Submitted by bob stoll, Mar 4, 2008 14:52

I spent many years teaching at Washington Irving High School. As at any big urban school it was always challenging, never easy, and usually offered few rewards. Our school changed dramatically in the mid 90´s when we got a new principal. His idea to turn the school around was to get rid of all teachers, tenured and untenured who didn´t jump to his program. Untenured simply weren´t invited back. Tenured were harassed until they transferred, or often brought up on ficticious charges. We quickly became the school in NYC with the highest number of greivances, almost all won by the teachers.

This principal was fired for changing grades( to raise our graduations rates), among other things. But it turned out he was a personal friend of Gualiani, so he was reinstated. And he returned with a vengance. At any point in time we usually had several teachers from our school suspended and sitting in what I guess is now called rubber rooms. We used to refer to it as "teachers heaven", since it not only removed us from the stress of the classroom , but more important from the harassment of this principal.

I spent one year sitting in the hallway of the manhattan superintentents office, reading, writing, chatting with many other teachers, and generally having a fine time. I never had a clue of why iIwas there. Until charges are formally filed, they never tell you a thing. After one year I took a leave of absence without pay. As pleasant as it was, it was such a waste of my time and waste of the city´s money. When I returned a year later, they still couldn´t tell me why I was there. After letters to the Chancellor and media, I was finally notified that they were very sorry, but there were no charges and I was welcome to return to the classroom.

I declined, and have had ten wonderful years since. It´s just sad to see that this system still exists. And even sadder to try to explain the american education system to all my friends here in Ecuador, and in the other places I´ve lived since those days in Teachers Heaven.

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