A high-quality public education can build much-needed skills and knowledge. It can help children reach their God-given potential. It can stabilize communities and democracies. It can strengthen economies. It can combat the kind of fear and despair that evolves into hatred.
Category Archive: Randi Weingarten
Teachers need time to engage with colleagues – whether shadowing, mentoring, co-teaching or conferring. They need a voice in school decisions and to be trusted as professionals.
I’ve worked in public education for 30 years – as a teacher, a lawyer and union leader. I’ve visited hundreds of schools and districts. I’ve seen leaders from the classroom to the national stage who have been willing to set aside their differences and do the hard work that’s necessary to create real, enduring change.
Learning should be engaging. Testing should not be the be all and end all. All students should have a broad curriculum that includes the arts and enrichment. Students should have opportunities to work in teams and engage in project-based learning. And student and family well-being should be front and center.
Schools should be places of learning and joy, not testing and agita.
Beginning with the No Child Left Behind law and continuing today with Race to the Top, the federal emphasis on standardized assessments has become so excessive that it has modified state and district behavior in troubling ways.
Throughout my career as a lawyer, teacher and labor leader, books have remained my constant companion – stuffed into a briefcase, overflowing on my bedside table, stacked on my desk at work. Books have carried me to distant worlds, opened new doors and made me feel empathy, compassion, anger, fear, joy, acceptance – and everything in between.
There are essential elements for our public schools to fully develop the potential of both students and educators. They should be centers of community, where students, families and educators work together to support student success. They should foster collaboration.
It’s hard work to ensure that all schools are safe and welcoming places for all children. It means changing policies, practices and cultures; providing school support personnel; and funding programs like restorative justice – not simply resorting to excessive and often discriminatory discipline.
While books expand horizons by exposing us to worlds outside our own, children also need to see themselves, their experiences and their cultures reflected in books they read. Unfortunately, for too many children, this is not the norm.