New Strategy for De-testing?

Old Fat Naked Women For Peace

Thanks to Juanita Doyon

Planning to Change the World

True ed reform will take a merger of Teach for America like fervor with social justice oriented teachers who see solutions lie way beyond the narrow "all we have to do is get better teachers and close the so-called achievement gap." Add a dolop of those who want to reform teacher unions (not the phony ed reformers who see unions that agree to do away with tenure and teacher rights as "progressive")so they battle for full funding of education and stop looking the other way when money appears magically for wars and bailouts. (Excuse the truncated version.)

Don’t forget— Order your plan book by Friday, Aug. 1 to receive a discount price.

Planning to Change the World: A Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers 2008-2009 www.justiceplanbook.com A NYCoRE and Education for Liberation Publication Dear NYCoRE Member, Planning to Change the World continues to excite educators nationwide, with almost 900 books ordered in less than three weeks. Educators from Hawaii to Canada, New York to Puerto Rico are buying this unique resource. You still have time to pre-order yours at the discount price of $14 plus shipping and handling. Orders placed by August 1 will be shipped in August. Please remind your friends and colleagues that this special offer expires in less than a week. After August 1, the price increases. All proceeds from the sale of this book support the work of the Education for Liberation Network and the New York Collective of Radical Educators. Planning to Change the World is a plan book for educators who believe their students can and will change the world. It is designed to help teachers translate their vision of a just education into concrete classroom activities. This unique resource has all the things you would expect in a lesson plan book plus: Weekly planning pages packed with important social justice birthdays and historical events Lesson plans and resources related to those dates Tips from social justice teachers across the country Inspirational quotes to share with students Thought-provoking essential questions to spark classroom discussions on critical issues Reproducible social justice awards for students …and much more BUY THE BOOK! Click Image to View Sample Pages Praise for Planning to Change The World ...an imaginative and innovative idea in the field of education...something that teachers all over the country who have social consciences will find useful. —Howard Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States" A unique and powerful teaching tool that honors students by bringing to the forefront the stories of their communities. —Lisa Delpit, author of "Other People's Children" Useful, hopeful and visionary. —Wayne Au, Rethinking Schools Planning to Change the World, for me, is an integration of the multitude of elements that I have tried to combine…to make my classroom a transformative environment. —Cristen Chapman, public high school social studies teacher BUY THE BOOK! Planning to Change the World was created by the New York Collective of Radical Educators and the Education for Liberation Network.

Teachers Unite

This past year I spent as much time working with Teachers Unite as with ICE and I was honored to be asked by Sally Lee to join the steering committee. I'll get into more details on why I think that socially committed teachers who see beyond the classroom can be the core of a progressive reform movement, which absolutely cannot occur without a progressive UFT. Of course, 40 years of waiting to see the UFT change into a progressive union is like watching grass grow. Or golf.

Sally is doing great work in reaching out to many of these teachers (as is NYCORE, which is where I met Sally.) Yesterday, I went to have lunch with one of Sally's contacts, a soon to be 4th year former teaching fellow who is not leaving. While waiting for her at a place in the Village, Sally walked out not knowing that was where we were meeting. "I'm not stalking you," I said, "but while you're here, stay around so you can point out who I'm meeting."

After the intros, Sally left us to talk and I learned a hell of a lot from this wonderfully committed teacher, who is already training new fellows, as we talked about small schools, large schools, teaching reading, special ed, the union, etc.

Boy am I getting an education. Old farts can learn new tricks.

Next year we are planning sessions for newer teachers on union-related issues, like "What are your rights?" (At least we can tell them they basically have none and not to expect much support from the union.) One of the potential themes is navigating the minefield of school and union politics, something they don't teach in Ed 101 or in Teach for America workshops (hey, TFA, I'm available.)

Here is an excerpt from the July TU newsletter. (Read the entire edition at Norm's Notes.) Also check out the Teachers Unite web site.

P.D. You'll Love

Are you a teacher looking to:

· grow as an educational leader?

· play a role in grassroots campaigns for social justice where you work?

· participate in community-based Professional Development?

Teachers Unite will be hosting an open informational meeting August 25th (please check back with Teachers Unite for details) where educators can learn more about our growing work with grassroots activists throughout the city.

Teachers Unite is building a movement of public school teachers who play a critical role in working for social justice. Our members contribute their insight and expertise as educators to grassroots organizing campaigns that demand justice in New York City communities, particularly in schools. Teachers Unite seeks to defend public education by rebuilding the relationship between teachers, students, families and communities as partners building power for social change.

Some examples of how teachers can contribute to community organizations:

· lead a workshop about innovative pedagogy and educational issues
· give an educator's perspective on life within a NYC public school
· provide training around lesson- or workshop-planning, tutoring or other instruction
· conduct outreach to neighborhood colleagues about a community issue

Planning to Change the World

From NY Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE)

Planning to Change the World, the social justice teacher’s plan book published by the network and NYCoRE, is an enormous success. In the first six days of sales, we have sold more than 550 planners. We are well on our way to making this book an underground hit!

I have attached a flier that you can copy and put in teachers’ mailboxes or pass out at relevant events.
We also have a new Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=681828705360.

You can help spread the word by checking out the page and becoming a friend. If your organization or school would like to place a bulk order, please contact bree@nyu.edu or tara@edliberation.org

Remember, all proceeds from sales of this planner support the work of the network and NYCoRE, so we very much appreciate your participation in this exciting project.

Thanks.
Bree and Tara

Planning to Change the World: A Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers
Order your copy today at www.justiceplanbook.com.

Can TFA's Be Saved?

I was at a small meeting yesterday that was attended by a 4th year Teach for America alum. Not biased against the union, she understands what the UFT leadership is all about and is interested in knowing more so that one day she could run for chapter leader. She wants to know about the rights of union members and how to defend them.

"The first few years of teaching, you barely keep your head above water," she said, "and you don't think much about your rights." She talked about the TFA training, which she said is really dependent on the group leader. After the summer institute, recruits do not have much to do with TFA, she said.

We talked about reaching out to other TFA's, or those that stay. Maybe even a campaign to get more to stay. This TFA is a politically conscious about the larger socio-political context of teaching and feels sharing that viewpoint with others would be helpful.

"Teach for America is all about a narrow concept: closing the achievement gap. Results count. The idea of teaching the whole child is not really part of their equation," she said. "Luckily, I went for my masters at an institution that took the opposite approach and focused on the whole child. Maybe too much. So I got the benefit of both worlds."

This TFA gets it and is jumping into the broader social justice struggle that goes beyond the achievment gap and over time hopes to get other teachers to do the same.

Over time I got to see kids who did not have an achievement gap at my school still get lost to the streets and some that were behind find success later on. So I've never seen closing the achievement gap as the end all and be all. Fighting the lure of the streets and family dissolution seemed to be part of the bigger battle.


Read the followup: The story of A & E

Would College Educated People Send Their Kids to KIPP?

Social justice issues and more:
http://schoolinginequality.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-do-we-teach-them.html
http://mizmercer.edublogs.org/2008/05/10/what-do-they-need-part-iii/

Jetblogged

So let's get this straight. I leave Tokyo at 11 AM on May 1 and arrive in New York at 10:30 AM on May 1.

I think I need a nap.

Before I go, make sure to read the great social justice teaching debate going on at Eduwonkette where Sol Stern and Bill Ayers do dueling guest editorials. Check out the various comments in all the posts - I chipped in a few, the gist of which...........
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The Conscious Classroom and Social Justice

This year I have shifted my priorities from working mostly on union related matters to broader-based activities, like working with Sally Lee of Teachers Unite on the Privatization forums and other concerns. Sally has certainly given me a heightened awareness of social justice issues through the groups she is working with and I am proud to have been asked to join the TU steering committee (I accept the nomination.) Her goal is to bring teachers into greater touch with some of these core issues. Teachers Unite is dedicated to building an intergenerational movement of progressive and left teachers to fight in the larger struggle against injustice.

Reaching this group of teachers, which we have not been successful in doing in ICE, is part of the reason for my shift in direction. Many of these teachers either see the UFT as irrelevant or, worse, as an obstruction to good teaching, mistakenly assuming a defense of teacher rights is the reason. (Not that the UFT truly defends teacher rights.) But the UFT has been an obstruction to building a progressive movement for educational change. And always will be.

I have come to believe that change in the UFT and in the educational structure can only come from a core group of teachers committed to basic change and not just from people who are worried about narrow trade union issues. I've heard a lot of disparagement about young teachers, but I am pleased to have met many who are socially conscious and view teaching as a calling. Their fervor has created hostility amongst some vets.

Some of these teachers, however, view caucuses like ICE and TJC that address internal UFT politics as being part of the structure - the "new boss, same as the old boss" concept. (People joke in ICE that if the opposition ever won power, I would become part of a new opposition – The anarchy within me.) That doesn't mean I am not as involved as ever with the work ICE has been doing in the union, but have been freed from doing the day to day stuff I used to do. (Thanks to the ICE steering committee for a great job.)

Teachers Unite hopes to put together a coalition of people who want to reform education in the proper way by capturing the idea of "ed reform" from the likes of the Eli Broads, Michael Bloombergs, Joel Kleins, etc. We want to address questions as to why the protection of teacher rights is an important component of any movement for change. We want to hold "bridge the gap" meeting between newer and veteran teachers. The group we are working with includes ICE'ers and TJC'ers, amongst others, so working with Sally and TU has opened up a big tent. If you're interested in the work of TU, Sally can be contacted at sally@teachersunite.net.

I met Sally through NYCORE (The NY Collective of Radical Educators) whose work I have admired. Over the years I attended some of their events and recently have worked with their Justice Not-Just-Tests group. They will also be working with the group doing the Radical Math conference in Brooklyn April 4-6. (See sidebar for details.)

In an article in The Nation, the story of social justice schools is told and NYCORE is mentioned.

With more education schools assigning the works of Freire and Jonathan Kozol, a growing number of teachers, with the help of local teachers' organizations, are infusing their curriculums with liberatory theories too. One such group is the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCORE), an organization of past and present public school teachers founded in 2002 that gives teachers the chance to discuss larger issues of social justice while formulating ways to bring those topics into the classroom. "We find that there are a lot of teachers who are highly politicized, but they are isolated in schools where they are being forced to implement curriculum or policies that are really antithetical to their own belief system," says Bree Picower, a NYCORE member and an assistant professor at New York University's Department of Teaching & Learning. "And we look to try and network those teachers."

This full article is worth reading and can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080225/doster

I unintentionally played a role in bringing NYCORE's attention to Sol Stern, who at the time I was on friendly terms with. He read my account of a meeting I attended and saw an opportunity to attack the idea of social justice movement in schools. He started bugging me for information and I put him in contact with Bree, who wisely, refused to talk to him. He actually contacted the superiors of some NYCORE members to see if they were "indoctrinating" the kids. He was probably concerned they were teaching kids about what's really happening in the world instead of pounding them with phonics. He actually attended the Radical Math Conference looking for bear. We ran into each other and engaged in a brief courtyard debate. The attendants were forewarned there was someone not there to learn anything about radical math but trying to find a story that could be used to fit the conservative agenda. What he did write was certainly not objective. But then again, nothing you will read here is either. Better to read all sides and figure out where to land.

Sol Stern and Social Justice

"Admit it! You and Joel Klein are on the same side." Thus spat Sol Stern at me when we ran into each other at the radical math conference a few weeks ago. Sol is the Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow and contributing editor to the right leaning City Journal who writes on education, solidifying his reputation with critics of unions and advocates of vouchers - the idea of offering competition to the public schools. Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice.

In an interview with National Review Online in 2003, Stern said, "I started writing about education in 1994 when my kids were in the New York City public schools and I realized that the teachers' union contract was a big impediment to school improvement." His experience with his kids and the fact that the union contract allowed an incompetent math teacher to transfer into the top-level Stuyvesant from the low-performing Seward Park HS seemed to be enough for Sol to make a general assessment that the contract and it's allowance of a few hundred teachers each year to take seniority transfers was a major cause of the ills of the NYC school system. (Sol has accused me of making some of this up but I've heard him tell this story numerous times.)

One would expect a natural enmity towards Sol from the teachers unions and the UFT in particular. And in the early years of Randi Weingarten's tenure she did attack Sol at various UFT functions as our enemy. And there was some sniping from some of her minions at me for writing favorably about some of Sol's ideas, though I can't seem to remember any of them offhand at this time.

I got to know Sol years ago through Education Notes when asked to be added to my mailing list and we have had a number of battles (friendly) over the years arguing education policy. He is very sharp (and funny) makes one really defend their position and my understanding of my own point of view (that it is more correct that I thought) has benefited from these discussions. I also benefited from the invitation to Sol's book release at the Harvard Club where I got a yummy meal (why wasn't I surprised to find a UFT staffer like Joe Colletti there too?). I did get to ask him a question as to why he wasn't happy that the poor kids at Seward Park HS got to benefit when that math teacher went to Stuyvesant.

I know, I know. Everyone wants to get rid of bad teachers though I don't hear the same enormous outcry about bad doctors or cops, who can actually kill you instead of causing a slight disruption in your knowledge of calculus. And the argument that bad teachers cannot be gotten rid of is part of the principals propaganda machine where they claim that - poor babies - they actually have to document why they want to remove a tenured teacher instead of being able to fire them instantly for reasons like they don't like the color of their tie. Or because they don't bow and scrape before them.

Joel Klein has made many of the same arguments on seniority as Sol. Sadly, UFT president Randi Weingarten seems to agree as she joined Klein in gutting the entire seniority structure that has protected senior teachers.

Ah! Sol, Randi and Joel on the same page. A perfect alignment of the stars. But here it gets complicated. In a perfect ideological world one would expect it to be Joel and Sol vs. Randi. But it turns out to be Randi & Sol vs. Joel. On paper at least. As you know by now, Randi plays every side against the middle and I urge you to follow my golden rule -- watch what she does, not what she says.

It seems that Joel's move to use what Sol calls the progressive curriculum have made Sol and his allies like Diane Ravitch and columnist Andy Wolfe of the right leaning NY Sun big-time critics of Joel. There are other issues, of course, but the attacks on Joel by Sol have driven Randi and Sol into the same camp. Sol even got some nice space in the NY Teacher recently. Nice. Anyone but actual teachers like people in ICE and TJC who represent 20% of the working teachers should be able to get space in our paper.

Thus we come to Sol and the radical math conference. Sol has been writing about social justice in education as it relates to teachers' beliefs and to what extent they might be imposing them on their students. The recent controversy over the Beacon School student trip to Cuba has generated much press in the NY Post and the NY Sun. When a group of NYC teachers decided to hold a math conference (www.RadicalMath.org)
they got a tremendous response from all over the nation and over 400 people registered.

Sol Stern was one of them, obviously looking to upgrade his skills so he could do his own taxes. Knowing full well they were not exactly going to get a fair and balanced viewpoint, the organizers handled Sol with aplomb.

I went to the conference as a volunteer, not a participant. I was a left-leaning teacher and I was open about presenting what I thought on issues to my classes because I felt kids want to know where you stand as a teacher. (I did try to avoid issues of religion though because the kids were involved with churches and I was an atheist, though that didn't stop me from having great holiday decorations going on in my classroom). I also tried to give them both sides but in today's world how does a teacher who is vehemently anti-war give the kids a fair presentation of that idiot - er - I mean - President Bush point of view? I and other volunteers were there to show these teachers some support for their activities.

Sol attended the Powers to the People: Unit Projects for Algebra 2 and Pre-calculus workshop with Erica Litke, a teacher at Lower East Side prep.

In this interactive session, participants will explore mathematics projects from Algebra 2 and Pre-calculus that integrate the curricular objectives of upper level mathematics with real-life social justice themes. With a focus on mathematical modeling, projects will include topics such as linear inequalities, exponential functions and logarithms, and regression analysis of a set of data. Participants will work through the mathematics of the projects, examine student work and brainstorm projects for other topics in the Algebra 2 /Precalculus curriculum.

I spoke to Erica after her workshop and she said Sol asked a few questions. Probably about the logarithms. Or maybe regression analysis. And those linear inequalities - here is a clear case of a teacher using math to influence students, always raising the issue of inequalities.

I ran into Sol after Erica's workshop. That is where he accused me of being aligned with Klein. "Joel Klein has created more schools with social justice themes than any chancellor in history," Sol said. Finally, Joel has done something right. If only he hadn't ripped the school system apart by shoving all these schools into larger ones. Well, one out of two on this one.

Well, people are waiting to see what Sol writes about his experience. Will Erica be condemned for unduly trying to influence her students? Or will Sol decide that he would rather have Erica teaching his children than that teacher who transferred into Stuyvesant?

The right wing attacks on teachers who use social justice themes in their teaching to engage their kids will continue. Instead of being defensive, they are striking back. Sally Lee of Teacher's Unite starts with her letter to the NY Sun followed by a reprint of an article in City Limits about the conference. You can read some of them at my other blog, Norm's Notes.