Norm Scott gives the history:
Once the decision was made to make Randi Sandy Feldman's successor (sometime around 1990 - when Shanker was still alive and no doubt helped make that decision) Randi needed to get some teaching creds (and courses -- find someone who took ed classes with her and you'll find Jimmy Hoffa) so she was handed a position as a teacher at Clara Barton HS -- near Bklyn Bot Gardens so she could be near her home in Park Slope. Casey was the chapter leader there to protect her. She technically taught there for 6 years but only 6 months full-time. She coached the debating team for comp time and reports were that she taught 2 periods a day. But she was also negotiating the 1995 contract (which we turned down the first time - a major defeat for her) while supposedly teaching. The Village Voice did an expose on her. Question that came up since she never got a regular appointment -- did she sit for the exams? -- was whether she was on leave all those years she was president and the UFT was reimbursing her salary so she could get pension credit? All was muddled. When she became pres she took Leo with her.
Another commenter writes:
Randi was in the trenches for one period a day with the best students; I think AP students at Bard HS Early College. This is a school where the principal and the majority of the teachers have a PhD and the students are highly motivated. Leo Casey was a teacher there fore many, many years.
My understanding was that she taught that one class a day, not a large class, for 6 years. Leo Casey was her mentor, showing her how to write lessons, the technique of presenting the lessons, and asking questions that assesses the students' understanding of the lesson.
How can she call herself a "teacher in the trenches" when teaching one class a day does not make you an experienced teacher? What about those teachers who teach 5 periods a day, for 180 instructional days a year, for over 20 years? Those are teachers in the trenches! She was a politician and union hack in the making using the classroom and those students as stepping stones. Wait a minute. This sounds exactly what TFA does to our students.
It is time for someone to FOIL her year-end evaluation rating sheet and find out the amount of time she spent in the classroom.
When Randi talks about spending seven years in the trenches as a teacher, she's talking about a part-time gig that was created specifically so she could call herself an "educator" at a school that was atypical of most schools in NYC.
Quite frankly, Weingarten is an "educator" the way Dennis Walcott is an "educator."
Of course, Michael Mulgrew really was an "educator" and he's been selling us down the river too, so perhaps it's a moot point whether Randi really should be considered a teacher or not.
But it does stick in some teachers' craws the way she throws that so-called teaching trench experience of hers around - experience that is nothing like the experiences of real working teachers in NYC public schools.
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