Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Im an opinion editor with a washington post. Im so happy to be joined today by becky and randi for a wideranging conversation about education. Not necessarily where we have been, i dont want to rehash the past. We know how the pandemic and partisanship have changed the state of education as a political issue. I want to focus on the future and solutions, whats working, whats not, not necessarily on the scary things. If you listen to republicans, im sitting with two of the most dangerous women in the country right now. There is this idea that a select few are making decisions about whats happening with education in america. Polls show that americans are generally supportive of teachers and trusted them, but they are divided on who should be primarily responsible for deciding what is taught in schools. Id like to know how you think about decisionmaking, and if it is better to have more people involved, or should we keep it to teachers, school officials, leave parents out . I was not just inviting, but demanding the shared responsibility that is required to educate our students. So that when we say every student, we actually mean every student. It takes all of us together. The reality of what is happening right now is that far extremists we will call them, are trying to divide us in ways that are centered on the cultural wars which we know about. And all the attempts to diminish and destroy Public Education as a foundation of our democracy. And those of you in this room understand that it is a cornerstone of it. Its an institution that we know, that for those who want to destroy or diminish our democracy, they go after Public Education because an uneducated citizenry is what they want because they dont want critical thinkers, and collaborative problem solvers. They dont want us to work on building a just society. When you ask the question, should everyone be involved . As an educator, thats always been true. But as a professional, i know that it is my job not only to learn both the science and art of teaching, but i understand it is my responsibility as a professional to continue to do that. That is the challenge we are seeing right now, the lack of respect educators as the professionals they are. And as part of my training, i understand the Important Role that parents and the Community Play collectively in educating our students. So, those are false narratives that have been promulgated, and spread around me i am a way that does not reflect the reality of teachers, and parents, and communities around this country. When we talk about how we are changing that, we will talk about the power of community schools, where collectively, the school is the hub and we are collectively sharing that response ability for educating students. You mentioned lack of respect for teachers among parents. Given that reality, how do you include everyone, when that is the reality . First off, i concur with everything becky says. But oh my god, we need parents to be involved, period. What happens in schooling is no one has the power that they wish they had in schooling. Parents need to be much more involved i think parents have to be involved in in curriculum decisions. In schooling. Teachers need to have more of a voice. I often think about how, what happens is, and you say this a lot, becky, that collaborative work that has to happen we are constantly put into different tribes that are poised as adversarial to each other. One of the first things we did at uft when i became president of the Teachers Union in new york city last century, 1988, is we started parent coordinators in each of our boroughs to create the practice of bringing people together and talking to each other. Community schools are about that practice of people talking to each other, and working with each other, because its really too easy to try to have people pit against each other. Even with all of that, what happens is overwhelmingly, parents dont want their kids to be teachers, but parents love their kids teachers. Basically if you listen to parents and teachers, and take polls of them separately, they are pretty consistent. The key is to get to solutions that those parents and teachers want. And to try and get through the noise that we see in the division. They are certainly a vocal minority when it comes to education. The moms for liberty groups, and others talking about Critical Race Theory, banning books, limiting discussions around gender and sexual orientation. You have done focus groups with parents and nonparents alike, you are discussing some polling. I want to just say one thing about this issue, which is, its intentional. Meaning, there is lots of issues that everybody has. And at school is the great mediator of all of this. Becky was a ninth grade teacher, was a 11th grade teacher in brooklyn. Look at what Christopher Russo said, he has one of the architects of toxifying the term Critical Race Theory paid what he said at Hillsdale College a couple of years ago, if you dont remember anything i say, remember this, he said the way you get to universal choice, meaning vouchers, is you create universal Public School districts. Sometimes, in a different part of that lecture, he said you have to be ruthless and brutal. I think what happened is they just threw spaghetti on the wall, and its like what stuck . Masks versus nomasker, vaccines versus no vaccines, Critical Race Theory which nobody knew what it meant, but fans, all this other stuff. That then became the divide, divide, divide. It raises the issue that there is a lot of things people are fearful about. And we have to get to the underlying fear. But they have been intentional about trying to create the divide that becky and my members for so many years are really trying to figure out how to help children learn. If you could tell us more about what you learned about focus groups with parents, nonparents alike, but especially parents, what do they want from what their kids are learning in classrooms, from teachers, from their education experience . So, im a mother of two, and a grandmother of two. And if i had known what it was to be a grandmother, i would have done that first. [laughter] its very personal for me, like it is with so many others, but im also a science teacher, so i want to have evidence. As we reached out and did Research Among a really brought swath of parents and families, we broke it down to understand what people want and their opinions on things based on rural, suburban, urban. Based on latino and africanamerican. And based on income groups as well. So we could get a deeper dive. Parents, they want the same thing. They want safe, just, equitable schools that are well resourced. That actually have a teacher who is certified in science, teaching science. That if a student has special needs, they have a teacher that has a degree in special education. You have covered this a lot. They want to make sure that the Mental Health needs of the students are being met. So, they want more counselors and psychiatrists and psychologists that are school based. They want to make sure that their students have all of the opportunities, whether they are going on to college [indiscernible] they want to make sure that the joy of learning is in the classroom. And that they have a place, the parents, a place in our schools as partners. Thats what they want. I will tell you, it is why we were able to actually get people who cared about kids, and cared about schools, and cared about communities where they were making decisions. Because we were able to talk about what the parents and other voters cared about that directly tied to supporting their Public Schools. Not diverging dollars into vouchers and voucher schemes. Privatizing schools, privatizing support staff. Parents dont want any of that. They want joyous places for their students to learn. They want a safe, true, honest history of this country. They want their kids to feel included. They want their kids to see themselves, and a chance to learn about others. It was consistent across the board. Thats what they want. What every parent wants for their kids. How do you make all this happen . I wish we were in charge. If you had one idea, either academic, or a Mental Health or social aspect that could or should be replicated. Thats why some of you got these little palm cards. What ive learned over these years is that since theres so much distrust, you have to be really specific and tangible. Even though you will not get to everything. What we tried to do off of all the things becky just said, is that we are thinking about and pursuing three specific strategies right now that we believe will help schools become places where parents want to send their kids, Educators Want to work, and kids thrive. One is literacy. As they banned books, we have given out 9 million books of diverse titles over the last few years. By july 2024, we want to get to 10. You can see the joy in peoples faces, kids faces, parents when we give one of these book. Its not just that, its also helping teachers they hear out what they should be teaching in the science of reading. Teachers could also took different curricula all the time, and they dont sometimes know what to do. So, we have invested in something called reading universe to make sure teachers at 11 00 at night can figure out how to help a dyslexic kid the next day. Number two, the wraparound services. How to deal with lung lameness, and social Media Companies loneliness and social media competes or keeping kids fixated on devices. Number three, how do we make that joyful environment for kids in schools . How do we make kids want to be in schools . This is why we are on this cake for experiential and handson learning, of which career tech is one of the ways we have seen it. How do we make sure kids have that kind of experience in schools, so that they enjoy it, and they love it, and they want to be there, and they work with each other and apply knowledge . How do we create that expense for every single child . And so, what weve done this year is between two sets of grants, we have given out to 100 locals with parent participation , others, grants to do this work and lift this work up. So, three solutions academically, social, emotionally, and literacy to really try to address these things. Sorry, how many things did you say . We are in 100 locals, we are in 25 states. Because, becky and i both go to great places. I went to cleveland yesterday. There is a Health Care Career tech program on a hospital campus. Its the first of its kind in the nation. Its amazing why cant we do that other places . We see great places. How come we cant see and then sustain and scale . Our intention is to take these solutions and to seed, sustain, and scale, but do it ethically and i do, bottom up. Thats why we have given out about 200 million in 100 places to seed this work. Id love to talk about career tech ed and how it works in practice. Wasnt available when i was going through Public Education. Who is it available for . How young could you offer Something Like that . First of all, that ties back to something randi said earlier, career and Technical Education is like the poster child for experiential learning. So its handson. We, of course, have certified teachers in schools, but we intentionally invite in those partners. And then we dont just do that. We actually partner with them to either place them into the premises while they are in high school, which is amazing, that journey while they are in high school. And then, we get the students who have gone through to come back and help the other students. The best Career Educational programs dont track the children, dont track the students, because a lot of students go into a career technical high school, and schools, where they decide they want to go to college. So, they offer all of those college prep courses, so that if they make that decision, even though they are learning a trade, they have that opportunity to do that as well. Spoiler alert, i was an ap gov teacher in a career ed tech school in brooklyn. 94 of kids in career tech ed graduate from high school on time, and 70 go to college. Thats compared to if you look at High School Graduates writ large, 60 of them dont go to college. We have created these kind of opportunities where these kids can have what becky just said. It is not just trade, its advanced manufacturing, health care, culinary, cybersecurity. Its transportation. And lots of kids then go to college regardless. We are just creating opportunities for kids if we start in high school and do this work. It is a whole of government approach. But lets be real, when i was teaching, we had to fight like hell can i say hell on this stage . To keep a program at the high school. We had to fight to keep it. So, we are going to have to rebuild them. And we have to rebuild them so that kids have lots of choices. Im going to say one more thing, which is in the ai world, we have to do application of knowledge. And handson learning as a way of doing that. So what career tech ed does is it gives kids the practical skills they need for life. Just like you as an eighth grade science teacher, thats what lab work does. Thats why we should be giving these opportunities to all kids. Thank you for that. Im so glad you brought up ai come up because there is obviously a huge debate now about its role in schools, whether a student. Writing their own papers, whether teachers will ban it or not. I want to know examples you have seen with ai, and how it can help children not just improve academically, but with Mental Health, social and Emotional Intelligence that we know ai can help with, too. Im often in conversations where people are saying oh, ai is scary. You know, its a little scary [indiscernible] but the reality is, its just like the internet and television, and computers, and all of that. The technology, and its only growing exponentially now, of course. For us, and randi and i are working together on this, not only through our International Education union. So, countries have come together and we are sharing knowledge and information. Some are ahead of us, some are not, so we are sharing that as well. Both of us are putting together groups to do a deeper dive to make sure we are centering the voice of educators. Thats what i would start with. That, when we are making decisions about the role of ai in schools, educators should be at the center of that conversation. The other thing is we want to make sure that we, as a union, play a large role in the professional development of our educators. As this technology evolves, that we are making sure educators are prepared for it. And they are teaching each other. As i visit schools around the country, i hear them talking excitedly about how they are using ai in the classroom. And its really pretty cool to see what they are doing with it. What they share with me. And i share this, too, is a public concern, one is equity. Equity in access, in the algorithms being used, and who is developing them, and are people of color prominently behind that technology . As well as access, which we always know, building equity into systems that dont allow that access. Lastly, we want to make sure we are dressing that. We want to be leading and making sure that this technology which is here right now, and will grow into the future, that educators are the ones that are driving what happens in classrooms. We could talk about ai forever. We are running out of time. From both of you, folks in the audience want to get involved. Should they be running for school board, attending meetings, whats the best way for people to be involved in Recovery Efforts and the innovation we are seeing happen every day . The most important way is 90 of kids in america still go to Public Schools. Public schools, whether you have kids, or you are grandmoms like we and have grandkids, they are the center of communities. And the center of democracy. So, ways that are centered in Public Schools, or in helping children are the best ways to get involved. School board, yes, but all sorts of other ways of just getting involved at a local level. We need you. Lift up your voice. Lift up educators. Thank them. Make sure we know that you appreciate them. We are talking about professional pay. We have a shortage of educators. We have a shortage of educational respect in this country, thats what we have a shortage of. [applause] and there are ways that you can be involved directly with the work we are doing. We put together a Collaborative Group across the country that are working together, the way i described it, on accelerated learning. Because we know that our students have academic, social and emotional and the science of learning talks very clearly about learning in a way where you have to connect the three. If you understand that, thats how you accelerate it. Lets take our babies from where they are, and make sure they are learning on their level, so they are not falling behind. Teachers, support staff, administrators, superintendents, parents, community members, and guess what . The students themselves to accelerate their learning. Thank you both so much. I appreci