- 3rd Annual PFT Rep and Principal Meeting -

Candy and John introduced the day’s work with a conversation about their experiences and beliefs around shared ownership and responsibility at the district/union leadership level and their interests in supporting the same type of collaborative relationships and work at the site level. As quoted during the meeting, “If you’re not at the table (for the discussion and decision-making) you’ll be on the table.” (Adam Urbanski, Director of TURN).

 Dr. Pat Dolan presented the foundation for the day’s work via video. Dr. Dolan has more than 40 years of experience working with unions and management building joint collaborative structures and systems in industry and public education. Dr. Dolan presented on the following topics:

Part I The BIG picture - including federal and state level waves of school reform

Part II Building systemic collaborative relationships, structures and systems in the organization

Part III Leadership and the concept of, “giving it away”

A significant learning for all of us from Dr. Dolan’s presentation is the charge to identify the common sense from the nonsense of what’s happening to “us” (imposed) in education by outside forces. For example, the federal government has put into place repercussions for school sites/districts not meeting NCLB expectations (all students 100% proficient by 2014). The feds offer states a waiver but only to those states willing to include student test scores in their teacher evaluation tool. The PFT and District see this as an opportunity to build our own teacher evaluation tool, based on what we will hold ourselves accountable to (common sense), before California’s legislature creates and imposes a teacher evaluation tool on us (which could include some nonsense). A take-a-away from the meeting, “We must find a way to grade teachers without degrading teaching. To make sure test scores are for information and not a verdict.” (Adam Urbanski). This will be our collaborative work this year.

Words from Steve Farber, last year’s PFT/Principal meeting’s motivational speaker, closed the day, “Extreme Leadership is not a solo act; it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You’re not going to change the world by yourself. It’s your job to recruit, cultivate, and develop the Extreme Leaders in your midst.” If you’d like to download Steve Farber’s book for free, The Radical Leap – Re-Energized - click here.

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	PFT GETS OUT THE VOTE November 1, 2012 Candy and Joe get out the vote with help from retired teachers Bob Pacilio and Bob Bjorkquist.

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PFT Representive Meeting with Bruce Dickinson, Co-Director of Southwest TURN February 2012		Framing Our Message ~ Our Voice We agree with our SW TURN (Southwest Teacher Union Reform Network) colleagues, “We have come to realize that politicians and the business community have controlled efforts around recent school reform. Educators it seems, if not silent, have been reluctant to engage in a very public dialogue. We also realized that our communications to date have been insufficient in building the support necessary to implement our ideas around school reform. Not only has the quantity been insufficient but the quality has been lacking. We need a new strategy for communicating (framing our message) if we are to be successful. We must learn these new strategies if we are going to impact policy-makers.” What is framing?   Read more  / PowerPoint Presentation

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