Our Union: Fostering Reform To Improve Schools

Good teachers usually have good ideas about what it would take to better their schools, help other teachers, or improve education across their communities.

But turning those good ideas into reality isn't easy. Here's how it usually goes:

One teacher, who has years of experience and a knack for turning theory into effective classroom practice, has become an excellent reading teacher. So, she wants to design a course that will help other teachers use the best research to help kids read better. But she has her hands full with classroom duties (and teaches summer school to help make ends meet), leaving her little time to work on the course.

The course never gets designed. Other teachers do a good job of teaching reading -- but not as good as they would have if they'd taken her course. That means some students in the school district don't have the opportunity to learn to read as well as they could.

Another teacher remembers -- painfully, and in great detail -- the struggles of her first few years. Since then, in the classrooms next door and down the hall, she has seen new teachers come and go, often repeating her mistakes. So, she asks to serve as a mentor to first-year teachers and help them learn what she wishes she had known when she was starting out.

But her principal says that it was "sink or swim" when he was a teacher. It was good enough then, says the principal, and it's good enough now. In her school, new teachers and their students continue to pay the price.

Still another teacher recognizes that his students are beset by problems that his school just isn't designed to address. So, he wants his school to become a "community school" that focuses on academics, health services and social services, and is open evenings, weekends and all summer long.

He takes his idea to the school board, which is caught up in a debate over the latest hot-button issue. The board ignores his idea, but he is persistent. He approaches his school about the community school concept, where his colleagues love the idea, but the school has no room in its budget. The union rep thinks the idea is promising and has seen it work elsewhere, but the union doesn't have the funds to make it happen either. Teachers in his school continue to do their best, but students still walk through the door with problems that could be addressed at school.

Sadly, this is often the way things work in our schools. Teachers and their unions come up with good ideas, and, while some lead to innovations that help students learn, far too many wither on the vine because of a lack of funding, time or technical expertise, or because someone in power just couldn't let go of the status quo.

Last week, the American Federation of Teachers did something about this problem. To help turn good ideas into good teaching and learning, we launched the AFT Innovation Fund, investing in our own members and our own locals -- in their energy, creativity and experience -- so they can develop their own reform initiatives. These are initiatives that bubble up from real classroom experience, not plans that rely on a top-down corporate model that fails to appreciate the realities of teaching and learning.

Nationwide, successful efforts have shown that when teachers unions are engaged as partners in reform, there is greater ability to take risks, scale projects, and generate and sustain real results that help children. With the Innovation Fund, we are providing our local and state affiliates the mechanism to harness the power of collaborative, union-supported innovation; a vehicle to create a voice for good ideas and then share those ideas with other educators across the nation; and a laser-like focus on how to sustain those reforms and gains. What we bring to the table with this initiative is built-in voice and built-in buy-in.

The Innovation Fund has three major goals -- to build capacity to provide consistent, high-quality instruction; to help close the achievement gap by addressing out-of-school factors directly affecting student achievement; and to foster collaborative relationships among educators, their unions, management, parents and communities.

It's long past time we started tapping into the creativity, intelligence and dedication of our teachers to develop the kind of reforms that can actually work -- and be sustained -- in the classroom. If we truly want to prepare our children for the challenges they will face, we must take ourselves off the shortsighted, standardized-test-obsessed path we have been on. The Innovation Fund is an important step in changing this paradigm. With educators and their unions leading the way, we can bring new meaning to reform and new opportunities for our children to succeed.

Visit www.aft.org/innovate for more information about the AFT Innovation Fund. And please watch this spot for more union-led ideas about how to improve our schools and strengthen our communities.

Comments

[mlaiuppa]

Imagine that.

Rely on teachers rather than politicians to come up with teaching strategies that work. Golly!

While you're at it, get the used car salesmen, realtors and housewives off of the school boards and put a few teachers on there too.

[LarBear]

Can you say WE the People??? POGO: "WE have met the Enemy and IT is US...

Blaming "Unions" changes nothing..... Unions built this Nation... Give up what "Unions" fought long and hard to achieve...
40 Hr week
Overtime pay
Vacations
Lunch hour 2 - 15 min breaks
Health Care
Safe work conditions...... Much more....

Now, most people/ members think "UNIONS" are the Elected Officers... Members give up their Power, all to often to Officers.... That matches WE the People, who think Elected Officials, are "The Government"...

WE the People are Schooled, Religioned and Politically entrained to believe Control is Power... Control is birthed of FEAR... Fear reacts... Power is birthed of LOVE... Love responds...

WE the People are SCHOOLED, but NOT EDUCATED in our ability to THINK... Standard reaction is to blame Teacher's Unions... A Thoughtful RESPONSE would be more along the line of..... WE, need to change from a Teaching based Schooling System, which attempts to fill in information... Change to, WE, are born with an innate ability to think and learn... Everyone needs to be involved in a Lifetime Educational System, using guides, NOT teachers, with EACH response able for their own Education... Think honed skills, not information fills....

Politicians, Religion and Schooling do NOT desire an educated, WE the People... Religion, as Politicians have learned also, controls the Flock through Fear... People seek Religion, because they are entrained to believe, their "Soul" is in Danger, without Religion...

THINK!

[BabsfromKansas]

As a former principal, I resent the blanket statement that "we" are to blame. I saw my role as doing everything I could to support teachers.

My experience with the unions was not positive. It took me one year to get a teacher who left red marks on a child's neck removed from his assignment. I find that kind of protectionism reprehensible.

[rwe]

Randi, then why not disgard the bane of the education system ; tenure... Tenure allows negligent and incompetence to fester... use merit and review .. And oh yes... freedom of choice.. vouchers.

[browndoe]

The teachers' unions, AFT and NEA, are not necessarily part of the solution nor are they all of the problem. I did teach high school for a few years and saw things from the inside. Currently, I live in a community where the teachers thwart any standardization or tracking of a curriculum: every teacher does what they want. My son had NO science in 5th grade. The teachers hide their resistance to putting lessons plans on a website, saying it is extra responsibility and not in their contract. Ask to see their lesson plan book, and you won't get an answer. One teacher refuses to post grades on an electronic gradebook. This is nonsense and teachers use their unions to short change kids. We need some kind of merit system: all teachers should not be paid the same or treated the same. The unions don't rein in these underperformers; they elect them as officers.

[dadw5boys]

WHAT CHANGE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ??

WHERE THEY ONLY TEACH THE BASIC'S AND THATS ALL ?????

YOU MEAN ACTUALLY TEACH KIDS STUDY SKILLS ?

TEACH KIDS RELEVANT THINGS SO THEY CAN APPLY THE BASIC'S AND BECOME MORE INTERESTED IN LEARNING ???

NO!! WE HAVE TO TEST THE KIDS TO TEST THE TEACHERS !!! TEST AND TEACH TO THE TEST !