Teacher Workload

Our teacher team started the day today working with the district negotiating team on the norms we will follow as we discuss teacher workload and professional development. Together, both teams then identified our interests around addressing workload, what the current reality is around teacher workload, and what options might be relevant to addressing the issue. The district representatives were sincere in their interest to listen to all the workload and professional development issues brought up and ideas generated. While a lot needs to be ironed out, a lot of progress was made. We assigned ourselves some homework to continue thinking of solutions in preparation for a follow-up meeting with the district on Wednesday, October 17th after school.

In retrospect it felt a lot like the work you do as a teacher to build a classroom community. First you establish the sort of rules that will help you function, then you can introduce the interests that will guide your work. Most often in a class these are standards, with the implicit interest being the next skill or even grade level available, but at times the interests your students have and the interest you have as a teacher converge and are less tangible and more intrinsic. For me this would often happen when I had the chance to teach the elements of poetry by studying Langston Hughes. In the midst of a lesson about rhyme or meter or how he might play with space on a page, we would find ourselves lost in his words and discussing so much more. It almost seemed criminal to lasso the learning back to a mere academic standard when I had a glimpse of real-time learning blossom in front of me.

While we are going to have to be mindful of our January 15th deadline to complete our negotiating and all of the standards that pin-prick at our interests, it seems that we have a team that will look for every opportunity for real progress.

Peer Assistance and Review (PAR)

This weekend I am in Silver Spring, Maryland for a 3 1/2 day workshop on peer assistance and review (PAR). I am very interested in PAR for a few reasons. First, I want teachers to be able to control the quality of our profession. Our union has organized teachers to address the quality of our wages, benefits, and working conditions but historically we have let our adversaries, or those politicians who know nothing about education, control the quality of our profession. I have been president for a very short time, but twice in that time probationary teachers have been let go despite being advocated for by a number of tenured teachers or experienced EAs who actually KNEW THEIR WORK as opposed to an administrator's 10 minute classroom visit and/or hearsay from another district. We are the group who should be the gatekeepers to the quality of our profession because we have dedicated ourselves to our profession. We do the work of teaching the students of St. Paul Schools everyday and we are responsible to build on the work of our colleagues. I can't wait to explore PAR with the building stewards, members, and Executive Board of SPFT, to determine how we can use this idea to ensure the quality and reputation of our profession.

We already have the language in the back of our contract that says we will develop PAR, now it is just up to us to do this in a way that supports and enhances a new teacher's achievement of tenure within some very clear standards that measure effective teaching. The more obvious we make it known that we have standards for quality in our teaching ranks, the more obvious it will be to everyone in St. Paul and Minnesota that St. Paul Public Schools and the St. Paul Federation of Teachers are both serious about working together to ensure a world-class education for every child.

"Team Teacher"

Far more domestic, and certainly close to home, is the negotiating work I have been doing with the teacher and the EA teams. Because I had already started this blog for my study tour to the Middle East, I realized that this would be one 'real time' way to get out information about the process and progress of negotiations for the 2007-09 contracts for teachers and educational assistants in SPFT. Here is a start:

The teachers are a team. Wednesday night (the 10th) our teacher bargaining team met again in preparation for our all day meeting with the District on October 15th. It is an intense group and when our collective experience gets shared with each other we tend to agitate each other, make each other think, and most often inspire each other. These are feisty, articulate, thoughtful, and passionate representatives of SPFT who intend to advocate for healthier and more attractive working conditions at every opportunity. Last night's almost 3 hour, after school meeting was exclusively focused on the workload all of our teachers experience pre-k through 12 and within each license area. Even within the potentially demoralizing topic of workload though, there were stories of commitment to our students, our profession, and to each other. I am looking forward to our time with the District on the 15th because this team never fails to impress me with their focus and their dedication. I know we are determined to improve our profession. Keep your thoughts with us!

First thoughts on my last day in Yemen

On June 2nd I was set to fly out of Yemen at 6:55 p.m. and I had a day packed with 4 meetings: The US Embassy, the USAID staff, UNICEF, and with the President of the Arab Sisters Forum. My last 2 meetings in Sana'a, Yemen were some of my most productive. The women from the UNICEF office challenged us to first ask the teachers' unions if they have committed to equalizing access to education for girls. I think that is entirely reasonable and I think we should make that a condition of our work with any trade union here. Improving the learning climate for girls needs to be our priority. As it stands, unless your family has money and a bit of a liberal attitude, there is absolutely no future for you except to be one of a man's possibly 4 wives having children until your uterus gives out, which can happen on your wedding day because of the genital mutilation you may have been subject to as an infant.

Conditions for Yemeni women were better before the 1st Gulf war when over 800,000 Yemeni expatriates came back with extremely conservative views, largely returning from Saudi Arabia. Now women are blatantly subjected to second-class citizenship, internalizing their own oppression, and the men we met with meanwhile are asking for time/decades/ centuries to correct it. Given what I know now, that is absolutely unacceptable. As an embassy official said this morning when I debriefed with her, "then let's fund their programs at 1885 figures, and see how much time they want to take for us to increase it." Needless to say, I LOVED her. Sadly, she is moving on to Tel Aviv in a few months.

The women at UNICEF went on to say that classroom management wouldn't be helpful unless there was some gender parity training to go with it. If boys are still the only ones called on, if secondary female students still get pushed out of school because of a lack of female teachers instead of letting them attend classes with a male teacher, if women are forced to leave the profession when they get married and have a family, when girls have to sit in the back of the room and are taught not to raise their hands, then we have much bigger problems than spitballs and talking back.

These women from UNICEF (one Dutch, one Yemeni) were amazing with their gentle but assured prodding. I was so inspired by their amazing focus on the state of women and girls. I felt like they were the first group all week to keep me totally honest about getting what I came for in Yemen.

My next meeting with Amal al Basha, the president of the Arab Sisters Forum will easily go down as a seminal moment in my life. I really felt like I was sitting at the feet of a master. Listening to her, I realized that I had merely been safely dabbling around the edges of social change. I was firmly tucked in my cocoon of half privilege safe enough to believe that there was just enough urgency for change that I merely had to offer bribes to my conscience to believe that I was doing good work for the world when in fact I am too comfortable. Her struggle will only become my struggle when I am in it as deeply as she is. Their struggle will become the world's struggle when we can successfully cause good people to lose enough sleep over the condition of women world-wide that we all do something about it. She showed me pictures of her in the paper that have her caricatured as the devil. She has been threatened with an immorality arrest for "denouncing Islam," which she never did. She is one of only 31 women in all of Yemen who do not cover their heads when they go out. Yet, she makes time in her amazingly busy schedule, and makes room in her home for this American woman she has never met. She listens to me, at this immature stage in my learning curve of the Middle East/Yemen, and offers encouragement and seems so sure of herself. She should be. She is on the side of what is right in everything she does. Is it any wonder that my meetings today were primarily with women and I felt that they were the most productive?! In all three, they essentially put the question directly to me, "How is this country going to be better for girls when you leave?" I will be honest, after talking with them, I realize now that is exactly the work I have cut out for me, for all of us.

Arabic spoken here

I just returned from one of two trips I have now had the opportunity to take to the "sook," or market, in Sana'a where I am staying. This open-air market with its shoe-box sized stalls is where Yemenis go to get their spices, their clothing, shoes, kitchen utensils and to maybe grab a bite to eat. In both visits, we were eventually accompanied by a young man who was extremely helpful in guiding us around. Also, both times each of the young men had very strong English skills. They did not expect to get paid, they were not asking for "baksheesh" (money) , and although we were told that they more than likely got some sort of kick back from the owners of the stalls that they took us to, it seemed to me, with their interesting questions and polite conversation, that they were merely looking for an opportunity to practice their English.



Over the last 5 days my resolve to introduce Arabic language study to St. Paul has grown more and more. I have always been extremely proud of the work St. Paul schools has done to make world languages accessible to students. In fact, both of my children study Spanish and I hope they go on to study Chinese, French, German, Japanese or another language as secondary students. The world language teachers I have met in St. Paul are entirely dedicated to their work and quite cognizant of the importance of their work as our world grows together and communication gets easier. While I think St. Paul Public Schools should continue to invest in the languages it has, we should be working to expand the languages we offer and expand the opportunities for our students to access that learning.



Each time I log on to this computer I am convinced more and more that we should be just as serious about Arabic language study as every other language. Consistently, no matter what site I go to: cnn.com, bbc.co.uk, msnbc.com, yahoo.com; at least 3 out of 6 headlines are reporting news originating in or happening in Arabic speaking countries. Strategically, the United States is going to have a strong interest in this region for a long time to come. There are as many opportunities here as their are situations to resolve or problems to solve and although I am honored to be here studying what the American Federation of Teachers can do, I know that our work here is going to need to be continued by another generation. In fact, with an investment in language education, our current work could only be improved upon, and the world's relationship with the countries of the Middle East could actually evolve.

Right now we are playing catch up with Chinese languages. Let us use that as a lesson and not let it happen again with another one of the world's strategic languages.

Uncommon experiences travelling

Most of my group left this morning for the 15 hour flight back to their various corners of the United States so I have had a bit of time before gearing up for my work in Yemen today. I have remained behind in order to determine how the AFT can help teachers over here with their work in the classroom as well as their work in building a successful, democratic trade union. In this time, I have had the opportunity to list all of the little things that I did not prepare for but came up anyway on this trip.

First of all, I am typing on an Arabic keyboard that has keys in slightly different places than my English keyboard at home. That and the fact that this website consistently comes up in German (I can't read German) has made for some entertaining work in managing this blog, spell-checking, and trying to make the best use of my limited Internet time. While I have had the some of the usual translation stories that accompany my limited language acquisition and my hosts limited English, I have been impressed over and over with how hard everyone works to understand each other when we don't share a language, how patient the Yemenis are with me, and how polite everyone has been. My perceptions of Islam and experiencing a Muslim country have been enlightened along the way.

In thinking about all of these opportunities to problem solve, I realize that this is exactly the sort of navigation we need to be teaching our students everyday. This world is theirs and we need to equip them with every skill possible so that when they find themselves in these situations in the future, whether that future is a business trip to Yemen or navigating a new social studies class and the culture, language/lexicon, expectations, and norms that follow, they are able to see the experience as an opportunity to problem solve as well at stretch, grow, and learn about themselves.

I went into teaching because I loved my subject and I loved the idea of a career in teaching, so it was work for me to remember that loving English/language arts (and being okay with 7th grade) wasn't native to every student. I had to bring them there. It seems common that our first reaction to change or to something new is to retreat. Travelling has certainly brought that instinct out in me from time to time, but I know in teaching it took time to reflect on my classroom to remember that sometimes all it took to retreat for my students was the time it took to travel down the hall to my room to feel foreign, to retreat, or to become defensive. Balancing the ambitious work of teaching with setting a classroom climate where it would be safe to take risks and use their time with me as an opportunity to stretch, to grow, to learn about themselves was always a challenge. The real issue became the time I had to reflect to improve myself, or rather, the lack of time.

Just as I have a break in my schedule this morning, those moments I had the opportunity to reflect amidst the break-neck pace of teaching helped me better meet the needs of my students. Too often I only found that time when I couldn't sleep at the end of the day because I was still too wound up from my day of teaching, reviewing my rotating list of things to do during my prep the next day and trying to figure out how I was going to get my children dropped off early enough before school (but after my day care opened) in order to do those things that could not wait until prep time.

Like travelling, all of us need down time to think and to reflect on our work. We need opportunities to remember that we may have made our classrooms native for us, but we are inviting all travellers who have only a short time to learn from us before we send them off to the care of our colleagues in the next grade, the next room, or the next step in their education. I believe that the St. Paul Federation of Teachers should make it our priority to carve out that time to reflect. Each of us as individual professionals will then make it our priority to use that time to welcome the world to learn with us.

Time out for a word on that veto

Today we had an afternoon meeting scheduled with a group of independent Yemeni journalists who were going to talk to us about the political situation in Yemen. Unfortunately (on many levels), an explosion went off north of Sana'a, where we are staying, and they all went to cover that instead. While the rest of Sana'a went about its day, and our interpreter from Beirut, Lebanon just shrugged her shoulders, I had the chance to catch up on news from St. Paul.

I was very disappointed to learn that Governor Tim Pawlenty vetoed the statewide health insurance pool bill for school employees (SWHI). The rising cost of providing health insurance must be addressed and our statewide union has been the only group to attempt that. Officials opposed to the SWHI bill, including Gov. Pawlenty, had over 4 years to offer an alternative. Instead, the Governor's only response during that time was to make access to affordable health insurance even harder by kicking Minnesotans off of MNCare.

This legislation was extensively vetted over 4 years, so the Governor (and every DFL and Republican legislator who opposed it as well) had every opportunity to offer solutions or ideas. Instead, one of his primary arguments is that our workforce is aging and the SWHI bill does nothing to address that. As far as I can tell every work force is aging, including the Executive Branch of our state government. Short of discovering a Fountain of Youth, one of the ways I have been told that you can prevent aging is by keeping your mind sharp by thinking. Education Minnesota has been thinking of a solution.

The Governor also criticises the bill for failing to address the runaway cost of prescription drug coverage. I find this criticism the most disheartening of all. Rather than merely complain, this issue could have been the perfect opportunity for the Governor to use the power of his office to partner with this legislation. He could have offered a tandem solution to prescription drug costs and coverage that could have not only dove-tailed to the statewide pool, but possibly enhanced Minnesota Care as well. Instead of creativity he offered criticism. Health insurance in Minnesota will continue to languish from this disappointing lack of leadership.

Of course there was an entire contingency of legislators who also spent 4 years refusing to lead on this issue and instead failed to commit to the intense work of finding common ground for the common good. They measured their votes in 10,000 steps and $6 million subsidies, rather than in the long-term health of crafting a real solution for our state.

We must call on our elected officials to take opportunities to show real leadership. This lesson is not lost on me.

From conflict to alliance

We landed in Yemen at 2 a.m. on Monday morning and since have had 9 meetings and a couple different tours. Aside from yesterday's powerful meeting with the Arab Sisters Forum, which was run by 2 female workers for SAF, today was the first day that a woman was present at one of our meetings in any official capacity. Jawhara Hamad Tabet was a top official with the Yemeni Socialist Party as well as chair of the Women's Committee and the Civil Society Committee. While she was quiet for quite a bit of the meeting, toward the end the gentleman leading it specifically called to her to answer a question and stated that we "needed to hear her speak." It was the strongest support of a woman by a man I have seen up until this point. She then went on to explain a point about the Socialist party and their strategic alliance with Islah, a strong opposition party, as well as her own history as teacher, principal/director/union activist and social activist.

The refreshing part of this situation is that in at least 2 other situations unfortunately, where we had been in meetings with men professing to work on behalf of the advancement of Yemeni women, no women had been present. Furthermore, when pressed about this by Cathleen, another woman on this trip, or me, we received very evasive or downright disconcerting answers. In one case, when we asked about any women helping to lead we were told that there was one woman in a leadership position, but that she did not want to participate. In another meeting, when pressed, the Islah party pushed back using the struggle of American women to gain the freedoms we currently have and asked for us to have patience. It would take a great deal of time for Yemeni society to advance to a place that American women enjoy now.

I suppose they thought that gave them cover to dodge the question, but it actually points to the larger truth and that is that they don't have the time. Much of the education debate is a fractal of the larger human rights debate going on around the world. It used to seem reasonable to take the time to see if women were up for the pressure of man's work, man's legislative power, or a man's wages; but the world is moving at the speed of a click now and no country can afford to wait for human rights to evolve. We are moving toward greater communciation, greater need for ideas, greater need for education, and a greater need for collaboration and connections if we are going to work together to find solutions to the world's most imposing problems.

A country(theirs or mine) can't afford to write off half of its population. I am so inspired by the work of the Arab Sisters Forum, the leaders who have taken chances, and the verve and attitude I see in my daughter that I am determined to move from isolated conflict with people who don't know they have work to do, to work with the people who want to make a difference, because we don't have the time to do otherwise.

A part of me

I have been in about 3-4 meetings each day here in Yemen with NGOs, union officials, government officials (theirs and ours), and citizens and each meeting gets this country under my skin a little more than the last. Their problems are very well-defined, their hope is very real, but their actions seem extremely elusive. If the story of Tantalus were a country, it would be Yemen. Just when they are getting democracy off the ground, the 1st Gulf war strikes and they get an influx of extreme conservatives re-writing the agenda for women and country. Just when the Clinton administration shines a light on Yemen as an example of how the Middle East can incubate democracy, the Cole gets blown up in Aden, a Yemen port. Just as moderates begin coalescing, the 2nd Gulf war breaks out and conservatives use George Bush's reasoning that he is doing the will of God to claim that they are merely doing the same.

Their education issues (2 million students with no access to education--the majority of them girls, corruption is rampant, teachers have no uniform training when there is training offered at all, 100-150 students per class, 95% of the schools have no laboratories, 42% have no drinking water, 70% have no electricity) look insurmountable until you have seen where they were before. Fifteen years ago there were 4 boys attending school for every one girl, now there are 3 boys for every 2 girls. That is progress. Fifteen years ago about 70% of Yemen's women were illiterate, now that has fallen to 59%. That is progress. In 2006, 4 organizations cooperated to train 400 Yemen women to run for political office. Ultimately 140 actually ran, and 38 won (out of 7000 local elections country-wide). That is progress.

From at least 2 of the meetings I was in today (one with the Arab Sisters Forum, another with Islah opposition party officials) there is great determination to keep improving the condition of education overall, and specifically education for Yemen's girls. This determination is borne out of the realization that it is more than a human rights issue (which it has been acknowledged to be) but that is is an economic vehicle for a country that is going to run out of oil, run out of water, and run out of friends outside of the Middle East if it does not prepare for the 21st Century.

At our final meeting, I had an exchange that sums it up well. If the AFT is going to come in to Yemen to offer assistance to educators, the idea has to come from Yemen and they need to know what they need in an educational system that prepares this country for the future. If any one of us comes in and begins to offer something without listening first, or forcing the conversation among Yemenis first, then it is just a form of educational colonialism.

Not so much Likert as Maslow

The discussions between the Palestinian teachers from their teachers’ union and the Israeli teachers from their union couldn't have been more different.

The Palestinian teachers talked about not being paid a full salary for 18 months and having to strike for over 100 days in order to finally get one month of a full salary just this month. They did not separate the lives they lead, concerning the wall going up, the police, politics, their salaries, etc. with the conditions in which they teach.

The Israeli teachers’ union discussion was much more focused on professional evolution. They talked about pushing back reform efforts that were bad for education, how they found negotiating empowering enough that they didn’t have to resort to a strike, and how they were rolling out a plan to increase teacher pay by 30% largely by creating a salary schedule based on education and experience. The discussion included international standards, pensions, and governance. It makes me wonder if Maslow could create a hierarchy of teacher needs?