Union News: Your Impact at the MCAS Hearing
Union News: Your Impact at the MCAS Hearing
We are still feeling the power of the State House press conference and hearing, where we laid out the case for ending the use of the MCAS as a graduation requirement. You supported the eloquent speakers with hundreds and hundreds of messages to the Legislature. You, the educators of Massachusetts students, are the true experts.
We want to invite you to view some of the images and a video of the play put on by a group of young people from the Boston Workers Circle school, in which Deb McCarthy participated. They make the case against high-stakes testing better than anyone.
Last Friday was International Women’s Day, and we thought we’d share an inspirational video, and a request for your ideas.
On Friday, the MIDDAY Movement Series sponsored a flash mob inspired by the call to action by One Billion Rising (OBR), an organization founded by author and activist Eve Ensler. OBR seeks to end violence against women. OBR stands out as a women’s organization that explicitly identifies “poverty, economic injustice and labor exploitation” as a form of violence against women. Its call to action declares, “The right to be paid a just wage, have union rights and job security are basic rights of working people all over the world.”
Every year, between Valentine’s Day and International Women’s Day, One Billion Rising seeks to shine a light on the injustice of violence against women and gender-based violence – physical violence, economic violence, racial violence, reproductive violence, and more. And they’re doing it through dance. Why dance? Because through dance we express both defiance and joy. Through dance we celebrate and reclaim our bodies. Enjoy!
And now the request:
We met with state Senate President Karen Spilka last week to advocate for MTA’s legislative priorities. Senator Spilka shared that she is accepting public nominations to honor an influential woman with Massachusetts ties with a bust in the Senate chamber. The submission form, deadline info and additional details are here.
MTA Events, Opportunities and Solidarity Actions
Affordable Public Higher Education
We have won some important victories at the state and national level to move toward a top MTA goal — debt-free public higher education for all.
All Pell Grant-eligible students can now attend any Massachusetts public two- or four-year college or university without making any family contribution to the cost of tuition or fees, thanks to the MassGrant Plus Expansion program, funded by, of course, our Fair Share Amendment. We hope you’ll share information on this program with your students and their families — and take advantage of it for your own children, nieces and nephews.
At the federal level, the Biden administration has persisted in the face of a terrible set of Supreme Court decisions last summer to erase student debt — over $130 billion committed to be eradicated at this point. But we need to move along a process that might be held up by bureaucracies and Republicans in Congress. The Debt Collective (which received the President’s Award at last year’s Annual Meeting has created a way for individuals to push for immediate relief of debt from the Department of Education.
Webinar: Palestinian Struggle Against Anti-Palestinian Racism
When: Thursday, March 21, at 6 p.m. Where: Zoom
A group of MTA rank and file members, along with Jewish Voice for Peace, have created a workshop to engage their MTA siblings in a conversation about questions such as: What is anti-Palestinian discrimination? How does Palestine fit into the larger framework of colonialism and imperialism?
Register for the Anti-Racism Task Force special webinar today. Speakers will include Dr. Elsa Auerbach, Dr. Heike Schotten, and Dr. Leila Farsakh.
Support our Union Siblings at Mass MOCA
Workers at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, better known as MassMoca, are on strike and need our support. They are striking for living wages, which our members in Andover and Newton recently went on strike for. Even in an area of the state that is less costly than Boston, workers at this outstanding cultural resource don’t make enough to live on. Follow them on social media and please help them out as you can.
Political Education
Our MCAS fight is not simply about preventing the denial of diplomas to hundreds of students every year who meet all other requirements but didn’t meet the cutoff for a single test. It is about reclaiming our classrooms from a testing regime that has sapped the life out of too many classrooms. We need to remind ourselves — and policymakers — that the best moments in education are when a creative educator connects with students through their own unique approach to the curriculum.
As this terrific piece says, “To fix U.S. education, free our teachers.”
“Teacher engagement and empowerment may be the single most important national objective for improving education. Yet years of failed education policy combined with maligned attitudes about teaching have rendered teachers as among the least empowered and most disrespected professions in the country.”
We also wanted to share a poem by Martín Espada, an MTA member, National Book Award winner and UMass Amherst professor. In “Gonzo,” published recently in The New Yorker, he captures in a few words, in the way only a brilliant poet can, the essence of how an educator changes lives one student at a time.
“Gonzo,” by Martín Espada
Everybody knew Gonzo, his cigarettes and cologne, his gold crucifix, the white T-shirt he wore to every meeting. They leaned closer to listen whenever he spoke in the circle at the rehab center, some with eyes shut, seeing his confessions of addiction’s demons and sobriety’s angels at war.
No one knew Gonzo signed his name with an X. The tutor at the rehab center held up flash cards and sounded out the letters: A, B, C. There was no alphabet song in Gonzo’s head, no teacher at the blackboard. He said the letters, one by one. At the letter S, he stopped. The tutor studied Gonzo’s nose, long but not as long as the nose of the Muppet with the same name. S, she said again. Gonzo had no front teeth, no place for his tongue to go. He puffed and sprayed, a man unable to navigate the river of his own name: González. He hid his face in his hands, unlettered cards in his head, as if the tutor could not see him now. A sob surged through him, a beast chained to the rock of his ribs for fifty years, since the days the roosters woke him up for school in Puerto Rico. He wiped his face clean. Gonzo was clean: clean fingernails, clean-shaven, clean white shirt.
The tutor waited, thinking: He doesn’t know his letters, but he knows every street in Paterson by name. She squeezed Gonzo’s wrist once, then again, till his eyes met hers. She held up the next flash card. She said: Say T.
This is included in “Jailbreak of Sparrows,” a collection of poems that will be published in 2025.
In solidarity,
Max and Deb