Randi Weingarten calls on superintendents: Listen to your teachers
"This de-professionalization is killing the soul of teaching," she said.
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten spoke Thursday in Washington, D.C., about how teachers are leaving the profession at record-breaking rates and how the AFT can help. She wants to create partnerships between local unions and superintendents so that decisions are made based on feedback from teachers — not dictated by the whims of national foundations. That requires reversing a trend to standardize teaching and learning.
“The disinvestment in education and the failure of many states to make teaching a viable career go hand-in-hand with another major crisis,” Weingarten said. “The de-professionalization of teaching.”
Weingarten’s address at the National Press Club, billed as “Freedom to Teach,” was followed by a panel discussion with education and union leaders from states and districts that have moved toward this approach.
In the early 20th century, the principles of Taylorism — a factory philosophy of achieving profit through labor efficiency — were used to creates standard school practices so that lessons could be taught by any literate person without training or experience, reducing the role of the teacher “to an unskilled laborer,” Weingarten said.
That began to change for the better in the mid-20th century, but now teachers face “prepackaged corporate curriculum, intended to standardize teaching to conform with the standardized assessments.”
“Scripted curriculum, a.k.a. teacher proofing, took this to the extreme,” she said, “not only CONTINUE READING: Randi Weingarten calls on superintendents: Listen to your teachers | The notebook
