Teachers who Dare

Claiming our Power, Transforming Our Schools 

May 5 Central High School 8:30-1:30

NJTAG group sponsored this conference, and the panel again had Stan Karp and Michelle Fine like the last PD event I attended.  I felt like a groupie.  But it was more good information just like the last panel.  The principal of Central High School made an encouraging speech.  He joked that someone had asked him if he still let those leftist meetings in his school? He replied would you rather I let fascist meetings in my school?

The keynote was Dr. Lois Weiner.  She just coedited a book called The Global Assault on Teachers, Teaching, and their Unions.  She says it is a worldwide movement to defund and dismantle public education.  Corporations see the potential for big money in the takeover of education through testing and privatization of schools.  She says it is not a conspiracy because it isn’t secret, it’s out there in full view and it is happening all over the world, so teachers have to fight it together all over the world.  She even showed Merrill Lynch quotes from the late 1990’s about changing education to treat parents as customers and the school as a product to sell. Lois says the answer cannot be “we are helping our kids by beating up on their teachers.”  She wants us all to join this website: teachersolidarity.com

She said we have to occupy the unions.  It is only through strengthening unions that we will have a chance to fight back.  If we joined together with local unions, and joined in solidarity with teachers fighting and protesting and advocating for students all over the world, it would really be a strong and growing movement.  She thought then parents would jump on board and be willing to protest the tests and takeovers, and with parents we could stop it.  It’s not too late to stop it.

The workshop was a presentation of a school teacher who leads teachers through Haiti for social justice trip.  Then the panel with my two favorite protesters, talking more about Christie, Cerf and the Zuckerberg money as well as the move to privatization all over NJ.  The closing keynote was a gentleman named Brian Jones who is a 4^th grade teacher in Brooklyn.  He co narrated The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman. He described his school having a Treyvon Martin day recently.  Everyone wore hoodies and discussed racism, oppression, intolerance, violence at his school.  They wore pins and had meetings.  A first grader compared the day to a Martin Luther King’s march.  He said his administration read a quote from Malcolm X over the loud speaker for it, so was supportive.  He felt schools are ready and embrace change if teachers would lead the way.

The people who sponsored the event seem like very dedicated people and I was disappointed to not stay for the meeting of TALIN afterward but had a conflict.  I got on their email list and plan to become a regular member, I really like this group.  They are starting a NEW caucus to learn to work with the Newark Teacher Union.  They are having a meet and greet in a bar in Newark the day we have the special education conference in Montclair 5/31. It is my son’s 11^th birthday so I can’t go –  but it will be other progressive Newark teachers at a bar so it might be very cool….if anyone wants to go….I got a stack of flyers.