Visit with the Chancellor

I know I am all kinds of late with this one but my school had the priviledge of being visited by the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education on October 19, 2006. My school is definitely a in the hood school. When I came here in 2002 I just knew I had left the zoo and was now in the jungle. We have managed to be in the news for some kind of negative occurrence every year since my arrival.

1. When they published the list of schools that were the 10 most violent in the city, we were there.
2. When they published the list of principals who were no more because of their poor performance, my principal was there.
3. The teacher who paid a semi-autistic Caucasian man to take his state certification exam because he could not pass, yep he was a transplant from a school in BK but when the shit hit the fan he was in my school.
4. The teacher who was attacked in the save room, and then had corporal punishment allegations brought against him claiming that he was the aggressor in that situation, yep my school.

All of that was in the past and we are now an empowerment zone school that has made an impressive turn around on more than one front but still it was quite a surprise that the Chancellor would show up at our school. The kids and all of the staff were at their best. And even though he reminded me of Jim Carrey’s character in The Series of Unfortunate Events I have to admit he was actually personable. And I think people were impressed that we actually rated a visit.