Mr. Buchell's effect on his students

In a couple previous posts, I blogged about one of my colleagues (who we'll call for purposes of this blog Mr. Buchell). Mr. Buchell is a twenty-third year teacher in the New York City public schools and has been teaching longer than every teacher in my school. Now, for those of you who did not read about all of the crazy things about Mr. Buchell, his experience has not really served him well when it comes time to students. His students are significantly behind students in my class and in Miss Gonzalez's class (a fourth year teacher). They often score about 10-15% lower than my students on department-given tests. And it's not their fault at all. During my prep period and adminsitrative period, I sometimes walk past his classroom and see absolutely NO learning being done. None whatsoever. He sits at his desk reading the New York Times or on his laptop reading the latest in sports or on Facebook... basically everything except for TEACHING when he is supposed to! The students, sometimes sit in groups trying to figure the material out on their own. Sometimes they play hangman on the board or texting or chatting.

Yeah, no wonder why their scores are so low. Ms. Lopez, my principal, is not oblivious to this at all. In fact, she tried to remove him for the past three years. However, the paperwork and everything attached to the removal process is too much that it never actually gets completed because somewhere along the line it gets more and more complicated and usually the removal process gets terminated sometime before the end of June. Thus, when school resumes in September, a whole new set of 150 students are left to suffer through a year of no learning and an awful, ineffective teacher. And, no, "U" ratings don't really help here.

For bascially the entire year, some of his students come over to my classroom before or after school for extra help. I usually do the best I can for them to ensure that they can pick up the much, much, much needed material for success on the NYS, school material & tests and preparing them for high school math. I tutor them the material, help them review for the tests, pass out my study guides and notes to them, etc during these after school sessions. Sometimes we pair students in my class and students in his class to "buddy teach" some of the material. This is the same for Miss Gonzalez too. She also teaches in the "8th grade department" and helps out as much as possible with the students from Mr. Buchell's class that come over seeking/begging for help.

We devote countless hours to his students, treating them like our own. Feeling responsible for them like our own students. But, we don't get any extra money. Meanwhile, Buchell makes over $100,000 doing absolutely no work.

This is not fair at all. 150 students are being hurt by this process. While Miss G and I are helping, we can't possibly help them grow a whole year's worth of learning in only 30-45 minutes before and after school three days a week. I am confident that all my students can pass the NYS. Miss Gonzalez is confident that all her students can pass. But Mr. Buchell's students' chance of passing is significantly diminished with the complete lack of learning going on in that classroom.

I am really liking the new developments in New York for tying part of a teacher's performance rating to student performance and giving more weight to observations. Maybe that way teachers like Mr. Buchell can be booted out and kids can finally get what they deserve: a good, hardworking teacher.