Meeting Sign In Sheet: Fill & Download for Free

Not so much an argument as a complaint because I caught them in a scam.Three years ago, the Chicago Teachers’ Union was re-negotiating their contract with the city, and things weren’t going well. My daughter went to a Chicago public high school at the time.Her school, like many public high schools, did not send report cards home to parents. Parents had to come in and pick up the report cards. Students would get the day off of school that day, and any time between 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. parents could come to the school and get their child’s report card and meet with any of their child’s teachers, all of whom had a designated spot in the cafeteria.Upon walking into the school, parents were greeted by two teachers who had a sign-in sheet. I was told I had to sign in before I proceeded to the cafeteria, where the report cards and teachers were.I looked at the top of the sign-in sheet, and it wasn’t a sign-in sheet at all. It was a petition to show support for the Teachers’ Union and demand more money for teachers from the city. I refused to sign it, and walked past the teachers and into the cafeteria. They seemed shocked.I should mention that I’m not opposed to the Teachers’ Union per se. I am opposed to them tricking all of the parents into signing a petition of support. I’m a teacher in Chicago too, but not in a union. And I’m also a Chicago taxpayer. My property taxes were raised 66% a few years prior to this, to cover shortfalls in teachers’ pensions. Over-promising politicians in the past created problems in the present that I have to pay for, and I don’t appreciate it.Anyway, I wrote a well-worded letter to the school about how shady that tactic was. They just want to have “proof” that the majority of parents support the teachers. All they really have is proof that not everyone reads what they sign when they’re told to sign something.The next time I went to get her report card, the Teachers’ Union people were still there with a petition of support, but they were off to the side and weren’t telling people they had to sign the petition before proceeding.

By far, the most appalling things I’ve seen other teachers do happened during my student teaching experience (that what teachers call their apprenticeship) at a Chicago public middle school. My cooperating teacher (mentor) was very nice to me, but she also happened to be the union rep for the school, and I witnessed a lot of her coworkers complaining about really petty things to her.Among the appalling behaviors there were:A teacher who refused to sharpen 25 #2 pencils for her students to take a standardized test, because those pencils were supposed to be sharpened beforehand. They were the official testing pencils that came with the other testing supplies. The entire class began their test 15 minutes late as the teacher, who had an electric pencil sharpener on her desk, sent the pencils to the office to be sharpened, because that was their job, not hers.An hour-long meeting with about 20 teachers. The entire meeting was to plan how each teacher was going to get their 15-minute breaks during standardized testing the next week. The possibility of working through a break, just once, to make everyone’s life easier, was never raised. At that point in my life, I was still working as a retail manager as well. We routinely worked 6–7 hours before getting our first break. These teachers… they were being asked to proctor a 2.5-hour-long test without a break, and they couldn’t do it. They weren’t even teaching then… just proctoring the test. Literally just being the adult in the room, making sure no one was cheating.Teachers who, knowing weeks ahead of time when their principals were going to observe their classes, showed up that day with amazing, small-group interactive lessons (what principals want to see), when literally every other day they just teach from the book. Although, I guess “showing off for the boss” isn’t too appalling. It was just shocking the first time I realized what was going on.A teacher who gave a test one day, then, the next day, asked the handful of students who passed the test to work on an unrelated billboard display in the hallway while she gave the rest of the class an easier test. That billboard display was something the teachers themselves were supposed to do. This teacher just outsourced her work to her students. One of those student’s parents wrote a well-worded email to the teacher and the principal complaining about that… complaining about his daughter spending a whole class period working on a billboard when she should have been learning. The principal apologized on behalf of the teacher, because the teacher didn’t see anything wrong with it.My oldest daughter went to a Chicago public high school. I didn’t teach there, but I was a teacher (at a different school) while she was a student there. At her school, some appalling things I witnessed were:A mandatory orientation for freshmen and their parents. Within 15 minutes of the orientation beginning in the auditorium, the students were ushered out of the room to tour the school and meet some teachers, while the parents sat through an hour-long presentation that was all about how to get free things from the government. It had little to do with anything we’d need to know to help our children, and everything to do with how to take advantage of every possible way to get money from the government.The school refusing to give me my daughter’s report card until I filled out a parent income level form. I finally signed the form, but left the income level blank (it’s none of their business), and they gave me her report card.Upon entering the school for report card pick-up (they did it in the evening, and all parents were expected to come into the school to get their child’s report card and talk to their child’s teachers if needed), being told that I needed to “sign in.” But there was no sign-in sheet. It was a sheet expressing support for the teachers’ union in their negotiations with the city at that time. That was three or four threatened teacher strikes ago now. This is why I’m wary of any statistics of support for the union from parents. I wonder how many parents were tricked or misguided into expressing that support.

Your RA notices that you’ve missed the meeting because they know all their resident names or because you weren’t on the sign-in sheet (etc.)They come to your room, repeatedly, until you answerThe talk about the importance of the meetings for a few minutesThey re-explain everything that they talked about in the meetingThey walk away frustrated with you, since you forced them to repeat workThey remember you, and when it’s time for them to put on their disciplinarian hat, they’ll definitely remember youYou miss out on a chance to socialize and meet people