Reader Comments: West Virginia Teachers Win in Strike Led by Women - What a Way to Celebrate International Womens' Day; Climate Lessons from New York Victories; Remembering Pete Seeger; Resources; Announcements; Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Commemoratio
Reader Comments: Parkland vs. NRA; Trump's Arming of Teachers - Not; Criticism of Pledge to Transform the Resistance, and America; Labor - War on Workers, Labor in the 70s, Janus, West Virginia Teachers on Strike; Science; Sex and Drugs; I AM 2018 - The Fight Continues - Memphis - April 2 - 4; and more.....
It’s actually illegal for teachers to strike in West Virginia. They’re doing it anyway. Thousands of public school teachers across West Virginia went on strike this week in protest over their pay and benefits, affecting more than 277,000 students.
In “You Can’t Fire the Bad Ones“: And 18 Other Myths about Teachers, educators Bill Ayers, Crystal Laura and Rick Ayers flip the script on many enduring and popular myths about teachers, teachers’ unions, and education that permeate our culture. By unpacking these myths, the authors aim to challenge readers to rethink their assumptions about teachers. Praxis Center shares an excerpt from Myth 16: Teachers Are Unable to Deal Adequately with the Disciplinary Challenges Posed By Today’s Youth, and We Need More Police in Our Public School Buildings to Do the Job and Maintain Law and Order.
"Women's Work? Voices of Vermont Educators" details the reality of work for teachers and paraeducators in Vermont. These workers are putting in long hours to meet growing student needs, as the opioid epidemic is on the rise, and child poverty grows. They are spending their own money to buy food and clothes for students. They are supporting their families as the primary breadwinner, and paying off high levels of loan debt. And they feel disrespected because they work in a female-dominated profession.
Union leaders hope that by organizing teachers and staff at charter schools, and giving them a voice to advocate for more resources through collective bargaining, the charter model will become less attractive to investors and public officials.
Ceding exclusive representation in order to write non-members off rather than winning them over will not result in the labor movement growing or becoming any more militant or successful.
With teachers facing similar attacks in school districts across the country, it makes sense to share strategies for fighting back. That’s the goal of the United Caucuses of Rank-and-File Educators (UCORE), a growing network of locals and caucuses within the teachers unions.
To create pressure on the district, a group of teachers organized their own protest. The 11,000-member Philadelphia Federation of Teachers didn’t authorize the action. Instead it was a rank-and-file group that got the employer's attention.
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