Tag: Gunderson

Support the CTU’s Sarah Chambers

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In 2014 at the UCORE conference in Chicago, I had the pleasure of briefly meeting Sarah Chambers in a workshop.  Since then Chambers, like so many other teachers from the rank and file caucuses who make up UCORE, has been busy continuing to fight back against ed deform and for the schools her students deserve.  Very few teachers have fought as ferociously and vocally as Chambers.  As Michelle Gunderson put it in her post on Living in Dialogue, “If you are fortunate, every once in a while you will meet someone who breathes the fire of justice. In my life Sarah Chambers, a special education teacher from Maria Saucedo School in Chicago, fills that role.”

Unfortunately Chambers is under attack from her school district, Chicago Public Schools.  CPS has suspended and is seeking to fire Chambers because of her role in vocally defending students.  Please check out Gunderson’s piece above, Dr. Lois Weiner’s post titled A Teacher Who’s Dangerous- To Chicago’s Power Elites, and then sign this petition to support Sarah Chambers.

You can see Chambers eviscerate the Common Core at the 2014 AFT Convention in this video.

PJSTA Live- Episode 2- Betsy DeVos

Check out our December episode of PJSTA Live where I was joined by Carol Burris, Marla Kilfoyle, and Michelle Gunderson.  We talked about the appointment of Betsy DeVos but also dove into a more deeper discussion on how we build resistance not only to DeVos but to privatization in general.  We discussed the need, as unions, to do the all important work of site based organizing within our schools to build the foundation for the work that we have in front of us.

Watch the episode whenever you get a chance… on the couch, on the treadmill, in your faculty rooms at lunch time, or even listen to it in the car.  Please share far and wide within your circles, and be sure to make suggestions for our future episodes.

PJSTA Live- Episode 2 Coming Next Week!

Last month we shared with you the debut of our YouTube broadcast PJSTA Live.  This month we are excited to be bringing you our second episode.  We’ll record that episode next week and share it with our millions of many viewers.

For Episode 2 we will be covering Donald Trump’s nominee for United States Secretary of Education, the conservative billionaire Betsy DeVos.  Democracy Now! recently was dubbed DeVos, who has never held any job at any level, “Public (School) Enemy No. 1”.

For this episode we will be joined by three guests…

  • Carol Burris– a former high school principal in Rockville Centre who is now the Executive Director of the Network for Public Education
  • Marla Kilfoyle– a teacher in Oceanside who is also the Executive Director of the Badass Teachers Association
  • Michelle Gunderson– a teacher in Chicago who also serves as a Vice President for the Chicago Teachers Union

If you have questions for our guests or if you have suggested guests or topics for future episodes please submit them here or by tweeting us using the hashtag #PJSTAlive

A Couple of Links While We Wait for Opt-Out Numbers

As we wait to hear on opt-out numbers across the state today, a few worthwhile links to pass along.

Though their local union, the UFT, may be working against the opt-out movement in New York City, the teachers at the Earth School in Manhattan have an important message to the families they serve…

Public education is important to us. As teachers, we share a deep commitment to our school’s mission and have chosen public education because that is where our values lie. The founding teachers of our school envisioned a “dream school”: a public school to serve diverse students and families. Our participation in public education comes with responsibilities and implicit agreements–a social contract. We agree that all of society benefits when children have access to quality education. We also share the uniquely democratic hope that children who learn together will later govern together with more compassion, more social cohesion, and a greater sense of civic responsibility.

Be sure to read the full text of their letter.  It is well worth your time.

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Teachers at the Earth School

Over at Living in Dialogue, Michelle Gunderson of the Chicago Teachers Union write about her experience organizing picket lines for their one-day strike last week…

A picket line is sacred ground. As a labor organizer and teacher unionist, I do not say this lightly. Workers have fought and died on picket lines fighting for work conditions that respect the inherent dignity of human life. A picket line is hallowed ground sanctified by sacrifice.

Make sure you check out that whole post as well.

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CTU Picket Line

The CTU’s One-Day Strike

Today Chicago’s teachers waged a one-day strike.  The strike was not just for a new contract, but for a just public education system for the city’s students.  There are a couple of essential pieces to read regarding the strike.  I’ll link to each and share excerpts from them below.  First, check out this startling picture of the striking teachers taking to the city’s streets below…

 

First comes Jacobin‘s piece by Micah Uetricht who sat down with the CTU’s Sarah Chambers.  Here are a few of Chambers’ comments (but be sure to read the whole article!)..

They stopped paying our steps and lanes, which provide for pay increases based on time in the schools and degrees earned. Legally, they have to continue paying them, because we’re still under our old contract, which provides for steps and lanes pay increases. So they’re breaking the contract, which is why we’re going on an unfair labor practice strike.

Union leadership has indicated they aren’t particularly concerned whether the one-day strike is deemed legal or not — even though CPS has said it is illegal.

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The consequences of not striking are far worse than striking. If you want to see the consequences of not striking, look at cities like Detroit, where they have skyrocketing class sizes and don’t have proper cleaning services. Look at New Orleans, which has no public schools left. These are the consequences of not fighting the privatization and austerity agenda in public education.

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Labor needs to learn that they can’t be collaborationists. They have to fight back against the bosses, but also against the politicians that are hurting the workers. The only way to do that is to show militant force and withhold our labor.

A lot of unions have stopped using strikes as weapons. But striking is the most powerful weapon we have. I think our strike in 2012 started to re-energize labor; I hope that continues.

We can’t just be service model-style unions — we have to actually energize every single union, every single workplace, so our members, the rank and file, are the ones leading these actions.

Uetricht is also the author of the book Strike for America: The Chicago Teachers Against Austerity which you can get at the special price of only $1.00 this weekend as a special solidarity price!

The second thing to read, by the CTU’s Michelle Gunderson, was posted on Living in Dialogue.  She wrote up a blog post on Why We Will  Strike…

A teachers’ contract is not just about money. It’s an agreement between government and a community about how children will be treated.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I will always advocate for reasonable compensation for educators, especially in light of the amount of education and expertise needed to do this work.

But a contract is more than a pay schedule.

As a member of the Chicago Teachers Union bargaining team I see our contract as a way of building a school system where both adults and children can work to build a world of respect, caring, and a joy of learning.

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We’ve asked for a reduction in standardized testing to only include state mandated tests. Our schools are run through three layers of management – “downtown” offices, networks, and school site administration. At each step along the way, each level of management has demanded more and more testing. We know of schools where kindergarten teachers are using the Haggerty program and are required to give sight word tests to each child once a week. That is 20 percent of a classroom’s reading instructional time. That is beyond crazy. Children cannot learn to read if they are being constantly tested on their reading. And this is just one example.

We are negotiating for less paperwork so we can spend time and energy on our students. Along with the layer of management comes endless paperwork. Many of the lesson templates that administrators require are so tedious that they take almost as long to fill out as they do to teach. There is one thing I know for certain, no urban school district ever improved through increased paperwork.

We are being crushed under a punitive evaluation system that includes tests scores and observations based on the Danielson Framework. There is a saying that we teach what we test. Even worse than teaching to the test, an evaluation system based on a rubric that does not fit the varied forms of teaching necessary in a highly complex system perverts our schools into testing factories and with cookie cutter teaching. We are looking to broaden evaluation range bands so that teachers who are just learning their craft are not crushed by test scores that plummet their evaluations. In my mind, this is just a sense of fairness.