Teachers rising up in rebellion of 'everyday heroes': Randi Weingarten

Oklahoma teachers' walkout happens when you don't prioritize education:
Teachers rising up in rebellion of 'everyday heroes': Randi Weingarten

Melissa Smith has 30 students in her criminal justice class in an Oklahoma City high school — but only 20 desks. Remedial help for students struggling with reading and writing is gone at English teacher Anna Graven’s Oklahoma City high school, so each year they fall further behind. A student in Ada, Okla., just found Blake Shelton’s name in the plate pasted on the inside of one of her dog-eared textbooks. The country music star used the very same book in 1982 — 36 years ago. Many textbooks (if teachers even have any to distribute) are even older and held together with duct tape. A 20-year science teacher in the Sooner State left the profession to make more money as a part-time dog groomer.

Teacher advocacy for excellent, equitable, safe and well-funded public schools and livable wages started long ago, but the recent walkouts that started in West Virginiaand spreading across the country have captured the attention of the public because of the David vs. Goliath nature of the battle.

Teachers are standing up for their students and themselves against largely red states with weak labor laws and where governors and legislators have opted for tax cuts for the wealthy instead of investments for children. This has left education conditions deplorable and educators pauperized. The movement has even become a verb of sorts. “Don’t Make Me Go West Virginia on You” was the message on an Arizona teacher’s sign as she protested at her state capitol.

This movement is a rejection of years of austerity budgets that have stiffed education funding and kids’ futures in favor of tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations. Twenty-nine states spend less today on public education than when the recession began in 2007. But educators, students and parents are taking on the budget shortfalls with tangible results.

West Virginia, with a Republican governor and GOP-majority House and Senate, voted to give public employees, including educators, a 5% raise, and created a task force to fix health insurance costs, rescinding the premiums hikes in the meantime.

Oklahoma, also with a Republican trifecta, voted for the first time in 28 years to raise taxes to provide new revenue for teacher pay raises and school funding. 

The days of passive resignation are over. Educators, students, parents and concerned Continue reading: Oklahoma teachers' walkout happens when you don't prioritize education:

Teaching for Black Lives book release: #BlackLivesMatter “Required reading for all who care about the future of Black youth.” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Teaching for Black Lives book release: “Required reading for all who care about the future of Black youth.” – I AM AN EDUCATOR:

Teaching for Black Lives book release: “Required reading for all who care about the future of Black youth.”

ORDER TEACHING FOR BLACK LIVES, EDITED BY DYAN WATSON, JESSE HAGOPIAN, AND WAYNE AU

Teaching for Black Lives is officially released today by Rethinking Schools and I couldn’t be more hopeful for it’s impact on schools around the country.

By RICARDO LEVINS MORALES

I have spent the past many months in collaboration with two other leading anti-racist educators, Professor Dyan Watson and Professor Wayne Au, writing and editing this book to bring alive Black excellence and struggle in the classroom.

This beautiful full color book is a compilation of essays, teaching activities, role plays, poems, and artwork, designed to illuminate, the movement for Black student lives, the school-to-prison-pipeline, Black history, gentrification, intersectional Black identities, and more. As we write in the introduction to the book,

We recognize that anti-Black racism constructs Black people, and Blackness generally, as not counting as human life. The chapters in Teaching for Black Lives push back directly against this construction by not only providing educators with critical perspectives on the role of schools in perpetuating anti-Blackness, but also by offering educators concrete examples of what it looks like to humanize Black people in curriculum, teaching, and policy. Throughout the book, we demonstrate how teachers can connect the curriculum to young people’s lives and root their concerns and daily experiences in what is taught and how classrooms are set up. We also highlight the hope and beauty of student activism and collective action.

Leading educators, intellectuals, activists, and artists have contributed to this collection including, James Baldwin, Michelle Alexander, Eve Ewing, Bill Fletcher, Renée Watson, Monique Morris and many more.

And the book couldn’t have come out at a more important time.

By ERIN ROBINSON 

To start, given that I am about to begin teaching a unit on Black history for my ethnic studies class on Monday, I am personally excited to use the book right away in my classroom. But beyond just my four walls, this book is being released in the wake of the police killing of Stephon Clark, an unarmed Black man in Sacramento California. The book is also coming out in the wake of the release of the video showing Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood saying that it was “better financially” to kill suspects than wound them, saying, “Because if you cripple them you have to take care of them for life and that cost goes way up.” And it’s coming at a time of resurgence in activism in the streets against police terror of Black communities.

But the attack on Black people isn’t only of their bodies.

As Teaching for Black lives points out in the introduction of the book, the attack is also on their minds: “From the north to the south, corporate curriculum lies to our students, conceals pain and injustice, masks racism, and demeans our Black students. But it’s not only the curriculum that is traumatizing students.” And as Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation writes of Teaching for Black Lives,

In this edited volume, we learn that Black Lives Matter is not just a rallying cry in the movement against police abuse and violence but it is a critical framework for understanding the persistent attacks on public education.

Teaching for Black Lives is also coming out not long after of the first national Black Lives Matter at School week of action and it helps to chronicle the development of this movement. This action during the first week of February 2018 saw thousands of educators and students across the country teach lessons around the 13 themes of the Black Lives Matter Global Network with the demands of:

• Hire More Black teachers
• End Zero Tolerance Discipline; Institute Restorative Justice
• Mandate Black History and Ethnic Studies

By OLIVIA WISE

We bring you this book with the hopes that it will become a precious resource to educators seeking to empower students in a struggle for their lives and to anyone who is interested in joining the struggle to defend the bodies and minds of Black youth.

Order Teaching for Black Livestoday. Then encourage your community to do the same by sending out this announcement for the book to your union leaders, school principal, education reporters, educator Facebook pages, and beyond. Follow the discussion of the book on social media at #Teaching4BlackLives, or if you have press inquiries, get in touch with our managing editor, Ari Bloomekatz, at: ari@rethinkingschools.org

Teaching for Black Lives book release: “Required reading for all who care about the future of Black youth.” – I AM AN EDUCATOR:

As Teaching for Black lives co-editor Dyan Watson said of the reason she helped produce the book,

I have two Black sons. For me, this collection is about their survival, and the survival of children like them throughout the United States. Teaching for Black Lives is a handbook for all educators, students, and families who truly care about Blackness and the intersections of learning, teaching, and race.

---

Jesse Hagopian teaches Ethnic Studies at Garfield High School. He is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, The Seattle Fellow for The Progressive magazine, and blogs at www.IAmAnEducator.com. Jesse is the co-editor of the book, Teaching for Black Lives. and editor of the book, More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing. You can follow Jesse on Twitter, @JessedHagopian.

Teaching for Black Lives book release: “Required reading for all who care about the future of Black youth.” – I AM AN EDUCATOR:

Revealed: Secret rightwing strategy to discredit teacher strikes | Education | The Guardian

Revealed: Secret rightwing strategy to discredit teacher strikes | Education | The Guardian:

Revealed: Secret rightwing strategy to discredit teacher strikes
Manual provides ‘dos and don’ts’ for how to smear the strikes
Top of the list: ‘teacher strikes hurt kids and low-income families’

A nationwide network of rightwing thinktanks is launching a PR counteroffensive against the teachers’ strikes that are sweeping the country, circulating a “messaging guide” for anti-union activists that portrays the walkouts as harmful to low-income parents and their children.

The new rightwing strategy to discredit the strikes that have erupted in protest against cuts in education funding and poor teacher pay is contained in a three-page document obtained by the Guardian. Titled “How to talk about teacher strikes”, it provides a “dos and don’ts” manual for how to smear the strikers.

Top of the list of talking points is the claim that “teacher strikes hurt kids and low-income families”. It advises anti-union campaigners to argue that “it’s unfortunate that teachers are protesting low wages by punishing other low-wage parents and their children.”

The “messaging guide” is the brainchild of the State Policy Network (SPN), an alliance of 66 rightwing “ideas factories” that span every state in the nation. SPN uses its $80m war chest – funded by billionaire super-donors such as the Koch brothers and the Walton Family Foundation that flows from the Walmart fortune – to coordinate conservative strategy across the country.

Another financial backer of SPN is the billionaire DeVos family of the Amway empire. Betsy DeVos is the current education secretary in the Trump administration.

SPN’s previous campaigns have included a plan to “defund and defang” public  continue reading: Revealed: Secret rightwing strategy to discredit teacher strikes | Education | The Guardian:

Fake Teachers, Fake Schools, Fake Administrators Courtesy of DPE | tultican

Fake Teachers, Fake Schools, Fake Administrators Courtesy of DPE | tultican:

Fake Teachers, Fake Schools, Fake Administrators Courtesy of DPE

The destroy public education movement (DPE) has given us teach for America (Fake Teachers), Relay Graduate School (Fake Schools) and the Broad Superintendents Academy (Fake administrators). None of these entities are legitimately accredited, yet they are ubiquitous in America’s major urban areas.

There was a time in the United States of America when scoundrels perpetrating this kind of fraud were jailed and fined. Today, they are not called criminals; they are called philanthropists. As inequitable distribution of wealth increases, democratic principles and humane ideology recede.

It is time to fight the 21st century robber-barons and cleanse our government of grifters and sycophants.

Philanthropy in America is undermining the rule of law and democratic rights. Gates, Walton, Broad, DeVos, Bradley, Lily, Kaufman, Hall, Fisher, Arnold, Hastings, Anschutz, Bloomberg, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Dell and the list goes on. They have afflicted us with teach for America (TFA), charter Schools, vouchers, phony graduate schools, bad technology and bogus administrators implementing their agendas.

Without these “philanthropists” and their dark money schemes none of this would exist. Public schools would be healthy and teen-age suicide rates would be going down; not up. Instead we have mindless testing, harmful technology and teaching on the cheap.

This “philanthropy” is about profits, reducing tax burdens on the wealthy, imposing religious dogma and subjugation of non-elites. It is harmful to America’s children. The attack on public education was never primarily about benefiting children. It certainly was never based on concern for minority populations.

The Absurdity of Fake Teachers from TFA

 Over the last five years, there have been several wonderful books written on the Fake Teachers, Fake Schools, Fake Administrators Courtesy of DPE | tultican:

The Civil Rights Lawsuit Against Betsy DeVos's High School Alma Mater #MeTooK12

The Civil Rights Lawsuit Against Betsy DeVos's High School Alma Mater

Title IX and Gender Equity Advocates—

As we await Betsy DeVos’s next move to weaken Title IX enforcement, would you spread the word that her own high school alma mater, Holland Christian Schools, is now being sued for violating Title IX?  When the US Secretary of Education’s own alma mater flouts its responsibilities under Title IX we begin to understand the pervasive disregard for Title IX compliance that includes the majority of public schools nationwide.  

SSAIS today announces the lawsuit that directly stems from its work with the survivor’s family.

You can help by:

• forwarding this email or the link to toolkit/graphics https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NqtMAOAfuLuWS3bAK-QgXZ-ckq1myrBd
• posting and tweeting the short video SSAIS prepared about the lawsuit, DeVos, and OCR: Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbe8TXdoodg&feature=youtu.be   or   https://bit.ly/2uWTtiu    
• tweeting about the lawsuit. Please use the link to the video: https://bit.ly/2uWTtiu   
• sharing the press release link on the SSAIS Media Inquiries page: https://bit.ly/1OdaAhY

Suggested DeVos specific tweets:

Title IX enforcement K-12 is so lax that even @BetsyDeVosED’s alma mater has evaded the law. Now it’s being sued. #MeTooK12 https://bit.ly/2uWTtiu   

Title IX also applies to private K-12 schools that receive federal funding. But @BetsyDeVosED’s alma mater doesn’t think so. That’s why it’s being sued for violating Title IX. #MeTooK12 https://bit.ly/2uWTtiu   

Doesn’t @BetsyDeVosED think the students at her K-12 alma mater deserve to be protected by Title IX? After all, it received over $660K in federal funds. Find out what the lawsuit means private AND public school families. #MeTooK12 https://bit.ly/2uWTtiu   

Betsy DeVos is proud of her high school alma mater, Holland Christian School. Is she proud that they’re being sued for violating Title IX?  @BetsyDeVosED #MeTooK12 https://bit.ly/2uWTtiu   

Isn’t it ironic that @BetsyDeVosED’s alma mater, Holland Christian School, is being sued for violating Title IX?  SSAIS announces the lawsuit and explains its importance. #MeTooK12 https://bit.ly/2uWTtiu   

Why doesn’t @BetsyDeVosED’s alma mater know about Title IX?  What does this mean for all students? Find out why Holland Christian School is being sued. #MeTooK12 https://bit.ly/2uWTtiu   

Private school specific tweets:

Private K-12 schools that receive federal funds often deprive students of their Title IX rights. Confusing guidance from OCR is part of the problem. Here’s why @BetsyDeVosED’s alma mater is being sued. #MeTooK12 https://bit.ly/2uWTtiu   

Private K-12 schools that receive federal funds often don’t know their obligations under Title IX and deprive students of their rights. That’s why @BetsyDeVosED’s alma mater is being sued for violating Title IX. #MeTooK12 https://bit.ly/2uWTtiu   

If Title IX is good enough for public schools, why isn’t it good enough for @BetsyDeVosED’s alma mater? SSAIS announces the lawsuit against Holland Christian Schools. #MeTooK12 https://bit.ly/2uWTtiu   

SSAIS specific tweets:

Betsy DeVos’s K-12 alma mater received over $660K from the US Dept. of Agriculture. But the school flouts Title IX. Now they’re being sued after the survivor learned her rights from SSAIS. @BetsyDeVosED #MeTooK12 https://bit.ly/2uWTtiu   

After their daughter’s Title IX rights were violated in a public high school, SSAIS helped another family sue Betsy @BetsyDeVosED’s alma mater, Holland Christian School. #MeTooK12 https://bit.ly/2uWTtiu   

Link to video transcript: http://stopsexualassaultinschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Transcript-of-Holland-Christian-Schools-lawsuit-video.pdf

Holland Christian Schools being sued for Title IX violations - News - Holland Sentinel - Holland, MI - http://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/20180411/holland-christian-schools-being-sued-for-title-ix-violations on @hollandsentinel h/t Bill Ries-Knight (Steelhoof)

Big Education Ape: To Understand Betsy DeVos’s Educational Views, View Her Education - The New York Times - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/06/to-understand-betsy-devoss-educational.html

Big Education Ape: Mother Jones on Betsy DeVos’ Sheltered Background (and More) | deutsch29 - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/02/mother-jones-on-betsy-devos-sheltered.html

Big Education Ape: Dutch Treat: Detsy DeVos and the Christian Schools Movement - LA Progressive - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/03/dutch-treat-detsy-devos-and-christian.html

What a great teacher is worth - Salon.com

What a great teacher is worth - Salon.com:

What a great teacher is worth
Think about a remarkable teacher you had — do you remember what they taught, or how they taught you?

Who was the best teacher you ever had? Which mentor immediately stands out as the one who has been most influential and inspirational in your life? This could have been a teacher from elementary school, or high school, or college. It could be a coach or a neighbor or a relative. Whoever it was, your teacher was someone who was an absolute master at helping you learn far more than you ever imagined possible.

Bring to mind a clear image of this remarkable teacher. Hear your teacher’s voice, concentrating on not only its unique resonance and tone but also some special message that still haunts you. Feel the inspiration that still lives within you as a result of your relationship with this teacher. Think about the personal qualities this person exuded that commanded your respect and reverence. As you recall memories of this individual who was such a powerful model in your life, it is likely that you can identify and list certain personal characteristics that were most powerful. As you review this list of qualities, it may surprise you to realize that very few of these notable attributes have to do with the content of what this teacher taught or even with personal teaching methods. What is ironic about this phenomenon is that much of teacher preparationcontinues to be focused on methods courses and in areas of content specialty. The assumption behind this training for elementary and secondary teachers is that when you study a subject in depth and learn the proper methods of instruction, presumably you then become a more competent and outstanding teacher. Not included in this process are a number of other variables that make up the essence of all great educators and infuse them with power—their distinctly human dimensions, including What a great teacher is worth - Salon.com:

Arne Duncan Has Learned Nothing | ACADEME BLOG

Arne Duncan Has Learned Nothing | ACADEME BLOG:

Arne Duncan Has Learned Nothing

Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, writes, “Our efforts to improve schools have worked well where people have led with courage. To say otherwise is wrong.” As one who has spent 25 of the last 40 years in the classroom, as a secondary-school teacher, an adjunct college instructor and as a full-time college professor, I am certain it is he who is wrong. And that the real courage, in education, lies elsewhere.

Like so many making decisions about education in America, Duncan is besotted by numbers—or massages them, at least, to make predetermined points. He starts his recent article for The Washington Post with two paragraphs celebrating that fourth- and eighth-grade test scores are up—before admitting that twelfth-grade scores are flat. His explanation for this, circular and self-serving, is that high schools have resisted reform.

He then celebrates the increase in high-school graduation—but he looks at this only as a number to be proud of, writing that getting “more kids over the finish line of high school means many more have a chance to continue their education.” In light of twelfth-grade flat scores, that can be no more than just pushing recognition of failure, in point of fact, on to the next level: many of these graduates (as a recent look into graduation rates in the District of Columbia shows) should not have graduated at all and will face extensive remediation if they go on to college.

Duncan goes on to take credit for the increase in percentages of Americans with two- and four-year degrees and for the increased number of Latinos in college. I suspect that he knows these numbers cannot be connected to his “reforms” for Arne Duncan Has Learned Nothing | ACADEME BLOG:

New Rule: Pencils Down | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) - YouTube

New Rule: Pencils Down | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) - YouTube:

New Rule: Pencils Down 

In a surprising move, Bill sticks up for children in his editorial New Rule.

‘Real Time': Bill Maher Defies Himself to Come Out Swinging for Kids (and Striking Teachers)

Bill Maher used the “New Rules” segment of Friday night’s episode of “Real Time” to do something even he couldn’t believe he was doing: advocating for kids.

Specifically, Maher weighed in on the ongoing wave of teachers strikes in states like Kentucky and Oklahoma, likening underfunded schools and underpaid children to neglectful parenting. “There is a revolt brewing in the teacher’s lounge these days, and it’s long overdue. #TimesUp, meet pencils down,” he said.

Also Read:'Real Time': Bill Maher Mocks Conservatives Who Hate Hollywood as Jealous Haters

But of course, Maher also noted how weird this topic is for him, as he famously can’t stand kids.

“I know, me sticking up for kids? It’s like Mike Pence fighting for gay adoption,” Maher joked.

But, Maher said, he was recently struck by a social media post from a teacher in Arizona, who shared her pay stub, that went viral. “Probably because she’s one of the people we entrust with our children. And she makes $320 bucks a week.”

“How do people, even the burdened taxpayer, justify this? We were all kids, we remember early learning,” he continued. “You have those moments imprinted on your brain. A teacher was your first mentor, your first role model.”

Or, said, “if you grew up in Florida, your first lay.”

Also Read:'Real Time': Billy Bush Admits Career Worries Made Him Not Shut Trump's 'P--' Speech Down

Maher noted teachers in West Virginia went on strike for a 5 percent pay raise. That’s “not a lot, but it helps when you have to pay for your own paper, your own pencils, and now, your own bullets.”

“Here’s an idea, don’t give the teachers guns, give them a living wage. They’re not asking for the world, just enough of a raise so they don’t have to drive an Uber three nights a week,” Maher said. “It isn’t  Continue reading: ‘Real Time': Bill Maher Defies Himself to Come Out Swinging for Kids (and Striking Teachers)

Meet the Activist at the Heart of the U.S. Teacher Protests | Need to Know | OZY

Meet the Activist at the Heart of the U.S. Teacher Protests | Need to Know | OZY:

MEET THE ACTIVIST AT THE HEART OF THE U.S. TEACHER PROTESTS

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Because the teachers’ movement is on the rise.

This week, thousands of people descended on the Oklahoma state Capitol, holding signs that declared, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!” and “Give us the tools we need so we can succeed!” It was the latest in a string of teacher walkouts in favor of increased education funding. And if you squinted hard enough at the picket lines in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Illinois and Puerto Rico in recent weeks, you’d have seen the same diminutive 60-year-old New Yorker: Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Long one of the most powerful — and controversial — figures in the labor movement, Weingarten has emerged as a face of a nationwide battle for more resources for public education that has taken a bold, even desperate, turn after years of budget cuts by states and school districts. West Virginia teachers won a 5 percent pay raise after shutting down the state’s schools for nearly two weeks. Oklahoma saw its third day of walkouts Wednesday, with educators demanding more classroom funding — even after the legislature tried to avert the walkout with a $6,100 teacher pay raise. Kentucky teachers are storming their Capitol this week to protest budget cuts and pension changes. More states are likely to join in. When asked why teachers are striking now, Weingarten says, “Because the time for passive resignation is over.”

OUR WEAPON IS OUR VOTE, AND OUR MISSION IS THE 2018 ELECTIONS.

RANDI WEINGARTEN

The situation has become so dire in Oklahoma that many public schools have been forced to operate on a four-day week. Textbooks are severely outdated and falling apart, and buildings are in disrepair, including defective heating systems that force kids to bundle up head to toe in the winter. Weingarten says she spoke to an Oklahoma social studies teacher who has kids that are forced to sit on the floor because there aren’t enough desks. “The inequity for kids in this country is real,” she says.

The daughter of a schoolteacher who went on an illegal strike when Weingarten was in high school, the labor leader is rooted in education and activism. Her suburban high school outside New York didn’t want for much — from rigorous coursework to ample extracurriculars — but when she later taught history at Clara Barton High School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, she was Continue Reading: Meet the Activist at the Heart of the U.S. Teacher Protests | Need to Know | OZY: