Author: Diana Abasta & Kim Allender, Co-Presidents
As educators this seems simple enough. We plan lessons, organize activities that will engage our students in order to help them achieve the objectives and reach the standards, and then we evaluate them using a variety of assessments. The assessment also allows us to reflect on our teaching and see what is needed for the next plan.
As an association, we too must plan, act and evaluate. To ensure success we must have constant organizing goals. Five common characteristics of strong locals are having goals that identify new leaders, communicate to the membership, achieve parity and maintain parity, evolve programs and objectives, and develop alliances. One weekend a year, your elected Co-presidents, Board of Directors, Lead Negotiator, Executive Director and Administrative Assistant, meet to plan, act, and evaluate.
Our goals are driven by membership surveys, feedback from the Representative Council, and direct input that you give us when we visit school sites. I would like to share what we have heard and what is being done to meet these goals. It is never too early to start identifying new leaders. Many of our colleagues are natural leaders on different levels. We must seek each other out and be more inclusive. As a result, the Association has sought teachers and sent them to conferences that focus on leadership skills. These teachers may or may not ever run for office, but their presence at our sites brings about new ideas and needed changes that are essential to survival and power. We will continue to promote future leader workshops in The BTA Benchmark and through our website [javascript protected email address].
Evolving programs and objectives are crucial because our membership cannot settle for the status quo. Change initiated by teacher collaboration and shared problem solving is crucial to a healthy education environment. Our BTA Faculty Representatives must be ready to facilitate staff collaboration and shared problem solving at our sites. Once a year BTA has an all day training for them. We are going to work on more extensive training involving contract training in Representative Council meetings this year, including evaluating and understanding contract issues. Our BTA Faculty Representatives will also work on finding out the issues and interests of the teachers at their site by having ten minute faculty meetings. It is essential that members attend these meetings. Throughout the year we review progress and make changes when the wants and needs of our Association change. BTA, through its members, must be a full partner in District decision making. This includes all decisions which affect teachers and students, including (but not limited to) instructional methods, curricula, textbooks and materials, as well as salaries and benefits. This kind of shared decision making is what we call parity, and teachers cannot be true professionals without it.
As educators we value reason, logic, and fair play. We also value harmony because we see enough conflict in our lives and in our students’ lives. However, not everyone pro-actively seeks to collaborate with teachers. As an Association we must meet this challenge and elect a school board majority that values teachers as full partners in education. We will organize and then mobilize in the months to come. We must also not fear conflict because it is managed conflict that brings about proactive change. We must not tolerate ìsurface bargainingî or ìhappy talk televisionî as an answer to our concerns.
Building communication systems is vital to our unity. We are isolated in our classrooms. We seldom see all of our colleagues even at lunch. Therefore, we must take advantage of our ten minute faculty meetings, the BTA Benchmark, the BTA website, flyers, and the BTA bulletin board at each site, and we must have conversations on common goals. We need to ìSay it seven times, three different ways,î in order to get our message out to every member. We are also planning to send members regular negotiation updates throughout the year. Watch for the special half-sheet, lime green bulletins called ìFrom The Table.î Of course we will continue the ìBudget Crisis Updateî (hot pink paper) to report on the meetings of the Budget Advisory Committee or its sub committees.
Last but not least, is developing alliances. CTA surveys show by a wide margin that the public trusts teachers and understands that teachers know what is best for students. We have seen evidence of this in the voting down of voucher systems. We have our greatest source of natural alliance in our parents. We have established a relationship with our PTA and will continue to work closely on issues that impact our students. We would love to avoid the arena of politics; however, we cannot do this and keep our profession intact. We must organize and mobilize around those politicians who understand the need to involve teachers in every step of the education reform process. Top down mandates don’t work, and will never work.
There is nothing magical about success. It is a product of clear goals, focus, knowledge, implementation, evaluation, and a willingness to change. As the year continues we must work together to use our constant organizing goals to plan, act, and evaluate.