Ed Notes Online: Labor Goes To the Movies Jan. 21 in NYC and May in Turkey: Screening of "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

Monday, January 2, 2012

Labor Goes To the Movies Jan. 21 in NYC and May in Turkey: Screening of "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

2011: Huzzah Huzzah "Incnvenient Truth behnd Waitng for Superman”-- documentry made by NYC teachers shown in evry state w/ no promotional $$ --Tweet from susanoha Susan Ohanian

UFT continues boycott of GEM film
They love the GEM-made movie all over the world - including New Zealand and Turkey - except at the UFT which continues to boycott what many consider the most effective case made against the ed deformers. But then again, maybe, just maybe, the UFT doesn't want the case against ed deform made effectively.

I know, I know. Even many of my friends who are critical of the UFT look at me with cross eyes when I claim the UFT/Unity Caucus/AFT leadership is often on the other side of the line with one foot in the ed deform camp. But the boycott of our film, which if the leadership really wanted to educate the members and should show it at the Delegate Assembly, is a perfect example.

Atlanta

Dear Friends,
I was unable to attend our local showing in Atlanta of Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, but I just got to watch my own copy…
Just superb, folks. I’m making copies for friends teaching in departments of education, for public school teacher friends, and anyone else I can think of. And I’m trying to figure out a way to legitimately use it in my first-year composition classes at Morehouse. And more. I’m busted financially, but I want to at least send you a tiny thank you. Million thanks for your work, your voices. --- Cindy

New York: Jan. 19: Park Slope - details on request.

New York: Jan. 21

The ITBWFS will be shown by the PSC as part of its Labor Goes To the Movies series on Sat. Jan 21 along with Waiting for Superman.

http://www.psc-cuny.org/calendar/labor-goes-movies-3

Labor Goes to the Movies
January 21, 2012 - 12:00pm

Special Screening and Discussion of Waiting for Superman and the documentary it inspired, The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman.

Waiting for Superman (Davis Guggenheim, USA, 2010)
From the director of An Inconvenient Truth, the most galvanizing film of last year attempted to explain the causes and effects of the failing US schools system. Although the director has claimed that he did not intend to create a pro-charter, anti-union bias, the film highlights the work of charter school and privatization advocates. These “heroes” blame ineffective teachers and their unions for preventing reform. The critical and popular acclaim for this film has sparked widespread discussion about education reform, as well as a counterpoint documentary. Come see why the American Federation of Teachers called Waiting for Superman “scathing” and “potentially dangerous” to US teachers.

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman (Julie Cavanagh, Darren Marelli, Norm Scott, Mollie Bruhn, Lisa Donlan, USA, 2011)

In response to the criticisms in the popular Waiting for Superman, a group of public school teachers and education activists proposed a different set of problems and solutions to the US education crisis. The result is a counter-narrative suggesting that low-budgets, lack of teacher support, standardized testing, systemic poverty and myriad other factors are to blame for drop-out rates and low scores. The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman challenges the common misperceptions and offers feasible solutions for students in New York City and the rest of the country.

Email Address: shughes@pscmail.org
Location Name: PSC-CUNY office
Address: 61 Broadway, 16th Floor

Turkey: Laborfest

Hello,
I am writing you on behalf of the Organising Committee of the VII. International Labour Film and Video Festival in Turkey.

Our Labor Film festival is an enterance-free and prize-free festival that has been screening approximately 50 films around 25 countries each year.
You can find information about the first year's activities in an article at this link:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/zeltzer230506.html

We would like to screen your film called "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman " during our festival in May 2012 in Turkey.
We need you permission and DVD copy.

Kind Regards,
Coordinator
Önder Özdemir

New Zealand

Hi all
Just seen your video on YouTube and want to say I really enjoy the
discourse you are creating. It is scary times in New Zealand. We had a
recent election and are under a National (centre-right wing) government again. Days after they won they announced that they want to start creating charter schools. They will begin in Christchurch (our quake stricken city) and South Auckland (poor area of Auckland). This rhetoric was not present during their campaigning. I don't know what will happen but we are going to fight against it if we can. Keep up the good work.
Kylie

Just survived my first year of teaching

============

Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on the right for important bits.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Norm, it's politics. My guess is that many Unity people love the film. You guys did what they didn't have the balls to do because they are a business union. ITBWS takes a stand. It takes a side. In the Unity world, this is called "moral purity" and bad politics.

I recently became a fan of the Wire. What a show. Everyone should watch season four which focuses on Baltimore schools.; Tuesday, January 3, 2012 at 9:28:00 AM EST

"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/cory-booker-clear-and-present-threat-public-education

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

This chapter looks interesting:

Class struggles: The UFT story, part 3

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Of course for another view, check out the review at New Politics of the Kahlenberg Bio on Shanker by Vera Pavone and me: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:
http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/
I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You can sign up for this free series at :
http://act.bcfed.ca/online-campaigning-for-union-activists/

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

Ex-HSA Teacher has left a new comment on your post "Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire ...":

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy Tyson
Professor of African American Studies and History
Duke University

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.
- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Full article with charts here.

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

More at Substance

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.
Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/on-growing-use-of-corporate-test.html

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

SEE MY VIDEO ON HARLEM SUCCESS RALLY 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Ed Notes Extended

Monday, January 2, 2012

Labor Goes To the Movies Jan. 21 in NYC and May in Turkey: Screening of "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

1 comment: