I want to be part of a powerful union of educators with meaningful impact into how we educate our students to serve our community, as a part of how the community is shaped into the future.
Right now, Silicon Valley is envisioning and investing in a view of the future. They have power at the level of legislature, and together they are thinking about the future of education and of budgets. Our experience as educators lets us understand the value of the time we are able to spend in classrooms, interacting with and learning from our students how to meet them where they are and move them where they need to go. In the current technologically-driven environment and economy, time spent with a person becomes ever more expensive while the cost of incredible technology continues to drop. Will our student population have the privilege of being able to spend time with educators in a position to spend most of their time thinking about how to serve their students? Or is this a privilege that will be reserved for only those whose families can afford to send them to elite schools?
Look around you. Are you privy to key decisions about the future? Are you involved in the discussion, or know how and where it is happening? Do you want to? So much of bureaucratic systems is not about facilitating meaningful involvement, but is instead about creating layers of process that prevent meaningful involvement, so that only a few can engage that process, while disconnecting those few from connection and accountability. Meetings in which updates are given about fait accomplî, while the key decisions that are coming are left undiscussed.
I am hoping, in the course of this campaign, to model the behaviors and processes I hope we can continue, irrespective of the outcome of this election. I do hope you will opt to join the ELAC Faculty Issues Discord, and fill out the interest form for participating in a Zoom Issues Forum. Even if you are not sure you’d like to participate, signing up will let us generate a list of non-work emails that we can use to stay in touch.