The teachers union is so liberal it hurts, how do real teachers about some of their positions?

Answer 1

People use the term liberal to end discussion just as people use name-calling to end conversation. By calling someone something, it is assumed that we all understand what or who a person is or believes and that we don't need to ask anything else. I have worked for thirty years in a public school district with a conservative union and a so-called liberal union. The conservative union supports the superintendent and principal on most issues and do not ask for much in salary and benefit discussions. As a result, many problems go unsolved, teachers take on part-time jobs away from school, and our health insurance costs us a lot--morale of teachers is not very good and excellent teachers quit to go to school districts that treat them better. The liberal union calls for better pay and treatment and tries to defend good teachers who are bullied and mistreated by their principals, students or parents. I am aware of a district in which the superintendent gets everyone together to solve adult problems so that teachers can spend most of their time teaching. It works so well that the community has grown rapidly and have great schools.
By the way, the liberal union has been lobbying for improvement in the fairness of the tests and has also helped school districts that have problems to improve. It is a grass-roots union whose policies are set by the members not by the leaders. They elect all their officers and all their officers are teachers or support staff of public schools. When this organization sets policy, it is done by representative assemblies based on 1 representative for every 50 members and on the national level it has an assembly of 10,000--the largest representative body in a voluntary group in the world. Most of the heat it takes is propaganda directed at deflecting attention from the issues--like using testing to label schools as failures instead of using it to identify schools that need help and then providing that help--deflecting attention from the issues by calling teachers or their unions by a particular name in order to end the discussion. Thanks for asking your great question.

Answer 2

I'm sure what the person meant to say ask is how teachers "feel" about some to the positions of the teacher's unions. I'm sure of that because I thought about it for a second. That was all it took. As a teacher, I can tell you that the first two responses represent one of the greatest challenges facing educators today. People have stopped THINKING. Seriously, if they had spent the 30 seconds it took them to scribe a meaningless response and thought about the word that is most likely missing from the sentence, I'm confident they would have arrived at the same conclusion I did. But that would require a bit of critical thinking.

As to the question posed, I find most of my union's positions to be quite over board. That is to say, I think they push things too far knowing that they'll lose most of it at the negotiating table. I wish I could say more about the positions of my union, but I'm woefully uninformed. I don't like unions and I don't claim to be an actual member of mine, even though the dues are taken from my check every two weeks.

I think unions have become the very thing they were born to combat. In a sense they've become the school yard bully, forcing people to pay up or else.

We have much bigger problems in education than how many free visits to the doctor I'm entitled to each year. My health plan is to stay healthy. Let's worry about actually educating our youth!

As to the issue of liberalism, I don't see it as a big problem with teachers unions. I don't think that sort of dogma has much of a place in contract negotiations or any of the other standard business of the unions. I do see it as a problem in the areas where state curricula are handed down, whether that is the State Assembly or a particular office thereof. I agree that there is a desperate need to reform the education system, but it has to start at the foundation. The liberal practice of creating new programs and initiatives to address problems as they arrise is not going to fix the schools. For that reason, I have a problem with the liberal trends governing our classrooms. However, I'm certainly not advocating a conservative approach, where we keep things mostly the same and try to patch any leaks that pop up. That won't work either.

No amount of "reforms" will save our school system. It's outdated and inefficient. I mean, how many kids actually need July and August off to help out on the family farm? 180 days of school is outdated. One teacher in a class of thirty students, all the same age, is inefficient. Now, one teacher in a "school house" style class, where you have all ages together and the older kids help the younger kids might be workable, but there are just too many kids to educate. It's not logistically feasable unless we re-examine some of our fundamental assumptions about the right to a "quality education."

At the end of the day I don't think it matters whether the reformers get too liberal or too conservative, or strike a nice bipartisan balance. Nothing but a massive overhaul of our system of education will bring about the results our polititians desire.

Answer 3

Curriculum is becoming way too "left of center" and teachers have little, to no control over it.

Health insurance is not that great, the pay starts low ($27K), and slowly gets to mediocre.

The daily time commitment is huge. 9 hrs at school, homework grading papers for hours after that.

Summers used to be "off", now they have mandatory "continuing education" courses teachers take during the summer along with other obligations that are slowly but surely chipping away at the "summer break" and then there's "in-service" training for the week before school starts.

Don't forget there's a lot of abuse dumped on teachers too by snotty nosed delinquents and their parents that believe those children are perfect angels.

It is a very emotionally rewarding job though, not unlike I imagine a firefighter or police job would be like.

The job description just keeps getting more demanding and requires more of a time commitment every year when someone in government thinks up a "new idea". Too bad the pay and benefits don't keep pace with the increasing demands.

Think of the union demands as a whole, and as an "asking" price, that leaves room to negoitate to a price both parties can live with.

Answer 4

Like most organizations above about 12 in size, the union is more concerned with perpetuating its own existence than with actually improving classroom conditions. In that they're no different from school district administrators, government agencies, and governments. This has nothing to do with being liberal or conservative. Those points of view are just the stories power groups tell the chumps to keep them happily at war with each other, or to make it look like they're doing something.

NCLB (pronounced "nickle-bee" by teachers) is a case in point. Absolutely NOTHING about the demand to improve student performance has any impact on the real classroom. Administrators have meetings with each other to try to understand the demands. Administrators have meetings with teachers to explain the demands. Somebody at the state level writes standards and teachers waste hours of time proving they are actually teaching to the standards. In the Spring, everybody takes the big test, way too early in the year to have done a decent job teaching all the standards (May and half of June are thus mostly wasted), and students lose a week of instruction in the process. Test results come back from the state way too late in the next school year to have any influence on curriculum planning. And meantime, of course, the same kids are ignoring the same lessons, skipping the same homework, dating and partying and blowing off their education.

The result: NCLB makes things worse. The same could be said for countless other programs, liberal and conservative alike.

Answer 5

Liberals as a complete cannot difference the unions, nor can the Cons difference the Government. We want Americans to make the option to difference. Everyone is blaming one facet or the opposite for the Government ruining the economic procedure right here, good that is the shocker, have you learnt who truthfully is a fault for the economic mess? YOU, ME, all folks, now not for our vote casting however our possess egocentric greed and the have got to have the whole lot. We are continually watching for the following first-rate factor to provoke. It is our society that has prompted the predicament, now how can we repair it. Change our habits, appear at what's fundamental, begin their. These academics made up our minds to emerge as academics to train the kids that's what they aspired to be, now not Union subsidized lazy academics, Society made them that means. These Teachers have got to don't forget why they receives a commission. However a Union is crucial to make certain the Teachers get the help they want (academic systems, textual content and different) and the Pay and Benefits which are wanted.

Answer 6

I am related to 3 teachers and they all are almost as liberal as I am. I think is starts with the altruism of being an educator.
You just can't be a tightwad, narrow minded, scrooge and be a good teacher.

Answer 7

huh??? and your a teacher. Whats wrong with being liberal? What are you trying to ask?

Answer 8

I don't understand your question. "how do real teachers about?"