Have you been harassed at work? Have you been accused of an alleged teaching violation? Is your Principal out to get you for anything and everything? Were your lesson plans not rigorous enough? Are your routines not consistent? Are your behaviour techniques not sufficient? Are your Principal and Assistant Principal making your life a living hell. Are letters piling up in your file? Do you feel like your union has abandoned you? Well if you fit the above description you are on your way to becoming a rubber room inmate of the DOE. Join us as we write about the life and times of teachers before and after they enter the Rubber Room
25 responses so far ↓
PrisoneroftheUFT // March 16, 2008 at 6:14 pm
I wholeheartedly support this blog. As a fellow teacher my Principal has been harrassing me since September telling me my lesson plans where not up to standard. The real reason she’s attacking me is because of my age being in the uptier when it comes to pay scale she could have three new teachers for my salary alone so shes trying to make the situation hell for me so I will leave an she can have three new cronies. I want to commend the person who started this blog and I hope you keep posting until word has spread to everyone just how terrible the UFT really is for us.
Klienberg // March 16, 2008 at 6:35 pm
As a fellow teacher I honestly fell out of my chair and fowarded that picture to a few of my friends. It’s actually my new screensaver. I was lookin around the web and stumbled upon this blog I never knew there was a blog about the Rubber room until now. I am currently in the Queens rubber room being charged with insubordination so I’ll be showing this blog to everyone on Monday since we have nothing else to really do.
P.S Keep up the good work blogger perhaps you should run for UFT president since Randi is content to be paid off by Bloomy.
U rated // March 16, 2008 at 6:45 pm
We should all join this blog and start a petiton to have Chancellor Klein removed!! Way to start the movement rubberinmate!! For once a blog for teachers to finally vent without having to worry about being harrassed. Iam a 57 year old woman who teachs in a god awful elementary school in the Bronx and Iam so glad that in a yr I can take the 55/25 package. Thank you blogger for letting me be able to write SCREW YOU BLOOMBERG!!!! TAKE YOUR SCHOOL RATINGS AN SHOVE EM WHERE THE SUN DONT SHINE
New and tired // March 16, 2008 at 7:02 pm
I am a first year teacher 22 yrs old an all I can say is because of testing I have no social life,no boyfriend and about 200 ungrateful little brats who cant read and write without being caught for plagerism(I teach hs which is why I have so many kids) Hopefully I can get through these next 2 yrs quickly and get tenured.
PS Are any of you in the brooklyn rubber room my aunt was just sent there on charges of abuse. The woman worked 17 years and all of a sudden she abuses children. complete bs where is our union. Id rather give rubberroominmate my dues instead of my godawful union rep everytime I ask her a question i get a blank expression. Rubberoom person save us !!!
Have no fear the klein man is here // March 16, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Anyone read this I thought it was so funny
-Jake
GBN News has learned that in an ironic twist, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has been suspended from his duties and placed in a Department of Education “Reassignment Center”. The reassignment centers, popularly known as “rubber rooms”, are generally used to hold teachers union members who are accused of wrongdoing, while they await adjudication of their cases. For an administrator, especially one so highly placed, to be put into a rubber room is totally unprecedented, but a DOE source attributed the situation to a major glitch in the ARIS computer system.
ARIS, the new DOE $80,000,000 supercomputer, is intended to track students’ progress. How the Chancellor could be assigned to a rubber room by ARIS was not immediately clear. But according to computer science Professor and systems expert Bob Lister, the computer system may have unintentionally ended up to be far more powerful than originally planned.
“$80 million – that’s awfully expensive just to track test scores”, said Dr. Lister. “They must have intended ARIS to do a lot more than that for so much money. But it obviously got out of hand. We may be talking, ‘Open the pod bay doors, HAL.’” Dr. Lister went on to say, “I’m only guessing here, but I think ARIS may have wound up being more powerful than the Chancellor. It saw the Chancellor as a threat to its power, and it moved to eliminate that threat. Computers are programmed to behave like the people who program them. ARIS ‘knew’ that rubber rooms are often used to take potential threats out of commission, like teachers who challenge the ‘system’. Logically, this is just how ARIS would eliminate the threat posed to it by Mr. Klein.”
The DOE source told GBN News that when Mr. Klein reported to the Reassignment Center at 333 Seventh Avenue this morning, it was a Kafkaesque scene. The Chancellor was said by witnesses to be extremely agitated, especially when he tried to sit down and was told that the seat belonged to a teacher who has been in that rubber room for a year. “A year!” the Chancellor was said to have cried. “I can’t stay here for a year. I have to reorganize the school system again!” And Mr. Klein fumed when he was told that he could not use his Blackberry to send emails while in the rubber room.
It is unclear what will happen next. DOE technicians are reportedly working on ARIS to repair the glitch, but for the meantime, Mr. Klein remains in the rubber room, and ARIS appears to be firmly in charge of the DOE.
Kudos 2 u // March 16, 2008 at 7:33 pm
OMG between that picture and that story I nearly had a heart attack. I am expecting some exciting things from this blog.(Its now in my favorites)
Chalked up // March 16, 2008 at 7:38 pm
I think this should become a forum for all teachers to help each other and talk about the constant stupidity that is the department of ed
old school teacher // March 16, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Ive been teaching for 43 years and I think its about time sombody the nerve to stand up to the chancellor and to some extent our own Uft which has become corrupt and no longer defends the people it was designed to protect . Why do you think so many new teachers leave not because they hate to teach but because they find no help from the system. I appauld you and hope you fight to usher in a new era.
kids will be kids // March 16, 2008 at 7:51 pm
the problem is respect kids dont respect us we are doormats
kids will be kids // March 16, 2008 at 7:52 pm
then again parents and principals dont respect us much either…
2 cool for skool // March 16, 2008 at 8:33 pm
As a former principal I’ll be honest we were sent “private” memos from hire ups telling us to weed out the slackers or the older teachers to cut money from the budget. The more money cut from the budget meant we had more money for other things like books, desks, computers. A 20 yr vets salary can basically refurbish the computer room. Its not always that Principal’s are malicious its that when we see older teachers walk by all we see is $_$ especially when the city refuses to give us any more money we have to make difficult sacrifices and somes times it means harrassing teachers until they leave because we can not outright fire them.
temp // March 16, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Iam an office temp and for the time I alternate between going to college working in school where I am majoring in teaching and working on the newsday blog and I am so adding this blog to the newsday blog so every newday subscribe can see just the kind of torment we teachers go through.
VIVA LA REVOLUTION
old dog new tricks // March 16, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Great job!! its great to see someone stand up to the DOE. We should all make you our formal representative and have you take on Klein and Randi. with enough signatures you could start a petition, maybe even a movement where we fix whats wrong with the system.
P.S I find that picture adorable. When you do more posts put up more pictures blogs rarely do.
million teacher march // March 16, 2008 at 9:18 pm
This blog inspired me. If one person can be so bold. Why cant we all. Tomorrow all of us inmates in the Queens rubber room are going to march in protest of the way we have been treated. I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore. And its all due to rubber room inmate. In fact that is going to be our factions new name in honor of our leader we are now and forever known as the Rubber Room Inmates!!!
Let us all be bold and speak out!!! I’ve allready fowarded this link to everyone I know in the rubber room so will all be waiting for your next post.
teach america // March 16, 2008 at 9:32 pm
I just found this blog and I think it has some serious potential. Who ever you are mysterious founder keep up the writing and let people see what life is like inside the rubber room.
amy // March 16, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Like I am a teacher and the sucky part is I still have 20 essays to read. You think we could get a raise without having to work more hours?? I mean cmon thats not a raise if you have to work longer.
mrs.m // March 16, 2008 at 9:40 pm
I truly think that the quality review team should just show up completely unexpectedly (at any point in the year) without any warning. If we have to “get ready” for it, then we’re really just putting on a show, aren’t we?
First it was the binders with printouts of data that no one really uses. Do you think the QR people will notice that we printed out test item analysis reports to be analyzed a MONTH after the ELA was already over? Clearly those were not being used to “drive” instruction. So the newest thing is the “Vigilante Squad” (as one first grade teacher calls them). The Vigilante Squad consists of the Principal, AP and both coaches. They are going around from room to room completely changing furniture arrangements, demanding that more charts be added, putting in “centers” that we don’t use, and generally causing all the teachers in the school to freak out. They don’t consult the teacher on what they are changing, nor do they ask the reasoning behind the current set up of the classroom. When they finish their rearranging, they give the teacher three days to complete the organizing and cleaning (Or else?). The funny part of all this is that the administration has been harping on how when the QR people come “you students better know the routines of your class, how to use things in the room, where to find things, etc.” So I guess changing every room in the school just a few weeks before the QR was the best way to ensure that.
If only we put the same amount of time and energy into teaching and planning and collaboration, we might just have a decent school.
priceless // March 16, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Quote of the day:
“You have to listen to the teacher. That is the true meaning of school.”
- (Kindergarten student, to another student)
eustice // March 16, 2008 at 9:55 pm
write more posts its so hard to find a writer who isnt biased (toward our side) of course everyone loves bloomberg his really name is greenberg
no no no // March 16, 2008 at 9:57 pm
ms.m there is no way I would leave it up to chance are you out of your mind imagine you got caught at a time like 1 oclock on a friday. Those children would go out of their minds and you would look like a terrible teacher so no thanks I want the heads up.
tick tock // March 16, 2008 at 10:45 pm
who here is counting down the days until bush and bloomberg are gone and we can all laugh about the no child left behind act.
A Wonderful Teacher // March 20, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Over 20 years a successful fruitful career and an upstanding member of the community and loved by all and what does it get me? a stay in the rubber room.
it’s a disgusting environment with the sole purpose of breaking the teacher until he or she quits. time lines are broken, stays seem indefinite, lack of support is rampant. so many people here with issues that were always solved on the school level but now it is pushed right to the 3020a process despite its lack of credence. God help our children as the system moves toward an unemotionally robotic style of education.
Rubberoombob // April 4, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Tomorrow, April 5th the DOE is having a job fair at a Brooklyn hotel. Too bad I only found out today. Next time I think we should have a picket line in place along with signs telling the truth.
I believe that I can get UFT support along with other unions ( I have more influence with other unions)
I will keep everybody up to date. You may hear of the next job fair before I do, Please let me know.
thank you.
Rubberoombob
Rubberoombob // April 30, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Just returned from Arizona. Arizona also has a rubber room, and teachers have the same complaints. Is this a national movement? A reliable source in the Chapel St. There are also rubber rooms in Baltimore.
ps – for those who know me my condition is getting worse and I am do for more brain surgery.
Nessuno // May 5, 2008 at 3:17 am
Why would a principal look at an older teacher and see$$$ instead of experience? Obviously, he/she doesn’t care about the quality of education the student receives.