Theres different people i have not always agreed with that have he title, chief of staff. Im a High School History teachber training, taught in shuck public schooling ford ten years and lucky enough to land a position on staff at the ctu but at my core im still in the classroom and i milled it greatly. Im really alreadied to be hike talking with two people who i admire immensely and you should be excited to be here with them today. Im also honored to be part of printers row litfest. Were here to honor books and i would like to say my dining room is also the place where i honor books. Ive run out of space on my shelfs and now you cant dine in there, but the books have a nice home. So today were here with Elizabeth Todd vrelnan. The off the or instant classic, black politics and education reform in chicago since then 1960s. Is required reading youre a chicagoan or care about Public Education today and as many of you probably foe, also one the neuer new appointee those Chicago PublicSchool School board and well talk about that. And and sitting to her left is the iconic william or bill ayers, who is technically retired but as any good educator does, still peaching at both depaul and university of chicago and needs no introduction. His books are seminole in the world seminal in at the world of teaching and education but heres their to but though latest book, bother becoming a teacher and concise and what i say is hopelessly optimistic message to future educators which we need. It made me less jaded which is hard to do is in moment when we are under devos, under the secretary of education under the donald trump administration. Im from grand rapids, michigan, where betsy devos got her start. So this book is refreshing. Please check it out and pass it on to any educators you know. So today well just open it up. I want them to talk but why this book, why did they write it, what is it about this story that youre telling in this particular moment, and who do see as the audiences for your books. So my book, i first started writing when i was a graduate student. Began as a desert addition and at the time in the early 2000s and i income in Public Education more generally there was a sense that people who were education reformed that should be or were making decisions about public occasion, tended to be from philanthropy, big city mayors, from the corporate and in the research i was doing but communitybased ideas how education should change it was a very different cast of characters. So particularly looking at black parents and teachers, students who had been protesting and organizing during the 60s . And 70s and 8s through today for a different version of public occasion and at the time i was working at Charter School and the school i was working at was collocate with a traditional Chicago PublicSchool Neighborhood school and that School Building was one of the sites of a Community Controlled project i had been studying from the late 60s and early 70s call the woodlawn experimental schools project. And think but this Single Community that had been experiencing these multiple generations of reform, with very different ideas who were reformers and who should be reformed and it seemed that black communities in particular were places that were to be reformed, not placed that reform could come from or change and ideas for change could originate from. So i felt very much inspired to write this book that put black organizing at the center. The generational quality offed of indicational progress and trauma is present in your book, bill . I have to give a shoutout to this book. I taught this book at depaul this year, its a favorite. A very important, elizabeths book. My books not a book on policy. Its not a book of stories. It really generates from 1965 when i became a teacher, and what it is is a call to young people, even old people who are burned from being lawyers or whatever, to think about teaching as a profession and wonder and i wrote it as a pamphlet. Its a very small book. Its a book that anyone could pick up and carry around in their back pocket. And it makes an argument for why teaching, and jen just called it hopelessly optimistic. Like that. Actually im not an optimist at all because optimists are the twin cousins of pessimists. They all thing they know whats coming. I have no idea what is coming and because every day is a surprise, i get up hopeful as a choice. I want to be hopeful. I want to think maybe today well get Elizabeth Todd brelan on the school board and then, damn, or maybe today is the last day of capitalism and then guy to bed disappoint but get up the next day. In brief, this whole idea of my argument for becoming teachers is generated from 50 years ago. My partner of 50 years, has been a lawyer and i an find myself at lawyer parties and the conversation would always go like this, were having wine and cheese and the lawyer says what would you do . And i depending on the year i might sale i work in the juvenile deinnings center for teach kindergarten and the lawyer always has a pit using patronizing smile and says that must be interesting. And so after a while i got tired of that, and the conversations would good, what do you do and i say i teach kindergarten. The most intellectually demanding thing i have ever done and richmond it because it causes lawyers heads to snap dismiss an exploration of what it the intellectual challenge of being a preschool teacher or High School Teacher or teacher of any kind. It takes more than you can imagine sometimes of your will, your values, your politics, your ethics. Everything comes. To the fore. You asked about audience and as aggrated student it was to graduate, and then or prefers. Once i became a professor it was, i need this to keep my job and ailes felt committed to at the work and i think one of the most exciting things for me is getting to shave with a lot of different audiences. Ive shared in my academic spaces in my profession as historian but also being able to talk directly to eachers, not just near chicago but other cities in the country, to be able to speak to Progressive Union groups to speak to students. Ive presented for High School Students and with them in collaboration with High School Students at public libraries, i convert parties out into what was part of a walking tour for Elementary School kids in brownsville, so i think being able toshire the work in those spaces has been unexpected but very enriching and exciting. I think those who educate and too education and study education are very familiar with kind iron how systems interact with schooling. Bill raises capitalism and youre describing youre having to bring that story to new audiences who may not be as farm as we are. Talk to this audience but your view or description of corporate or Neoliberal School reform, what that and is how you see your book potentially playing a role in resisting neoliberal Corporate School reform. Sure. The sort of shirt tufts privatization and publication occasion is the con next economy was writing the book, and part of what i was trying to do is i think there was a lot being written in my field about civil rights protests and organizing in the 60s and then more contemporary moment but privatization and i was interested in linking and bridging this two eras and so for me i think id say the last 30 years has been largely dominated by the logic of corporate enterprise as a preferrable way to govern Public Education the Public Sector but i was able to trace back and see both the what one my might consider fromming from the left and right origins. The way that they gain bipartisan support and took hold at the same time i saw this constant pushing against and pushing and back and forth and challenging but also participating in this trend and so i think that was something i was very much aware of in writing the book. Beautiful. Bill . I think the last 30 years, as elizabeth says, has been dominated by a certain approach to what they call School Reform, and its an approach that stands on three legs, and leg one is the reduction of education to a single metric of test score and thats fatal for the education in democracy. The second leg is do away with any collective voice of the teachers. Thats also a terrible backward move. And the third leg is privatized the public space and those three legs taken together are what is constituted what jen is calling Corporate School reform but School Reform endorsed by the new york times, the no,er, National Public radio, loudly, and regularly. Its endorses by every major corporation, every major foundation. By both the republicans and the democrats. So its been a very forceful movement to rethink what Public Education is for. And at bottom, in my view, at bottom, what we have to be arguing about and fighting about is that education in a democracy is has to be thought of as a human right. Every human being has a right to a full accessible educational experience, right down the block or within reach and that is up against the notion that education is a product to be sold at the marketplace, and you have to jump through hoops to get it and its a zero sum game, some get it, some dont. Right now the scandal in new york city about the fact that. The seven selective high schools have 4 black students or something, down from 40 , 30 years ago, is a staggering reality. But then somebody has to ask the question, why there are seven good high schools in new york city . Near not 50 . What are we talking about . Thats the kind of madness we get trapped into. So caught in an argument you dont want to be in. And i want to make the argue. This book is an intervention, small intervention, that basically is on the side of the teacher and on the side of the voice of the teacher. The idea, for example, that you could make policy about fighting fires in Downtown Chicago and have no firefighters at the table . Thats just nuts. Who wants ed burk deciding fire policy. Timely. Who wants. That . You want firefighter ted table i good down to the lab school and interview them about some of their policy things. The have 100 teacher with an average of ten years of experience worse. Would want to throw a thousand years of experience into the wastebasket . You want that experience. That is what jen and many others are fighting for. Thats what this book intends to raise up, the voices of the teacher matters. Do you seeo your book as tart after the tradition or resistance or trying to expose people to the system or be less neutral than that . I think its a book about organizing, and i think one of the thing that is important him that document is that within black communities i think theres often people have an idea of a singular black politics but black politics is a plural and there have men many different approach biz africanamericans to improving education for black children. So at various times that clued desegregation or Community Control or building independent black institutions and sometimes the things were in conflict with each other. Sometimes some things were an evolution of ideas in terms of the best outcoming result. To this point but teachers, teacher are central figures arrived indicators, both parents who i would consider educators in the book as well and organized but also i have a whole chapter but black teacher and their long struggle, particularly here in chicago, to gain certification to start with, and then from there to organize both for themselves as Public Sector employees and also on behalf of the students in their communes, and so i think an when i hear you and other folks in the ct and relate Community Organizations talk about how teachers teaching conditions are Students Learning conditions, that resonates strong live with the model of black teacher organizing in the 60s and 70s and saying we need second but part of the reason we need it is because its the schools in our community that keep having this turnover in teachers. If we try to organize for civil rights gains in our schools, they transfer us because were at fulltime basis substitute status and have not been able to get certification. So i certainly think this in chicago and people are often asked me, when i because i write about chicago. Do you think chicago is representative of the rest of the nation . Not necessarily but i think thing that go on in a lot of different places happen in the extreme here. So, when you see teachers organizing, that happened in other places but in Chicago Teachers were black teachers in particular were exception whatly successful aft gaining rights around certification, gaining inroads into the teach, precision and so i think when you see more recent numbers of the decline, for example in black teacher is its all the more strike because the gains they made. Your book does a good job profile hogue black aid countiors who are trying to create selfdetermination for black children. And so im actually glowing how to this to you throw this to you, bill. You book is for any teacher and yet race in teaching is incredibly important. Have to talk but our own identity as teachers. The changing demographics in Chicago Schools, a district that 50 years ago had close tier white students and now down to 10 of the students being white. Bill, how does this book help a new teacher at least begin to unpack the racial ground of cheeching, particularly in a chicago. Inthink theres whole Library People so reed, starting with elizabeths book and eviewings become, ghost in the schoolyard. What im trying to do is to say, if youre inclined to become a teacher, if youre drawn in that direction, you have to understand the ethical, merely, and political implications that and cant pretend that the teaching takes place in a skinner box or something. It doesnt. I takes place in a context. And so i was kind of lucky in a weird way. Started teaching in 1965. Had just been arrested in a draft board trying to shut down a draft board because thief vietnam war, and i came out of jail where i spend ten days in into my first teaching job, because some people in the jail started a freedom school. So for theres never been a submit between teaching and social justice but if you look more deeply and elizabeths historical glance at is is so important. Look more deeply, every educational system, every school, is imbedded in a social condition, and you can understand the schools you will find if you know anything about a given society. If youll noe par tied, africa you can predict the school will be big, falling down 50, kids in the school for african kids and little stateoftheart schooled for the white kids and thats true the world around. So what should the Schools Look Like in democracy . Would the promote obedience and conformity, promote racial high, a can is, promote a segregation on many levels racially for sure but in terms of class and interest and age. No, they want. Thats something i think also we have to fight about. Elizabeth says chicago is kind of. I not a letter, at least leader, at least an amplified example. Teacher organizing is part of it but you mentioned briefly, teachers in communities organizing together. Were watching that happen the country round now and happened in jacques early on because of the efforts of jen and karen lewis. We searing the publishback against corporation apparatus School Reformes coming from the unity of students, parents and teachers by saying education is a human right, democratic responsibility, not a product, and that is something we have to fight for. So its peoples kind of what you call in your book to the soul of teaching. Why are we drawn to this profession, what does it heaven and how does it connect to our principals and hopefully social justice. Wonder if you can each tell a story in your book or speak to a passage in your book you think reflects this idea of a search or struggle for the souls of teaching. I might need a minute. What came to my mind. My back is a pamphlet, a little thin thing. But the chap its basically ten questions and ten answers. Should i become a teacher whats any role in work with parents . In an era of high stakes testing, what shy do . Those questions but Chapter Seven was written by the tenyearold granddaughter the which it the question that is asked in Chapter Seven is how die develop my own teaching signature and i was spending a week with the granddaughter, and i asked her who her favorite teacher was, guy named mrobb i said what is mr. Robs teaching signature. She said, huh . I saved what makes hitch special, different. Curiosity. I said how do you snow she base then the went into the longest explanation of a fourth grade classroom with a teacher who gave every kid a wonder book and anytime you have a question, he says put it in your wonder book. Asked them the difference den a while turkey and domesticated turkey some he said put that in your wonder and just marinate on it. Was just very taken with the fact that this is a teacher who showed a group of tenyearolds that being curious about the world is the real curriculum, trying to understand the world. He has the question of the week. One question was, of whats the difference between a problem and an issue . These are tenyearolds. Am agree citizen . Of this school and of this classroom. How can you tell . And soen. Who doesnt want a teacher like that fourth grade graduate school. This is a great chapter and almost send me into a spiral of depression if dont know what the signature is. Thats fantastic. So i think one of the thing is had the privilege to do for this book was interview many, many retired teachers, current and retired teachers particularly older black women, because amongst black teachers, black women her to vast majority of teacher and one of the women i had an opportunity to meet many times was woman named lily peoples and she was a longtime teacher, she started a migrant here to chicago from the south like many, she bounced around the southside to the west side. She taught at sherwood Elementary School, later taught at dumas, and she talked about i think in particular she was just a wonderful story teller and something but the way she told stories that let me know some would have been an amazing Elementary School teacher. I remember her talking about teaching on a dual shift and so in the 60s, students often attended black students extend schooling 0 dual shift. Glaus was so much overcrowding and deny arch seeds in nearby white school us because of racial segregation. Black students attend cool in shifts, half in the morning, another set in the afternoon, and when she was first teaching at sherwood they taught on a trim shift. They did that three time as day and i remember her telling me how for her, people she wanted so hard to advocate for their students in these positions, making this linkage between teachers and students because as hard as it was and hutch she saw students be denied irit was terribly delivering to teach this way. Overcrowded classrooms and trying to create any type of relationship with these students and their families was very trying and thats part of what pushed her into becoming an organize. So she earthed with operation bread basket now operation push, Teacher Division and they organize hundreds black teachers to address these issues. Remember i asked her one of the last questions in one of our session was about what her most rewarding teaching experience was it and was her last site the taught at. Woodson Elementary School in the Washington Park community. And at the time theyre no longer there but the Washington Park homes were on either side of woodson and she said i remember when guy there, people were like, good luck, thats failing school, a terrible school, kids from the projects, and i remember her telling me it was the most rewarding experience she had they had a unite group of teacher doing incredible thing arounder andan shall learning with kid who had had never leather their neighborhood and get south and experiencing things and making these ties between teachers and communities is they helped to found Armstrong Park which is now next to the school as part over the transition with the demolition of Public Housing and the time and care and meetings she went to after school, time she intent with students tocracy this park, a really touching story, and unfortunately one thing that happened when youre an oral historian men of your interviewees pass before the book was published and miss peeps passed before the book came to be put but i honever i have honored economy her work and he feel a very strong commitment to doing. So the was an incredible person. So this question is perfectly relates to what you just said. You profile lilly peoples, barbara sizemore, rosy simpson, carol lee so made hopkins, jacky vaughn, very spurlock and then people i know and consider friends in the book, terra stamps, karen lewis. You book is many thing but struck me that this the story of black women educators. There are many iconic men in the book. Samuel black, harold washington, just the short lift. Right . But the book really lifts up what bill called the hidden curriculum of uncovering the story of organizers who are black women, teachers, parents, and other otherwise. So today im sitting with a black woman educator historian, who i respect a ton and i think shes part of an incredible Chicago Community of people like barbara ramsby. Page may, essence mcdowell, each ewing, who are doing work around education from their various points of view and you were just named to the school board yay not elected yet. Some day we believe itself will be. So what will be the unwritten chapter of your book that you will be in . What do you hope the chapter will be around. I have yet to be appoint he. Its announced. I say it is nothing i imagined for myself but i will say, when the opportunity came, i fell a commitment, certain commitment to serving and i too believe there should be an elected school board soon. And i think my editor dish goods i hard the announcement of the book and he was like, wait, hold on, youre about to be in the seek sequel sequel but i feel a commit tom serving the children and families and educators in the city of chicago and often people, when i talk about inequal and racial segregation, bog cheer nationally, comes as a very depressing story but for me writing but the organizing that ive uncovered and the archive or have maybe amplified from the archive, has been very empowering. Think that its theres when you look at the challenges before before you face, what is in front of you today seems less daunting. I plan to private the same way i 1 2 a principle manner my previous work. Thats the plan. A lot of miami will help. Bill in your book reminds me. I think of missiles sort of as a veteran teacher, like thats a little sad. You are. And i think you really centered that love is a value that needs to remain a part of teaching. And i think our system make is hard to maintain that. Teacher turnover is very high. As we have already talk about, black educators in particular have been push out of many urban school districts, including chicago. How have you maintained this long career devoted to Public Education in the face of so many attacks and what would you say to someone who is a veteran, right . This is written to becoming teachers but it rye juve fate me. Rejuvenated you. How do you i dont think theres any easy answers and i think that i look at rosa bergs advice to friends when some was was in prison for opposing world 1 and he friends said you have to get out and her response was, stop whining. Thats my main advice to everyone who is progress of senior teacher, stop whining. Second piece of advice, she says my advice i you b a mencs. Its yiddish. She said a mencn is one who enjoy her own life enough to enigood meal, the sunset and take care of cheryl love the children november to put her children 0 historys wheel when history rerears. Work that out in practice with your friends and you will be where you want to be. Thats how we avoid burnout and cynicism. Look at you elizabeth and i have absolute confidence that you will be a mensh. Continue love your kid and take ware of them and try to do societys work but its important that we pends time taking care of ourselves, taking care of each and telling the truth and taking the consequences for telling the trying in a time when the truth itself is suspect, its more important than ever. Sometimes i think its a revolutionary act. To tell the truth and to love your own life. That is in itself can be very refreshing. So theres no formula except to say keep your eyes on the kids and on the teachers and on the parents. Dont put your eyes on the school board except for a minute. And the hierarchy. Thats not where we live. We live below that and thats where the strength comes from. In fact when i think broadly about politic is think we spend too much time looking at the sites of power we have no access to and too little time organizing in sites of powers we have absolute access to the neighborhood, community, workplace, house of worship. These are our places and their powerful places so thats how i get the strength. Thats great. I i wonder if you have questions for each other or comments you would like to make but eachs works. I religion start by saying i really enjoyed this that this an extremely accessible book and i recommend for anyone to who might be considering going into teach are and trying to make that decision and part of why i say that it is the part to your earlier question what the larger political thus of Public Education over the last 30 years has done is made teaching incredibly unattractive because we dont value teachers because, because he underpay and underappreciate teachers. Its made it that way because we made their lives harder than they were before. But i think your book is you said something i think its very hopeful and i think that its a very hopeful way so inspire people to become educators. So if you have a friend or someones kid i dont know what i want to do when i grow up. Reads this. Thank you. Think that elizabeth and i have known each other for a while, and been on several panels together, and im a huge admirer of her work but one thing i admire but the book is that she is an historians historian shiver understands the value of history and makes an argument for why you should value history, too. And its something that is living and contemporary. Not something that is buried and that we have no access. To i think thats usually important. The other thing is important and i thinking this i true of the whole range of book that have come out recently about chicago. Theres not a hint of black pathology in this book. Not a hint that the problems within the black community or this black kid or this black teacher. He think problem lazy are systemic and theyre orchestrated and controlled from above and if you dont see that, theres no way out. Not a book that kind of imagines lifting kennedy because of something theyre deprived of. Its a book that imagines understanding history so that we can change history, so we can part of history. Beautiful oomph educator in the other educators in the audience . How much of you read the book, either book. Okay so theres a signing later, have to pick it up. I wonder if you could think of any stories from your own teaching experiences that might be enlightening for speck to lessons you hander yourself. You. Thats a curve ball ball. So many lessons. I think i teach my experiences largely at the postsell secondary level. Ive done some teach wig high school and middle school but large live with university students. But many of the thing you were saying ring true. We love feels like. Nose as good as a teacher when someone comes and you see a change in them. And you see them growing. To see glowing a young person or rushing student. One of my most enriching teaching experiences was actually at my first job as a University Professor which was at Governor State University in the south suburbs of chicago here and largely computes Commuter School and the student body is an interest intersection of folks from the south side, the Southern Suburbs and a whats calling the almost rural areas of illinois and those different communities coming together in a classroom of largely commuter students returning students issue taught a u. S. History survey course where the age range because at the time they werent accepting freshman from 22 to 76 ask the different perspectives in the classroom and how much i learned from my students, which is always the case as a teacher. I you want to a be a life long learner, back teacher i always think i have learned far more from then than i ever taught them but i think that love, thats where you get it from. This is a twoway street. Were not just on high commanding and sending lessons down. But were really launching from each other and those moms when you have that can be the best. No high like it. Im resonating to that. I started teaching im now 57. Started teaching when i was 20 years old and i remember going my first kindergarten classroom at the age of 2 and i was in the classroom for 15 minutes and a kid said to me, whyings to the ball sundown and i thought, oh, shit. Ive been a teacher for 15 minutes and ive been stumps by a fiveyearold. And by the end of that first day, why was my skin ping and her skin was brown . Why was the sky blue . It was just horrifying what i didnt know. And the only answer the only question is remember from the first day i loved why is the floor sticky when we spill juice because i nuance but created a crisis for me and the crisis is still not completely resolved, but i was a healthy crisis and the crisis was, i thought teachers were the master and commands over the classroom ship, and it took me a while and im still figuring out that thats not what a teacher does. A teacher, as elizabeth eludes to, unlocks the wisdom in the room. Theres always wisdom in the room in a group of five years or graduate students. I teach now mostly doctoral student its but plays where theyre smart, funny, good adviser, sexy, fun, not in our classroom for god sake, this is graduate school. And i think we lose so much when we dont understand that the people who come into the classroom are bringing with them history, culture, language, community, and sometimes i think just trip out and i think, standing on every desk are hundreds of people and so i could be overwhelmed bill that or find that an absolutely exhilarating experience and it is that that for me. Wisdom in the room, unlocking it is the main job of a teacher. I have a fiveyearold, and i dont know the answer to any of those questions. I dont know how you teach kindergarten at all personally. We are going to enup for iquiques but your books make me even more committed to helping the next general raidogy of educators stay. These are optimistic stories of the hard work and organizing that we have to do in a realized and segregated school system, specifically chicago but im excited. One of my former students is graduates from depaul and becoming an educatessor and i never thought that would happen. And i think that sometimes the system beats us down and makes us not encourage our own student busy become educator but its the most on miss city is thick to say use be be a great teacher um you have the stuff to fight the fights and make the next generation feel the same way about school. School needs to be great. Some coot note be license because of testing. So the basic skills test, the test of academic proffer si has been a barrier to teachers of color and the Legislature Just voted to eliminate the tests for five years, and then to reevaluate. Thats the kinds of pushback we need. Dont need the standardized test. Its related to temperatures that elizabeth tells and now she is going to have to go back to school and get a degree but she is going to become an educator and thats very, very exciting and give me great hope. Theres microphone in thester. There any questions that folks have for our esteemed colleges here. Tell us your name. Im from iowa. Theres a new mayor in the city hall, and i was wondering what are your hopes for in the news a administration in chalk and which porks of you book would you point out to her. Great. I think both of you. Well, for me i think if you look at the new mayors overall education platform, ill pick specifically on todays education ive been feeling hopeful about the insistence on equity. Think certainly the history of the city shows us that education has been provided in a highly inequitable way. And so im excited about the overall focus on equity. And i think that there are lots of opportunities to make improves in those areas so thats one way in which im feeling optimistic and hopeful. I think we should all be very, very happy in chicago that we could have had a runoff between daley and chico and instead we had a run off between could progressive black women, both committed to progressive platform, both with complicate historied. Lets go with that. And lets recognize also as we were talking earlier that voting takes two minutes and its like brushing your teeth. I you dont do, i bad things can happen. I if you do it its takes shore time and you have the rest of the day to do important work so im glad we have what we have as a result. Now the question is, what are we going to do to create the fire from below that brings about real change . What are we going the ron i think we had two blam women candidates is because chicago has the by3100, black lives matter, no cop academic, goodbye anita. Now lets keep the moms growing because thats what brings about real progressive change. Beautiful. A great session. Thank you. I agree that there the reliance with the idea the reliance on test scoresser wrong headed but can you comment how to eval wraith schools . Theres a chapper in my little book about this but the short answer is, that we should if theres going to be testing but what we have is a runway train that reduces the idea of education to simple met trick on a single test. No person of wealth and power would allow for the thirds and the diet get into usc, and yale, not only do they have every advantage but they have too cheat on top of that. The ridiculousness. Look at arne duncan, eight years four years in charge of Chicago Schools and eight years the nations schools, comes back to chicago and cant find a school for herself kids, why is that . Because he wouldnt send his kids to a School Without the arts. No person of power and wealth would do that. Wouldnt send his kids to a school that didnt have physical education, and band and so on. So, why is it okay for other peoples children. And and we should say we want a school system, minimum, we to an say what the most privileged have for their kid is baseline ontario we demand for kids. How to evaluate how things going . When he have problem with Chicago Public schools which is daily, go down the lab school and ask them how they do things, when they banned pre i win down the lab school and asked them if they had. I. Yes, we have 12 copies. Two in the original french and the kids read. Every seven inch grader has to. So the kids of privilege get real art and real literature, and the kids at lane tech get one more our of drill and kill. But on teacher evaluation i went down lab school when the legislature passioned a 30 of your evaluation, and i asked them. How did you do . Mitt with the head of school and union. And they give me a twohour class in how you do teacher evaluations. It was so brilliant that i was staggered by the end but things like creating a culture that asks the question, what is good teaching . Having peertopeer conversations, having parents conversations and then finding ways to get kids work presented in portfolios, inform n forms that can be complex and nuances. At the end of the discussion i said what role to test scores have and they looking at me like i heather been listening and said what do test scores have to do with good teaching. Okay, it takes an investment, takes an intellectual commit it but it can be done. Thats right. Do you want to ay anything . I say we have to measure our values. If we care about having educators of color, that need to be something were valuing. Peter. My name is peter, and im a history prefer at western illinois university. Theres been a lot of talk but teacher organizes and not specifically but teacher unions or other unions and i wonder if you might say a few word what role teacher unions might to play a role to making a better chicago or other school system. Ed seemed to obvious from in the. Know in my own work, theres been contentious over time relation twitch he ten teacher of scholar black teacher and the Teachers Union and black teachers had major struggles in the six until around certification and part of the reason is that here in chicago, everyone has to take a written exam to back teacher but in addition Chicago Public schools had a oral exam, and so the oral exam became a way of subjective mechanism by which to deny black teacher certification and because of that, when the Chicago Teacher union win on strike in 1969, almost half of black teachers crossed pick lines and called the ctu in Chicago Public school two heads of a twin snake of institutional racism. Between and then the type of organizing today where communes and the chicago Teachers Union are working much more closely together, took a lot of work. Right and a lot of of intentional organizing to improve those relationships, to develop a different type of relationships, between parents and teachers and students as well, i would add, as part of that group. Here in chicago as elsewhere we have hafted some impressive student organizing movements over time so i think certainly theres an Important Role there for organized labor lots of different forms of organizing by teachers within and outside of unions as well as parents and students. Do you i dont thing we need to be the unions have played mixed roles. Teacher unions inches new york city during the great like the 60s. Complicate issues. But i think we have to fight for thal that the collective voice of teacher is i inval knuble creating schools we need. Need the collective voice of teachers, whatever forms that takes, because good working situations create good teaching conditions, create good learning conditions and not a question of special interest lobbying. Its a question of understanding we need that collective voice. So when people are opposed to that, as betsy devos and arne duncan and others have been, they opposing the idea that we can come together and add to the collective wisdom and make a difference, and what theyre saying basically is teaching is like driving an uber, and the going economy and thats us irnonsense. Education which is such a so general ative and so generous, like love. You dont lose anything by giving it away and thats what we should be fighting for, that vision, and anyone who says, no, every teacher is an individual contractor, is nuts and theyre missing the whole point. If you put my third grade against your third grade, my school against your school, my system against your system, my state against your state, which is what duncan did, you are underwining what it basic but education. Bill writes be us thes be the idea that going into teaching is an individual choice or indiffer is not the case. We learn from each others a indicators and organizing together i work uic so im part of a bogey as well, a union of faculty members and working together and in that organizing work, ive developed stronger relationship with colleague i never knew before and that find feeds into our teaching. Le justs a smith egg over countied ofines theyre the last bastion of democratic voice. Hey rules, we vote, debate and theres a real dialogue hat helps at result of being part of a vibrant teacher union. Some of them not so vibrant and something i think is incredibly powerful is the networks or unions have been building across the country and global. This a facts in Public Education are not just here, theres all over the place. Thats playbook used to attack Public Schools and because we have a structure of unions we have collective voice to have the debate how to approach these things and save or school which is part after the project. The reason i underline collective voice and i said unions can be positive or not so positive because even though i think the chicago Teachers Union was the template for what the end in the referred red states and the idea that teacher and communities working together oppose this kind of antiteacher, antistudent movement, is huge. But notice that in west West Virginia and oklahoma and other places didnt work through the Teachers Union. This Teachers Union was standing in their way but thats not unusual because you all started organizing with the Teachers Union standing in your way and you write about that as well. He opportunity immigration lets fight for a progressive forward looking collective cinderellas of teachers and hope that it can be done through a group like the ctu. Were out of time. I want to thank everyone for coming here today. Can we please give a round of applause to bill and elizabeth. [applause]