What is "The Rubber Room?" Simply put, "The Rubber Room" is a room where hundreds and hundreds of New York City schoolteachers presently sit, being paid full salary to do absolutely nothing. But, like so many things, it's not quite so simple... What Happens? Each year in New York City hundreds of schoolteachers are suspended. Their teaching privileges are temporarily, but indefinitely, revoked. Accused of a wide range and varying degrees of misconduct, these teachers are no longer allowed in the classroom. Instead, while awaiting a lengthy adjudication process, they are compelled to report to an off-campus location commonly referred to as The Rubber Room.
Read this newspaper article about it. Look at the trailer for a documentary film about the rubber-room. Look at the film's website. Listen to the radio broadcast on NPR's This American Life.

Friday, May 4, 2007

Another weak [sic]

The end of another week. There's a microwave here that people use. I hear arguments over who is next, and shouts of why people can't wait. I didn't understand all the disagreements over using a machine that is detrimental to our health. Ever since I stopped using the microwave to heat and cook food and drinks I feel much healthier. People don't realise the harmful effects of things often long after the harmful effects have taken place. I choose to write my own script for my life, in which I am not subject to the pollutants of our own making if I can avoid such. There has to be something inherently wrong with food heating up in containers that are probably also vulnerable to the same molecule-altering changes that produce a microwave oven's results. Nobody would heat a meal in a plastic dish in a conventional oven. Likewise, it is not healthy to place teachers here in this container, this reassignment center. We are fooled into thinking this is a voluntary situation, that we are not prisoners, but our income is discontinued if we leave, our jobs are terminated if we don't report, and therein lies our trap. We're free to go as much as we're compelled to stay. In other places and other organizations, such treatment of employees, of people, would not be done, or accepted, or tolerated. It's as if we're being placed in a microwave, being cooked from the inside with no immediately visible or noticeable sign of burning or scarring, but left too long in this container, and we will no longer be healthy or recognizable as the same before we were sent it. How long will we be left to cook and spoil?

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