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McAllen AFT News - March, 2010

Volume 18, Issue 7
March, 2010
 
 
MCALLEN AFT NEWS
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
 
  
CATCHING UP ON THE NEWS
 
 
 
Texas Charter Schools Get Mixed Reviews:
 

On March 22, 2010 the state Senate Education Committee heard invited testimony from a slew of charter advocates and also heard from Texas AFT and an independent education researcher some distinctly less celebratory comments on the state's 15-year-old experiment with charter schools.

Texas AFT's testimony addressed a full array of charter issues, including: problems with simply raising the cap on the number of state open-enrollment charters; better ways to increase available charters; reform of the charter application process; improving state oversight; reciprocal sharing of best practices between charter and traditional public schools; promising approaches to the development of "in-district" charter schools approved by local school boards; and crucial differences between charter schools and traditional "take all comers" public.

Health-Care Reform Passes:

 
The U.S. House of Representatives on Sunday, March 21, 2010 passed a hard-fought, comprehensive health-care reform bill that will benefit Texas AFT members, their families, and communities substantially and move the nation closer to the goal of universal, affordable health coverage.
 
But important work remains to be done in the U.S. Senate this week to complete a package of improvements in the bill. Important work also lies ahead on a number of issues only partially resolved in this round of legislation. 
 
Previous information—Texas AFT Hot Line Summary, March 22, 2010.
 

This year we counseled with members regarding the harsh realities of job and health insurance loss. Please let us know what we can do to help our members.

What Respect Looks like to Terry Armstrong—Plant Services Carpenter:


“The tools we use the most—aside from our hand tools—are trust, honesty, courtesy, our ability to communicate, and our team work across the trades.
 

In the business of skills and trades, Health and Safety is a very important issue; not only for ourselves, but for our work environment around children, teachers and the public. Our people-skills are also very important. Many times we serve as a public relations department while walking through the schools talking with teachers, administrators and even parents. They want to see a smiling face from us. Some kind of training in people skills, to learn how to communicate publicly, would be very helpful.”   

Educational Research and Dissemination

 
What is ER&D?
 
The American Federation of Teachers Educational Research and Dissemination (ER&D) Program is a research-based professional development program. It was created by the AFT through collaboration between practitioners and researchers to encourage classroom educators to improve their practice and their students’ achievement by becoming users of research.
 
The AFT has long recognized that a research-grounded knowledge base is essential to professional practice. Through the creation of the ER&D Program in 1981, the AFT began a systematic process to translate, codify, and disseminate quality educational research findings about teaching and learning to classroom teachers.
As a professional development program, the ER&D process is very different from traditional in-service, because it affords pre K-12 and postsecondary classroom educators the opportunity to gain access to research on teaching and learning in a form that gives them the ability to apply those findings effectively. It also helps practitioners understand the value of using research findings to guide classroom practice.
 
In 1990, ER&D expanded its reach to include classroom paraprofessionals. Further recognizing the invaluable contributions non-classroom staff make to maintaining safe and orderly learning environments, and realizing the lack of training and support for such staff, ER&D in 1997 introduced a research-based course on managing student behavior in non-classroom settings for all school-related personnel.
 
The ER&D Program has come to represent one of the union’s major efforts to improve student achievement by making a difference in teacher, paraprofessional and school-related personnel performance and professional growth. Through its focus on providing educators with instructional tools to change practice and promote student achievement, it has enhanced the union’s organizing efforts and been the source of a new kind of union activism.
 
What makes ER&D different?
 

Classroom practitioners have long been subjected to in-service sessions that, all too often, they rate as not being very worthwhile. As the organizational representatives of teachers, paraprofessionals, and school-related personnel, the AFT has constructed a professional development program that is meant to be an ongoing process, rather than an in-service event.

The ER&D Program is committed to:

 
  • Providing credible, research-based information;
 
  • offering a non-threatening, non-judgmental learning environment;
 
  • providing opportunities for thoughtful discussion about teaching and learning with colleagues and researchers;
 
  • providing opportunities for self-reflection and collegial inquiry;
 
  • making a process available that allows for individual understanding and implementation of instructional strategies that result in real change in practice;
 
  • and providing opportunities for professional growth, continuous learning and validation of existing practice.

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