Clark County School District teacher, Chip Mosher, writes about the abusive practices of some administrators in his latest column, Socrates in Sodom, for Las Vegas City Life. He certainly doesn't pull any punches.
by Chip Mosher
SHE WAS ONE OF THE BEST TEACHERS I'D EVER SEEN ANYWHERE, intelligent and passionate about education. She had 19 years' experience in the Clark County School District, plus academic standards higher than the Himalayas. Her accelerated-placement honors science students, who loved her, often graduated from high school with as much knowledge as students in advanced college science programs. One day, while I was teaching in an adjacent hallway, she walked into my classroom, stopped and stood shaking uncontrollably, then shit her pants in front of my class.
"Mr. Mosher, I think Ms. Competence just shit her pants," one student discreetly whispered to me.
For the previous month she had been tortured by a supervisor, another woman, under the school principal's orders. To harass her, the supervisor would bolt into her room unannounced constantly throughout the school day, to check Ms. Competence's grade book, lesson plans, attendance sheets and so forth. All of which were always perfect.
Competence's crime? She had approached her principal, a man, to dispute her supervisor's annual evaluation of her. In the evaluation -- which is placed permanently in a teacher's employment records -- was this phrase: "Ms. Competence is too emotional for a teacher." (Footnote: Her principal and supervisor both had the intellect of a rutabaga.)
For questioning this one sentence in her evaluation and, subsequently, the administration's authority, Competence's honors classes were ripped from her schedule the following year. Instead, the principal forced her to teach bonehead science classes -- excessively large groups of 9th graders who had behavioral problems and loathed science. When the teachers' union failed to represent her competently against such brutal intimidation, a common story, Competence left the district. Why? Because her standards were higher than the Himalayas.
Thousands of teachers in Clark County have been treated as shabbily as, or worse than, Ms. Competence by the district and union. Combine this with the abusively low wages for teachers here, and you have the recipe for a mass exodus of educational talent from the valley.
To deal with this issue, that biennial carnival of crackheads in Carson City, our state Legislature, has been attempting to create, through Assembly Bill 459, a Teacher Bill of Rights. Apparently the U.S. Constitution hasn't been enough to protect teachers.
AB 459 is a legislative confession that the school district has been operating as a terrorist organization to destroy teachers. Unfortunately, this Teacher Bill of Rights is a clever ploy to divert the public's attention from the fact that the Legislature itself has been terrorizing teachers financially by refusing to raise the revenue needed to pay them a living wage in Las Vegas. Although AB 459 promises local teachers the right to legal representation in meetings with administrators, how many teachers on pitifully substandard salaries will be able to afford a lawyer? It's a bill without bite, created to give an impression that legislators have been doing something for teachers, when they haven't. Even with these bogus rights, abuse of teachers by vicious principals will continue. What teachers really need is a Bill of Bites -- to empower them to deal with the dipshits running our schools.
A Teacher Bill of Bites:
1) If an administrator looks at a teacher cross-eyed, or worse, the teacher can lean into the administrator's face and say, "Bite me, asshole!"
2) Any teacher unhappy with an evaluation can rewrite the evaluation to her liking, then call Murder, Inc. to hire a Luca Brasi-type for her evaluation meeting. With the Luca-type holding a gun to her supervisor's head, the teacher can say, "Either your signature or your brains will be on my new evaluation."
3) For protection, a teacher has the right to invite a suicide bomber to any administrative hearing.
4) When principals disrespect a teacher, the teacher can say, "Mess with me again and I'll kill ya -- by making you watch American Idol reruns of Sanjaya Malakar over Christmas holidays."
5) (And for my friend, the incontinent Ms. Competence): If confronted by an inept administrator, a teacher has the right to reach into her own underwear to pull out fresh feces and wing it at the administrator's forehead while saying, "Fuck you, shit for brains!"
Too much emotional and financial violence against teachers has crippled education here. Teachers don't need no stinking Bill of Rights. They need something with more bite. Can you spell baseball bats, kiddies?
Chip Mosher is a simple classroom teacher.
Comments (5)
Wow! The harassment of good teachers by administrators for no other reason than to flex their muscle is more common than many think. I feel her pain, having gone through the same situation in Carson City. The unions are in collusion with the administration and of no help, quite willing to sell teachers out to pursue their own narrow agenda.
A month after I resigned my position at Carson High, I turned around and filed for school board. I defeated the former board president and am trying to protect good teachers from this type of nonsense. I hope more teachers have the courage to speak out publicly and describe these types of abuse. Feel free to contact me to get your stories out.
Posted by Joe Enge | May 5, 2007 2:20 PM
I feel the empathy with you. I wrote a 3 page rebuttal to my evaluation earlier in the school year. The principal checked and found out the people who wrote the rubric for the domain I was being evaluated felt as I did, a high ranking was unattainable. My relationship with the principal went down faster than a meteor entering Earth's atmosphere. The other day she questioned how long I had taught at my grade level, indicating I seemed frustrated with the students. (Hint, maybe you should retire or just go away.) I've had a flawless record as long as I went with the flow and didn't disturb the pond by questioning, or disagreeing with an administrator. Yes, this is way too common of an occurrence from which there is little chance of recovery.
Posted by robo#18 | May 9, 2007 8:41 PM
Same thing happened to me. There are no safeguards against administrators who lie, then document their lies as the gospel truth. I, too, was forced to retire due to the incoherent ramblings of my supervisor, a 31 year old with three years in the classroom (none of which were in Nevada) and a semester of leadership training.
Posted by teachsost | May 15, 2007 8:08 AM
Every time I asked the intent of all of my legal reprimands, I heard the reply, "We are doing this to help you become a better teacher." Yet my couterpart in Special Ed. would be doing the exact same transgression 10x's over, for months at a time, and nothing would be done to them. When I asked if the purpose was to get me fired, I was told, "That is not the intent." I was told that the intent was to me help me become a better teacher. My so called special ed. team would take comments out of context and report them to my admin. I am an excellent teacher. My sped kids show academic progress. Now all of my legal papers are in line for grievances sometime in the future. My favorite part of this year was a reference from my admin that if I wanted to go to a new school, the paperwork could be fixed. FIXED? I guess I am not such a lousy teacher after all.
Posted by meerkatmama | May 27, 2007 2:21 PM
I wish I could be on CCSD's school board because they get to pick which laws they want to obey, and which laws they want to ignore.
One of the laws they have consistently chosen to ignore has to do with caseload ceilings for special education teachers and related services personnel
Nevada is one of only a handful of states that actually has caseload ceilings written into law. (NAC 388.150) However, in the 5 years I worked for CCSD in special education, my caseload was at or below the maximum exactly ONE time, and the rest of the time, I carried double the amount of students I was supposed to serve.
I, and many others in SPED were (and are) caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place:
If we DID attempt to service an impossible number of kids, there was no way we could competently provide the quality and frequency of services as stipulated in each child's IEP. That meant we got to deal with angry parents, unrelenting pressure from the same assholes who assigned those brutal caseloads in the first place, and a significant risk of being involved in any litigation resulting from the failure to provide the mandated services for the student(s). Let us not forget that the IEP is a working, legal document.
If we REFUSED to accept any more students above the maximum allowed by law, we ran the very real risk of being retaliated against or even fired.
Think I was getting a double salary for a double caseload? Think again!
I even called the NV state ed. dept in Carson City, and was essentially given the runaround.
The union didn't do shit. Period.
Sadly,during the time I worked for CCSD, there just didn't seem to be enough parents willing to confront the decision-makers about this. Whether this was from fear or apathy, they didn't take the necessary steps to claim what was rightfully theirs in the first place: a free appropriate public education for their child.
What I am hoping will eventually happen is that a Michael Moore-type film maker will expose this shithole for what it is. Better yet would be the feds coming down with both feet on the powers that be. Cleaning house is long overdue, but when it happens, I will bring my favorite lawnchair, beverage and camcorder and watch it all come down...
If anyone cares to call the RJ or similar about this issue, that'd be a good first step. Publicity can be a good thing.
Posted by Anonymous | October 25, 2007 7:01 PM