September 11, 2012
Dear Mayor Emanuel,
I love my job. I eat sleep and breathe teaching. Every commercial and TV show I watch make me
think of a lesson I could teach on cause and effect or some other reading
skill. I spend upwards of a thousand dollars on my
classroom each year, and I am happy to do it to provide a magical place for
learning with all the supplies we need.
I am in my eleventh year of teaching in Chicago Public Schools. Let me tell you a little but about my experience. My first year of teaching involved working at
a school where the principal illegally fired the entire middle school staff in
the middle of the year and put her friends and family in their positions as
substitutes for the rest of the year, and was fired towards the end of the year
for “financial mismanagement,” but that was the least of her offenses- walking
into your classroom and screaming at you because the children were wearing
shoes- that’s right, she wanted everyone in slippers- and screaming at people
for all sorts of things- I don’t like the desks arranged this way, cursing
people out in front of the children, etc…
The school was also being investigated for making an abnormal amount of
gains the previous year. People were
being pulled in rooms and interrogated by state investigators. Luckily, I wasn’t
at the school the previous year, so I escaped interrogations, but I was asked
if I heard any rumors. The person the
board of education chose to replace her?
A person who had been fired with cause from being a super-intendant of a
school district in another state. At summer
school, she pointed at all of us in a staff meeting and said “I don’t trust
you, you were all probably in on it with her, and I am trying to get rid of
you.” I went and found another job. I found a great school with shoes, and a
principal who was interested in the students and the instructional practices,
and I was very successful and I have the data to prove it. The principal said she was “very impressed”
with me. At the end of that year, I lost my job due to
declining enrollment. I searched all
summer for a new job, but I ended up being able to come back to that school
because someone resigned. The following
year, I again lost my job due to declining enrollment. I went to work at another school on the west
side. In October of that year, I got off
the bus (I could not afford a car on my year 4 lane 1 teachers salary and pay
back my student loans) and walked toward the school and was beat on the side of
the head four times with a piece of metal rebar and mugged by a guy in a Halloween
mask- all within eye-lines of the children who were on the playground waiting
for school to start. Of course, the
school’s surveillance cameras were not working.
Were they fixed afterwards?
No. A guy coming out of weekend
basketball a week later was shot in the parking lot and no cameras were working
to get justice for him either. I started
asking the security guard to walk me to my car at night (because I stay late
planning, etc…) and found out months later that the principal yelled at him for
it, saying that was not his job and told another staff member that it must have
been my boyfriend who came to the school and beat me. (I had no boyfriend at the time.) I came back to work a week after the 20+
stiches in my head though I could have sued the school system and probably
could have retired. I had a black eye
for about two months afterward. You can
fact-check this with the police department, and the workers compensation
department at the board of education. I
had two little girls in my room who were clearly mentally ill and making it
impossible to teach, and I referred them to the counselor and brought the issue
to the principal and assistant principal and I was sent to a class on classroom
management. So I soldiered on the best I
could. What was my reward for my commitment
to children and loyalty to my employer?
I lost my job at the end of that year due to declining enrollment. From there, I got a job at another school on
the west side, and I was in heaven. The staff
was a true community and the principal allowed us to be the experts. The school was a rarity in the area for not
being on academic probation. He told me
I was a great teacher and that he appreciated all my hard work. Then,
the board of education promoted him out of the school. He was replaced with a principal that told me
that I could not teach the children the nation’s national anthem, nor allow
them to do puzzles in the classroom when gym had been cancelled. She came into my classroom and derailed my
lessons and told me to have the children get off the carpet and go back to their
seats or to stand at the back of the classroom instead of the front while I delivered
instruction and then would say “Now, move now!”
and would wait until I moved. Then,
she made me and another teacher move all of our things in November and trade
rooms for no reason, simply derailing instruction for an entire week as the
students carried heavy things from class to class, and then my classroom which
I had spent weeks setting up before school was chaos- with piles of things
everywhere. There was no support or
discipline. The zero tolerance policy
was not followed when a child brought a toy gun to school and told people he was
going to shoot them. There was no
response for a child who brought weed to school in the third grade and was
trying to sell it. I was offered another
job in the middle of the year, and because of my teaching year one experience,
I decided to leave in the middle of the year because I was drowning with all of
this. I went to another school and was
told I was an excellent teacher. I
tutored kids for free, I received a superior rating. The principal was fine, though struggling to
get a handle on everything as a result of being new, but after what I had been
through I could deal with that. What was
harder to deal with was mandates on instruction from the area office. They had a mandated program for reading
instruction and assessment which was not based on research and was ineffective,
but God help you if you didn’t do it.
There was a mandated program for sight word instruction that was not
based on researched best practices, but God help you if you didn’t do it. There was a mandated program for everything. And one day I added up how many minutes they
had mandated for all these programs (20 minutes a day of this, 60 minutes a day
of that…) and it exceeded the amount of minutes the children spent in
school. Most teachers in the area just
seemed to be making up the data that went with the programs, because God help
you if all your kids didn’t a passing score- special education students
included. Some of them told me as
much. Let me be clear that I never made
anything up. But I soldiered on,
SNEAKING real education and teaching in when I knew I wasn’t being watched so
my students were able to make gains. I
was at this school for two and a half years, teaching in the shadows,
instructing in secret, spending hours and hours after school trying to make
that work. Then, the summer that Ron Huberman was trying to put 40 kids in each
classroom, my coworkers and I started getting nervous because the enrollment of
the school was getting low, so we divided the number of students by the number
40 kids per classroom and used the published salary records to determine seniority
of the teachers at the school and I figured I was safe with my nine years with
the board compared to the other teachers.
Nope. I got a letter in August of
that summer saying that I, a tenured teacher with a superior evaluation rating
and the highest improvement data in the school, had been honorably terminated
due to a lack of money. A tenured teacher is supposed to be placed in
a pool or reassigned teachers and retain benefits for a year. But not me!
This letter said I wasn’t even going to be allowed to sub in the
district and my benefits were expiring at the end of September. The principal that I had been working under
had been removed from her duties and replaced with a principal from somewhere
else who had been removed from his duties by a different area officer. The new principal who had NEVER watched me
teach a class was sitting at the job fair a few days after my letter arrived
advertising for my replacement. Did I
mention this happened to six people at my school at the same time, and we were all
replaced in this manner? I had been let
go due to a lack of money but he was hiring all the replacements plus an extra
teacher THREE DAYS LATER? I filed a
grievance. They said I had no right to
get my job back. We all filed another
grievance because all the fired teachers were of one ethnic group and were
replaced by teachers from a different ethnic group. Apparently the equal opportunity employment commission
has an office inside 125 South Clark street.
The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission never called me or emailed
me or talked to me. They did however,
send me a letter saying my claim was unfounded. How they did that without getting the details
remains a mystery for me. I found a job
at another school, this time on the south side but the only thing available was
a temporary position for a teacher on leave.
I took it. I proved myself. I got a real position. My principal is very happy with my
performance, and I received another superior rating from a principal who RARELY
hands out that type of rating. She is
doing her best to turn the school around, but it is very challenging and will
take a few years, as she has built a strong foundation in the primary grades,
it will only get better as those students move up through the grades. But the board often does not give a school
that much time. Last year, my kids made
more gains on the particular test that measures gains than anyone I know of,
though many of them still did not test at grade level. My school has been
probation for years. I am worried about losing
my job again, and this time, with a master’s degree- which should make me more desirable
but instead makes be more expensive- and eleven years in the district, I am
worried about losing out to less experienced, less expensive teachers in a job
hunt. I am committed to urban education,
and I am very, very good at it. I came
to Chicago because I was called here by God.
This is where I am supposed to be, this is what I am supposed to
do. I work with those children the Bible
calls “the least of these.” I work with
them ON PURPOSE, not because I can’t find work elsewhere. I am highly qualified, highly motivated, and
love the children more than you know. A
recall statute in the contract would help the children and the test
scores. When I am recalled, I will help
the test scores of any school where I might land. It would give the students a sense of
community. Do you know I have NEVER been
able to watch my students go through a school and watch them graduate? I think you do not understand, Mr. Mayor
exactly what it is that we are asking for nor exactly why we need it. I can see how as an outsider, you think the
way you do. In other large school districts,
the principals must choose from a pool of displaced teachers before making new
hires. I do not feel this is an
unreasonable request, especially after living through what I have. Principals often base their hiring decisions
on money rather than quality because they are so cash strapped, but this is not
what it best for children or the teachers, nor is it best for the city, where
the teachers buy houses and city stickers and pay the highest taxes in the
nation, and are part of the middle class that keep this city afloat.
I also restate my promise that I put on your Facebook page earlier,
to donate any raise increase, 9% or 16% (or however you do the math) when the
contract is reached to a charity of your choice if you agree to do my job for a
week- the lesson plans, the classroom management, ALL of it. But it must be during a hot week, and you
must work the hours I work over and above the contractual hours and drive
yourself back to the north side in 2 hour rush hour traffic each night
afterwards, just like I do. I will even
help coach you with the planning.
Humbling explaining, because explaining is what I do,
Kristen Kelly
3rd Grade Superior Rated Teacher in CPS and
loving it even though it is very hard to do
P.S. Someone told me that offering to give up the 9% belittles the cause that we need it. I am not giving it up- I am willing to sacrifice it to myself to teach a lesson. Which is exactly what I do when I sepnd tons and tons of my own money on my class. I sacrifice it in the name of someone's learning. I need it too. I am getting married in October (a wedding for which I am paying the Chicago Park District thousands, and also pouring thousands into local businesses- see it is good to pay teachers, we ALL win). I could really use that to start a college fund for my future children (college is projected to be how expensive in 20 years?) or pay the sky-high property taxes we have now that my future hubby is a homeowner.
