Age Discrimination Win in Pennsylvania
One of the problems teachers faced in pre-union days was age discrimination. With the advent of tenure senior teachers could no longer be dismissed without cause.
But discrimination takes forms other than just firings. And discrimination, including age discrimination, is not a thing of the past.
A recent Appeals Court decision upheld for 3 female teachers in a Western Pennsylvania school district who claimed that they entered the system at Step 1, but that 7 younger teachers hired after them were hired at higher steps. The District contended that there were reasons to offer the other teachers more (hard to fill spots), but clearly there had been no such policy in place, and they were trying to justify themselves after the fact. Younger men were starting at higher salaries than older women.
Perhaps most worrying about this whole thing is to be found on an education administration website. They hold this up as a model of how not to discriminate, then give employers careful advice on how they can discrimate without violating labor laws. It is worth reading how slick they are. Click here.
Thanks to Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination for the link. They showed up on the wordpress teachers tag.
Hint for the last Photographer Puzzle
From last Spring’s puzzles on this board, only one remains unsolved: Saturday Photographer Puzzle 1.
A photographer takes about 15 seconds to line up a group of people and take their photo. Faced with a group of 4 people, and a little extra time, he decides to take their photo in every arrangement possible (this guy always lines them up in 1 row, and never leaves gaps). How long will it take to take all the photos?
Answer again for 8 people. For 12.
Hint 1: If he has to take 4 photos, it will take 4×15 = 60 seconds, or 1 minute.
40 photos would take 40×15 = 600 seconds, 10 minutes.
And n photos would take n/4 minutes.
For Hint 2 (the big one), click ———> Read more…
Three NY food links
Well, maybe not entirely New York.
WordPress tags led me to Off the Broiler. Wow. This guy goes to amazing New York restaurants, takes mouth-watering photos, shares clever recipes. Just go. Look once. See if you can find the chocolate pizza. (If you hate to search, click here. It is the second photo down.)
Where did that guy learn to take food photos? Worth a look.
Sarah at Tales from a Tiny Kitchen has a neat little site with a new menu going up about twice a month. The most impressive piece (for me, at least) is not visible. She built the website from scratch, and taught herself the HTML along the way.
A few words about Chowhound, if you click —–> Read more…
Eight Planets!
Stop press on this one. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) at their General Assembly in Praha reversed course.
Instead of keeping Pluto and adding Charon, Ceres, and Xena (?) to our list of planets, as widely reported, including here by me, they removed Pluto and left off the other three.
Pluto is no longer a planet
The sticking point? They altered the definition of a planet to include the requirement that it “clear its orbit” which Pluto clearly (ha ha!) does not do.
Planets on top, Dwarf Planets below. Et tu, Pluto?
This definition is Resolution 5A. Click the link and scroll down, or click to read it on the next page ——> Read more…
New Link: SyntacticGymnastics
Check out Syntactic Gymnastics. She (?) is an English teacher in the City, heading into her second year. Here’s someone already offering thoughtful, solid advice to new teachers, who keeps harping on the need not to recruit but to retain teachers. Well-written and on target. All after my own heart.
Plus, she wrote about code switching and a way to teach Standard English to children who speak a non-standard variety that I found quite interesting. (That was cross-posted as Decoding Grammar on Syntactic Gymnastics, and under the same title at Edwize.)
So go, check this one out. And bookmark it.
(Thanks to Öğretmen for finding SG)
Qualified? More details, and an apology
Two days ago I wrote here about Renee Cloutier, the new principal at PS7 in Riverdale who has, as I saw it, alarmingly little experience.
I based what I wrote, in part, on what Leo Casey wrote in Help Wanted on Edwize. Leo in turn used Inexperienced but Trained, an article in the August 16 NY Times by Samuel G Freedman.
Since then I found the Riverdale Press‘ [their homepage is just a little slideshow, with nothing to click. sorry – 2718] coverage of the leadership change, which has given me pause about the tone of my remarks (though not the general thrust). The Riverdale Press is unabashedly liberal, pro-public education, etc etc.
For more details, and my apology, click ———> Read more…
A Solution
Last week’s Leftovers post contained three old problems. JBL solved one of them, but there are two still left over. Here is the answer to one of them
The Barcelona Barber
A Barcelona barber usually gives good hair cuts, but today he was spectacular. Ten in a row, absolutely perfect. He hires a photographer to take pictures of the pleased clients in different arrangements.The photographer is no dummy. He … wants to get home in a reasonable amount of time, so he asks for some constraints.
To continue click ——–> Read more…
Qualified? Barely Qualified? Highly Unqualified?
Last Wednesday Leo Casey on Edwize wrote about Renee Cloutier, the new principal at PS 7 in the Bronx.
The woman has very little experience. Quoting the New York Times Leo wrote:
After four years as a teacher, with the time window allowed for obtaining the Masters Degree required for permanent licensure about to close, the new principal entered the Leadership Academy. She will now be a principal, with a new clock for the Masters Degree, without ever having completed that requirement for a teacher’s license.
The Department of Education contacted Edwize, indignant. Apparently the new principal was not unqualified: she earned her Masters more than two months ago.
Many teachers will relate: instead of a diploma, the DoE sent a letter from her college. (How many of you have sent the DoE or State Ed letters from your colleges, since your certification couldn’t wait for the diploma?)
So she was qualified, if only for a very brief time, not unqualified.
Click for ———-> Read more…
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 ——–> Read more…
Nine Photos of Salonika
At the end of June I flew from New York to Rome and from Rome to Thessaloniki, in Northern Greece. Thessaloniki is also called Salonika. (or is Salonica better?) Here are some photos:
Clockwise from upper left: The White Tower, the seashore, a portion of the western wall near the old Vardar Gate, Mehmet Kapantzis Mansion east of the old town, upper town with part of its wall, Square and streetstairs in the upper town during a rain storm, Salonika under storm clouds, Arch of Galeraius, Umbrella sculpture on the seawalk east of town (center).
The White Tower was a fort, then a prison. The umbrellas date to Thessaloniki’s rise to Cultural Capital of Europe in 97; they get lit up at night (follow the link). The Upper Town was the Turkish section; the only part of old Salonika that escaped the 1917 fire, was repopulated by refugees from Asia Minor, and avoided having its streets widened and straightened. The Walls were broken in a few places to let a breeze into the city, but are remarkably intact.
Van Cortlandt Park South
As you snake down Van Cortlandt Avenue West to the Major Deegan entrance, there is a red building to your right
If you look back as you make the turn onto the northbound ramp, at the corner of the building are some stairs. What are they, and where do they go?
Four flights of eleven steps, with short landings: 
The stairs, and this entry, continue. Click —-> Read more…
New Education Links
New links today:
Get On the Bus. Scott Elliot’s genuinely superior education blog over at the Dayton Daily News.
Pharyngula. PZ Myers, Bio Prof in Minnesota, writes about evolution and biology.
Chris Correa. Math, Education, Psychology. Site in redesign, but what I’ve seen is intelligent.
I’ve also dropped a link, in tribute of poor teacher retention. Altruism Gone Wild (http://disgruntledteach.blogspot.com/) is still in New York, but done teaching. I wish her luck.
Summer Reading
Summer vacation has come and gone. Rome, Thessaloniki, Alonissos, Samothrace, Alexandroupolis, Istanbul (and Ft. Niagara, NY and Lowell, Mass. as well) It was wonderful. I have uploaded photos, and over the next few weeks I will share some stories and some images.
In the meantime…
I have become a very bad reader. I don’t read much, I don’t start what I finish. But since June 28 I absolutely devoured books. The shelf in the picture above was probably a quarter of my luggage (by weight). And I read it all. (Except the McPhee, which I gave away to a guy who had worked on the North Slope during the period McPhee was writing. And the games book, which I continue to skim; I use it in my elective. And the dictionaries, of course).
For the list and cover images, click —–> Read more…
Twelve Planets?
It’s out of my normal range, but the International Astronomers Union is preparing to vote on adding 3 planets to our current 9: Ceres (the largest rock in the asteroid belt), Charon (Pluto’s moon), and 2003 UB313 (which would get a letters name to replace its numbers name, soon. Xena is an early favorite. Whatever happened to Gabrielle?)
Bigger than Texas, smaller than Canada? Meet our new planets.
Mug Shots of the New Planet (former Asteroid?) Ceres
Click for ———> Read more…
U-rating numbers hold near last year’s level
That’s the subject line on an e-mail I received from the UFT’s Communications Department.
Turns out, U’s rose from 957 in 2004 – 05 to 981 in 2005 – 06. Those numbers are flat.
But why was the e-mail sent? It’s an attempt to show that the contract we approved last Fall was not so bad.
There are numbers for U’s, and we should all be glad they did not rise appreciably. But if we want to look at the effects of the last contract, we should look at “letters to file.”
Click for —-> Read more…
Güle güle!
Join me in wishing a pleasant journey to Oğretmen. This Bronx science teacher is relocating to İstanbul for a one-year teaching exchange. What an opportunity!
I was in İstanbul for a week in July (I should blog a bit about it later). It was absolutely wonderful and frustratingly short.
I took ferries every chance I got. Which meant every day, usually twice. This is a typical view.
Anyhow, oğretmen means teacher in Turkish, and ours is going to blog from the Anatolian side of the city. Good writing, and much better pictures than mine. Take a look.
Leftovers
Not food. Puzzles. Before I start new puzzles for the fall, I want to clear out the old ones from the Spring. There are three on this site that didn’t have solutions posted. Here they are. I will post solutions next week.
To see them click –> Read more…
More on teacher retention
NYC Educator points out here that the Department of Education benefits from lousy teacher retention. And he makes a whole pile of good points.
But he misses one vitally important point, and is quite wrong on another one. (The criticism may sound harsh, but make no mistake, NYC Educator is a serious partisan of our union and of NY teachers. To not answer, that would be a sign of disrespect. And believe me, there are plenty of people who are not worth answering).
Click for ——–> Read more…
UFT Member Contract Questionnaire I
Ten days or so ago most UFT members received a questionnaire in the mail directed to the next round of contract negotiations. There is quite a bit to say about this questionnaire. For now we start with this:
A union is an organization that takes collective action. We are not one hundred thousand individuals, but a collective, made up of collective subunits (districts, chapters, functional chapters).
We are individuals when we shop, when we vote. But when we act as a union we are much stronger than consumers or the atomized electorate.
Discussions, not Public Opinion Polls
So, input on the next contract is great. But the form is important. The questionnaire cuts the feet out from under our strength. We needed discussions, in our chapters. We did not need an opinion poll that Quinnipiac or Lee Meringoff (sp?) could have put together and that does not reflect our interaction, our discussion, our strength.
Please fill it out. It needs to be in August 23. It still is input. But what a shame it was solicited as if we were K-Mart shoppers, and not as if we were members of a powerful labor organization.
Look in this space for commentary on some of the actual questions in the next week or so.
Back
Back from a posting hiatus. Back from vacation.
Should get up to 4 – 7 posts per week in no time.
Look for UFT stuff.
And public staircases in the Bronx and upper Manhattan (step streets).
Lots of vacation details, with photos aplenty (Rome, Greece, Istanbul, Upstate New York, Massachusetts).
And math puzzles galore.
Starting up again, soon.
AFT Magazine Spotlights Teacher Retention
The latest American Educator spotlights problems of teacher retention (pay attention here! not recruitment, retention).
If you are an AFT member, it comes in the mail. If you are a UFT member, you are also an AFT member and you get it. Open. Read carefully. They don’t get everything right, but, man, do they hit most of the right issues.
If you are an experienced UFT member (or leader), read carefully. What can we do? We know what we ant the bad guys to do, but what can we do? (as a union, as individual chapter leaders and individual chapters, as individual teachers. but mostly, as a union.)
And anyone can read on line. Follow the link above or here.
Excerpts follow –> Read more…
Turkish Money: a matter of 0’s
Prices in Turkey are (usually) quoted in YTL, or Yeni Türk Lirasi. Yeni means new. 1 YTL = $0.64 (roughly). Or 3 are about 2 dollars.
(the i in lirasi shouldn’t have a dot, but I haven’t figured out how to control those things on my Mac)
Why new? Because Turkey went through some mindboggling inflation in the previous decade, reaching 100% at one point.
A dollar bought 13,000 lira in 1993.
I traded a dollar for maybe 20,000 lira in 94.
1995 – 40,000
1996 – 100,000
1999 – 500,000
2001 – 1,000,000
Click to continue –> Read more…
Take That!
I was walking through Patatiri, the port on Alonissos today with a friend who spends time on the island. He shouted something at a motorcycle heading towards us. The motorcyclist stopped next to us, said something in Greek*, reached into the bag on his bike, handed my friend a cucumber, then handed me one, and rode off. There was no smile, no goodbye.
The cucumber was still wet where it had been cut from the vine.
* I just picked these five minutes ago.
A quadratic question
This one has been puzzling me: for ax2 + bx + c = 0, let a, b, and c be integers between -100 and 100 inclusive, a different from 0.
How many of these equations have a double root (ie, b2 – 4ac = 0).
All I can come up with is a brute force count, which I really don’t want to do. Anything clever out there?
The Quiet Island of Alonissos
Alonissos is my third stop (I didn’t blog about Rome, where I sleepwalked through the Colisseum, Palatine Hill, and the Trevi fountain).
The weather has been kind since I arrived, highs in the mid-80s. The beginning of the trip was brutal, nearly 100 in Rome, high 90s in Thessaloniki. But then it stormed in Thessaloniki, rain for two straight days, aqnd my ferry was canceled. (In the event, I bussed south to Volos, sampled their local spirits called tsipouradiko, and took a catamaran the next day. Don’t know if it was the rough sea or the previous night’s drinking, but I got off that boat looking fairly green)
Thessaloniki was big and fast. Alonissos is a small, slow island. It is off the beaten path, and does not see anything near the tourism that floods the better-known Greek Islands.
This website has a couple of nice photos.
Patatiri is the port. Most year-round residents live here – of course with a supermarket, post office, internet cafe (where I am right now), etc. It looks like a very small tourist spot, with pretty cafes on the harbor.
Click for more –> Read more…
JD2718 