It seems that really…in the search for jobs almost no one can be satisfied in the economy. Teachers are no different. Although the RIF’d teachers have been getting the lions share of media attention, Public School Choice, and general downsizing also causes “displaced teachers” to happen.
That’s where the District still employs you, but you don’t have a school to work at anymore.
Local District 8 had a Job Fair for Displaced Teachers at Hnery Clay Middle School yesterday. Despite being the hosts of the event, Clay teachers noticed quite quickly that they were vastly outnumbered by the sheer volume of displaced teachers from elsewhere in Local 8. A good deal of ill will followed that, because it was generally thought by the staff that this fair was part of the “personalized, individual attention” from Human Resources that Mike Romero had promised.
I have to admit, it made for a packed, frantic, impersonal environment…not unlike a “cattle call” for movie extras. By percentage of people present, a decent number of Clay staff were called up for pre-interviews, but only in the rarest cases were final decisions made, or jobs offered.
As stated by Donovan, numerous schools did not even show.
The roughest part of it for Team Kuppersmith was two fold. Firstly…we actually got a call from a Pilot School that was interested in a significant portion of the Team. The problem was, that call came while we were in the Job Fair. Thankfully, we handled it swiftly and well, producing an upcoming interview…but that then produced a “time crunch” to assemble materials for a stellar interview.
The second part…a good number of the staff were pretty hostile to the members of Team Kuppersmith. I get that, since we didn’t stand with the Official Plan, and it is generally percieved that this resulted in “the door being open for the Charters to come in.” However, with that said, we had every opportunity to seriously improve the school over the five years of program improvement. In fact, since we were year five for four years, we had nine years.
Blaming a small group for busting their humps to do right by the kids…you can do that, but it just doesn’t make sense. Every situation like this needs a scapegoat, and we are easy targets. Oddly, little is ever said directly to me personally, but yesterday began with Anti-Kuppersmith tagging on the school site. Perhaps the indirect approach is generally the way.
Regardless…there are seven school days left.
I agree with the staff’s general view on this: the Job Fair is a poor way of going about interviews, with a low level of return.
The Hammer Lane 