Statement from AFT President Randi Weingarten on World Teachers’ Day 2008

World Teachers’ Day, celebrated every Oct. 5, has been promoted since 1967 by Education International, UNESCO and other leading organizations as an opportunity to recognize the important work teachers do and to draw attention to crucial issues facing educators worldwide. The theme of this year’s World Teachers’ Day is Teachers Matter, with a focus on international teacher shortages and the need for professional training to deliver high quality education.

WASHINGTON—The American Federation of Teachers has an enduring commitment to improving the quality of education in the United States and abroad. World Teachers’ Day recognizes the central role of the teacher—in every classroom, in every country. The focus this year on teacher training rightly highlights the established link between high-quality professional development and effective instruction.

The AFT has been a leader in initiating programs that support teachers, and has consistently pushed for high-quality training programs for teachers. Recently, we announced the AFT Innovation Fund, a groundbreaking domestic initiative that will foster union- and teacher-led education reform from the bottom up. For more than 25 years, the AFT has promoted research-based professional development through our expansive Educational Research and Dissemination (ER&D) program, which offers training courses for teachers and school support personnel. From helping new teachers to start off strong, to cracking the code of effective reading instruction, to sharing classroom management strategies, ER&D has trained thousands of educators in the best educational practices.

The AFT’s longstanding international work includes advocacy campaigns to defend the rights of teachers to form independent unions, and to assist those in fragile democracies and developing countries during times of political turmoil or humanitarian crises. Our recent international programs have included support to educators and teachers unions in South Africa, Zimbabwe,  Georgia, Iraq, China and Colombia.

World Teachers’ Day helps bring the vital role of teachers and the need to support them in their life-changing work to the attention of everyone, from students to heads of state.

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