News: Interview
John Wilson
New Executive At the NEA Helm

NEA's new executive director offers a vision for the future of public education based on his own classroom experience.

When John Wilson comes on board this month as the top staffer at NEA headquarters in Washington, D.C., the nation will be watching. It's not every day, after all, that a national organization over 2.5 million educators strong brings on a new executive director. Wilson will be replacing the retiring Don Cameron, the Michigan teacher who has led the NEA staff since 1983. A former president and executive director of the North Carolina Association of Educators, Wilson likes to say that he's been an NEA activist since his days as an NEA student member back in the late 1960s. What's his vision for NEA? NEA Today's Leona Hiraoka discussed that question with Wilson last month, before he assumed his new responsibilities.

<What's your classroom background?
I've taught K through 12, basically with students who were either mentally handicapped, learning disabled, or emotionally handicapped. The labels change. Eventually, they'll figure out that we should stop labeling children, because you're never going to find a label that doesn't degrade the child.

I also ran a progressive discipline program at a middle school.

I don't believe we should punish children by denying them an education. Suspending students into the streets is giving up. But you can have zero tolerance for discipline problems if what you suspend students into is an alternative program.

To attract young people into teaching, you helped create the North Carolina Teacher Cadet program.
Yes. Students usually decide by the age of 14 what they're not going to be. So, in North Carolina, our NEA state affiliate has developed a program that offers an exploratory course at the middle school level and an honors course in high school.

These courses help give students an idea whether they'd like to become a teacher.

How can NEA help attract people into education?
I would love to see the Association serve as a catalyst for getting the federal government involved in a teacher cadet-type program. One of my interests, as NEA executive director, will be in seeing whether the U.S. Department of Education is open to forging a partnership with us on this.

How do we keep new teachers in the profession?
We have to connect teacher education with the real-life classroom. We need extended time for student teaching, so students have an opportunity to hone their craft.

We also need to provide mentors who truly have time to support new teachers. And we can't load up new teachers with extracurricular activities and non-instructional duties.

In North Carolina, we pushed for and passed a law that said you cannot assign an extracurricular activity to teachers during the first three--or last three--years of their teaching, unless they have requested this activity in writing.

Did you have a mentor when you started teaching?
When I started, I was assigned to the trailer that wasn't ready when school started. I had no books, no materials, no mentor. It was quite a learning experience.

What makes for good professional development?
NEA members in North Carolina have helped create the North Carolina Teacher Academy, which is absolutely the best professional development in the nation. We use national experts to train our trainers. And our trainers are real teachers who continually upgrade their skills.

Teachers who take courses at the Academy are compensated, and some critics have charged that teachers wouldn't attend if the state didn't pay them. I say, "Yes, they would participate without compensation, but, no, they shouldn't have to." If IBM can make professional development part of its employees' compensated work, why can't education?

What about professional development for education support personnel?
That's very important. All workers should be learners. If you think of custodians and their handling of chemicals, for example, then the need for training becomes instantly obvious.

Support staff should get paid for skills and knowledge they develop, and, at the work site, we need to make sure that everyone understands and values the work that support staff do. All staff have a stake in the development of children.

North Carolina has more teachers with National Board Certification than any other state.
Yes. In North Carolina, we provide lots of orientation and support. We've worked successfully in the legislature to have the application fee paid for teachers and to get teachers time off to complete the required portfolio.

I believe that, within 25 years, National Board Certification will be required, just as it is in the medical profession. We should plan for that. If you don't get involved, things can turn out quite differently than what you would have wanted.

What about salaries?
To improve student achievement, you have to improve teacher quality. To do that, you have to provide good salaries and good working conditions. They all go hand in hand--higher standards, higher salaries, better teacher quality, better student achievement. In North Carolina, we've raised salaries 54 percent. Somebody asked what I'd do when the teachers in North Carolina became the best-paid in the nation.

I'd then want to know what the engineers and computer technology people are making, I said, because I want teachers to be in the top 10th percentile of what we pay all professionals in the nation.

Resources

• For more on John Wilson, visit the Web at www.nea.org/nr/nr000908b.html.

• Visit www.ncae.org for details on the programs that the North Carolina Association of Educators provides for its members.

• The Covenant with North Carolina's Children, a group that John Wilson and NEA's North Carolina state affiliate joined with other child advocate groups to create, advances public policy to promote the total well being of children. See www.ncchild.org/covhome.htm.

• For more on National Board Certification, visit the Web at www.nbpts.org and www.nea.org/teaching/nbpts/nbptsqa.html.