Extra Credit

I’m thinking of assigning this as extra credit.

An ATR No More

Like a pupating caterpillar about to emerge, I am finishing up my last day as an ATR today. My school is creating classes for me – three in my subject area, two wild-cards – and on Tuesday I get to pretend it’s the beginning of the semester.

Yeay? (throat clear) Yeay.

I do feel bad for the classes I leave behind, who innocently bought my bluff that I was the real teacher no matter what it said on their program card. They’re getting my least favorite colleague as their teacher, if and when she ever decides to return.

Ah, public school…

Focus on the Positive, parte dos: The Joys of being ATR

1. I’m totally uninvolved in the school’s phase-in of Small Learning Communities, and therefore am forced to attend neither daily planning meetings nor Saturday staff development.

2. I get to do the crossword during my prep.

3. I’m still getting paid and still have my benefits.

That’s all.

Oust Randi

Wear your displeasure at our punk ass union leadership on your sleeve:
http://www.cafepress.com/gingerella

Trying to Focus on the Positive

1. There was actually toilet paper in the teacher’s bathroom.

2. There were paper towels too.

3. Nobody defecated in my classroom.

I Give Up

This is how I feel after today.

And So it Begins

A funny thing happened at work today. I was made an ATR because this lady has three more days as a high school teacher than I do. But that’s not the fun part. The fun part is that because she was lured to our fair city from overseas as part of an international teacher recruitment, and since her visa status needs tending to, she gets an extra month to work on her paper work while I, in my new capacity as a glorified sub, have the pleasure of teaching her classes for the first month of school.

Now it’s choose your own adventure time:

1. If miss thing does not succeed in getting her papers, her classes become mine for the rest of the semester (turn to chapter 8, “Flight of the Crapass Schedule in Four Different Classrooms!”).

2. If miss thing is able to get her visa renewed, I remain an ATR for at least the rest of the semester (turn to chapter 9, “Without a Clue: Teaching Bilingual Marine Biology, Business and Social Studies”).

No matter what happens, I predict a slow and steady seeping of whatever modicum of enthusiasm I might have had left.

Thanks Randi Weingarten

The good part: several weeks off in the summer. The bad part: the dread of the furlough ending.

I’ve been alternating between ignoring the looming date of my reincarceration (August 31 instead of September 5, thanks to Ms. Weingarten) and being depressed by it.

On Thursday and Friday I go in for meetings. For some reason our hours even on these two non-teaching days are 7:47-2:37. Why not the relatively round 8:00 to 2:50? I imagine it’s because that would be less absurd, and where’s the fun in that?

Motherfucking House on the Motherfucking Lake

A fellow Spanish teacher who has until now been quite successful at shirking what we in the biz call "trabajo," ( that's "work" for you gabachos), chewed me out today for blowing up her spot: I made sure that she had to help grade the regents exams today. She yelled at me, in both Spanish and English, about the fact that I was cutting into her study time.

Relatively unaccustomed to being barked at by a colleague, I looked at her like the nut job that she is and gave my best Valley girl "What-ever[crazybitch]". (The[crazybitch] is silent in Valspeak).

You know what a nice balm is for such an irritating day? That's right – The Lake House. Keanu is unemotive. Sandra Bullock is cute but weird looking. The have chemistry in that gay boyfriend/in-denial girlfriend kind of way. You have to suspend your disbelief from the Empire State Building to buy the conceit of the film. And yet…ahhh….fury….calmed. Anger…abating.

Apply topically.

Brooklyn Queens Day

Even though this is the first year that ALL NYC public school students get the first Thursday after the first Monday in June off, this formerly joyous day is tinged with bitterness: teachers in Brooklyn and Queens have to attend staff development rather than taking the subway to the unchosen boroughs and mocking their colleagues. Personally, since this is my first year teaching in Manhattan after previously teaching in Brooklyn, I think it's only fair that those slackers have to schlep to work too.

Kenny Bruno has an interesting take on BQ Day in the Queens Ledger, including the origin of the somewhat mysterious holiday:

Long Live Brooklyn Queens Day By Kenny Bruno
Brooklyn Queens Day was sweet. Brooklyn Queens Day was special. BQ Day was, as MS 51 graduate Joshua Paris says, simply, "the best holiday ever."
But Brooklyn Queens Day is no more. This year students in all boroughs have the day off, while teachers in all boroughs must work. My 14-year old daughter calls this "the most disturbing thing I have heard in my entire life." A weapon in her fight against the "Brooklyn Sucks" crowd across the river has been coldy confiscated.
R.I.P., BQ Day. Let us now praise Brooklyn Queens Day.
I suppose the single most delightful thing about Brooklyn Queens Day was that it was a day off from school for no apparent reason. Grownups had to work and therefore couldn't schedule any vacation-like activities. Unlike Christmas or Thanksgiving, there were no holiday curricula, no commercials, no traditions to uphold and no family events to attend. It came in June, during the best weather and longest days. The kicker was that no one else had this day off. You could actually go to Manhattan and see to it that your Manhattan friends, if you had any, would look enviously at you from inside their prisons.
Or you could play basketball. You could watch Gilligan's Island. When you were older, you could go behind the school and…well, nevermind.
BQ Day was marvelously uncontroversial. There are no records of Bronx people protesting the exclusion of their borough. A review of Brooklyn Eagle letters to the editor from the early 20th century reveals that some people did get upset when the schools opened one year, but who can blame them?
Another lovely thing about Brooklyn Queens Day was the lack of information. We never asked, and were never told, what it was about.
Now that its era has ended, I will hereby reveal the murky origins of this most meaningless of holidays (and I say that in the most affectionate way). Drum roll, please.
What was originally called Anniversary Day started in 1814 to celebrate the founding of the Protestant Sunday School Union.
Yep, that's it folks. That's the whole story.
How did the glory that is Brooklyn Queens Day evolve from these humble beginnings? The crucial moment, according to a 2002 article in the Brooklyn Papers by Paulanne Simmons, came around the Civil War era, when "a bill was drafted declaring Anniversary Day an official school holiday in Brooklyn, but not a bank holiday." Genius. Brooklyn became part of NYC in 1898, but el pueblo certainly was not going to give up this perk.
But hold on a sec. "A bill was drafted??" This is no time for the passive voice, Ms. Simmons! This was a legislative legacy that would father generations of fond memories. Who drafted it?
Well, no one seems to remember who wrote the bill. But whoever it was, we love 'em.
This seems like a good time to settle one contentious aspect of holiday history and nomenclature. During research for this article, both the Brooklyn historian Ron Schweiger and my friend Jenna, who is from Bay Ridge, reported that growing up they called it "Brooklyn Day." Jenna tried to suppress a supercilious look as she said it, but we both knew this was a slight to Queens.
Now even the Queens library website acknowledges that this great tradition started in Brooklyn. But a mere century after the passing of the aforementioned landmark legislation, the Queens Federation of Churches pushed through a bill closing schools in both Queens and Brooklyn. Since both boroughs were part of New York City by then, the signing of this bill surely counts as one of Governor Nelson Rockefeller's most remarkable political acts.
Thus, since 1959 BQ Day has been a bi-boro bonanza. The former Interboro Parkway is mostly in Queens and only a little in Brooklyn, but it wasn't called the Mostly Queens Parkway! Enough with the Brooklyn chauvinism, Jenna. The Day belonged to both boroughs.
And wherefore the demise of BQ Day? At first I thought there might be deep significance, something to do with Brooklyn and Queens becoming so hip and so expensive that they no longer needed what some might think of as Underdog Day. But the culprit, I'm afraid, is an organization to which several of my ancestors belonged, the United Federation of Teachers. In 2005, the teachers signed a contract, which stipulates that the first Thursday in June shall be a school holiday for the entire city (though teachers have to work on staff development). Thus did the UFT undo the fine work of the Queens Federation of Churches and negotiate away our patrimony.
But wait, say the UFT lawyers. Look at subparagraph 7.C of the October 6 2005 Memorandum of Agreement, to wit: "All teachers…will also have a professional day on Brooklyn-Queens day." In other words, kids in all boroughs are off, yet it is stilled called Brooklyn-Queens Day. Hallelujah, the BQE is saved from being the only thing left in this world with both "Brooklyn" and "Queens" in its name.
Brooklyn Queens Day as we knew it is no more, but its spirit lives on. For example, there will still be marches in both boroughs commemorating the lack of school this June 8. The Anniversary Day Parade celebrating Christian Education in Brooklyn and Queens is scheduled to start on Fresh Pond Road and 68th Avenue at 10:30 a.m. The marchers are heading to Myrtle Avenue and back.
And I bet you didn't know that just a half-hour later not even two miles south, the Brooklyn Sunday School Union, a federation of dozens of churches, is holding its 178th annual parade not far from the site of the first Anniversary Day parade in 1829. They will start on Thomas Boyland Avenue and Fulton Street at 11 a.m. If you're still on your way from the Queens parade at that time, you can catch them by noon or so at Stuyvesant Avenue and Fulton. The route will finish at Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Fort Greene.
Councilwoman Letitia James marches every year. I asked Ms. James, a Brooklyn girl who represents Fort Greene, what would be different this year. She said, "Nothing is different. No one comes out, but we're going to march like we always do." And how did she feel about Manhattanites getting to join in? "I never paid any attention to them anyway."
Touche, Councilwoman. See you at the parade. And Long Live Brooklyn Queens Day.