California Educator

March 2017

Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/795366

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 41 of 55

Adam Ebrahim, Fresno High School Adam Ebrahim has a busy day ah ead , but then again, most of his days are busy, involving a combination of teaching, pro- fessional development work, and being the vice president of the Fresno Teachers Association. e day begins with his ninth- grade human geography class at Fresno High School; it's a uniquely structured course, with classes meeting only once a week, for two hours. e course content blends history and current events, with elements of economics and environmental science. As his union's vice president, Adam has much to share with school site union representatives at their rep council meeting [later that day]. My visit runs less than an hour, but the most interesting part for me is seeing Adam's presentation relating to website improvements and an evolving association collab- oration with the district to improve the professional growth of Fresno teachers. More than any other teacher observed as part of this book, Adam practices a brand of unionism that emphasizes the devel- opment and continual improvement of teaching, alongside the usual labor issues that unions negotiate and advocate, such as salaries, benefits, and working conditions. Working through a union framework has given Adam a national reach, and he's also a leader at the state level: Adam is among the teacher leaders in Cal- ifornia's Instructional Leadership Corps (ILC), a joint project of CTA, the National Board Resource Center, and others to promote Common Core training by teachers for teachers. While the Common Core adoption remains controversial among some educators, Adam suggests that when the Common Core fades or evolves, as educational reforms invariably do, his hope is that models like the ILC will have taken hold, demonstrating that teacher leadership builds the capacity of districts and schools to meet the needs of their teachers and students and that it is more effective and more economical than having outside consultants and publishing representatives deliver training. Such leadership opportunities also meet a clear need felt by many teachers who seek new challenges and responsibilities that don't require them to give up classroom teaching. Encina Preparatory High School, Sacramento The San Juan Teachers Association (SJTA) has had a leader - ship role in CalT URN [Teacher Union Reform Network] for many years, and it has been leading by example in the work of promoting quality teaching and learning through labor-man- agement collaboration. Almost everyone I talked to about Encina Preparatory High School in San Juan Unified School District described it as needing major changes when it entered a rede- sign process in the 2010-11 school year. e teachers at Encina, as well as other teacher leaders in the district, all agreed that Encina has shown significant improve- ment, predicated on three key elements: Teachers had genuine leadership roles in the school's redesign, they continue to have genuine leadership opportunities in the ongoing work at the school, and there's a focus on community partnerships. Union engagement at each step ref lects a strong labor-management relationship; for contrast, teachers noted that Encina had been through a top-down redesign effort about 10 years earlier, and it had failed to take hold. Teacher Barry Roth explains the difference in part by noting that both excellent and poor administrators tend to leave quickly; "teachers are the glue" holding a school together. e teacher-driven, union-supported model has Encina headed in the right direction. Understanding the improvement at Encina requires some understanding of the student body. e high school absorbed a neighboring middle school and now serves grades 6-12. Most sixth-graders enter the school reading at a second-grade level or "Encina Preparatory High School's improvement is predicated on three key elements: Teachers had genuine leadership roles in the school's redesign, they continue to have genuine leadership opportunities in the ongoing work at the school, and there's a focus on community partnerships." 40 cta.org Barry Roth teaching & learning

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of California Educator - March 2017