Darry-Error
Oh, my. Big changes are afoot at the Columbia Heights Education Campus (CHEC) in Washington, DC. I taught social studies in this hell hole for three years. The head of my department was an assistant principal because teachers were not trusted to hold this position.
This man was the worst of the worst of the bullying, sloganeering, hard-headed, head-in-the-sand principal class to emerge in the last 10 years. Never in my entire working life have I known somebody so universally despised and distrusted by those he was supposed to inspire, instruct and lead. An insecure, disorganized, dishonest bully who single-handedly ruined teaching for dozens if not hundreds of teachers. Our department of 9 ran through 25 teachers in the three years I was there. He was also in charge of the ninth grade, which experienced similar carnage. The overall yearly teacher turnover for the whole school is 40-50%. He never failed to repel the most people.
(This just in: What do we have to show for this? 40% proficiency in Reading and 48% in Math, 2012. Seriously?)
He was notorious for berating teachers behind closed doors until they cried, faking dates on evaluations, scheduling meetings and not showing up, demanding data he would never look at and wouldn’t understand, promising feedback he would never give, changing his mind, forgetting he had changed his mind, using his power to bully and intimidate teachers and students, and generally being wildly ill-suited for any type of leadership position whatsoever.
One of his favorite things to say was some version of this: I’m an equity educator. I’m here to educate black and brown kids. Are YOU down with educating black and brown kids? ‘Cause that’s what I’m about. So…
At this point he would throw up his hands a bit and scan the room as if expecting a challenge. With his purpose and purity of motives established and unchallenged, anybody who disagreed with him or questioned anything he did or said could safely be assumed to NOT be down with educating black and brown kids. Easy.
At least twice, groups of teachers collected large dossiers documenting his inappropriate and unprofessional behavior and presented them to the principal and the folks downtown. But nothing ever happened. He was clearly being protected by the principal of the school, Maria Tukeva. She is a legend in DC, an untouchable icon, and has been the principal of some version of this school since the Carter Administration. She keeps things quiet and raises a lot of money. What happens within her walls is of little interest to the authorities as long as the noise level is low and the money do flow. She is the consummate authoritarian bureaucrat in the finest traditions of Cold War Eastern Europe and Dick Cheney.
We can only imagine the arrangement the two of them had. Were they lovers? Did he have some dirt on her? Or did they merely share the simple joys of bullying and demoralizing teachers? Perhaps we’ll never know, but they were both allowed to treat teachers as poorly as they pleased without sanction. She continues.
I could go on and on with ridiculous stories, ignorant quotes, juicy rumors and delicious hear-say. And it’s tempting. But I’ll close with these two things:
1) Here is an email exchange between him, me, and the principal from 2010. (I’m positive that pronoun sequence is grammatically incorrect and I think I know who will point it out.) It documents a rare and foolish attempt on my part to engage him in an honest conversation about my teaching, explain what I’m trying to do, and ask for his help. It’s priceless. I can’t stop reading it;
2) He may be headed to Georgia. If you walk into your school on the first day and your new boss is a bald black guy named Darry, turn around and walk out. Briskly. Take a shower and don’t come back.
_______________________
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I would like to declare you a winner in the bad teacher sweepstakes, but this dude is just par for the course in the US right now. I think these guys are cloned or something.
Darry the Douche sounds pretty heinous. Sadly, he also sounds like one of our current VPs. This guy, however, usually only does the berating and bullying thing with female employees. We’re wondering if he got into education so that he would have lots of female employees to bully.
Also, our guy consistently sits with his legs spread as wide as possible. We assume this is his way of implying that his balls are so big he can’t keep his legs together.
Let’s call it a draw.
Bully…sounds about right. What kind of man takes a job where he can boss around women and children? Can you smell the insecurity? These guys could never cut it in the private sector. I don’t think they could be effective, or hack it, in mid-level management at McDonald’s or Walmart.
My favorite part is that you never received a response to your email from your Principal. Administrators hate email. They hate to have a clear record of their communications with staff. It’s much harder to bully teachers when their abusive language and ineptitude is in hard print. Just keep sending those emails teachers, they will end up being the best documentation for your defense.
Nope, hard to obfuscate and deny actual logged correspondence. Instead it is always better to go shake down the victim in person. That way the admin can also claim it (insulting, dehumanizing pronoun use is intentional) is friendly and personable by solving problems face-to-face rather than through email.
Ah, “Velvet Pleaser.” I haven’t thought about him in ages. I hope his next principal sees through his bulls@&t the first day.
Anonymous…you tease me with your anonymous ways.
Good news for the CHEC community – extraordinarily bad news for some teachers in the Peach State.
It will be hard to forget that guy. Some of his other comments were saved at the link below.
I love that email you saved. He speaks in true edudrone fashion there. Really makes it clear how out of touch admins can be these days.
http://www.anurbanteacherseducation.com/2010/05/columbia-heights-case-for-teachers_21.html
And on edudrones: http://www.anurbanteacherseducation.com/2010/10/soooo-funny.html
Oh, Teachbad. One of the reasons I love reading your blog is that you make me feel better about my working environment. So thanks for helping me get into a better mindset for my first pointless meeting this week.
I meant that seriously, by the way. My administration does not suck nearly as bad as that, and being reminded of how bad it could be makes me happier.
Why is it admins are so similar regardless of race, age, geographic location, or school? Do education schools take their admin program participants into a basement somewhere and implant microchips or something?
I have worked for this admin — more than once. Mine were a middle-aged white woman, a younger white woman, and a middle-age white man. All in CA. The white man was the worst, he never replied to any of my email, even the one recording the giant cluster-f**k resulting in my lying on my couch unable to move without pain. Not so much as a “Sorry about that, you and the art teacher were right, won’t happen again.”
As far as your pronoun sequence, no clue. My direct psychic hotline to William Safire is on the fritz today.
Email is a waste of time. Your administrator can add, subtract, delete, change any school email. Our district wiped all emails with any reference to their illegal activities – some of us had already forwarded them to our home accounts, though.
You know that cell phone you have in your pocket? It records conversation. Use it. Get a smartpen. Or use the sound recorder in your laptop. It’s legal to record a conversation as long as one of the participants knows, and presumably you will.
The advantage of the smartpen is that some of the admin know they are being recorded, and they then shut up, much like email. They may not get smarter, but they do get quieter.
Print out any emails you think will help your case. Problem solved.
True. I could have hundreds of emails like this, but most were in my DCPS email. These just happen to have been in my personal email. If you don’t print them all out, at least send to personal account.
same guy who called basketball players he “coached” a bunch of pussies and fags. real class act. no wonder many players hated him and quit the team… not to mention names he called some teachers. a REAL pro of edickation. what a worthless piece of shit who I wouldn’t want any child to be in the same
building with, or neighborhood for that matter.
I’m guessing we know each other. I hope you are well. Give my best to those other people we both know who you might see around.
In the post I wanted to stick to just a handful of things I had personally witnessed or otherwise been a part of. But yes. There are many, many such stories and accounts.
All I can say is “Wow.” I am truly sorry that you were run out of education. I know of several schools where teaching like yours would be welcomed as best practice. I have been lucky in my professional experience to at a minimum be left alone and at the maximum appreciated. As I move to a new school and administration, I hope my lucky streak continues. I hope you too find a school so that you can continue to do what you so obviously enjoyed.
Yes, administration can certainly make a huge difference in terms of teacher contentment. However, for those who have been teaching for at least a few years or so, if not more, the job itself, administration aside, is becoming a shell of itself. I’m trying to transfer to another school. If I can’t, I highly doubt I can tolerate another year and may be forced to find another career at the age of 40. If I do transfer, I wonder how many years I can tolerate, even under reasonable administration. The reality is, just when you think the job cannot get any worse, it will. I thought it sucked only a few years ago, only to find it even worse now. This trend will continue as long as there are enough new, clueless teachers to fill the vacancies left by the countless who have given up (I may one of them soon).
My hard drive crashed and I was recovering documents and came across an email like that I sent to my principal. I was being required to submit lesson plans because it was noticed I wasnt introducing enough rigor into my lessons. Like you, I went into some detail explaining my rationale but you know Mr. Teachbad, it didnt ever matter what you wrote, and I’ll bet you knew it.
You were a “troublesome” teacher and thats all you were to them. You could out “edubabble” them and even as stupid as they were, they knew you were beating them over the head with it and it made them hate you even more.
You alway make me laugh and remind me what nonsense I chose to walk away from.