Close call for Millcreek!

Millcreek Education Association struck a deal with the board last night, averting a strike by one day. They have thusly been moved to the "strike averted" category on the Strikewatch board.

I've been getting some interesting emails from you folks out there about what's going on with you. Keep 'em coming, I will be adding bits and pieces to strikewatch and the main page as well. Confidentiality is assured. drhomeslice (at) hotmail.com is where you can reach me.

Oh, and thanks to Ed an' all the nice folks over at AFT for the mention in 'Labor Blogs' on Let's Get It Right!

New and exclusive feature!!!

I'd like to announce a new feature, ladies and gentlemen.

Strikewatch!

If you look to the right, below my profile, you'll notice a new heading-- a constantly updated list of school districts on strike. I plan to expand it to include school districts who have approved a strike vote, school districts working to the rule, districts in negotiations and so on. If you read this and don't see your school district up there, shoot me an email at drhomeslice (at) hotmail.com .

For the latest on teacher union strikes or negotiations, click here.

California Craziness! LA, Bakersfield! Parents on Strike!

It's spring, it must be the season for job action flowers to bloom. The first one, a "work to the rule" petunia, comes to us from Bakersfield, California.

The "strike vote" tulip is predicted to come out in LA February 12-14th.

Can you belive it...parents keeping their kids home so that their teachers' union will be supported in their negotiations. Yes, folks, that's right....a parent's strike supporting a teacher's strike! 2/2 Update: It's over, the teachers got their contract!

In Houston, the Houston Independent School District Superintendent put his foot in his mouth and now he's go a bunch of teachers that want to call in sick in protest. Bad idea, as the HFT President says it could cost teachers their jobs and certification.

Commentary: Sicking out hurts the credibility of your local-- it's not a collective bargaining technique that I endorse. I'm all for job actions (like striking and working to the rule), but for if they're going to be effective you need to coordinate them with your local. A few teachers doing something on their own make themselves look bad and make the whole union look bad. There are democratic processes in place in your union to get the message to your leadership and the leadership of the school board. Use them-- don't resort to sicking out.

THIS JUST IN (January 30th)
Punxsutawney Phil might be carrying a picket sign in solidarity with the teachers. The aforemention local district's teachers have been working without a contract since '04, walked out in '05 and are ready to do it again, and have an authorized strike vote. Last negotiations are scheduled for 2/8. I'm going to add 'em to Strike Watch.

(Ok, so it's not spring, but I want it to be.)

By the way, don't forget to take a look at my new and exclusive feature!

Union Bouquet #9: Post Carnival Edition

For the latest on teacher union strikes or negotiations, click here.

Welcome to the 9th edition of the Union Bouquet! I hosted the last edition of the Carnival of Education and whew...that was some work. Fun, rewarding, love the traffic it's bringing to the ol' site, but it's quite a bit of work.

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you haven't heard about the teacher contract language searchable database.

Edwize brings us the news of a Chinese teacher strike....next, pigs will fly to a recently frozen over hell. Perhaps they saw this post of mine.

Okay, so perhaps she's not necessarily a teacher, but she's still one of us. Dr. Homeslice has a crush on Ms. Solidarity Forever.

Edutheria presents for all the letter that Darren got from a CTA bigwig about California Empowerment Network. The best quote from Edutheria? "When will the public at last turn on these vile, thuggish, cynical, reactionary unions?"

Ednotes reports on the job action that has begun in LAUSD with the UTLA boycotting after school meetings and unpaid after school events. On a side note, I already got that up in the last UB, but they beat me on the possible one day Boston Teacher's Union Stike. The reason is apparently to express displeasure with the way negotiations are going. Since they've been working without a contract since August 31st, a one day strike won't violate any performance pledge in their current contract. It's interesting to note that they threatened a one-day strike in 2003 and got a contract then as well. Here is a Boston Globe article about it.

Middletown Teachers Association in Middletown, NY has a nifty website where they have a "Grievance Corner".

Texas Ed has a post that has something to do with getting rid of ineffective teachers, but I can't figure it out for the life of me.

This is probably the most well-written news article about a grievance hearing. It's also the most uh, sensational.

In West Virginia, teachers might go on strike, so the local news station resurected footage of the 1990 strike and streamed it on their site.

Mr. Chalk, a limey, explains why he hasn't joined a union in 14 years of teaching.

The Governor of Maine is all for the consolidation of 290 school districts into 26 regional districts. The Maine Education Association is all over it.

Limonada recalls going on strike....against her father, the principal of her school....when she was in third grade. Priceless.

The Detroit News slams DFT members for being elitist and sending more of their own children to private schools than the public.

Joyeous explains the Boston Teachers' Union demonstration. She should know, she took part in it.

The Metro Nashville Education Association (I did a long post about them and their briefly appointed homeschooling school board windbag-thorn-in-their-side, Kay Brooks here) is being sued by a teacher who wants to get out of the union, but can't do it until the two month window according to the bylaws open up.

Ascribe ends up on the wrong end of a grievance. A 2 year teacher, he applied for and was hired for a lucrative school newspaper gig over a 30 year veteran. The teacher thought she should have been hired because she was better qualified and grieved it. The union is supporting the grievance.

Commentary: I realize I only have one part of the story, but as long as the hiring process was followed, this 30 year vet has nothing to complain about. Yes, it sucks when you don't get hired and you think you're the best candidate for the job. I've been there before, I think we all have. Bringing the union into this is the wrong thing to do just because you think you're the best qualified one, and it's even worse that this person's local is picking up their case. Just because you're the one with the most seniority doesn't mean you're the most qualified.

By the way, don't forget to take a look at my new and exclusive feature.

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102nd Carnival of Education..Woo-Hoo!

For the latest on teacher union strikes or negotiations, click here.

It is with great pleasure that I host my first ever Carnival of Education. I have been exhibited on the midway several times, but this is my first job "opening" for it.

Now for some words of wisdom from Dr. King.

"History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let's Carnival!

Nic recalls her students' recent and extremely colorful use of the infinitive future verbs in class. Apparently some students thought he would be stopping off at the local cantina after work.

How many times have you told your students not to copy on a paper or other assignment? Ms. SuperScience recounts holding the hand of her student teacher as the student teacher went through her first plagiaristic experience, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Incidents of students impersonating teachers online are rising, especially on Myspace. Brice recounts making a slanderous Myspace page a high school teacher he hated. He also remembers getting caught after doing it.

This piece at The Psychology of Education talks about the science of procrastination. I'd tell you more about it, but I haven't read it yet. I was planning to, honest. Heh.

Janet waxes philosophical on school uniforms. As she says "You can take the girl out of the low rise jeans, but you'll never stop the guy from lusting after that girl."

Robin, the homeschool teacher and mom has a handle on what a teachable moment is and how to use it.

Should a test grade stay etched in stone, for time immemorial? Is it important to record a student's mastery level at one point in time and keep it, unchanged by the learning they have engaged in since then? Or should you as a teacher constantly allow them the opportunity to take tests and replace old grades with new grades and improved conceptual understanding?

Ever have that one student who won't do anything without you mentioning their name for every class directive? Mister Teacher does.

Ms. Cornelius admits not everyone makes it through AP. "She had said repeatedly that she wanted to stay, but her actions screamed out, "I'm in over my head!"

NYC Educator realizes that all he needs is a few good administrators to and his DoE to back him up and he would be able to move mountains like this charter school.

Barack Obama may have formed an exploratory committee but the real news in politics is Bill Gates throwing his money (and foundation) into the ring in 2008 to make public education the topic of the election, says Alexander Russo. Apparently the mess in Iraq will have been solved by then.

If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one to hear it, does it make a sound? If a substitute teacher gets accused of something they didn't do and there's no administrator there to back them up, what happens?

Joanne Jacobs blogs about something very important. I saw words like "percentile" "bell curve" and "standard deviations" and other stuff of the sort, so I know it's important. Maybe it's about math or something. I hate math.

Graycie waxes eloquently about Poseidon and the Odyssey, inspired by his freshman.

Happy first birthday to NCLBlog over at AFT! A number of key blogosphere types share their favorite posts over the past year from the blog. Kind of like a rockumentary for a blog.

Muse revels in a quiet thank you from a student.

Coach Brown lays out his 14 point plan for peace and healthier children.

D-Ed Reckoning is using big words too. Very similar to Joanne Jacobs' post, I think. I even saw the word "longitudinal". Yep. Big words.

Texas Ed says it right when she writes "All I can say is that 'acrimonious showdown for school board' doesn'tÂ’t inspire confidence."

Do you want to be a person billionaire? Sure, we all do.

This interesting debate between two wonkish types touches on the recent involvement of the Supreme Court when it comes to race-based admission/ assignment policies in public education.

How many of you good folks out there teach in portables? Mat says they're better than reg'lar buildings, 'cause "With a fixed building, the community is left funding a building that is obsolete when finished and then lays largely dormant as the neighborhood ages."

Mamacita says "A little homework is a good thing" but seems to have been burned alive on a forum. Here she defends herself.

Darren agrees with the right a of a teacher to make butt print paintings on his own time outside of the school, and says that teacher shouldn't have been fired for it.

Remember cheerleaders: make sure you say "Yea Team" for the girls as much as you do for the boys, or someone from the acronym patrol will be paying you a visit!!

History is Elementary laments the lack of frontline teachers on the recent WaPo education blogroll.

That's it, I've had a great time. Make sure you support your local union rep!

Next Week's Midway: The Carnival comes home to The Education Wonks. Thedeadline for submissions is: 9:00 PM (Eastern) 6:00 PM (Pacific) Tuesday,January 23. Submissions may be sent to: owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net. Contributers may also use Blog Carnival's handy submission form: http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_5.html

Wrong on the Left Coast!

"The evidence is abundant and clear. This movement represents a dangerous trend in education not only because students won't learn math content, but also because they'll be indoctrinated with leftist claptrap."

The quote above is from Darren, of Right on the Left Coast blog. It concerns the idea of the combination of math education and social justice education. Specifically, it references "ReThinking Mathematics" offshoot of "Rethinking Schools". I plan to debunk it. In order to truly and honestly respond, I must offer a few confessions.

1. I don't teach math, and didn't do well in math in high school. If I misuse some terms or concepts, please forgive me, as I consider it my fault and not that of my past math teachers.
2. I do teach in an urban school district.
3. I do have something to do with the "L" word. Liberal, that is. I'd like to think I'm pretty moderate, but I acknowledge the fact that your position on the political spectrum is all relative. I wouldn't, however, call myself a leftist. I've always been right-handed.

Now, with that out of the way....

I was introduced to Rethinking Schools through a project I worked on roughly four years ago. I have been interested ever since.

I will tell you that some of the most thought-provoking and most interactive lessons that were not of my own doing were from RS. Teaching in an urban school district, I've realized our students define their world by the boundaries of their neighborhood. These boundaries are set by what interstates run through their community, where the territory of rival or hostile gangs begins or ends and where the public transporation will take them. More often than not, my students' world is contained within their zip code. In their mind's eye, everything that is good, holy and important occurs within this small area.

The lessons that I have used from RS are powerful. They are so powerful that they blasted the students into orbit and out of the confines of their interstates, rival sets and zip codes. They were able to see the bigger picture behind things outside of their zip code. They saw how people, culture, ideas, government, math, science and life in general collided in ways that were completely alien yet comfortingly similar across the world.

One lasting impression that I have had was using a poem regarding the election of Allende and then his overthrow and installation of Pinochet in Chile back in the 1970's. Long story short, it is a spoken word piece from two points of view, one of a peasant woman with a family and another woman of the upper class. Through the poem, you see the changes in the country as the result of Allende's reforms (including land reform) which are positive for the peasant, but frustrating for the rich woman. His overthrow and Pinochet's rise to power make life better for the rich, but miserable for the peasantry.

The reason that poem sticks in my head is because of the reactions of my kids after they heard it. It struck a chord with my young ladies, many of them asked to keep a copy of the poem. I of course obliged.

Yes, Allende was a socialist, and the last time I checked, socialism is a leftist political value system. So yes, kids learned something about a leftist political/economic country that didn't glorify the superior nature of free market capitalism.

On the way out, I didn't hand them each a copy of the Communist Manifesto, nor did I give them an "Impeach Bush" bumper sticker. I didn't text them the address of a leftist website, nor did I give 'em a podcast about evil Republicans. Nor did I want to.

When I teach politically sensitive lessons, I make sure to tell the kids that I'm not teaching them something that is right or wrong, I'm just teaching something that happened. I try to examine ideas from both points of view; sometimes I take positions on items that I myself abhor. I do it so that my students can critically examine ideas, people, issues and items of the day. I cringe when my kids look at me and half-ask, half-tell me that "You voted for Bush in the last election, didn't you? I know you did." I just want to scream, "No I didn't!" but I don't ever tell my kids who I voted for.*

I think it's wrong to condemn an entire movement simply because of a lack of faith in individual teachers. That's what it boils down to-- a lack of faith in the ability of our fellow warriors in the trenches to discern the source of a movement and decide for themselves how they want (or whether they want) to integrate the ideas, lesson plans or activities of this movement into their instruction. The unspoken word here is that teachers will simply regurgitate the prepackaged material, just as the leftists have planned it. (Diabolical music plays in the background.)

The idea that social justice is leftist claptrap...is quite honestly...claptrap itself! (Kudos on the use of claptrap, as I rarely run across it in my travels throughout the blogosphere).

The social justice movement is one that encourages students to take an active role in their communities. Unfortunatley, adults in power see "active role in communities" and think "Hey, now someone can rake dear old Mrs. Stutley's lawn." That's not community service-- that's corporal punishment.

The idea of social justice (and this concept of course extends to unionism, but that is a different post altogother) as it is taught in the classroom is that we use the curriculum to pique our students' interests in the world around them, in the plight of others in their community (local or world) and move them to action to solve problems of discrimination, inequity, inequality and various other sundry topics.

Gosh darn liberal, leftist tree-hugging do-gooders. We'll fix 'em in the next election.

* One more confession, I do tell my students who I voted for. The only time they can ask me is when they're getting ready to walk down the aisle to go onto the stage right before "Pomp and Circumstance" is playing. Call it a perk. Graduation has its privilleges.

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My new favorite blog....

I stopped by Life in the Rubber Room and found Ed's link to Pissed Off Teacher. I don't know why it is that I spend so much time reading NYC teacher blogs, but man are they ever good. Pissed Off Teacher is a 30 year veteran math teacher who alternates between high achieving math classes and lower-achieving math classes. Make sure you're not wearing a suit, 'cause she doesn't like 'em. There are good suits, and probably good principals, she opines. She just hasn't met any good principals yet.

My favorite quote of the moment is a directive from the AP to the department:

"Every teacher is expected to conduct bell-to-bell lessons, even though the bell is not working."

Do yourself a favor and read this blog!