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Sunday, May 15, 2011

Education Nation – A Union Leader Reacts « InterACT

Education Nation – A Union Leader Reacts « InterACT

Education Nation – A Union Leader Reacts

This guest post is an excerpt from a longer piece by Christal Watts, president of the Vallejo Education Association. Like me, Christal was tuned in to the Education Nation Los Angeles Teacher Town Hall webcast earlier today (5/15/11 – archived video available beginning 5/16/11). Her post was generated at near-lightning speed, and she allowed me to cross-post a portion of it here at InterACT, where I expect we’ll have some other California teachers presenting their views as well. Many thanks to Christal for allowing InterACT to use part of her work, and you can read the rest of it, along with more of Christal’s writings, at Five Feet of Feisty.

I reluctantly pointed my browser to today’s Education Nation to watch it online. Last year’s Education Nationappeared to be nothing more than a forum to beat up on public education, teachers and their unions. This webcast felt much more balanced than the small bit I watched last year. There were actual educators on the panels who had experience teaching in public schools mixed in with college professors, charter school teachers and others.

It was great to see Teresa Montano correct the misconception about tenure. As a college professor, she