Labor & Employment Law

Community Is Family

By admin

By Carlos Daniel Rosa

In this cross-post, Carlos Daniel Rosa, an AFL-CIO Union Summer for Jobs intern working in Chicago, reports on a recent speech by Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union. You can read posts by the Chicago interns at http://chicagointerns.blogspot.com/.

A few nights ago, I heard Karen Lewis, the newly elected president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU)-IFT/AFT Local 1, address a standing-room-only crowd.

She brought down the house. Lewis began her speech by stating that when the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Board of Education closed a school they had never even visited, they weren?t just closing a building, they were destroying a community and, in turn, they were destroying a family. ?Community is family,? she said, ?and that?s something they don?t understand.?

The ?they? Lewis was referring to are the ?business people? who, through their donations of money and their elevation by elected officials, were rapidly changing our schools to reflect the values and sensibilities of Wall Street. In the process, Lewis said, they are de-professionalizing teaching and creating a system where any individual could come in and teach school for three or four years and then move on to something “better,” leaving their students behind.

The cynics among us would say that Lewis is defending her members? jobs, but I can tell you that sitting in that audience I saw a woman who was a lifelong educator, deeply committed to her students and enraged by what she saw was being done to her pupils by the recent crop of education reform ?gurus??individuals who have never stepped foot in a classroom or graded an exam.

I believe, like Lewis, that if we truly want to reform our educational system, we need to turn to those with the expertise and the know-how: the professional educators who know how to teach and manage a class. They understand that a school isn’t a business, it’s a community. Until we listen to their voices, effective educational reform will not take place in the United States. In the coming months, the battle over educational reform is sure to intensify. In that battle, I know where I stand. I stand with the educators, students and parents?the family that, if empowered and given the opportunity, will bring success to our schools.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on July 16, 2010 (boomark / email).