Rubber Room 2 -- From the Fire to the Frying Pan

Last spring, I was very close to throwing in the towel and retiring.  I had passed the magic age of 62, and had 27 years in, so my pension would cover my living expenses.  I was eligible for social security, had lived frugally, and had saved.  I was in a good place financially and in a bad place emotionally, physically, and psychologically.   But then they announced that there would be a Rubber Room 2, and I just had to stay to see the sequel.

I hated sitting in the Rubber Room.  What a waste of life!  My life.  Minute by minute.  I tried doing something productive--reading, writing, learning something new.  It was impossible.  I couldn't concentrate.  It was very loud most of the time.  Some people dealt with the strain by socializing loudly and constantly.  Some people were clearly emotionally disturbed and acted out in very bizarre ways. (See Chaz's post of September 15, 2010)

It would have made for very interesting and even amusing blog posts, but I held off.  Anything negative that I wrote would have been used against all of us:  "And that's why those people are there".  You can't blame this blog for the closing of the Rubber Rooms.  But now that they are closed, the stories will start coming out.

And that's what I want Bloomberg, Klein, and their Slave-Minded Administrators to know.  Eventually the stories will come out.  Kids who are in elementary school today will one day write their dissertations about the New York City Teacher Witch Hunts and your part in it.  You can try to bury what you did, but you have generated too much paper for that to be possible now.  You have people like me who will dedicate the rest of their lives to collecting and dispersing it as widely as possible. Try explaining that you did it all for the good of the little children, or because you were just following orders.  I want to live to see you squirm as you try to explain away your lies.

400 years later they are still writing about the Salem Witch Trials.  The prosecutors are seen only as persecutors.   The same thing will happen to you. 

As for the UFT leadership.  If there is/was collusion between the UFT and the DOE, as many believe, then that will inevitably come out too.

So as I was saying, I was seriously contemplating retirement, but then came the news that the Rubber Rooms would be closed as of June 28, and that all reassigned teachers would be re-reassigned to other locations where they would actually be given work to do.  No more sitting on their asses all day doing nothing.  I didn't want to miss that.

It's only been a week, but this is what has happened so far.  Before the beginning of the school year, every reassigned teacher was supposed to receive a notice telling them where to show up on September 7, 2010.   That didn't happen for a large, but undisclosed number of teachers.

On September 13, as other teachers were welcoming their students, we were being welcomed in various DOE administrative offices.  Most of the administrators in these offices had been given very little, if any warning that we were coming.  From what I have heard, all the teachers were treated with respect by administrators and workers in the new offices.   However, we have been assigned to do low-level, menial jobs that have nothing to do with teaching.  We are working side by side with people earning much less.  Actually, they are working and we are just sitting there, waiting to be told what to do. 

Many of my rubber room colleagues look back fondly on Rubber Room 1.  I do not.  But so far, from what I can see, Rubber Room 2 is designed to have the same purpose as Rubber Room 1 -- Teacher Abuse.

I still haven't been charged with anything.  I want my charges.  Paper, you know.  Lies written down in black and white and signed and dated.  History.

Rubber Room vs Teacher Reassignment

           










When I disappeared from my school, some of the other teachers asked the union rep where I had disappeared to.  The union rep replied that I had been "reassigned".  I met one of these teachers on the street shortly thereafter.  She said that the union rep had told her that I had been reassigned, but the parent coordinator was telling everyone that I had been sent to the Rubber Room.  She wanted to know which version was true.  You see, she thought that "reassignment" meant that I had transferred and was teaching at another school.  I told her that "Reassignment" meant being sent to the Teacher Reassignment Center, which was also known as the Rubber Room.  She looked horrified.

A few weeks later, a newly reassigned teacher was placed at our table in the empty seat in front of me.  There were a total of eight people at the table:  one at each end, and two at each side.  The newbie asked us how long it would take for her to be "reassigned" to a new school.  The reply was that it could take two years or more.  She looked confused--why does it take that long, she wanted to know.  Well, first you have to receive your charges, then meet with your attorney, then wait for a hearing date, and then go through the hearing.  Depending on the charges...Charges?  She hadn't done anything wrong.  Neither have we, we replied--you don't have to do anything wrong to be brought up on bogus charges and sent to the Rubber Room.  I thought this was the Teacher Reassignment Center, she said.  It is, we replied, but they also call it the Rubber Room.  She looked terrified.

Then she put her head down in her arms and started to cry quietly.

So, as you can see, there is a certain amount of confusion among the rank and file as to the relationship between reassignment and the Rubber Room, which means that teachers aren't really paying attention, aren't really doing their homework.  There are probably several reasons for this.  First, teachers tend to be very focused on their students and on the job of teaching them, and that is time consuming.  Whatever time they have left over is taken up with family, friends, and the courses they have to take in order to get a salary increase.  Second, they think that the Rubber Room is not about them; it's about bad teachers.  If they don't personally know anyone in the Rubber Room, they probably go with the New York Post version of Dirty Rotten Rubber Room Scoundrels.  Our union leadership confirm the major media version by not forcefully denying it.  Third, there is fear.  Outside the illusion of safety sustained by the bubble of their predictable classroom routines and schedules, lurks the Rubber Room bogey man, ready to pop out and carry them off--no mater how excellent their teaching skills, no matter how much they try to please the administration--and somewhere deep down inside, they know it.

Now Chancellor Klein and Michael Mulgrew have entered into an agreement to close the Teacher Reassignment Centers aka Rubber Rooms.  However, unless this agreement means that investigations will be carried out fairly and impartially, and that principals will be held accountable for bringing teachers up on bogus charges, then there will still be large numbers of reassigned teachers, and no matter where they are warehoused, they will still be in the Rubber Room.