Mikey and the Chocolate Factory

Screw Chapter Leader training and failed curriculum. I'm going to Switzerland!

I’ve written about chapter leader training before. It’s notable because that’s where Unity does its primary recruiting. Hey, did you enjoy the creme brûlée? Would you like to have more? Sign up, right here, to join the Unity Caucus. All you have to do is promise to support whatever we tell you to. Once you do that, we’ll send you to conventions every year. All the creme brûlée is on us!

And hey, if that works out, the sky’s the limit. There are all kinds of trips you can get invited on. The higher you go, the more trips there are. As a part time employee, you might go to a symposium here or there. But if you get to the very top, you could travel internationally on the UFT dime, or possibly the AFT dime. Who knows?

Also, maybe, there’s support in how to be an effective chapter leader. You’d think that would be important. But Michael Mulgrew had other things to do during last week’s chapter leader training. He was on one of those trips!

Above you can see our fearless leader in Switzerland, along with his wife, and AFT President Randi Weingarten. Who picked up the tab? UFT? AFT? Hard to say. But as you know, Michael Mulgrew makes three times what teachers do. He’s also a Vice President of AFT, and who knows what he pulls in for that (not to mention his NYSUT gig). That, of course, is before the UFT expense account. Who is Michael Mulgrew answerable to?

Though it’s technically his job, he’s certainly not answerable to UFT members, at least not until May. He can’t even be bothered meeting personally with new chapter leaders, some of whose lives are liable to take a dramatic turn. (Mine certainly did.)

While Mike and Randi were at the “real live chocolate factory,” a handful of math teachers were sitting at 52 Broadway, desperately trying to modify the execrable but mandated Illustrative Math (IM) curriculum.

UFT invited 25 math teachers, but go figure—during Regents week a lot of math teachers have to grade the exams. It turns out, perhaps, their supervisors didn’t want to release them that week. Or maybe teachers didn’t want to travel to Manhattan every day during Regents week. Who’d have thunk it? Not UFT Bosses, evidently.

Six teachers showed up. They did their best. Sure, IM is garbage. Sure, teachers and students hate it. But because it’s the shiny new silver bullet, we’re stuck with it. The fact that it doesn’t serve our students well is neither here nor there. The DOE hires third-party “coaches” to “help.” A teacher gave me chapter and verse about one “coach” who screams at teachers and blames their performance, rather than the crappy material they have to work with.

Every teacher in NYC is familiar with the DOE approach to coaching. They’re right, and everyone else is wrong. They went for a “teacher-proof” solution, meaning every step was pre-programmed—as though we were the problem, not the solution. As usual, they had it backwards, and made our jobs considerably more difficult. If Michael Mulgrew had a competent team, they’d have noticed that at its inception.

Call me madcap, but I’d say it’s obvious that leaving teachers out of the equation means the equation is hopeless. The time to deal with a crap mandated curriculum is before it’s mandated. It’s not like we didn’t know how bad it was. Imagine what things might have been like if UFT resisted this, and took a stand against scripted lessons before teachers had to waste their time. In fact, article 8 of the UFT teacher contract states that lesson planning is under the purview of the teacher.

The very notion of scripted lessons suggests we are all widgets. Reading is not teaching. Interaction is key, and wholly unpredictable. How out of touch have you got to be to not see that? Have you been sitting at a DOE desk for 20 years? Is a UFT desk all that different?

Imagine if AFT and UFT had resisted Common Core, instead of getting all macho and threatening to punch its opponents. Maybe current Regents exams wouldn’t be wasteful nonsense. Imagine if we’d actively opposed Tier 6 when it came up, instead of waiting years, saying, “Oopzie,” hoping for the best, and changing it in dribs and drabs.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, Mulgrew, but recognizing and fighting bad programs before they’re universally mandated is a good idea. Mulgrew likes to say people like me spout “fairy tales,” but since we’d tried it and it didn’t work, perhaps we should NOT have expanded it, inflicting it upon the largest school district in the nation. Perhaps the teacher union should be a voice to preclude and prevent disaster, rather than just play catch up.

Instead, teachers sat for a week and figured out how to supplement Illustrative Math so that it could address the NY State Regents exam. They also addressed topics that IM assumed students had learned in eighth grade, but in fact, did not. However many band-aids they applied, they could not address the underlying issue—that it’s a terrible program loathed by teachers and students.

The first new car I ever bought was a 1991 Nissan Sentra. I spent some time with the dealer, who told me that a Yugo was the only car he’d ever seen that was crappy even when it was new. What we have here is a used Yugo. We’ve added new tires, an upgraded sound system, and an air freshener, but it’s still a Yugo.

While dedicated, hard working math teachers did their darndest to dress up the Yugo, while chapter leaders went to a training weekend, Michael Mulgrew, UFT President, was in Switzerland.

This trip was related to CTE. Curiously, Leo Gordon, the UFT CTE Vice President wasn’t invited. I guess the participation of our CTE guy on the CTE trip wasn’t important, for some reason. I hear Mulgrew took time out from his travels to address the chapter leaders via Zoom. You know—just like he runs into Executive Board meetings, speaks for a few minutes, and then dashes off to do Very Important Stuff.

As math teachers battled to repair DOE-approved pre-owned Yugos, Mulgrew was in Switzerland, touring the chocolate factory. Fond though we all are of Willie Wonka, let’s take another peek at Mulgrew’s expenses. As far as I can determine, he’s answerable to no one.

Right after RA won the election, I was invited to a few meetings at 52. At these meetings, I was pretty shocked to learn that the Retired Teacher Chapter has no budget at all. We sat at a table with some UFT Big Shots who informed us that they would grant us 20 hours a week for people to work answering email. Any expenses beyond that would have to be personally approved by Michael Mulgrew.

I was elected Vice Chair of the RTC. I was not completely surprised to learn that the title meant virtually nothing. I’d already seen paraprofessionals elected, and the only thing Unity wanted them to do was go to meetings, or make fun of them if their second jobs precluded doing so. I’d seen Melissa Williams elected chapter leader of OT/PT and basically told she could not communicate with the chapter.

Bennett Fischer’s been able to do things they couldn’t stop, like run real meetings. Still, perish forbid they should give him the email list. Someone from RTC spends a few hours a week answering email, or doing something or other. But we certainly haven’t got the representation we elected.

That’s not entirely Unity’s fault. Some choose to follow their example. For example, a dozen unelected, self-appointed people in Retiree Advocate decided that they spoke for the 300 of us who ran. Perhaps from hanging at 52 so much, they’ve learned from Unity. They decided that 288 of us didn’t need a vote, and joined the MORE coalition. So far, at least one of them is running for Adcom, the actual top level of UFT. This is the sort of thing that passes unnoticed when people don’t pay attention.

If we, as educators, urge students to pay attention, it behooves us to do the same.

Back in Unity world, people come up through the ranks, get jobs, and run for election. They win get elected titles, as directed by bosses, and said titles have no job descriptions. Therefore, they largely continue doing whatever jobs they did before. But Unity has never given jobs to people just because members elected them. Unity doesn’t care what members think. So you have these orphan jobs.

UFT Retired Teacher Chapter, for example, has a treasurer and an assistant treasurer. Do they handle money? They do not. You have the same in UFT. What exactly does the treasurer do if Mulgrew controls all the money? Sure, Mulgrew gets a rubber stamp vote at Adcom to approve some trips and things. Like RTC, UFT has a Secretary and Assistant Secretary. What do they do?

The Secretary runs Executive Board meetings. This stems from Unity’s much-cherished, long-standing tradition of the President being too precious and fraidy-scared to do it himself (or herself). Otherwise, everyone does pretty much Whatever Mulgrew Says.

Personally, I have zero desire for a job doing Whatever Mulgrew Says. Still, a lot of people voted for me. They had every right to expect me to do something for them. That’s one reason I’m here.

Unity can call all the lawyers it wishes. They can tell all their people to write anonymous blogs (on thr UFT clock, for all we know). They can pretend to support retirees, while doing absolutely nothing to help, and being part of a court case against us. They can secretly or openly undermine us. They can even take lavish trips at our expense.

But they can’t prevent us from exercising our choice in a secret ballot. They can’t even prevent their own members from standing up for what’s right. I’m weary of needless drama and those who manipulate democracy to serve themselves.

That, of course, is why I’m supporting and running with ABC this year. I hope you join us, and I hope you are part of our member-driven vision.