Young leaders move to the forefront as affiliates reach out to welcome them

A focus on professionalism
Pankaj Sharma admits to being more than a little surprised by what he learned about the North Suburban Teachers Union during his first year at Niles West High School in Skokie, Ill. The 26-year-old social studies teacher knew the union had negotiated a strong contract for the educators it represents and that it was effective at handling the grievances of individual members.

What surprised Sharma was the union’s deep-seated commitment to helping teachers, particularly younger teachers, grow as professionals. He says he learned during a union-sponsored orientation for new teachers that “being a quality teacher went hand-in-hand with being an active union member.”

“The union officers made it clear from the outset that they valued professionalism and that the union was there to support and foster that,” he recalls. “That was a very positive message for a new teacher to hear. It resonated with me and gave me a new respect and appreciation for the union.”

Thanks to a mentoring program run by the union, Sharma got invaluable advice and guidance from a veteran colleague during his first year with the school district. His mentor, Janet Kelsey, was an active member of the North Suburban local. “I was impressed by how she [Kelsey] and the other mentors were able to address many of the questions and concerns that a first-year teacher has.”

That experience made it easier for union officers to persuade Sharma to take on a leadership role with the local. Currently in his second year as chair of the union’s membership development committee, Sharma is happy to have the opportunity to reach out to new, younger teachers, many of whom he knows personally.

The more younger teachers learn about the union and its history, “the more impressed they are and the more motivated they are to get involved,” he says.

“It’s smart for the union to be proactive in its recruitment of new members into leadership roles,” says Sharma, noting that the district has been hiring an increasing number of new teachers as veteran teachers retire. “The demographics of the union are changing.”

A leader for tomorrow
After 13 years, Mary Cathryn Ricker has left the classroom for the union office as president of the St. Paul (Minn.) Federation of Teachers.

Ricker, 36, assumed the top post of the 4,000-member local in June. Her rise to the post was part destiny, part chance.

Destiny: she grew up in a family of teachers who were active in their Minnesota locals. “I walked my first picket line to support my father and my teachers as a sixth-grader,” says Ricker.

Chance: when the local was looking for candidates to sit on a joint union-school district committee, Ricker interviewed with then-president Ian Keith. Impressed by her enthusiasm and commitment to the union, Keith not only named her to the committee, he appointed her to the St. Paul federation’s executive board.

Although Ricker says her involvement in the local “snowballed,” it was really more like an avalanche. The 2004-05 school year marked Ricker’s 13th year as a middle school English and language arts teacher, but she didn’t start teaching in St. Paul until 2000.

“I am crazy busy but I am absolutely loving it,” Ricker says. “I feel like I have the opportunity to offer up a whole bunch of ideas that have been incubating these last 13 years as a teacher.”

Ricker says she kept many of her ideas to herself because she just didn’t have the energy to share them after a day in the classroom. “I don’t ever want teachers to feel that they need some type of leadership position to have a say. Simply by being a teacher and a professional, you are an expert on how to improve your profession,” she says.

As president, Ricker intends to keep in touch with the classroom. “There are teachers like me all over the district who have great ideas and are just waiting for someone to ask them,” she says. She knows that teachers with 20-plus years in the classroom have thoughts about how things can be improved that they’ve only shared in the lunchroom. “We have to catch their ideas before they retire,” she says.

In an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Ricker sums up what she brings to the job: “Younger teachers are hoping I will carry the torch for them on a number of issues that are important to them. But I think older teachers know that I am mindful of the history of education and the history of the teachers union.”

Building the team
You could forgive Richwood, W.Va., teacher Brandon Tinney if he hesitated when leaders of his local union and state federation approached him three years ago to see if he might be interested in running for a union leadership post. After all, the 26-year-old math and science teacher at Cherry River Elementary was still just a provisional employee. He and his wife talked long and hard about what might happen if Tinney won the presidency of the Nicholas County Federation of Teachers and things got contentious between the union and the administration.

“I was kind of reserved at first, knowing that I would have to approach the school board and superintendent” on some tough issues, Tinney remembers. “But I saw it as an opportunity. I really wanted to learn more about what our rights and rules were in the workplace, and I could learn more about the profession.”

Now, looking back on three years at the helm of the local, Tinney is convinced he made the right move. He knew he possessed some of the major qualities that make for a good leader—a willingness to ask tough questions, a skill for team-building and, above all, a talent for listening to the concerns and views of the 110 educators he represents. Then there was the strong support from retiring local president Barbara Taylor and from the staff of the West Virginia Federation of Teachers. They had a broad range of expertise that Tinney used frequently and effectively in the first few months, when he found himself dealing with such complicated issues as the rules and requirements  for special education teachers working on Individual Education Plan (IEP) teams.

He’s already enjoyed some major victories. The union won additional resources to help special education teachers purchase classroom materials; it was a long-term goal for the local, begun under Taylor and brought to completion under Tinney. Now he hopes to build on the win by securing additional compensation for special education teachers, funds that reflect the hundreds of extra hours these educators must dedicate each year to navigating the red tape associated with special education.

Tinney’s advice to younger union leaders is simple: You’ve got good people around you, use them.

“The main thing you need is to surround yourself with a good support team,” the local president advises. “If I had to do every battle by myself, there’s no way I could do it. There are people who will take on meaningful jobs. … You just have to find them.”

‘It’s an investment’
Sylvia Matousek has a longstanding reputation for finding people with certain talents and interest areas, and has brought them into union work,” says Phil Cleary, referring to the long-time president of the North Syracuse Education Association (NSEA). Cleary should know. He is one of Matousek’s recruits.

When Cleary’s program was at risk of losing funding, Matousek held a school meeting. “We just had a great conversation about political activity and connecting with local lawmakers, and she co-opted me,” says Cleary, a preschool special education teacher.

Cleary, 42, has held a number of local and statewide union positions over the course of his 14-year teaching career, ranging from building representative to New York State United Teachers’ political action coordinator for the state’s 50th senatorial district. For more than a half-dozen years, he’s been first vice president of his local.

Union work, he says, “is a great investment. It’s an investment in yourself, your profession and your colleagues. It is something that is going to pay you back. You’ll find that whatever you put into it, you get so much more out of it.”

For Cleary, his union work gives him the satisfaction of being able to help his colleagues, providing them with the information and services they need “so they can enjoy their profession and the work that they love.”

A sense of community
Even before LaTrina Roland was a teacher, she knew she wanted to be active in her union—whichever union that was going to be.

The former school secretary got her first glimpse into a union at Dobbins Technical High School in Philadelphia, where she worked during the day while going to school at night to become a teacher.

So it’s not surprising that when Roland, now 34, landed her first teaching job at Hamilton Elementary School for the 1998-99 school year, she also landed her first union job: member of the school’s building committee.

For the last four years, Roland, a sixth-grade teacher, has been building representative at the school, serving as the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers point person at Hamilton. It’s a position she started campaigning for her first year on the job. “Every year, I ran just to get my name on the ballot,” recalls Roland.

Ambition was not her driving force, however. Rather Roland was motivated by her union experience at Dobbins. “We had a wonderful building rep there,” she says, noting the sense of community among union members at the school, as well as their high degree of involvement in union activities.

“I wanted to transfer their attitude to the elementary school,” she adds.

Reinforcing that the union is a community is one of Roland’s priorities. “When you are standing alone, it is very easy for the administration to come down on you. But when you are standing with 30 people, it’s different.”

The personal touch
When Joel Flores first started teaching, he wanted to know why money was coming out of his paycheck—and going to the union. So he asked some of his colleagues. They explained that the union, Orange County, Calif.’s, Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers, negotiates their contract and provides liability insurance.

That was that—for four years. “I didn’t have a negative opinion [of the union] but I didn’t have a positive one, either,” says Flores, 32, who teaches a ninth-grade literacy program at Estancia High School in Costa Mesa. “In my first years of teaching, I was so focused on keeping my head above water.”

Four years into the profession, Flores was asked to be a site representative. He recalls being overwhelmed at the first meeting. “I didn’t know anybody,” he says. But veteran teacher and union activist Kay Long took care of that. Long introduced herself and invited him to a Committee on Political Education (COPE) meeting.

Flores went, and the rest, as they say, is history. That meeting propelled Flores from union member to union activist. He is now vice president of his 1,250-member local. “I remember her [Long] telling me that ‘we need more young teachers to get involved in the union,’” he says. “If Kay hadn’t introduced herself and invited me to the COPE meeting, I don’t know how involved I would be today.”

At the meeting, Flores says, he realized he was surrounded by like-minded people—union members who care about political issues, including social justice.

Being a leader has been “real rewarding because I feel like I have a whole other family,” he says. And just like a family, if one of his brothers’ or sisters’ rights are being violated, “I take it personally.”

Family values
Oregon, Ohio, teachers Melissa Mlynek and Ben Pfeiffer know the difference a union makes.

Mlynek’s father, Bill Pasztor, is the president of her local, the Oregon City Federation of Teachers. Pfeiffer’s father, Denis, who died in 1997, served as the local’s president more than two decades ago.

With the district’s teacher demographics changing as the baby boomers are retiring, the union is making a concerted effort to get new teachers involved. “We have a large percent of our membership with less than 10 years of teaching experience,” says Pfeiffer.

Both Mlynek and Pfeiffer have taken the leap from union member to union activist. Pfeiffer, 31, is an alternate building representative at Clay High School where he has taught chemistry for five years. Clay High School special education teacher Mlynek, 28, who has been teaching in the district for four years, was on the local’s contract negotiating team as the special education representative.

“A lot of our members who were on [the negotiating team] are retiring at the end of this school year,” says Mlynek. “They thought it was important to get some newer teachers involved because we need the experience—and we need to have a better understanding of the history of why some things are in the contract.”

“It’s very important for people to be involved because we have a very strong and proud tradition [in the district]—and it’s our responsibility [as younger teachers] to step up and maintain that tradition, to make sure future teachers have the same experiences that we’ve had.”

People join people
As the recently elected president of Florida’s Hernando Classroom Teachers Association, Brian Phillips not only wants to increase the involvement of the union’s 1,100 members, he wants to get the 500 teachers who have not joined the local signed up.

“People don’t join organizations. They join other people,” says Phillips. And the collective voice of those 1,600 teachers in Hernando County will be key to achieving one of Phillips’ primary goal: salaries commensurate with the job.

Although the 2005-06 school year only marks Phillips’ third year in the classroom, this 31-year-old ex-Marine hopes to whip into shape decision-makers who continue to undervalue the teaching profession.

“It upsets me when I look at salary schedules and I see what a professional [athlete] makes and what a teacher makes,” says the English teacher at Nature Coast Technical High School.

Phillips got involved in the union his first year on the job when he was asked to participate in a membership program. Like other union members in his local—and around the country—he says that “once you get involved, you start getting more involved.”

He also knows that running a union is a group effort, and that, as an organization, the union needs to offer a variety of opportunities for involvement to newer as well as more seasoned teachers.

“Teaching is such an important calling for people,” says Phillips. As president, he enjoys most being the voice of the county’s teachers at the district and state levels. “It is quite challenging but also very rewarding at the same time.”The bottom line: When it comes to education, he says, it’s the union voice that balances out the power of administrators and policymakers. “We need to move together to create an environment where students can be successful and teachers are happy.”

See related sidebars:
Engaging and Activating
Fostering an involved membership