There is no way I would ever--I mean never never never--kiss a frog!

Surrounded by creepy music, a sleepy-bear roomie, and some Disney-craving theater kids, I've had to leave off writing yet another anthro paper. How can I work with "The Princess and the Frog" in the background. Er...foreground.

Remember when I wrote about the rubber rooms at the beginning of the semester? When I searched for it at the time, the first page that came up was about a documentary-in-progress. Tonight, I saw a pre-release screening of that documentary, but if you search "rubber room" in google the first thing that comes up is a news page. If you want to read about it:
Here is the radio broadcast (Thanks to Professor Sloan for letting me know about it!)
News story one
News story two
and
The documentary page.

So the rubber rooms are reassignment centers for teachers who are for whatever reason deemed to be unfit for the classroom. The teachers have to report to these facilities for the length of the school day each school day, and while they get paid for it the conditions are frightful and in many cases the teachers haven't been told the charges being filed against them. Now I'm not well versed in politics or law, but the way these centers were being run was obviously problematic. Innocent teachers were mixed in with guilty ones in a repressive environment where they stayed for months or even years while they waited for their cases to be heard. I shouldn't be using past tense; that's wishful thinking. The D.O.E. announced yesterday that they will be closing the rubber rooms. From here on, they claim, teachers waiting for their arbitration hearings will do clerical work in their schools or at another location. Also, the city would like to see the process sped up and so is aiming to increase the number of arbitrators available to handle the cases from 26 to 29. For the entire city? Excuse me for being skeptical, but when arbitrators work half-days anyway I'm not sure what a difference 3 more will make. Hmmm.

And while I'm certainly no expert, one of the documentary makers also expressed doubts about the city's plan. His thoughts: There were already limits on the length of time a teacher could be suspended without a case review but these limits haven't been followed, so what good could more limits do? What does the district intend to do with suspended teachers instead? What is 'clerical work' and if teachers do it in a cleaner room is it not still a rubber room in theory?

As the film is still in its pre-release phase, the directors acknowledged--in the Q and A session afterword-- that they still need to do some technical editing for lighting and sound quality. That said, I felt like they did a good job showing how complicated the issue really is. They had tenured teachers and former teaching fellows; they had old and young, women and men, gay and straight, white and 'minority'; they had teachers, guidance counselors, and politicians. And while they had a good number of people, they didn't have a huge cast of interviewees. Rather, they focused on a group that showed the diversity of the people impacted. I was also relieved to see that they mixed the innocent with the guilty. Chancellor Joel Klein responded to most questions with a comment about protecting the children from harm. While this got old rather quickly, I was wondering how the filmmakers were going to address the question of teacher who really did deserve to be out of the classroom. They found a teacher who admitted to losing his temper in the classroom, throwing and kicking furniture when he did lose his temper, and generally teaching because he's "an egomaniac who likes to have an attentive audience." Crazy! Interestingly, he was released from the rubber room after two weeks and allowed back into the classroom while other teachers who were later found to be innocent of any accusations spent months or years before returning to teaching, if they were able to return at all. Thus the filmmakers acknowledged that some people need to be removed from classrooms but that those people should be fired and that the rubber rooms weren't helping get that done at all.

Of course the room was full of teachers, policy makers, graduate students, and those interviewed for the movie. I felt very outside the culture; they recognized people and phrases in the film, and they reacted collectively. Sometimes I knew why they chuckled or groaned, but most of the snickers and jeers were lost on me. It was interesting to experience, though. And during the Q and A, it was funny to be in a room full of teachers whose phones were going off and who were interrupting the filmmakers despite the fact that this was supposed to be a facilitated discussion. People fascinate me sometimes.

After the discussion, I came home to write for a bit. While doing my roommates' dishes from the past two weeks I dreamed about sharing a kitchen someday with people who like their cooking/eating spaces clean (Hillary, Alex, Cass...). I wrote some more, had tea with Alex, wrote some more, and then was distracted by Disney so decided to write this bit. I've been posting more recently...Is blogging merely procrastination disguising itself as productivity perhaps? Regardless, the day itself was fairly productive. I'm hoping to arrange an internship while abroad next semester, to move out before my roomies so I'm not left cleaning the mess at the end of the year, waiting on paperwork so I can apply for my student visa, wishing I could go to Georgia, revising my Roald Dahl paper, looking forward to a 2011 independent study on Gothic Literature with Dr. Lennox, craving baked eggs, and getting a little bit sleepy.

A final note: Best of luck to Cass and Lanie at Forensics Nationals! I'm terribly proud of them. While I'm writing about Anne Meneley and Nancy Ries, they'll be competing with students from across the country in delivering duos and after-dinner speeches and other such things. Meanwhile, my cousin Jean Calderone will be displaying some of her work in her school's thesis show this weekend. Congratulations all around!