Summertime--the teacher should have no cares, no worries. The teacher is on vacation, free from the classroom, free from lesson plans, free from marking, FREE.
All this would be true if the teacher were not an ATR. The ATR does not have a classroom to be free from and unless there is a miracle, the teacher will have no classroom to go to in September. The ATR belongs in the classroom. The teacher is only an ATR because the school has closed and no school is willing to take the teacher who has been around a few years, the teacher who knows the score and asks things like "why?" and says "I know a way that works", the teacher who refuses to jump on command.
The ATR is spending the summer going from job fair to job fair, school to school, hoping to find a school. Every day is filled with the dread of not knowing what the future will hold and of dealing with people who have no idea how bad it is to be an ATR. Every day the ATR wonders why the union is doing nothing to help. Every day there is a prayer that a real teaching job will appear.
All this would be true if the teacher were not an ATR. The ATR does not have a classroom to be free from and unless there is a miracle, the teacher will have no classroom to go to in September. The ATR belongs in the classroom. The teacher is only an ATR because the school has closed and no school is willing to take the teacher who has been around a few years, the teacher who knows the score and asks things like "why?" and says "I know a way that works", the teacher who refuses to jump on command.
The ATR is spending the summer going from job fair to job fair, school to school, hoping to find a school. Every day is filled with the dread of not knowing what the future will hold and of dealing with people who have no idea how bad it is to be an ATR. Every day the ATR wonders why the union is doing nothing to help. Every day there is a prayer that a real teaching job will appear.
2 comments:
With the budget crisis the city and state are in, NO new teachers should be hired till the ATR's are placed. $80 million dollars put back to work.
... "they"(the Post and the Dailynews) say ATRs are lazy and should be fired because they don't look for positions, nobody wants them, are "deadwood". What they fail to say is that teachers are being discriminated by age. political views and yes race!
I will probably end up in that postion and I speak 3 langauges, am former military and have a license in a shortage area. Tell me what's wrong with this picture?
Post a Comment