Monday, September 10, 2012

The BIG 2 on CHICAGO #faircontractnow PS THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING


The BIG 2 on CHICAGO




What Does Rahm Emanuel Believe?

When Mayor Rahm Emanuel is talking about youth crime, he assigns responsibility to parents and families for the values and attitudes and behavior of what he calls “gang bangers.”
When he talks about schools, however, he forgets that parents and families have any influence on how students behave and the effort they are willing to expend on their studies. All of a sudden, teachers alone control test scores, no one else.


Chicago strike

Forty five years go, fresh from Chicago, I began teaching kindergarten in Central Harlem. Instead we went on strike. A year later we did it again–and on issues that remain (to this day) open to fierce arguments among friends. They were tough strikes–and yet I remember them with both sorrow and joy. The students in my own children’s schools joined their teachers in off-site sort-of schools after the picketing was over. Relationships between teachers and students blossomed. But there was also great divisiveness between pro and anti-strike families. Much of that took years to recover from. And it wasn’t helped by some outrageous lies published by the media–which they apologized for personally but not in the NY Times itself. (More another time)
All this to say, the CTU needs ALL of our support–in every way possible Call friends who live there to be