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Convention Sunday
By: Alexander Russo / July 13, 2008
Freelance writer James Ewert reports in with a first-hand description of the Obama endorsement Sunday morning:
"Three days into its 80th annual convention, the crowd gathered at Navy Pier was in a feisty mood -- not at all the stereotype of mild-mannered school teachers with pocket protectors and pencils and bobbed haircuts. And not everyone there was lock-step for Obama."
Click below for the full text and for links to news updates as they appear.
When you're done, let us know: what do you think of his remarks, or of the convention as a whole?
Satisfied, frustrated, or don't really care?From Ewert:
Three days into its 80th annual convention, the crowd gathered at Navy Pier was in a feisty mood -- not at all the stereotype of mild-mannered school teachers with pocket protectors and pencils and bobbed haircuts. And not everyone there was lock-step for Obama. The Peace and Justice Caucus handed out blue fliers that called into question Obama's recently nuanced stance on ending the war in Iraq.
But the crowd was overwhelmingly supportive. There would be no booing as there had been in Washington DC. The crowd erupted into applause when the giant video screens showed two women dancing in their seats with Obama t-shirts doused in heaps of shimmering glitter. One brave delegate from New York got up to urge caution in endorsing the candidate. The crowd started to let him have it, but outgoing AFT president Ed McElroy pounded his gavel like a teacher switching the lights on and off to quiet down a class.
CTU president Marilyn Stewart, said "We will soon be the land of Lincoln and Obama." Following up with a hearty, "Yes we can! Yes we can!" When the time came for a vote, the motion passed with a resounding "aye" and only a single audible "nay."
At just before 11am, Obama's smiling mug finally appeared on the gigantic screens, live from California and complete with a flag pin on his left lapel. His comments were brief – copies had been passed out to the press long before his actual speech.
Obama told one of his favorite anecdotes about a teacher at Dodge Elementary school in Chicago, who told him her biggest challenge as a teacher was what she called the "these kids syndrome" which explained away the shortcomings of the education system by saying "these kids can't learn" or "these kids don't want to learn" or "these kids are just too far behind."
Obama went on to chastise No Child Left Behind and John McCain, while commending the AFT for operating its own charter schools in New York, something Obama said he supports and intends to expand.
"...We know well-designed public charter schools have a lot to offer, and I've actually helped pass legislation to expand them," Obama said. "But what I do oppose is using public money for private school vouchers."
When he finished, he received a thunderous standing ovation. It was hard to find anyone who preferred Clinton in the crowd, though some were there.
"I think there will be a push for certain individuals to change their votes," says healthcare worker Donna Maronde, from local UHP 3837 in Farmington, CT. "If you want to make things better, you have to go with the best candidate. I don't think there is any disrespect meant toward Obama, but I just think a lot of the people who supported Hilary knew more about her and her platforms... I think that unfortunately, Obama's positions are flowery and he doesn't state specifics, but to win the election he's going to need specifics."
Obama suggests tax credit for business health care AP
American Federation of Teachers endorses Obama ABC7 (with video)
Remarks to the 80th Convention of the American Federation of ... Real Clear Politics (transcript)
Teachers Federation Expected To Endorse Obama CBS2
AFT-provided video clips here. Obama speech here.
Clinton in Chicago for American Federation of Teachers meeting Sun Times
EdWeek coverage here.
Convention Sunday
Justice
Well I guess I’m thinking of the Warren Years.
Convention Sunday
Dear 1.04,
Have you been paying attention to the recent major decisions made by the Supreme Court? It's been fairly simple to predict exactly how the majority of them (the exception being Kennedy) will vote almost every time.
The only thing we have in our favor is at least a stronger majority of democrats in congress for the first couple years of the next presidency to block any really crazy appointments.
Convention Sunday
I like the ideas to help students and families, but I don't see how these ideas are going to happen. Just like the kid he quotes as wishing to go to Oxford. Well, now how is that kid going to do that. Does he have any clue how? Like how will IDEA actually get implemented in Chicago?
Convention Sunday
I know a lot of you don't like charter schools or performance bonuses, or the assumption that you need more professional development to be a better teacher, but I don't see how suggesting these programs is the equivalent of "teacher bashing." (Especially not when a pretty good portion of the voting public actually likes most of these things).
He even says, "And I am tired of hearing you blamed for our problems. " The 'you' being educators in that statement and calls out parents for their responsibility in the education of "our children."
If you think any presidential candidate will do more for education, by all means vote for that person, but please don't expect any major candidate during a general election to be marching lock-step with the opinions of the AFT.
Oh and criticizing him for giving Marilyn Stewart a shout-out...come on...this is politics, there are certain people you have no choice but to mention, especially if they're in the audience.
Nobody will be horribly surprised when I say that I, for the most part, agree with Obama's education policies.
Convention Sunday
we are working on a report of the internal voting issues of the AFT and IFT slated delegates.
Convention Sunday
Dear out of touch.
Nobody can predict how a person will vote after they become a Supreme Court Justice.
Convention Sunday
[i]It should be, "their". Not exactly a great impression of a qualified teacher!
[/i]
You haven't done much better.
1) Improper comma.
2) Poor use of quotation marks.
3) An incorrect correction.
Comedy Central, indeed!
1.04's "Another scumbag Democrat", should be matched with the singular his or her, not their. The word their is plural.
Oh, what fun.
Convention Sunday
Dear Teacher
I deliberately wrote the way I did to see how long it would take to get a response
like yours. When I write something like I did this morning the response always comes during business hours, never on weekends. Also people who write as you just did never seem to answer the questions I pose or discuss the points I bring up. It’s always the same old tired crap, almost like a script.
Convention Sunday
To teacher: HMMM! Spelling error noble not nobel
This is why I find this blog to be better than Comedy Central!
Convention Sunday
Dear 1.04,
It should be, "their". Not exactly a great impression of a qualified teacher! If we want respect when defending our nobel profession, we need to represent as competent, well-educated individuals. With poor grammar, poor punctuation and rudimentary spelling errors you are slamming Senator Obama for not adequately acknowledging teachers! Hmmm?
Convention Sunday
I hope you remember how out of touch Obama was when McCain appoints at least two right-wing, nutjob judges to the already very conservative Supreme Court.
Convention Sunday
I agree with the above comment. I would love to support Obama especially because I can't support McCain but I am getting more and more disillusioned and angry about his comments. He says that he doesn't like generalized comments about children (I don't either) but then he turns around and makes them about teachers. He holds Marilyn Stewart up as a role model which shows how far out of touch he really is. I know that by not supporting him, I will be accused of being a racist but I can't support someone who admits he is trying to distroy the public schools and who doesn't respect teachers as professionals.
Convention Sunday
Correction
Don’t bother I know it should be would .
Convention Sunday
Democrats
Well if what I have just read is correct looks like another scum-bag Democrat
is sharpening there knife to stab us in the back.
He forgot to mention the “Those Teachers†syndrome. You know those teachers
Like Debbie who gave a lowly state rep his first real endorsement for Senator.
Or those teachers who died of cancer in shit holes like the old Simeon.
Did he mention those teachers who came to work without pay for 6 weeks in 1980?
What about those teachers who were racially transferred in 1977.
You can probably tell I am a little bit steamed after reading this.
I consider his speech a direct insult to me and all “Those Teachers†who have spent
There lives trying to Teach†These Kidsâ€. Without some kind of apology , today,
I will not vote for him. Like I wood anyhow. Fool me once shame on you ect.
Convention Sunday
COLLEAGUES AND FRIENDS...
I don't have much time this morning before going back to AFT, but thought you might want to read the complete text of what Obama actually said, so here it is as we posted it yesterday to the Substance website (www.substancenews.net).
George N. Schmidt
Barack Obama addresses the AFT Convention via satellite
George Schmidt
[The following is a transcript of Senator Obama's speech to the American Federation of Teacher's annual convention in Chicago, delivered via satellite. An editor's comment will be uploaded within a few hours.]
Remarks to the 80th Convention of the American Federation of Teachers
Senator Barack Obama
July 13, 2008
Hello, everybody. I'm sorry I can't join you all in person today, but thank you for letting me say a few words. First and foremost, I am honored to have your endorsement, and I appreciate the commitment you're making to help us win in November.
I want to thank your president, Ed McElroy, your Secretary-Treasurer, Nat LaCour, and your Executive Vice President, Toni Cortese. Ed and Nat, congratulations on your retirements. We are all grateful for your steady leadership and tireless efforts to guarantee our students their fundamental right to a quality education. And I look forward to working with your new officers.
And I want to say hello to my friends from Illinois - Ed Geppert, the President of the Illinois Federation of Teachers; Marilyn Stewart, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union; and AFT Vice President Jim Dougherty, and all my allies with whom I've worked so closely.
Over the course of this campaign, I've had the opportunity to visit schools and talk to teachers and students; paraprofessionals and support staff, college faculty and employees; public employees, nurses and health care workers all across this country. But so much of what informs my visits comes from an experience I had a few years ago at Dodge Elementary School in Chicago, not far from where you're assembled today.
I asked a young teacher there what she saw as the biggest challenge facing her students. She gave me an answer I had never heard before. She talked about what she called "These Kids Syndrome" - the tendency to explain away the shortcomings and failures of our education system by saying "these kids can't learn" or "these kids don't want to learn" or "these kids are just too far behind." And after a while, "these kids" become somebody else's problem.
And she looked at me and said, "When I hear that term, it drives me crazy. They're not 'these kids.' They're our kids. All of them."
She's absolutely right. These children are our children. Their future is our future. And it's time we understood that their education is our responsibility.
I am running for President to guarantee that all of our children have the best possible chance in life. And I am tired of hearing you blamed for our problems. I want to lead a new era of mutual responsibility in education, where we all come together: parents and educators, the AFT and leaders in Washington, citizens all across America; united for the sake of our children's success.
Bringing about that future begins with fixing the broken promises of No Child Left Behind. Now, I believe that the goals of this law - educating every child with an excellent teacher, closing the achievement gap, ensuring more accountability and higher standards - were right. But promising all this while leaving the resources behind is wrong. Labeling a school and its students as failures one day and then abandoning them the next is wrong.
We must fix the failures of No Child Left Behind by providing the funding that was promised, giving states the resources they need, and finally meeting our commitment to special education. But that alone is not an education policy. It's just a starting point.
Now, John McCain is an honorable man and I respect his service to our country, but he won't even get us to that starting point. For someone who's been in Washington nearly 30 years, he's got a pretty slim record on education, and when he has taken a stand, it's been the wrong one.
He voted against increased funding for No Child Left Behind to preserve billions in tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans - tax breaks he wants to extend without saying how he'd pay for them. He voted against increasing funds for Head Start, and Pell Grants, and the hiring of 100,000 new teachers again and again and again.
In fact, his only proposal seems to be recycling tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice. Now, I've been a proponent of public school choice throughout my career. I applaud AFT for your leadership in representing charter school teachers and support staff all across this country, and for even operating your own charters in New York. Because we know well-designed public charter schools have a lot to offer, and I've actually helped pass legislation to expand them. But what I do oppose is using public money for private school vouchers. We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools; not throwing our hands up and walking away from them.
Real change is finally giving our kids everything they need to have a fighting chance in today's world. That begins with recognizing that the single most important factor in determining a child's achievement is not the color of their skin or where they come from; it's not who their parents are or how much money they have. It's who their teacher is. It's the paraprofessionals and support staff and all of you in this room. It's those who spend their own money on books and supplies, come early and stay late comparing lesson plans, who devote their lives to our next generation and serve as role models for the children who need one most because you believe that's what makes the extra difference. And it does. After all, I have two daughters. I know what their teachers mean to them.
So it's time to start treating our teachers properly. That means residency programs that supply exceptional recruits to high-need schools. That means mentoring programs that pair experienced, successful teachers with new ones. That means service scholarships that say if you commit your life to teaching, America will commit to paying for your college education.
And when our educators succeed, I won't just talk about how great they are; I will reward them for it. Under my plan, districts will be able to give teachers who mentor, or teach in underserved areas, or take on added responsibilities, or learn new skills to serve students better, or consistently excel in the classroom, the salary increase they deserve. And whether it's the plans AFT helped create in Cincinnati or Chicago, you've shown that it is possible to find new ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them.
And together, we will begin changing the odds for our at-risk children by providing quality, affordable early childhood education for all our children. To address the achievement gap, we'll expand afterschool and summer leaming opportunities. To address the dropout crisis that condemns so many futures, we'll intervene much earlier in a child's education - because the forces that lead a high school student to drop out start well before the ninth grade.
But there is no program and no policy that can substitute for a parent who is involved in their child's education from day one, who makes sure that child is in school on time, helps them with their homework, and attends those parent-teacher conferences; who is willing to turn off the TV once in awhile, put away the video games, and read to their child. Responsibility for our children's education starts at home. We have to set high standards for them, and spend time with them, and love them. We have to hold ourselves accountable.
This is the commitment we must make to our kids. This is the chance they must have. We all know there are too many young men and women in America right now who are slipping away from us as we speak - students who've lost all hope that they can make something of their lives. You know these kids. And I know these kids. I began my career over two decades ago in communities on Chicago's South Side. And I worked with parents and teachers and local leaders to fight for their future. We set up after school programs and protested outside government offices so that we could get those who had dropped out into alternative schools. And in time, we changed the odds for our children.
But while I know hopelessness, I also know hope. In May, I visited a high school in Colorado where just three years ago, only half of the seniors were accepted to college. But thanks to the hard work of caring parents, innovative educators, and some very committed students, all fortyfour seniors of this year's class were accepted to more than seventy colleges and universities across the country. And the example they set trickles down. While there, I met an eighth grader named Theo Rodriguez, who now sets his sights a little higher - he wants to go to Oxford and study criminology.
That's what hope is. That's the promise of education in America - that no matter what we look like or where we come from or who our parents are, each of us should have the opportunity to fulfill our God-given potential. Each of us should have the chance to achieve the American Dream.
That's why I'm running for President, AFT. To make sure all our kids have that chance. But I need your help to get there. From your earliest days in Chicago, you've stood up for change when minorities weren't allowed full union membership; when parents fought to integrate our schools; when it was time to take the march for civil rights to Washington, you stood up.
And if you stand up with me these next four months; if you march with me and knock on doors and make phone calls and register voters, and talk to your friends and co-workers and neighbors; then I promise you this: we will win this election; we will change education in this country; and we will bring about a better future for our children and for this country we love.