UESF AFT TEACHER LEADER GROUP S.F. Vision!

Concerns:

Teacher Leaders

·                   Enlisting other teachers taking it back to school

·                   Link to technology networking/community resources

·                   Group think

·                   Union

·                   Limited time.  What can we really get accomplished.

·                   Meet with politicians

·                   What will the product be?

·                   We get a say to the district

·                   Press conference – feedback to media from TL

·                   Reaching out beyond SFUSD to other districts

·                   Is there an ultimate goal?

Teaching, Learning, Education

·                   Disparity urban/suburban

·                   Class warfare

·                   Lack of continuity – 5 years, 5 admins

·                   Corporations – schools as cash cow

·                   Charter schools

·                   Lack of training in cultural awareness.  Institutional racism

·                   Schools should be community schools

·                   Criminalization of youth b/c lack of resources

·                   Disparity between schools within district

·                   School safety

·                   Data that we can trust

·                   Reducing teacher cynicism

·                   Crisis in leadership – admin, superintendent, district initiatives

                       - Arne Duncan

                       - Bill Gates

·                   Teacher education

·                   Testing

Vision: Group A

·                   Teacher voices will be heard and deemed legitimate by policy makers, media and administrators (from site to federallevel)

·                   Holistic approach to student assessment – reallocate funds to books and the arts

·                   Teacher driven PD

·                   Creation of TL website

Vision: Group B

·                   Create community schools – provide community services (medical, therapy, etc)

·                   Major realignment of priorities and resources

·                   There is a holistic relationship between the micro-level and macro-level with accountability to be one another (i.e. politicians communicate with teacher speaker bureaus)

·                   Redesign administrative positions to better serve students and teacher needs (i.e. teacher input into principal evaluations)

Visions: Group C

·                   Building communication across differences.

·                   Working together, reflecting as school staff, community including institutions in our society to create, implement solutions for our children

·                   Support a diverse school for staff for our children

·                   Support holistic educational environment which ensures the needs of our children and school staff

Barriers to Reaching Our Vision

·                   Historical barriers affecting achievement gap

·                   Corporate reformers controlling the terms of debate

·                   Lack of teacher support (resources, time, etc.)

·                   Convincing public of public education being in public’s best interest

·                   Literacy and poverty in students’ lives

·                   Cultural norms/white liberal

·                   Learning how to create culturally relevant curriculum/pedagogy

·                   Reason for high dropout rates for Latinos/Blacks

·                   District hierarchy

·                   Revolving/turnover of admins

·                   Need for students to deal with trauma and stress (restorative justice?)

·                   Administration?  Overburdened?

·                   Lack of trust in system

·                   Lack of clear communication?  Collaboration