Six Word Saturday

What a choice: fight or flee.



For more Six Word Saturday participants, click here.

As the APS cheating scandal continues, the new superintendent has removed staff involved and has told 178 teachers resign or be fired.

I don't know how it is where you are, but quitting is really their only option here. Non-renewal is really a kiss of death for your career. As I wrote here and here, non-renewal in Georgia is a career killer. (The young teacher is applying for a teaching job again and not having any luck).

So, what if some of those 178 are really innocent of the charges against them? In this witch hunt, how would you prove you hadn't cheated, that the wrong-to-right erasures were the students own doing?

Sometimes being right is not a good thing.

Somewhere on this blog - and I cannot find it - I wrote about a young teacher who thumbed her nose at the administration and repeatedly clocked in late.

Eventually, they called her in, threatened her about worse things that were not true (the kinds of things that end up on the front page of the paper), so she ran around like crazy trying to prove those things were not true.

They asked her to resign or she would be non-renewed. Several of us told her to resign and find another job, it is a no-win situation.

Her mother told her to be non-renewed so she could get unemployment.

Everything the administrators told her was documented was not (gee, they lied! Imagine that.) She cannot find a job. Untold numbers of teachers have been let go, she has a non-renewed due to "failure to perform duties" vs whatever they are saying about the ones they let go to thin the ranks. Business isn't interested in her because she has been teaching instead of "working".

Dang, I hate it when I am right. I wish she had resigned.

Non-renewal - will it continue to mean the same thing?

The AJC reported today that Gwinnett, the largest school district in the state, appears to be using non-renewal to thin the teacher ranks rather than "lay-offs" per se.

I don't know how it works in other states, as I have only worked here. We have no union, just two lobbying bodies. Normally, if you really screw up (that is, cannot teach) you are given the option of resigning rather than getting a non-renewal of contract. When you apply for a teaching job, you are asked if you have ever not had your contract not renewed (non renewal) or if you have any ethical violations.

Most resign, rather than get non-renewal (read the beginning of this blog - and I am not alone in my school. Principals have an obscene amount of power over people's lives.

But, I started thinking today. If Gwinnett (and Cobb and DeKalb And Fulton - the BIG boys among the districts) start non-renewing to thin the ranks, then non-renewal loses its dark power. And that might be a good thing.


BTW, someone who signed themselves as "Georgia teachers" wrote:
Folks who are not teachers:

I understand you do not see the reason why 1-3 year teachers being “non-renewed” for “performance reasons” is such a big deal to a teacher. It basically ruins a person’s career.

Every single application I have ever filled out for a teaching position in this state and in others have all asked: “Have you ever been terminated from a contract or not renewed for a contract?” Once you check yes, your application is then deposited in the circular filing cabinet.

I understand the district’s need to lay teachers off, but be upfront and tell the teachers we just don’t have a job for you. Don’t put that blemish on their record.