Progressive unionism flexes its muscles at RA

On July 1, I introduced New Business Item #4 at NEA Representative Assembly.  It was supported unanimously by the Vermont delegation.  A team of fantastic leaders from the Teacher Union Reform Network (TURN) Caucus organized to support NBI #4, including Mary McDonald of CEC Illinois and CETT chair Maddie Fennell, who mobilized the entire Nebraska state delegation to yield microphones.

An all-star cast of union leaders spoke for NBI #4, including Massachusetts Teachers Association president Paul Toner, Montgomery County MD president Doug Prouty, former Fairfax VA president Rick Baumgartner, and Wisconsin State Senate candidate (and CETT member) Shelly Moore.

This is the text of NBI #4:

NEA will create a plan for presentation at 2013 RA to implement recommendation 9c on page 22 of the NEA Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching report “Transforming Teaching” which reads: “Transform the UniServ Program, making UniServ directors advocates for educational issues to advance NEA’s professional agenda.”

The NEA Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching (CETT) produced the policy brief “Transforming Teaching” with recommendations from real teachers on reform.  Recommendation 9 calls for NEA to “Address internal barriers to organizational engagement about teaching quality and student learning.”

The Rationale/background as published in RA Today is a follows:

The Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching provided recommendations from accomplished teachers which highlight that educational issues have come to the forefront more than ever before.  One of the recommendations from the report is substantial and actionable within the current budget.

Pretty technical stuff…. Why then, did it inspire the opposition to organize a floor strategy against it?  NBI #4 became a screen on which the regressive forces in NEA projected their worst fears.  The opposition did not listen to our arguments.  They simply let their imagination run amok.

While NBI #4 was defeated by voice vote, much was accomplished:

·         A substantial debate about progressive unionism occurred on the floor of RA, exactly the type of internal debate which a healthy union needs.

·         The entire body of RA delegates took notice of “Transforming Teaching”

·         The progressive leaders of the Association flexed their muscles and demonstrated a remarkable capacity to organize on short notice.

·         A substantial minority of RA delegates stood up on division and supported a progressive action.  I’m sure the NEA leadership took note.

·         9000 people heard about TURN and saw demonstrated the group’s excellent work.

For the record: here is the text of my speech introducing NBI #4:

While bread and butter issues remain an essential task of our work, in the 21^st century, unionism is shifting. We have the opportunity to take control of the quality debate more than ever before.   We see the link between controlling this debate about quality and our continued success in providing our members with professional pay, benefits, and working conditions. 

We need a Uniserv program prepared to support elected leadership at the local level in meeting 21^st century challenges.  Our Uniserv directors need detailed knowledge of the policy challenges we face as local leaders, and the ability to respond to those challenges – bread and butter and teaching quality, with a full range of contemporary technical skills.

In many places, local leaders tell me this is already happening.  The plan we are requesting will not change that.

New Business Item #4 has three parts:

1.       We are asking for a plan to be brought to the 2013 Representative Assembly.

2.       We are asking that plan to address professional development for Uniserv directors to support our locals on issues of education quality and leading the profession.

3.       We expect that plan to align the Uniserv program to the NEA vision and the needs of our local and state affiliates to take the lead on teaching and learning.

Many of us are encountering challenges to the survival of our union and the well being of our members.  We request NEA create a plan of action for Uniserv professional development and report back to next year’s RA, so that our local and state affiliates have the support they need.

Please support New Business Item #4. 

Update, state caucus positions on NBI #4:

Support: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin

Support - leadership: Maine

Oppose: District, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada

Oppose - leadership: New Jersey

Refer - Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana

No position: California, Delaware, Federal, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia

Awakening a Sleeping Giant

NEA vice president Lily Eskelsen's Netroots Nation keynote last night addressed the attacks on NEA.  She spoke of how we are on the front lines, because eliminate us, and the 1% takes away the largest single institution defending the middle class.

I saw this coming years ago.  I always believed that my union should be much more proactive in reaching out and embracing the aspirations of other working people, even if that occasionally meant compromising some of our institutional priorities.  I believed that vigorous action when others, such as private sector unions, were the front line would protect our union. 

Too late.

This why I have always had an interest in progressive causes and have tried to learn from leaders of other unions. It’s why I provide as much support as possible to groups like the Vermont Workers Center.

There is a tension between my interest in collateral circulation with other activists and my union's need for control.  In internal conversations concerning member engagement one point always stands out:

The problem with membership engagement is that you end up with....engaged members.

Engaged members make mistakes.  Engaged members may not have enough experience because they haven't had a chance to make mistakes.  They may do things that contradict the leadership, either accidentally or on purpose.  But if they just pay other people to be activists, they never learn how to be active themselves.  Lurking in the background: an awakened membership may well make different demands on its own leadership.

In order to have a truly engaged and effective membership, union leadership and staff have to give up control.  Engagement is the only recourse in the present crisis.  The equation looks like this:  There is a tradeoff between institutional control and member engagement.  Member engagement is the last, best source of power in the current struggle.  For our union, therefore, survival involves giving up control.  That's scary for some people.

Real organizing means helping people to find their own voice, not teaching them to parrot yours.  What better group to do this than an organization of teachers?

Awaken a sleeping giant of engaged teachers.  It's the only way.

Follow NN#12

Netroots Nation: Why am I here?

Attending Netroots Nation for the first time as a Democracy for America Scholar. What do I want to achieve?

In the last few years I've been deeply engaged in the nuts and bolts of progressive unionism and education policy.  After working all day teaching young children, then negotiating, serving on the VT-NEA Board, working for the US Dept of Education, etc., there is precious little time left for all of the other worthy progressive causes in the world.  But I believe that connecting across policy spheres is crucial to the success of progressive causes.  I am here to make that connection and learn about all the things I've been missing while actually doing the work.

One of the things I've noticed about the radical right is that there think tanks cross issues.  Look at Hoover - they have specialists in defense, economics, domestic policy education etc.  This enables them to develop a narrative across disciplinary boundaries.  The different policy areas become mutually reinforcing.

Contrast with the left.  Think tanks, such as they are, tend to work within silos.  The issue orientation leads the public to latch onto specific issues rather than a coherent and self-reinforcing narrative.  Teachers go, "LGBT, Native American? Those aren't my issues - I'm not gay, I'm not Native American."  Well dammit these are our issues.  Urban is a rural issue.  Rural is an urban issue.   

We are all in this together.

The great narrative battle is between private good and the public good.  The right believes there are very few public goods - maybe defense, but that the benefits of the society accrue to individuals, and therefore society can be atomized, privatized and government shrunk until it can be "drowned in a bathtub."

My view, one I hope we share, is that there are great public goods, things which are too profound and important to consign to the markets.  Drive a Ford or a Chevy, eat Rice Crispies or Cornflakes?  Private goods - that can be settled by markets.  But education, healthcare, marriage equality, civil rights public transit, the environment and, yes, defense, are great public goods, matters of profound social consequence in which we all have too big a stake to turn our back on the collective enterprise.  I refuse to turn my back on my neighbor.

We are our neighbors’ keepers.

I am hoping to connect with this bigger narrative here in Providence.  Wish me luck.

Follow the hashtag #NN12

State Teams Featured at LMC2

The second United States Department of Education Labor Management Collaboration Conference (LMC) is convening in Cincinnati this week.  The theme is harnessing the power of labor management collaboration in the interest of student achievement.  I attended the last conference in Denver fifteen months ago as a researcher, part of a team of Teaching Ambassador Fellows.  In addition to becoming steeped in the theory and practice of labor management collaboration, I had the opportunity to network with several leaders from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), which is an extraordinary organization that provides free technical assistance to improve negotiations outcomes at the local level.   That learning has proven very influential in changing the tenor of our local negotiations during the last year.

There is an innovation of this year’s LMC that is critically important: the presence of state leadership teams, both as presenters and participants.  Three states, Delaware, Kentucky and Massachusetts, are presenting.  These states will highlight work they have done to support districts in collaborative work.  Vermont is sending a team of statewide leaders, which I find tremendously encouraging.  We need structures and supports at the state level to sustain and expand the good work in our state which is already happening at the local level.  I am confident that our state leaders will find inspiration and practical ideas at the conference to help us move forward.

Mere process reform, however is not enough.  Sustainability of our work ultimately depends on connecting to a greater goal: great student learning.  Leaders at ED already get this; it is a theme of both labor management conferences.  In Vermont, for us to take it to the next level, and to be able to deal creatively and proactively with 21^st century education policy challenges, stakeholders need to refocus on this goal.  Thinking about collective bargaining agreements must shift away from emphasis on salary and working conditions, management prerogative and taxation.  Our CBA’s must become education improvement plans in which the traditional concerns become tools.  When I think of the tremendous civic engagement which goes into our teacher negotiations in Vermont, I see a gold mine of effort and commitment which could be harnessed to our common enterprise of great student learning.  Our children deserve no less.

Equitable Funding of Public Education

My friend and colleague Gamal Sherif teaches at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA.  We are both Teaching Ambassador Fellows for the US Department of Education (Gamal this year and me last year), and members of the Teacher Leader Network Forum, part of the Center for Teaching Quality.  We are both also union activists - I'm NEA and Gamal is AFT.  What I love about our friendship is the differences: I’m a rural elementary teacher and Gamal is an urban high school teacher, yet across these differences we share so much.  Gamal’s asked me to share his latest blog post and I urge people to follow his excellent blog ProgressEd.

Public education is underfunded because of:

1.       mis-management

2.       mis-use of our military in countries like Afghanistan

3.       warped emphasis on privatized wealth at the expense of the common good

Here are a few examples:

·         In 2001, the Philadelphia Public School Notebook reported that the State of Pennsylvania had taken over the Philadelphia School District. How has that oversight helped students and teachers be more engaged? What stability or efficiencies has state oversight provided? Most importantly, what are examples of effective school district organization? How can we help teachers create effective working conditions so that they and their students can flourish?

·         In 2011, The Washington Post reported that "[t]he U.S. military is on track to spend $113 billion on its operations in Afghanistan this fiscal year, and it is seeking $107 billion for the next." Are there better uses for that money?

·         The Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported that the outgoing CEO of Sunoco is receiving about $37 million in compensation for liquidating assets. How can we create a sustainable economy that honors labor and fosters a commitment to the social good? Individual excellence is essential, but we are all more effective when we advance social equity along with individual liberty.

If the explanations for inequitable funding of public education are accurate (numbers 1, 2 and 3 above), then what are the solutions?  Below is my list -- what's yours?

Federal solutions:

·         Reauthorize a modified ESEA that acknowledges "college and career readiness" with an emphasis on systemic creation of "school readiness." All children should arrive at school safe, well-fed, well-rested, and curious.

·         Re-visit the 14th Amendment and the Brown v. Board of Ed. decision with consideration of funding inequities that create a "suspect class." All schools should be able to fund education at equal (if not equitable) levels.

State solutions:

·         Ensure teacher representation on state-wide panels that roll-out RTTT.

·         Ensure equitable funding of all school districts akin to NJ's Abbott decisions.

District solutions:

·         Create real equitable choice options so that students can attend schools of interest anywhere in the city -- or across District boundaries.

·         Develop and sustain teacher leadership so that teachers lead the integration of curriculum, instruction, assessment and policy that engages students and teachers.

Union solutions:

·         Integrate the labor frame with professional and social justice frames for a enriched unionism.

·         Cultivate cohorts of teacher leaders who are connected and can advocate for effective working conditions, participate in teacher-led research, and foster democratic learning environments .

Administrative solutions:

·         Provide operational flexibility for principals to build community partnerships, coach teachers, know students, and build the capacity of learning organizations.

·         Require extensive support for nurses, social workers, therapists and counselors so that all students with diverse needs are recognized and supported.

Teacher solutions:

·         View teachers as experts and support the professional development needed so that teachers can effectively lead schools.

·         Create professional learning communities within and between schools and the community so that teachers are facilitating and modeling the collaboration necessary to life-long learning.

 

Common Core and Monkey Training

Wrote this before the RTT convening in Boston.  This is where I was - I will write more on this subject  with respect to the convening in the future.

I teach elementary music.  I’ll be touched more tangentially by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) than many teachers, but I do have wide experience thinking about and writing curriculum with reference to standards in both my endorsement areas, music and technology integration.  I don’t have to implement CCSS in my classroom at this point, but as an educator, I'm fascinated. 

The problem with grappling with the details of implementation is that it is important to be able to articulate the big picture, the broad principles which form the basis of the CCSS.  The big picture is helpful both to educators and administrators trying to get a purchase on how to begin the work of CCSS, and to parents and other stakeholders trying to understand the implications for students. 

Standards represent our aspirations for students, which then need to be interpreted through a rich matrix of curricula, increasingly fine grained plans for the delivery of instruction.  There many different types of curricula, such as the political curriculum, the district/building curriculum, the classroom curriculum, the shelf curriculum, the taught curriculum and the learned curriculum, all of which look very different.

I've come to the conclusion that the most important curriculum is the one that the teacher has internalized, enabling minute to minute decisions in work with actual students.  All of those other types just prepare the one that lives in the teacher's head.  In the heat of the moment we can't pull a binder off the shelf to make decisions; we need an internalized plan to guide appropriate instruction.

Hence the significance of the broad outline or principles.

·         The CCSS calls for fewer things taught in greater depth.

·         The CCSS puts greater emphasis on informational texts, which is a type of reading we use in real life.

·         CCSS calls for more persuasive writing and less personal narrative, again what we do in real life.

·         CCSS calls for an emphasis on higher order thinking skills, requiring new assessments that can actually capture them.

·         In math, CCSS calls for the ability to reason quantitatively, not just the ability to perform procedures.

·         CCSS aspires to have students be able to anticipate the next steps in their learning, and therefore be educational actors rather than passive recipients.

·         CCSS calls for higher order thinking skills (HOTS).

I'm interested in the potential applicability of broad principles of this sort in my discipline, music.  My Orff Schulwerk level III movement teacher Brian Burnett talks about how we make kids in into "trained monkeys" in music classes.  By the same token, math students who perform the steps of a procedure but can't ascertain whether their answer is within an order of magnitude of reality are also victims of monkey training.  I ask myself what a Common Core for music might look like.

I'm fond of giving carefully scaffolded composition/improvisation tasks to students as a means of assessment.  A couple of years ago I had a fourth grade class improvise pitches to the rhythm of a poem using their recorders.  The parameters I set were a Do pentatonic scale on G, using G as the home tone.  One of the students asked me if he could use an F.  I replied, "Convince me."  He proceeded to improvise a lovely piece in the Dorian mode, dutifully ending it on G, per the requirements of the assignment.  When he shared with the class, I asked him if there was a note that would be more suitable for the ending than G.  He paused and thought about it, listening inside his head, and replied "D".  I looked at him and said, "You understand the home tone."

Martin deployed judgment in his answer.  My only regret was that in the design of the task I had not provided easier avenues of deploying judgment - I guess we call that reflection.  In fact the other day I gave this same task to students again, but this time invited them to choose their own home tone from given pitch set, which most did quite effectively. 

Could this story be illustrative of how the broad principles of our Common Core aspirations could be appropriately deployed in non-tested subjects?  A rising sea lifting all boats....

Collaboration: Just a Fancy Word for Working Together

I remember seeing Jesse Jackson on TV many years ago.   He said something about language which has always stuck with me, “Don’t say ‘prevaricate’ when what you mean is ‘lie’.”  What he was getting at is the virtue of simplicity and directness in the choice of words.

The word collaborate has been all the rage in education, whether we are designing “collaboration time” among teachers at a school, or achieving “labor-management collaboration” between boards, unions and administrators.  It’s easy to lose track, when using a fancy term like collaboration, of the human dimension of collaboration, in all its simplicity and directness: people working together towards a common goal.

In education, there is only one goal that matters: great student learning.  All other subsidiary goals must be paths to that single thing.  Without that, you can collaborate all you want, but the result will be vestigial.  Probably not a good use of anybody’s time.

In my experience there are two paths to labor-management collaboration, meaning leaders working together to advance student learning, 

The first is charismatic individuals.  There are extraordinary people out there who “get it” and can draw others into a home cooked approach to working together that works tolerably well.  But there are three disadvantages to relying on charismatic leadership:

1.       There aren’t enough charismatic leaders

2.       Charismatic leaders retire

3.       Charismatic leaders can block the development of other leaders

The second approach is to create collaborative structures and techniques within which normal people can operate.  The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service is in the business of promoting this body of knowledge.  Techniques include Interest Based Bargaining (IBB), labor-management committees, contract language which permits flexibility at the site level, and salary benchmarking.

I’ll use IBB for a moment, because it is probably the best known (if most misunderstood) technique.  IBB is not a panacea.  Rather, it provides a civil platform upon which other types of work can occur.  It is virtually impossible to advance the cause of student learning when, as one of our veteran WCEA negotiators put it, “The two sides are shouting at each other through their spokespersons.”

Luckily IBB has a well articulated body of theory and practice, which makes it accessible to those of us who are mere mortals.  People can learn to do this – it’s not a matter of talent.

The danger of this sort of structure is that it will ossify into something ritualistic, that people will value the process itself more than overall end goal of the enterprise.  But, providing this detour can be avoided with a little “big picture” thinking (something that seems to annoy a lot of folks when pulling weeds) having a structure for ongoing conversations about local policy and progressive education reform creates sustainability.

Of course the ideal would be to have both the charismatic leadership and sustainability of structures to support meaningful reform.  But if I had to choose, I’d choose sustainability.  This isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon.  And there is an essential human dimension to the work which is not captured by a term like collaboration.  Let’s remember, as flawed human beings, the advantage of structures that support us in working together.

Responsibilty, Autonomy, and Reform - NEA Style

I was invited by Larry Ferlazzo to comment on his Ed Week blog Classroom Q&A on “Transforming Teaching” along with Dennis Van Roekel and Renee Moore. Here are my remarks; I urge folks to read the original.

In "Transforming Teaching," the NEA recognized one incontrovertible fact: you cannot coerce reform. There is reform done to teachers (we've seen a lot of that lately), reform done by teachers (think NBPTS, CTQ or TURN), and reform done with teachers. "Transforming Teaching" calls for the latter: deep organic reform rising from within the profession with meaningful and realistic cooperation from other stakeholders.

Good reform is ultimately about changing teaching practice in order to achieve better student learning. Without the full force and participation of the teaching profession this simply cannot be done.

A couple of settlements ago, our school board demanded and got a 7.5 minimum hour day. Administration immediately designated that the time before and after school as "collaboration time" and created uniform start and end times at all schools. In my school there was widespread resentment over what one teacher called "forced collaboration." People watched the clock. The minimum became the maximum. The scheme backfired, producing far less collaboration than might have occurred by creating a great climate where people want to stay and collaborate because they love their jobs.

This story illustrates principles of human psychology and group dynamics. Multiply that by three million, the size of the teaching profession in the United States. You can't do it to us, as satisfying as that might seem at times; you have to do it with us.

The NEA recognized the psychology of the teaching profession by forming the Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching, a group of master teachers charged, among other things, to tell NEA a few things it did not want to hear. What emerged is a picture of systemic reform by and for teachers to elevate teaching into a true profession.

"Transforming Teaching" calls for real reform by demanding the conditions that create great teachers: professional responsibility and collaborative autonomy. Notice that I said responsibility. Much has been made lately of that fact that there is no word in the Finnish language for accountability in the sense that we use it in American education. If we aspire to the level of the best performing systems we need to embrace an essential principle that drives these systems: collective responsibility.

Yes, "Transforming Teaching" makes demands on other stakeholders: on the unions and their professional staffs, on the US Department of Education, on legislatures, and on school districts. But read the document closely - given professional responsibility, we teachers are far harder on ourselves than any outside entity. Why? Because we work for and with kids and our lives are better when their lives are better. Teachers live reform and are the ones who must ultimately create it.

How Do You Spell Respect?

Yes, I know this book was published in 2009.  And yes, I know that it's 2012.  Perhaps this book was ahead of it's time and it's moment is now.

Against a policy backdrop of reductionist accountability run amok, The Mindful Teacher by Elizabeth MacDonald and Dennis Shirley quietly restores a measure of sanity and balance.  This book could not have arrived at a better time for educators feeling under siege.

The Mindful Teacher displays profound respect for the teaching profession by throwing into high relief the intellectual and spiritual dimensions of teaching.  It is a demanding volume that honors the reader by showing confidence in the intellectual capabilities of educators, drawing on the best of the philosophical traditions of both east and west.  The book is more than a philosophical tome, however.  It constantly grounds this elevated discourse in concrete examples of improved teaching practice and better student learning, through six moving case studies of urban teachers, displaying teaching as a profession in the finest sense. 

MacDonald is a teacher in the Boston Public Schools; Shirley is a respected researcher and academic.  Together they pioneered the Mindful Teaching seminars, really a professional learning community (PLC) which is a product of an exemplary school/university partnership.  Dennis Shirley is a rare academic who is humble enough to see the correct role for academics in the education enterprise.  He sought ways to respectfully support educators.  Rather than pushing an agenda on a group of hard pressed urban teachers, he supported a process enabling them organically discover the questions they themselves needed to explore.

The seminars took place over a four year period and yielded ten clusters of questions specific to participants, but universal in character, and an “eightfold structure” which could be adapted to other PLCs with different circumstances.  An example of a question I found particularly telling: “What does it mean to be a teacher leader? How can I help build support networks for teachers in a way that leads to my renewal rather than burnout?”

An essential part of the eightfold structure of the seminars is the role of meditation in creating a space in which mindfulness can grow.  The concept of mindfulness emerges from the Buddhist tradition, and the concept of mindful teaching is advocated in the book as a means of mitigating alienated teaching, a concept borrowed from Marx.  The authors handled the practice of meditation in their seminars in a way that made it accessible and helpful to people from a variety of spiritual traditions.

The Mindful Teacher concludes with an exploration of dialectical tensions in the profession of teaching.  The Seven Synergies are individually necessary and jointly conditions for mindful practice, including concepts such as a caring disposition, professional expertise and collective responsibility.  The Triple Tensions acknowledge the existence of polarities in teaching practice: contemplation and action, ethics and power, the individual and collective.  The faith the authors show in us, that we can hold these tensions in our minds in what Estelle Jorgensen calls a “both/and” synthesis, demonstrates a profound respect for educators as intellectual and spiritual actors.

I was a bit troubled near the end of the book when the authors referred to teaching as a vocation.  As a labor activist, I fight for professional compensation and working conditions, and worry that teaching as a vocation leads us down the path to martyrdom.  But then I realized what The Mindful Teacher had taught me: profession and vocation are just one more tension that can be creatively embraced.  I felt both moved and honored.