And your question is … ?

From time to time we check the mailbag for questions. There are none. So instead we let wordpress tell us what searches people used to reach this site, and if it looks like they weren’t satisfied, attempt to answer what their question might have been. Here goes.

1. So many of you come looking for New York City teacher pay scale, that I am adding links for step placement and differentials to my UFT Contract Page.

2. Those of you looking for pay in Montessori schools, elsewhere in New York State, or in other parts of the country, I can’t help you. Seems to me that NYC Educator once cited some regional numbers. Long Island? And his source might have been New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), (just added a link to them) but I am not certain. Somebody should put lots of those numbers together and make them accessible. When they do, I will add the link.

3. Photos of Old Salonika. I don’t have them. But here is a link to a few of my new photos of Salonika.

4. Butterflys. Folks, I misspelled “butterflies” last month. In this post I remarked that NYC Educator and Leo Casey were saying nice stuff about each other. For the title of the post I misquoted (whoops) The World Turned Upside Down, the song the British (by tradition) played when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. (words and music here) For the record the opening lines are:

(on the next page, just…) click ——–>
If buttercups buzz’d after the bee,
If boats were on land, churches on sea,
If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows,
And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse,
….
Buttercups, not butterflies. And never butterflys. It was a mistake. No butterflys here.

5. Oaxaca – I have not followed what happened in Oaxaca after the election. I assume that the teachers supported AMLO and the PRD, but you should look elsewhere for info. Sorry.

6. Combine 1, 5, 6, 7 make 21. Tough one. Any help out there? My answer is to cheat. If I can pull in a decimal point, then (7*6*1)*.5 works.

7. How to grieve. Depends on your union (or is culturally established, for the other sort of grieving). For us in the UFT, the member who has suffered as a result of a contract violation files a Step 1 grievance, which includes the specific contractual provision that has been violated and the desired remedy. Talk to your chapter leader (but do it fast. There are tight deadlines on filing a grievance, and the exact time limit depends on the type of grivance).

Some forms are available here, but talk to your chapter leader, don’t assume that you are reading the directions correctly. A little mistake can be costly.

Some grievances are filed by the chapter leader on behalf of the entire chapter. Schoolgal argued in the first comment here that

…I am an advocate of not making the teacher do all the grievances. We have seen what happens to teachers who stand up for themselves. If we had a strong union, this would not be a problem. Instead it should be up to the chapter leader and DR to address all violations so teachers can be protected

Some grievances the individual member needs to file, but I like CLs filing more. I had an issue last Spring where my standing as CL to file on behalf of my chapter was questioned. But it is worth trying to expand.

8. Posts for math teachers in New York. Try AMTNYS, and look for e-mail discussions linked on the upper left.

9. August Math Regents answers. Exams (A and B) and answers (A only) are available at the Jefferson Mathematics Project.New York State will take some time to get them up on its site. Here are very very unofficial and unchecked answers to B.

10. 2.71828182845904523536. I apologize to the handful of searchers from Japan who came here expecting to find information on Euler’s number, e. I just use the first few digits because it is a cool number, not because I do real work with the number. Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks to jd in Kansas (not me) for the replying to searches idea.