A soldier’s story
Former WTU president returns to France to commemorate D-Day

Sixty years ago, a young William H. Simons was among the thousands of Allied soldiers to hit the beaches at Normandy on June 6, 1944. D-Day, as this date came to be known, changed the course of World War II.

Both a former Washington Teachers Union president and AFT vice president, Simons returned to France in June to reflect on that day. He was one of 100 American World War II veterans officially chosen to celebrate D-Day’s 60th anniversary.

“It was a thrill to relive the experience. It also brought back a lot of memories, good and bad,” he says.

A master sergeant in the U.S. Army, Simons celebrated his 20th birthday just days before his feet first touched the sands of Normandy Beach.

“As our ship approached the shore, the ship next to us was hit,” Simons recalls. “We landed at Utah Beach and could see gunfire from the Germans. We could also see the soldiers who had gotten there before us, inching along the beach. The situation was hectic. Nevertheless I survived,” says Simons.

Simons’ Army Quartermaster Corps service unit eventually settled in a small French town where the troops helped load supplies for the famous Red Ball Express, a convoy of trucks connecting supply depots in Normandy to the armies in the field.

It came as a pleasant surprise when the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs contacted Simons about returning to France for the commemoration. He and his fellow veterans each were named Knight of the Legion of Honor by the French government for their participation in the liberation of France and Europe. It is the highest civilian honor France bestows on its citizens or foreigners for outstanding achievements in military or civilian life. The French minister of defense presented the medal to Simons.

“It was a joy to return” to a place that had been so important in his life, says Simons, who was stationed in France for a year and a half. “Receiving the honor was a very exciting moment. It is a beautiful medal. I will cherish it for the rest of my life.”

Educating Congress
AFT member gives Congress a frontline take on teacher quality

You rarely hear the words “free time” and “teacher” used in the same sentence. But when AFT member Eileen Mitchell, a fifth-grade teacher at Public School 31 on Staten Island, was invited to testify before Congress last spring about the No Child Left Behind Act, the opportunity was just too important to pass up.

Mitchell traveled to Capitol Hill on April 21 to tell members of the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce that she and other frontline teachers embrace the goal of having all students taught by well-supported teachers who know their subject and how to teach it, a key goal behind NCLB.  But she stressed that lawmakers need to fine-tune NCLB so that the “highly qualified teacher” provision doesn’t place onerous burdens on classroom professionals.

Many veterans met the existing state requirements when they entered teaching and have demonstrated mastery in their subject area through professional development, graduate coursework and years of successful teaching, Mitchell explained. “NCLB wisely recognizes this” by allowing veteran teachers to demonstrate that they are highly qualified by meeting a high, objective uniform state standard of evaluation, or HOUSSE. To remedy this, “States must be required to offer the HOUSSE to veteran teachers,” Mitchell told the congressional panel.

Congress also should be mindful that quality in teaching must be an across-the-board proposition. “The same standards that apply to traditional teacher preparation programs should apply to alternative routes to certification,” she said. And, yes, salaries do factor into the teacher-quality equation, the fifth-grade teacher explained, noting that more-competitive salaries in New York City have attracted a higher percentage of qualified teachers into city classrooms.