November 2006

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November 2006

State Report

The 3-Minute Enrollment

Maryland Three minutes per teacher. That’s all it took officials of the Howard County Education Association (HCEA) to sign up new members attending a back-to-school orientation. Instead of filling out paper forms, the newest members of the Maryland State Teachers Association used one of 10 computers available to access the On-Line Membership Enrollment System (OLM). While several other states have partially automated enrollment for members using credit cards, “this is the first time NEA has had online registration using…payroll deduction,” says HCEA President Ann DeLacy. “The system made it easy for them to sign up at lunchtime and between sessions.” About 160 of the 320 teachers at the orientation became members. The electronic process allows new enrollees to begin receiving benefits within 24 hours.

Powerful Silence

Vermont After a lengthy bargaining ordeal, Windsor Southeast Education Association officials organized a committee named “Settle the Contract.” Members organized silent meetings, which took place under the window of the superintendent’s office. “They also attended school board meetings en masse,” says Robert Raskevitz, a Vermont-NEA UniServ director. “They didn’t say anything out of respect, but they filled the room.” The tactics worked. A settlement was reached on a three-year contract that calls for salary increases of more than 4 percent each year and boosts the base salary to more than $31,000 by the final year. The maximum salary for a veteran teacher with a master’s degree was also increased, and the health insurance premium contribution remained at 10 percent. “To maintain the co-pay was huge,” Raskevitz says.

Quality Control

Texas In an effort to curtail educator turnover, Education Austin (EA) members won a two-year consultation agreement that includes a 7.5 percent pay raise for education support professionals (ESPs) and teachers this school year and a 4 percent raise next year. In addition, EA won a commitment by the district to fully fund employee health insurance through fiscal year 2008. “High teacher turnover has plagued the district in recent years,” says EA President Louis Malfaro. “This commitment sends a message to our teachers and staff that we want you to stay.”

The High Cost of Health

Utah Despite a recent 5.6 percent salary increase for Jordan School District teachers, many experienced a net pay cut because of an even greater rise in health insurance costs. The smaller paychecks mean that new teachers will be more difficult to recruit, while some current ones can no longer afford Association dues—about $50 per month. “The dues money is going toward groceries,” says Laura Black, executive director of the Jordan Education Association. “Unfortunately, the insurance premiums here will impact our ability to recruit new teachers. We’ll be their last choice instead of first choice.” In 2005–06, Jordan teachers paid about $137 per month to cover themselves and their families. This school year, family coverage jumped to about $366 per month on the traditional plan, an increase of $229.

Just Compensation

Washington The Everett Education Association (EEA) approved a new three-year contract that awards raises totaling 9.5 percent for a new teacher and 4 percent for a 24-year veteran. The raises reflect a statewide 3.3 percent cost-of-living increase for 2006–07. With standardized testing and district assessments taking up increasing amounts of classroom time, EEA sought compensation for the additional workload, either in added pay or in time away from the classroom to prepare for and grade the tests.

Teachers belonging to the Federal Way Education Association (FWEA) won a new contract through 2009. While the largest part of teacher salaries and benefits are set by the legislature based on education level and years of experience, the FWEA negotiated a supplemental contract for work done outside the classroom that will increase teacher supplemental pay in steps over the next three years.

Educators Unleashed

Oklahoma “Call off your teachers,” state lawmakers told Joel Robison, associate executive director of the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA). When legislators wanted to add anti-teacher language to several bills that would augment reasons for a teacher to be fired or not reemployed by a school, OEA members organized public demonstrations and a letter- and e-mail-writing campaign that also focused on salary. The Association’s mantra was, “Three thousand dollars, no strings attached.”

November 2006

Spotlight

Plugging In

A digital literacy initiative in Indianapolis provided more than technology training. It created a community of learning for the district’s teachers.

Across the Lawrence Township school district in Indianapolis, a collective groan greeted the prospect of another professional development initiative. For teachers in this 16,000-student district, past experiences have elicited all too familiar complaints: a “one size fits all” approach, a hit-or-miss topic they may never actually find the time to address in the classroom, or the visiting expert who is gone at the end of the day and never seen again.

“Quite frankly,” says Betsy Wheatley, a teacher at Fall Creek Valley Middle School, “professional development is not something an average teacher looks forward to. But we knew soon after this new program started in 2002 that this was going to be different.”

The new program was Lawrence Township’s Digital Age Literacy Initiative, funded by a $5.9 million Lilly Endowment grant to promote “21st Century skills,” primarily the integration of traditional reading and writing proficiency with technological literacy among students who are “growing up digital.” 

District officials understood that these skills couldn’t be embedded in the classroom unless teachers were properly trained, so they turned to educators to train their peers.

“We believed coaching to be one of the most effective methods of professional development,” recalls Leona Jamison, the district’s director of professional development, “so we set out to train a group of classroom teachers to become full-time coaches.” In the process, they transformed Lawrence Township’s 1,200 teachers into a learning community they expect to live on once the grant money dries up at the end of the school year.

Sondra Shelton, a digital literacy coach at Sunnyside Elementary, was one of many intrigued by the opportunity. “I had been reading articles about the coaching model,” she says, “so I jumped at the chance.”

Using the grant money, the district trained Shelton and more than 30 other coaches to work with teachers across all grade levels, emphasizing basic technological, visual, and informational literacy.

As the coaches entered their peers’ classrooms, initial skepticism quickly turned to practical learning. They formed book clubs, study groups, and workshops as venues to collaborate and discuss new research and teaching strategies. A new Web network provided an easy way for educators to meet, talk, and take courses online. Just one month after the site launched in late 2004, more than 250 teachers had signed up for different online classes.

In addition to being exposed to new resources, teachers also learned how to collect, share, and analyze data to evaluate the impact of these new strategies. Writing workshops, for instance, were implemented at several different schools, and teachers played a direct role in assessing their effects on literacy skills.

Stephania Smith, a teacher at Harrison Hill Elementary, says the coaches’ accessibility was the key in turning abstract training into concrete teaching skills. “[They] have been in the classroom, working directly with you to implement the strategies we learned in the workshops, study groups, and book clubs. I’m not looking forward to the end of the grant.”

Smith isn’t alone in being apprehensive. At the end of this school year, the coaches will return to their own classrooms. To keep the program going, some will keep their doors open to any teacher who wants to come in, observe, and learn. Teachers who’ve been trained by the coaches add that the book clubs, study groups, and online forums created over the past few years will continue to offer venues in which to share lesson plans, research, and strategies. Shelton believes this signals a sea change in how teachers view professional development.
“Teachers now recognize that [it] is part of their responsibility,” she says. “We as professionals need to keep growing and challenging ourselves and not be afraid to try new things.”

—Tim Walker

Photo: Tom Strickland

November 2006

Resources

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November 2006

Resources

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November 2006

President's Viewpoint

Sounding the Alarm

The school dropout crisis has devastating
effects on young people. NEA plans to face it head-on.

The statistics are staggering.

According to estimates, about 30 percent of high school students drop out before graduation, meaning about 1 million students fail to graduate from high school every year. That amounts to some 7,000 students who drop out of school each day.

This is a deadly number that is having devastating effects on America’s young people, especially low-income and minority students. Only 5 in 10 Black and Hispanic students graduate on time with a standard diploma, and less than one-half of American Indian and Alaska Native students complete high school.

What happens when Johnny and his friends drop out of school? Studies show that each class of high school dropouts costs the nation more than $200 billion in lost wages and tax revenues, as well as spending for social support programs. High school dropouts have an earnings disadvantage that tends to remain with them throughout their lives. Without the required education to obtain a good-paying job, high school dropouts often face a bleak future. Among inmates of state and federal prisons, the majority failed to complete high school.

So what is the answer? Team NEA, we must face this problem head-on.

In an effort to refocus our nation on this crisis, we have launched a comprehensive plan to reduce the high school dropout rate. Drawn from a wide range of experience and data, the NEA plan calls for interventions that have been proven to be successful in improving student achievement and decreasing dropouts.

Among our sources was a 2006 study by Civic Enterprises that shared dropouts’ insights on why they left school before graduation. They cited a number of factors that would have kept them in school: enhancing the connection between school and work; providing real-world learning experiences; making school more relevant and engaging; and providing more help to struggling students.

We heard their pleas, and our plan addresses these issues and more. Many high school students are falling through the cracks and dropping out, so we will fill that gap by making sure students receive individual attention in smaller classes and learning communities as well as tutoring options during the school day, weekends, and summer breaks.

Our best hope of keeping students in school will require a multi-pronged attack. We will work to provide educators with the training and resources to spot the common dropout indicators: poor grades, poor attendance, poor family support, and lack of interest. We will fight to expand students’ graduation options by partnering with community colleges in career and technical fields and with alternative schools so that youngsters have multiple paths to earn a diploma and achieve success.

And we will act early. Children at risk need to be identified at a young age—as early as preschool—so that sustained support can be applied. Research shows that success in the elementary grades diminishes the possibility of later dropping out in high school.

Putting our Dropout Plan into action will demand a team approach—the combined efforts of parents, educators, administrators, community-based organizations, businesses, and federal, state, and local governments. There is no one magical, quick-fix remedy to the dropout problem. It is a complex issue that requires a complex array of solutions.

But one message comes across loud and clear from dropouts themselves: we must help youth to overcome their sense of disconnectedness. We have a responsibility to step in and end the “slow disengagement” that leads 16-year-olds to opt out of their basic right to a great public school.

We can turn the tide on this epidemic by executing our plan with a laser-like and purposeful focus. The nation’s dropout problem is generating a lot of passionate debate, but let’s remember what Mark Twain once said: “Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.”

Team NEA, I know you can deliver the lightning!

-NEA President Reg Weaver

November 2006

People

Unwinding With Wood

A Tennessee support professional sticks it to stress with a unique gift.

Superstitious? Knock on wood. Stressed? Rub some wood.

That’s the theory behind Stress Sticks, created by John Brazee, a carpenter and warehouse supervisor for Tennessee’s Jackson-Madison County school system. He carves each of the pocket-size wooden rectangles himself and gives them out for folks to tote in a wallet or handbag. “Keep stress in pocket or purse—not in heart,” read the accompanying instructions.

Brazee conceived the idea five years ago while working among the large stacks of wood in his warehouse. “The original idea was floating around from living stones and other little things you carry around with you,” he says. “So I made mine a Stress Stick.”

When he unveiled them at a college job fair, offering them to undergrads who came to hear him talk about carpentry, the sticks were a hit. So much so that Brazee started attaching his business card and giving them to the salespeople with whom he did business. Soon, he was handing them out at Tennessee  Education Association meetings, ESP National Committee conferences, and the NEA Representative Assembly. At one RA, NEA Vice President Dennis Van Roekel got his first
Stress Stick.

“I give them away to anybody I can get my hands on,” Brazee says, estimating that about 2,000 have passed from his hands to others’. And that’s a lot of stress relief.

Command Performance

Collecting histories that might otherwise get lost keeps this teacher on his toes.

Charles Jerome Woods, a special education teacher in Los Angeles, has a passion for dance and perhaps an even larger passion for preserving it. From dancing in the kitchen as a young man and mulling a career as a dancer or critic, he’s come to view the development of a National Black Dance Archive as his top priority outside of the classroom.

Dancers are dying or leaving the region, Woods says, and their playbills, flyers, and ephemera are getting lost or discarded. He has nearly 1,000 pieces now, but is grappling with where to house it all.

This isn’t Woods’ only foray into complex archival work. He is also amassing documents that will comprise the Western States Black, Lesbian, Gay, and Transgender Archive.
Woods says he’s not a spokesperson for the cultural communities he creates archives for, “but I want them to be preserved. And not just preserved, but seen, heard, and enjoyed.”

Going to the Dogs

A Montana retiree chases her new passion across frozen expanses—and back into the classroom.

When Lela Schlitz retired from teaching elementary school in 2002, she knew she’d need something to keep her busy, so she went barking up another tree.

Her husband had started a five-dog touring sled team with $5,000 of their savings. She began joining him on weekends, taking the dogs to a nearby ski resort and giving people rides for cash. The couple “slogged through the snow on a sled in winter and a golf cart in summer,” says Schlitz. “It was exhausting. As mushers, we push more than we ride.”

It wasn’t long before education returned to Schlitz’s life, this time as part of her new business enterprise. While giving a fellow teacher a ride one day, the woman mentioned that her class was reading a book about a boy trying to save his grandfather’s farm by winning a sled race. She asked Schlitz to bring the team to her school. “That’s when we realized we could tie this in with literature,” Schlitz says. “We use Stone Fox in the elementary classes and Call of the Wild among high schoolers.” In addition to the reading programs, she and her husband conduct school assemblies, giving children the chance to pet the dogs and learn about their work on a team. They relax on their 20-acre spread in Montana.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would have mushed a dog sled,” she says. “But I found something that I can put my heart and soul into.”

A Hobby That’s (Not) Music to His Ears

One Minnesota choral and drama teacher has spent the last 20 years in stitches.

Mike Ellingsen knows that as in the music and drama lessons he imparts to his students, artistry is in perfecting the details. For 20 years, Ellingsen has melded countless fabric swatches and delicate thread into more than 90 heirloom quilts.

It was watching his wife work on a sewing machine that first drew his interest. “I thought, ‘It’s just another power tool so it looks fun,’” he recalls. When the couple saw a quilt on a magazine cover that they liked, they considered its expense and decided to take a crack at making one themselves. Ellingsen has primarily taught himself, using books and watching instructional TV shows. While he’s certainly not the only male quilter out there, he says men practicing the art are “a pretty rare breed, maybe one in 100.”

His work has garnered the attention of not only the myriad recipients of his creations, but also the area quilting community. This year, he was the featured quilter at a quilting exposition in his hometown of Blue Earth, and he designed a special blanket for the event, featuring 150-year-old pictures from the town’s history.

The tranquility of the hobby appeals most to the man whose day is filled with a medley of sounds, sometimes cacophonous.

“I spend my whole day using my voice, but quilting is silent,” Ellingsen says.

When you look back on 2007, what’s the one thing you most want to be able to say about your year?

November 2006

People

Unwinding With Wood

A Tennessee support professional sticks it to stress with a unique gift.

Superstitious? Knock on wood. Stressed? Rub some wood.

That’s the theory behind Stress Sticks, created by John Brazee, a carpenter and warehouse supervisor for Tennessee’s Jackson-Madison County school system. He carves each of the pocket-size wooden rectangles himself and gives them out for folks to tote in a wallet or handbag. “Keep stress in pocket or purse—not in heart,” read the accompanying instructions.

Brazee conceived the idea five years ago while working among the large stacks of wood in his warehouse. “The original idea was floating around from living stones and other little things you carry around with you,” he says. “So I made mine a Stress Stick.”

When he unveiled them at a college job fair, offering them to undergrads who came to hear him talk about carpentry, the sticks were a hit. So much so that Brazee started attaching his business card and giving them to the salespeople with whom he did business. Soon, he was handing them out at Tennessee  Education Association meetings, ESP National Committee conferences, and the NEA Representative Assembly. At one RA, NEA Vice President Dennis Van Roekel got his first
Stress Stick.

“I give them away to anybody I can get my hands on,” Brazee says, estimating that about 2,000 have passed from his hands to others’. And that’s a lot of stress relief.

Command Performance

Collecting histories that might otherwise get lost keeps this teacher on his toes.

Charles Jerome Woods, a special education teacher in Los Angeles, has a passion for dance and perhaps an even larger passion for preserving it. From dancing in the kitchen as a young man and mulling a career as a dancer or critic, he’s come to view the development of a National Black Dance Archive as his top priority outside of the classroom.

Dancers are dying or leaving the region, Woods says, and their playbills, flyers, and ephemera are getting lost or discarded. He has nearly 1,000 pieces now, but is grappling with where to house it all.

This isn’t Woods’ only foray into complex archival work. He is also amassing documents that will comprise the Western States Black, Lesbian, Gay, and Transgender Archive.
Woods says he’s not a spokesperson for the cultural communities he creates archives for, “but I want them to be preserved. And not just preserved, but seen, heard, and enjoyed.”

Going to the Dogs

A Montana retiree chases her new passion across frozen expanses—and back into the classroom.

When Lela Schlitz retired from teaching elementary school in 2002, she knew she’d need something to keep her busy, so she went barking up another tree.

Her husband had started a five-dog touring sled team with $5,000 of their savings. She began joining him on weekends, taking the dogs to a nearby ski resort and giving people rides for cash. The couple “slogged through the snow on a sled in winter and a golf cart in summer,” says Schlitz. “It was exhausting. As mushers, we push more than we ride.”

It wasn’t long before education returned to Schlitz’s life, this time as part of her new business enterprise. While giving a fellow teacher a ride one day, the woman mentioned that her class was reading a book about a boy trying to save his grandfather’s farm by winning a sled race. She asked Schlitz to bring the team to her school. “That’s when we realized we could tie this in with literature,” Schlitz says. “We use Stone Fox in the elementary classes and Call of the Wild among high schoolers.” In addition to the reading programs, she and her husband conduct school assemblies, giving children the chance to pet the dogs and learn about their work on a team. They relax on their 20-acre spread in Montana.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would have mushed a dog sled,” she says. “But I found something that I can put my heart and soul into.”

A Hobby That’s (Not) Music to His Ears

One Minnesota choral and drama teacher has spent the last 20 years in stitches.

Mike Ellingsen knows that as in the music and drama lessons he imparts to his students, artistry is in perfecting the details. For 20 years, Ellingsen has melded countless fabric swatches and delicate thread into more than 90 heirloom quilts.

It was watching his wife work on a sewing machine that first drew his interest. “I thought, ‘It’s just another power tool so it looks fun,’” he recalls. When the couple saw a quilt on a magazine cover that they liked, they considered its expense and decided to take a crack at making one themselves. Ellingsen has primarily taught himself, using books and watching instructional TV shows. While he’s certainly not the only male quilter out there, he says men practicing the art are “a pretty rare breed, maybe one in 100.”

His work has garnered the attention of not only the myriad recipients of his creations, but also the area quilting community. This year, he was the featured quilter at a quilting exposition in his hometown of Blue Earth, and he designed a special blanket for the event, featuring 150-year-old pictures from the town’s history.

The tranquility of the hobby appeals most to the man whose day is filled with a medley of sounds, sometimes cacophonous.

“I spend my whole day using my voice, but quilting is silent,” Ellingsen says.

November 2006

Leading the Way

On the Same Page

A year after Hurricane Katrina washed through public schools on the Gulf Coast, the NEA Foundation returns to restock library shelves.

Even a splash of water will ruin a sheet of paper. And lots of water—we’re talking about Biblical levels of rain and sea, mixed with every kind of garbage, rising to rooflines—will ruin lots of paper, including almost every good book in the public school libraries of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi.

That’s a call for help that NEA President Reg Weaver and NEA Foundation President Harriet Sanford simply couldn’t ignore. “A good library is a vital resource for every great public school,” Weaver said. “Bringing books back to these schools and these students who have lost so much is a top priority for NEA.”

This fall, Weaver and Sanford flew south from Washington, D.C., with $340,000 in cash grants from the NEA Foundation to help rebuild public school libraries in four Gulf Coast school districts. Although Hurricane Katrina made its disastrous visit more than a year ago, schools still struggle to return to normal—many students and school employees continue to live in FEMA trailers and go to school in portable classrooms. Among their many problems are empty library shelves.

“What we hear from superintendents and other leadership is that they have very few resources for restocking libraries,” Sanford said. Unlike other boxed-up donations that libraries may have received, the Foundation—largely through a contribution from the McCormick Tribune Foundation—is providing cash that librarians can use to buy age-appropriate, nonfiction books to sustain curriculum and support instructional needs. Local leaders also can choose to buy media technology.

 The NEA Foundation Katrina Grants are part of a series of efforts by NEA and its memberstohelp their stricken Gulf Coast colleagues, as well as students and public schools. First, the NEA Disaster Relief Fund raised more than $1.5 million, sent directly to public school employees to pay for food, clothing, and new