Sixty Show at MORE Hardcore Chapter Leader Training / Summer Series Continues Next Week

Yelena Siwinski at MORE CL workshop

I joined Kit Wainer and Yelena Siwinski and 60 others at part 1 of the MORE chapter leader workshop last Thursday. Mike Schirtzer moderated. Part 2 will be in August (check here and MORE upcoming details). They have way more experience than I did as CL -- I only did 4 years but learned so much that I shared with the mostly new chapter leaders and delegates. I pushed for us to do this early in the summer since I imagined the new people might have some nerves over taking on this position and we needed to give them immediate advice and also let them know there is a support group for them.

I firmly believe MORE must not be a traditional opposition caucus that focuses on running in the UFT elections every 3 years but a service organization for UFT members who feel under served by the UFT/Unity Caucus leadership which often has other concerns - like undemocratically endorsing presidential candidates way before necessary - and if some Unity slug tries to tell you that this was the AFT, not the UFT, laugh in their face - the AFT is controlled by the UFT.

I taped the 3 presentations - there are loads of ideas presented by Kit (high school), and Yelena and me (elementary school). I focused on the political role within a school chapter leaders can play -- if done in the interests of the staff and not yourself -- you have some levers of power that you can use to build support and thus protect yourself and your members from retaliation. 



MORE Chapter Leader Summer Workshop - July 9, 2015 from Grassroots Education Movement on Vimeo. (https://vimeo.com/133271046)

Here is the report from the MORE listserves with an announcement of the next summer series next Thursday, led by the always amazing Jia Lee.

Over 60 people, many of whom were newly elected Chapter Leaders and Delegates, joined us at our Hardcore Summer Series Training last week!

Veteran Chapter Leaders Kit Wainer, Yelena Siwinski, and Norm Scott (check out their video presentations) led workshops on the nuts and bolts of leading your chapter, gaining support in your building, working with the school community to build a strong union chapter, and being able to counter anti-teacher administrators.

Thank you to all those who came out!  There will be a second session will be August 20th and we will have a Fall workshop with mentoring for  Chapter Leader/ Delegates in October, details to follow.

THURSDAY, July 23rd How To Build an Opt‐Out Movement in Your School
4pm‐7pm
The Dark Horse, 17 Murray St. NYC, Near City Hall, Chambers St, WTC
Drink specials: $4 drafts, $6 well drinks & $7 wine

High Stakes Testing and the Teacher Evaluation System are suffocating public education. As Diane Ravitch states ‐ the only way to save our schools is to starve the data beast. That is the mission of the opt out movement. Find out how teachers around the state are working together with parents to organize against high stakes testing and fight for the schools our students deserve!

MORE-UFT
http://more.nationbuilder.com/