielson driveby threats. Lesson plan and special education mandates have teachers spending hours a night getting ready for those possible Danielson drivebys. When the drive-bys occur, teachers are getting slammed for not hitting the unreasonable and/or impossible benchmarks on the Danielson rubric. The pressure teachers are under has been passed on to the students. Everything is about "rigor" and lo and behold any teacher who isn't teaching a "rigorous" lesson when the drive-by comes. And yet, students are suffering emotionally under all this stress, resulting in increased depression, bullying and self-harm incidents. The guidance counselors, understaffed as always, can't deal with the increased emotional and psychological problems students are experiencing because all of their time is spent on the ever-increasing academic mandates and tracking measures they have to engage in to make sure those are met. More and more pressure is being put on teachers to not only teach "rigorous" lessons, but also address the social and emotional needs of students - and yet, with the ever-increasing mandates, the time spent on lesson planning, the exhaustion teachers are experiencing from all the added pressure and stress, there is simply no ability to do this.

Carmen Farina is to blame for much the horror that is the NYC school system. De Blasio deserves more blame, however, because he hired her and supported her through her reign of terror/error. Like you, James, I have little hope that de Blasio will pick somebody who makes the system better. Instead we will get some Broadie who will continue to reign with a Blame Teachers First mentality.

In the end, at least Farina is gone. I do have one parting thought about Farina: I hope she experiences the same "joy" in her retirement that she brought to NYC schools during her chancellorship.

She deserves no less than that.

As usual, the ICEBlog leaves it to our readers to make an informed decision on who is correct.