Member Letter: No MOSL or Danielson for this Year.
Dear friends and family,
Please push Cuomo to waive teacher evaluation this year. DiBlasio and Carranza screwed the School Year up by not focusing on schools until mid-July. Online instruction is very different than teaching in a building and to evaluate teachers on student engagement under these COVID-19 times is just heartless and away for politicians to remove experienced teachers from the classroom for more inexperienced less expensive teachers.
I’m a parent and my 10yr old child doesn’t participate because having experienced a great loss she has high anxiety and depression. Should her teachers be evaluated negatively because she and many of the students are experiencing the same? Her counselor assured me that it’ll be a while before I get my daughter to overcome these feelings, so we’ll need more experienced counselors, paraprofessionals, and teachers not less.
I’m a Special Education high school teacher with 5 very large remote classes. I’ve always had a hand-on, holistic approach to teaching. I make the time to know my students and their families. I know many of my students are homeless, experiencing losses of parents and grandparents. They may join my class but won’t speak or go on camera but I’m just grateful they logged on because they see something worthwhile. Some students have had to move back to their parents country and their time zone are different or the WiFi isn’t reliable. Others are still having tech issues or their family don’t have the means for WiFi. I’ve had students who have had to return the device as many as 5times this school year. However, administration is evaluating teachers on participation—they only see that out of 40-50 students in a particular class only 20 student joined Zoom and a handful are participating by chatting or unmuting themselves. As an experienced special education educator I’ve seen the social emotional regression, and not just from the student with disabilities, some are back to preschool age where just being near others they feel they are playing/participating but inexperienced teachers and administrators aren’t able to make these connections.
So given just a small snapshot, do you believe under these circumstances educators should be evaluated ? Do you want to lose experienced paraprofessionals and teachers? As a society can our children further stand to lose familiar faces?
I ask that you reach out to Cuomo, DiBlasio, and Carranza please advocate for paraprofessionals and teachers because our union who is run by Unity caucus is corrupt and not fighting for us. This year, there should be no evaluations and there should be no excessing of paraprofessionals and teachers.
To my fellow union members: please stop electing Unity/Mulgrew he’s proven he does not stand with us. Please vote the Solidarity caucus because they have proven they will go to court to fight for us. I include a reading from iceuftblog.
Sincerely,
Luli
http://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/2021/02/why-isnt-uft-pushing-wounded-cuomo-to.html?m=1
