New AFT global awareness curriculum available
Down the street, around the world

If you've ever wondered how to make the connection between international issues and the everyday lives of your students, Down the Street, Around the World: A Starter Kit for Global Awareness might just be your ticket. Published in July, the supplemental curriculum kit from the AFT international affairs department is geared for middle and high school social studies students.

The research- and project-based unit helps students learn about globalization through an in-depth investigation of one of eight topics: education, the environment, health, human rights, labor, migration, security and trade. Students are challenged to identify and analyze the ways that global issues and local communities are linked, and the impact that individuals can have on global challenges.

The unit allows teachers to use it in a variety of ways depending on their needs and those of their students, and its flexibility lends itself to interdisciplinary work. The curriculum could be completed in an intensive two-week period, or expanded to fill an entire semester. The kit includes a complete teacher's guide and a student briefing book for each topic, which includes activity sheets as well as print and online resource lists.

Down the Street, Around the World, which was written by classroom teachers and funded through a grant from the United States Agency for International Development, is available free of charge. Copies can be ordered from the AFT International Affairs Department, 555 New Jersey Ave. N.W., Washington DC 20001 or e-mail iad@aft.org.

Look for the AFT 'brand'

Clarifying and unifying the union's national "look," and establishing standards for its communications, has been an AFT priority for more than two years.

The AFT identity project, dubbed "AFT branding," was spurred by AFT president Sandra Feldman's observation that it was difficult to fully appreciate how strong AFT turnout was at rallies and demonstrations when there was no evident "sea of blue"--in other words, no readily identifiable AFT color to indicate the union's presence. There was in fact no national standard for the use and appearance of the union's name and logo, nor were there common colors that immediately identify and bring to mind the AFT.

A study of AFT communications--print and online publications, reports and correspondence--further underscored the need for greater standardization. The AFT identity project, or "branding," was created to address this need.

The goal of the identity project, says AFT administration department director Bob Ripperger, who heads the effort, is to enhance the AFT's public exposure by bringing some uniformity and cohesion to the national union's image and identity. To do that, the project has designed easy-to-use tools for AFT staff who are responsible for the creation and appearance of AFT communications and publications.

Currently, the project is nearing completion of a five-binder set of guidelines, which offer simple instructions for using the AFT logo, colors and identity on national communications tools. Under headings such as Identity, Correspondence, Design, Meetings and Store, the guidelines include templates, graphics files and stationery. With the assistance of a Chicago-based consulting firm, the AFT graphics department, staff and elected leaders have been reviewing guidelines and selecting a wide range of materials for the identity project.

The next phase of the project is to examine how state and local affiliates may want to tie in to the national union's branding effort. Meanwhile, the AFT will continue to put its own guidelines in place so that the union will have a coordinated and cohesive look by the national biennial convention in 2004. Some AFT affiliates, learning of the national union's efforts, are beginning branding projects of their own.

For more information about the AFT identity project, call Priscilla Nemeth, AFT administration department, at 202/393-5661 or e-mail pnemeth@aft.org.

No recourse for assaulted school employees

Fay Cale is a dedicated bus driver of exceptional education students for the Jefferson County, Ala., school system who says she loves the children on her route. "I call them my babies," she says. But Cale has been hit, scratched, knocked in the head and punched in the stomach, in particular by a very strong and aggressive 10-year-old--a child who still rides the same bus. "It gets to the point," Cale told a Birmingham, Ala., television station earlier this year, "where I think, 'My goodness, can't something be done about this?'"

Exceptional education teacher Carol Downs, from the same county, has had to endure the violent behavior of an autistic male student, known for his hitting, slapping, kicking, biting and throwing of objects, who (with a cast on his arm) struck her with full force across the face. This occurred after repeated requests from previous instructors that the student be put in a more appropriate placement had been denied.

Special education paraprofessional Peggy Giambrone has been kicked, hit in the chest and arm, had her glasses knocked off her face by a 320-pound, 5'6" autistic teenager. She also has been stabbed in the hand with a pencil and has had numerous classroom objects thrown at her.

What these three AFT members have had in common is the Jefferson County school system's refusal to change the circumstances for both the children and the school employees involved in these violent incidents, and, fortunately, the leadership of the Jefferson County American Federation of Teachers, which has been relentless in its pursuit of solutions.

"This has been going on for two years now," says JCAFT president Vi Parramore, who has appeared before the school board and met with national experts on special education alternatives in an attempt to move the county system to action. With the help of national AFT staff, Parramore has also met with experts on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), who said the number one solution should be expansion of placement opportunities for these children.

Jefferson County has nearly 5,000 special education students; of these, 500 have potential for violence and 50 of the 500 are violent, Parramore says. "I'm talking about really violent kids, not just kids who cuss or curse," she notes. The 300-plus pound autistic girl mentioned above has an autistic twin sister and, between them, they have assaulted five AFT members throughout the years, says Parramore. "We have tried to intervene, our attorneys write letters. The result is they move the kids to another situation and remove our members from the [kids]," she says. "They basically give them a new victim. Very rarely do they put [violent kids] in placements where there is help to restrain the child or to give medication."

IDEA supports parents who want their special needs children in public school settings full time and who don't want their kids labeled, removed or set apart. And while Jefferson County AFT certainly supports that tenet, there aren't enough facilities suited to the needs of exceptionally difficult and violent students, says Parramore. Employees often get blamed for the assaults. "'If you had a better temperament for working with these children' or 'you looked at them funny' or 'suck it up and go on'" are some of the popular responses, says Parramore. "'If you hadn't wanted to be beaten up, why did you major in special education?'" There is no support for these victims, she says. "I have a teacher suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome who has never once been called by the school system to see how she's doing or been offered help."

Assaulted teachers have gone to the police and to family court, and the AFT has helped members file police reports. After all, says Parramore, if a child assaulted someone in a grocery store, that child would be arrested or carried off.

The JCAFT is calling for alternative placements for violent special education students and automatic reporting and investigation of every incident by an outside group.

The school superintendent finally did create a Violence Task Force recently, says Parramore. JCAFT member Christine Sexton, a special education teacher who was assaulted by the same male student who attacked Downs, is a member of the task force.

NAEP urban study: Reason to believe

A study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) highlights pockets of strength for big city schools that point to opportunities for closing the overall achievement gap between urban districts and other school districts.

While the aggregate numbers for the six participating school districts were weaker than the national averages, NAEP's first urban district study in reading and writing also showed that younger students in several districts performed at or above national averages. Results were released in July in Washington, D.C.

"This should put an end to the myth that all schools educating poor children are failing," says AFT president Sandra Feldman. "We must look at what is working in these high-performing urban schools and correct the shortcomings where achievement is unacceptably low."

Volunteering for the project were school districts in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C.

"Progress in urban districts is all the more remarkable given that most poor children start school already behind their more privileged peers," notes Feldman. "The secret of their success is no secret at all. Where high-quality reforms have been adopted and sustained, students are making progress."

Details on this NAEP study are available at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard.

Unicef offers more than a 'trick-or-treat'

Rudy Treuter has never forgotten about that pumpkin she won in Ms. Fields' third-grade class at South School in New Canaan, Conn. Nor has she forgotten why she won the pumpkin. It was her prize for collecting the most money for "Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF."

So when Treuter, today a third-grade teacher herself, read about the program several years ago she immediately went to work getting permission from her principal at Baranoff Elementary School in Austin, Texas, to organize a schoolwide "Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF" project with full support from the community.

"I feel like I'm living my childhood again," says Treuter, a member of Education Austin. Treuter hopes the experience will leave on her students the same lasting imprint it left on her: the value of community service.

"We don't give kids enough credit," Treuter says. "They want to help people too. Out of my whole class, I would say five kids now will be avid workers in community service," she notes, and they will pass that desire on to five other kids down the road.

The UNICEF program started in 1950. Over the years, schoolchildren have raised more than $118 million for the program.

"One of the greatest benefits of Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF is that it gives American children a wonderful opportunity to learn about the world around them," says Charles J. Lyons, president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. "And when American children Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF, they are literally helping to save other children's lives."

Appeals court says formula shortchanges NYC students

New York's highest court has ordered the governor and Legislature to put fairness back into the state's school funding formula, and the widely anticipated ruling could mark the beginning of the end to chronic underfunding of New York City schools.

Handed down in June by the New York Court of Appeals, the ruling found the state's current funding formula consistently shortchanges more than 1 million students in New York City schools. The court gave the state until July 30, 2004, to make the changes needed to uphold the state constitutional guarantee of a sound, basic education for all students. In its 4-1 decision, the court fell squarely in line with a 2001 ruling by lower court Justice Leland DeGrasse, which an appeals court had overturned last year.

The ruling capped a legal battle in New York that spanned nearly a decade. It began when the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE), a coalition of civic and education organizations and dozens of community school boards, sued the state over school funding disparities.

"The high court's ruling in the CFE case is a decision potentially as far-reaching as Brown vs. Board of Education and is a vindication of what the UFT has spent years fighting for--qualified teachers, smaller classes, enough books and supplies," says UFT president Randi Weingarten, who is also an AFT vice president.

The "decision means a brighter tomorrow for New York City students and every student in New York state," predicts Thomas Y. Hobart Jr., president of the New York State United Teachers and an AFT vice president. "The governor and the Legislature now have the responsibility to provide the resources to ensure that every child receives the sound, basic education that the Court of Appeals has mandated."

Nurses revive union colleague

The New York State United Teachers Representative Assembly in Washington, D.C., this past April was more eventful than expected for registered nurses Rosemary Scheriff, Anne Goldman, Nancy Barth Miller and Hope Willocks. The nurses and other NYSUT delegates were leaving a session at the Washington Hilton Hotel when retired teacher Herb Yules collapsed. The nurses sprang to action, dispersing the crowd to help administer CPR to Yules, who had stopped breathing.

Fortunately, NYSUT had arranged in advance to bring an automatic external defibrillator (AED) to the meeting. AEDs are used to administer life-saving electrical shocks to victims of sudden cardiac arrest. The defibrillator was a gift from Rachel Moyer, an AFT member whose son died of cardiac arrest almost three years ago when he collapsed during a high school basketball game. With the help of the union, Moyer successfully lobbied for legislation to put the devices in every school in New York. When NYSUT staffer Aaron Bifaro saw what was happening, he ran to get the defibrillator, which the nurses used to revive Yules and keep him stabilized until emergency medical technicians arrived on the scene.

"If Aaron hadn't come with that defibrillator, Yules had no shot," says Goldman, the nurse representative to NYSUT's New York City affiliate, the United Federation of Teachers. "Life is very fragile. We're grateful that we had the skills to interact."

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