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Monday, April 1, 2019

How “illegal” teacher strikes rescued the American labor movement – VICE News

How “illegal” teacher strikes rescued the American labor movement – VICE News

HOW “ILLEGAL” TEACHER STRIKES RESCUED THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT
Organized labor in the U.S. is having a moment. Sen. Bernie Sanders recognized a staff union for his campaign, the first presidential candidate ever to do so. Kamala Harris, the California senator running for president, unveiled her first big 2020 policy plan, which is all about taxing America's hyper-rich to give heavily unionized public-school teachers a $13,500 raise.
As if confirming Big Labor’s new clout, President Trump took time this month to attack UAW Local 1112 President David Green by name on Twitter, saying he should “get his act together and produce,” a big moment for a guy who represents laid-off auto workers in Lordstown, Ohio. The broadside got Green on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, and a visit from another 2020 presidential candidate, Beto O’Rourke.
The nation is paying attention to labor again, and for that America has one profession to thank more than any other: the public school teacher.
In 2018, 485,000 workers participated in what the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies as a “major work stoppage,” up from just 25,000 in 2017. It was the first major increase in work stoppages in three decades, and it was nearly entirely driven by 379,000 teachers and other education workers, who accounted for 78 percent of all those who went out on strike.
But while teachers — with their #RedforEd movement — brought new attention to labor, healthcarefast-food servicegraduate student, and hotel workers also went on strike. Marriott employees, for example, led a strike against the nation’s largest hotel chain in December and won San Francisco housekeepers a pay bump and some workplace protections.
By their sheer numbers, teachers breathed new life into the stagnating U.S. labor movement — even with nationwide union membership at historic lows. Union membership stood at 10.5 percent in the U.S. in 2018, down 0.2 percent from 2017, and down by nearly 50 percent since 1983, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track.
“In recent decades it has become much harder to organize a union in the U.S.,” said Julie Greene, a history professor at the University of Maryland at College Park. “That makes this recent burst of organizing and successful striking particularly significant.”
Despite mostly flat union membership rates, the number of workers participating in labor strikes hasn’t hit this high in a generation. To put it another way: There may not be many strikes happening, but their size is huge. More than 24,000 workers participated, on average, in each major work stoppage in 2018. That’s tens of thousands more workers than your typical strike.
Polls are also showing a generational attitude shift: 47 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds want a “militant” labor movement rooted in a multi-racial working CONTINUE READING:How “illegal” teacher strikes rescued the American labor movement – VICE News


In Classrooms: Social Justice Humanitas Academy (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

In Classrooms: Social Justice Humanitas Academy (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

In Classrooms: Social Justice Humanitas Academy (Part 3)


I come into the Ethnic Studies class just as Sasha Guzman, wearing a denim jacket over a T-shirt and jeans, is walking around the room checking on small groups of students at each table. The 19 ninth graders wearing ID lanyards are tapping away on their Chromebook keyboards or reading screens. Guzman has taught for 16 years in Los Angeles Unified School District, the last five at SJHA.
The period which lasts one hour and fifty minutes had begun a few minutes earlier before I arrived and students know what they are to do since it is written on the side whiteboard:
AGENDA                                                HOMEWORK        
* Choose narrative                            *Academic paragraph due 2/28 by midnight
*Write academic paragraph
The spacious room has the obligatory clock and flag and a printer sitting on a table in the back. Playing softly in the background are Spanish songs. Posters are on the four walls and door of the room. Above the door is one that says: “A Proud Member of the Facing History and Ourselves Schools Network.” On the door is another that says “Protect DACA.” Propped against a wall nearby is a print of a woman with the inscription “Viva La Mujer.”
On another wall are two posters that hang in every SJHA classroom:
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IMG_2404
Three to five students sit at tables facing one another. The teacher’s desk is in a corner at the front of the room. When students have questions, they address her as Ms. Guzman.
The teacher has loaded software content on their tablets about the current assignment. Students have to choose a story from political activist, America Ferrera’s Americans Like Me. Judith, a student sitting nearby, shows me which CONTINUE READING:In Classrooms: Social Justice Humanitas Academy (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Breaking News: Donald Trump fired Betsy DeVos this morning on Twitter | Cloaking Inequity

Breaking News: Donald Trump fired Betsy DeVos this morning on Twitter | Cloaking Inequity

Image result for trump you're fired


I just saw this this tweet from Donald Trump! As it was rumored recently, Betsy DeVos has finally been fired!
lUkbD3
Who do you think Trump will nominate next for Secretary of Education now that DeVos is on her way out the door? Michelle Rhee? Rhee was said to be in the running the last time around and the rumor was that she was seen leaving the White House during the transition. Do you think Trump might even consider appointing Linda Darling-Hammond because Obama decided against her? Considering the fact that Trump is wanting to kill Obamacare again in recent days, perhaps he might see this as the ultimate slight.
Why the firing today? Perhaps because DeVos thinks huge class sizes are good for children—watch Anthony Cody in the background after she fumbles around and makes this fact-free statement,
or inability to answer questions,
or answering questions inanely,
or general disinterest and lack of knowledge about education,
I bet she got brownie points for doing this,
and this,
Alas, Betsy DeVos is no longer the U.S. Secretary of Education. At least until tomorrow. #FakeNews
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Breaking News: Donald Trump fired Betsy DeVos this morning on Twitter | Cloaking Inequity




A Life Lesson: Don’t Cheat Yourself. Read the Whole Book. | deutsch29

A Life Lesson: Don’t Cheat Yourself. Read the Whole Book. | deutsch29

A Life Lesson: Don’t Cheat Yourself. Read the Whole Book.


I just finished grading this semester’s major essay for my senior English classes.
My goal was to have each student read a book– cover to cover– and write a paper on that book.
Sound simple?
Not so much.
We are in an age in which the technology at our fingertips makes cheating ourselves out of an education marvelously easy:
Read the summary. Copy and paste someone else’s words and pass them off as your own. Rearrange them a bit if you like. Or pay for an online subscription to browse prewritten papers, and choose one to pass off as your own. Or if you’re a more sophisticated cheater with some cash in your pockets, pay someone you’ve never met to write your paper for you. Just send the ghostwriter a copy of your assignment and a credit card number and consider it done.
I am pleased to note that of the 118 essays I collected and graded over the past three weeks, only three evidenced academic dishonesty. However, this chiefly-positive result is tied to some notable, proactive strategizing to curb such cheating. For example, I compose writing prompts that are not readily answered by using summary websites or prefab papers for purchase. Too, I require my students to pass an interview with me in which we discuss the book that the student is supposed to have read. Finally, students must also be able to hold a conversation with me about their own paper, with the understanding communicated upon issuance of the assignment that students must pass their book and paper interviews in order to receive credit for their papers.
Passing these interviews is only difficult for those who have not read the full book and/or not authored their own papers.
When I explain my system– the efforts I undertake to help assure that students CONTINUE READING: A Life Lesson: Don’t Cheat Yourself. Read the Whole Book. | deutsch29

Teaching Intolerance | The Jose Vilson

Teaching Intolerance | The Jose Vilson

TEACHING INTOLERANCE


You’re not even supposed to be this public.
You stood out in a space that was 80% people of color. Your scruff and leather coat belied your notoriety. The managers and custodians stopped mopping to whisper to their co-workers as you passed by with the tacky cell phone pose. New York natives know not to gawk at people we’ve seen on TV, regardless of our perception about them. “Famous people” generally stroll through our city with little interruption from those of us who’ve been here before gentrification. They can buy their groceries, watch their movies, and dine at the local restaurant with little interruption. Perhaps you knew this about us and thought shopping with us on this quiet Sunday morning wouldn’t arouse much attention.
But I’m surprised lasers didn’t stream out of my eyes like Cyclops, burning your groceries and your scalp with equal force.
Even as you perused the produce, I couldn’t shake the images of you across the news, the braggart shaken off his pedestal. You’d spent years representing the worst of us only to have SWAT teams appear in your offices. Then, you re-emerged, ready to tell the country how you partook in sins. You helped foist a burgeoning dictator to the pinnacle of our executive branch and willingly provided white supremacy another level of prominence in a society already rife with suppression and disenfranchisement.
For years, you hid behind your profession, as if to say the suffering you’ve brought to millions across CONTINUE READING: Teaching Intolerance | The Jose Vilson