This is for every teacher who refuses to be blamed for the failure of our society to erase poverty and inequality, and refuses to accept assessments, tests and evaluations imposed by those who have contempt for real teaching and learning.
Reading is great, joining is better - please sign in. For BATs, by BATs, we do not sell data!
BAT Store
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We have now gotten a US Made and Union shop to sell us BAT shirts in all designs at a low cost.
Bumper stickers are coming soon and we hope to add more shirt types (tank, polo) if there is interest in the t-shirts!
Post by lcscienceteacher on Aug 4, 2013 20:22:03 GMT -5
Hi-- My name is Erin and I am a HS science teacher in Las Cruces, NM. I have been teaching for 14.5 years, in both private and public schools in SC, TX and now NM.
Thought Iʻd come over and say aloha! I am excited that you are trying this! Will check in from time to time to see whatʻs up. Easy to follow as far as I can see. Let me know when ok to share.
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High School Chemistry Teacher. 7th year HS teaching. Franklin Central. Indianapolis, In
Post by bookworm1939 on Aug 4, 2013 22:24:32 GMT -5
Hi. I am an Instructional Support Specialist in Perkasie, PA. Before that I taught Special Ed for 10 years. I was a union rep for 5 years, but passed the torch on to someone else so I can be on the negotiating team this year.
Hello! I'm so excited to see this message board and be a part of it. I'm not normally a contributor, but I plan to start changing that. I am naturally a glass-half-empty kind of person, unfortunately, and I'm working on it. I'll try to keep my negativity out. I have been teaching for 7 years, all of that time in 3rd grade. I will start my 8th year teaching 2nd grade and I am super excited for the change. I have a bachelors degree in Elementary Ed from UCF, and I teach in Orange Co. FL. From the beginning of my career, I have had a rough time. For my first year, I was very naive and took a job in an inner city school, where the neighborhood was full of gang and other violence, drugs, etc. When I say naive, I do not mean to insult anyone. But for a dewey-eyed girl raised in a very sheltered home, this was a HUGE wake up call. A lot of crap happened that year, and I almost quit over spring break. I left at the end of the year. So let me commend anyone here who can handle that kind of environment year to year. My next 6 years were spent in a semi-inner city school. I taught sheltered for the first 4 years. I dealt with a lot, but nothing that I couldn't handle. The school over over 1,000 students needed a relief school and after we got one, our staff was split up. I went to the new building with the new principal and helped implement a rotating classes system in 3rd grade. Despite a new and MUCH better principal, my next 2 years were hell. I was treated like dirt by a colleague who had, until that first year in the new building, been my best friend. Going off my anti-anxiety meds was another terrible idea and made my job that much harder. Not to mention the parents and students getting worse and worse. Compared to most people I see in this group, my experiences are not even close to the crap I see you all write and have to deal with. And I don't have the various degrees and other things to pad out my resume. But I hope I can contribute meaningfully and learn from you all as well.
Post by Michelle Ramey on Aug 5, 2013 10:54:28 GMT -5
My name is Michelle Ramey and I am a 2nd grade teacher in WA state. This is my 9th year, I have taught 3rd, 2nd, 5th, and I subbed for several years before I got hired on at the district I currently teach in. I am a building rep and our union's secretary. I love that we have a forum set up for us to use.
2nd Grade Teacher {WA State}, taught 5th, 3rd, and I subbed for a bit, this is my 9th year teaching.
Post by I'd rather be cruisin' on Aug 5, 2013 15:17:13 GMT -5
Hi from Florida. Doin' the happy dance 'cuz Tony Bennet is gone! I can't think of a better way to start the new school year! I am an itinerant speech/language therapist working mostly at the middle and high school levels. I am reading endorsed, certified in both speech/language and hearing impaired (which I taught for 9 years) and serve on my district's autism focus team. My hobbies are assistive technology...or anything technology pretty much, and I've been teaching for 36 years, 27 in FL. I am so fortunate to have picked a job I still love after all these years and I work with the best kids and some of the best people I know. All in all tho, I'd still rather be cruisin'.
36 years in Public education. 9 years in self contained K-12 Hearing Impaired class; 4 years in self-contained K-5 SLI class (severe language impaired); 23 years SLP, the last 6 years in Middle and High schools.
Post by buckeyebatgirl on Aug 5, 2013 16:12:10 GMT -5
Howdy, I am Brittany. I have moved around a lot in my 16 years of teaching!
My first two years, I taught in Muncie, Indiana in an open-concept, elementary school as a special ed. resource room teacher. I was so homesick for Ohio, that I came back.
The next five years, I taught in Dublin, Ohio (a suburb of Columbus) as a special ed. resource room teacher in an elementary school. I then taught at a private school for children with special needs in Columbus for one year.
Finally, I am in a district and position where I'd like to stay as long as I can! I now teach in Hilliard, Ohio (another suburb of Columbus). We have a unique set-up that I have not seen or heard about in other districts. Our 14 elementary schools funnel into two 6th grade buildings. I am in one of these 6th grade buildings and I love that 6th graders are separated! I think it keeps them younger longer! Also in this school, I made the switch to "general" education and now teach LA!
I am so grateful for the Badass Teachers Association! I feel the strength, determination, love, dedication, and support of so many like-minded individuals, and this has been sorely missing for me! I know that we are fighting a long, up-hill battle, but I feel so much more equipped to do so with BATs! Thank you all!
Post by Ellen Simonis on Aug 6, 2013 12:59:51 GMT -5
I have been teaching in WA and OR for the past 28 years. I have taught in urban schools with 2000+ students and small, rural k-12 schools with 68 students total, and several sizes in between. I teach English and history. I am a passionate union advocate, and frequently a pain in the ass at those meetings - I am involved on the local, regional and state level which I feel entitles me to be as critical as I want to be of my association, or as supportive of the same. I am my union, but I am not a "my country (union) right or wrong" kind of person. I have an 8 yr old son going in to second grade, and have learned some tough lessons the past year about teacher/parent interaction. I am a passionate supporter of public education and see the threat to that in this country as a threat to democracy. Period. And I hate that people use the terms communist and socialist interchangeably. Gag.
I've been teaching for ten years, mostly chemistry and physics. I am a co-author of one of the labs in the new AP Chemistry Lab Manual. I currently teach at Lynn English High School, a Title I public high school in Lynn, MA. Prior to teaching in Lynn, I have taught in several different schools, including a "no excuses" charter school (a disastrous experience) as well as "regular" public high schools in very high, moderate, and low SES towns.
Some of the badass things I have my students do in the name of science include eating a burning "candle", dropping eggs from the roof of the school onto my head, riding a bicycle down the corridors, lying on a bed of nails, driving a hovercraft down the hallways, and being set on fire by their teacher. The picture I use for my avatar is from a demo I do every year.
I grew up in Big Flats, NY. (If you write "New York" across the state, it's under the "w", between Horseheads and Painted Post.) I graduated as salutatorian of my high school and earned two S.B. degrees from MIT, one in chemical engineering and one in biology. After college, I worked for five years as a chemical process engineer and then eight years as a software engineer and operations manager for several startup companies. I changed careers to teaching in 2003.
My wife is a fellow MIT engineer. We went to Antarctica on our honeymoon. We have two daughters, ages 13 and 9.
My primary interests outside of teaching are music and dance. I play viola professionally and I am the dance foreman (teacher) for two morris dance teams. I have a wide range of other hobbies and interests as well, including caving, scuba diving, coffee roasting, locksmithing, LARPs/roleplaying games, bicycling, travel, amateur radio, camping & hiking, computers, photography, community theater, trains, skiing, and coins. Having ADHD means never having to say, "I couldn't possibly find the time for that!"
I have several websites. The one I use for teaching is mrbigler.com, which includes a full MOODLE site (everything on it except for tests is downloadable for free under a Creative Commons license) and a blog.
Last Edit: Aug 6, 2013 17:44:56 GMT -5 by jcb: added comment about avatar picture
Jeff Bigler
Physics Teacher; Lynn English HS; Lynn, MA, USA
My name is Karen Linch. I have taught struggling readers k-6 for 13 years. Time sure flies when ur having fun! I teach in Wooster Ohio.
All the badass teachers retired the last 2 years so now it's my turn to take a jab at it. They sure are a hard act to follow. I was told by my union president that my questions have put me on admin's radar. Sorta cool and scary!
There certainly are some fascinating people in here and I'm so glad to be part of this group.
I have 2 college grads looking for jobs. My oldest is a 4-9 science/social studies teacher - anyone in Ohio know of openings? My middle boy is business with his first interview tomorrow. My youngest is a senior in HS. Man time flies!
PE teacher at Green Valley Middle School in Fairfield, CA. Active in my local as Political Action Committee chair and was local rep. at this summers NEA RA. Plan to retire in 2 years.
Post by gailrichmond on Aug 7, 2013 9:44:42 GMT -5
Hi everyone My name is Gail Richmond. I am a retired NYS Music teacher. I taught for 35 years, 20 years 7-12, 10 years k-6, then for the last 5 years I was full time Mentor Teacher for the District. I was also Union President for 12 years. I retired to escape the madness and to be able to fully devote my time to activism. We have to help our colleagues lose the fear! I have an open Facebook page for the purpose of education activism. Feel free to contact me if you live in NYS so that we can network and of COURSE make sure you join the New York BATS!
My name is Bonnie Taylor and I have been teaching High School sciences for 18 years and took a few years to finish my M.S. and work as a Manager at an alternative school for over-aged, under-credited high school students in Philadelphia. I currently teach at Northeast High School in Philadelphia, PA. I absolutely love that I have finally landed in the kind of school that I've always wanted to teach in, but saddened that it's feeling the pain of the privatization movement. Thanks for starting this forum. With the numerous posts on the Facebook page it was sometimes hard to keep up. Now our discussions can be more focused.