Topic: Education Issues
Contingent faculty team up, pass national shared governance policy
AFT Convention adopts resolution crafted by UC and community college faculty
While the COVID-19 pandemic meant that this summer’s AFT Convention had to go virtual, and in turn, resulted in format changes which made schedules tighter, and the work of those attending harder in many respects, one of the great achievements for CFT was the passage of a resolution calling for the right of contingent faculty to participate in shared governance.
The patient is on the table — Higher Education in America is sick
Opinion
By Geoff Johnson, AFT Guild, San Diego and Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community Colleges
Higher education in America is sick. Its classrooms and campuses have been largely shuttered, save but for students taking lab courses, or practicums, ironically in hospitals. Students and instructors are now confined to the domains of their computers and laptop screens in the educational netherworlds of Zoom or Cranium. With the exception of online instruction developed prior to the crisis, what is being delivered, more so than taught, is a curriculum of coping under the duress of the coronavirus pandemic.
Special Education Toolkit for coronavirus times
As distance learning becomes our new reality, public education is presented with new challenges. Many special education service providers are feeling overwhelmed and concerned as they navigate a new educational landscape to serve a population that is vulnerable and at times fragile. The current crisis, along with its many challenges, gives us the opportunity to find new ways to continue fighting for our students’ right to a Free, Appropriate Public Education (FAPE).
Social worker’s outreach during pandemic leads to district-wide change
“We’re not just trying to teach — we’re in the in business of love and care…”
Leslie Hu, a social worker at San Francisco’s Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, thinks that during a global pandemic, when many students are seeing their communities directly affected, isn’t the time for business as usual.
Tightrope Walkers: Teaching and parenting at the same time
Faculty parents share stories of teaching from home during shelter-in-place
By Katharine Harer, San Mateo Community College Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 1493
You’re teaching all your classes online, providing support to freaked-out students and dealing with a flood of emails every day, while at the same time, and often in the same room, hour after hour, your children need you to be present and available. You can’t send them to school or childcare or to the grandparents or to play at their friends’ houses. You can’t send them anywhere. Will lack of sleep, personal space and time make you trip and fall, and if so, who will catch you?
College students staying positive through the pandemic
Union presidents surveys students for newspaper column
By Mark James Miller, Part-Time Faculty Association of Allan Hancock College
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought its own unique challenges to every facet of society. Everyone has been seriously impacted by the virus, and students in higher education are no exception.
Nationwide, students are delaying their education until the pandemic is over and colleges return to the traditional classroom approach instead of the online model being used in its place. Some are simply uncomfortable with online learning, and others are fearful that the education they receive remotely is not of the same quality as what they get in the classroom with the instructor present.
Dedication to students helps teachers make huge shift online with grace, diligence
Distance learning demands hard work, extra hours — and good internet
Since schools closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and instruction moved online, Jessica Hoffschneider, a resource special education teacher at Soquel High, has been busy. A site representative for the Greater Santa Cruz Federation of Teachers, she spends her days trying her best to help her students with mild to moderate disabilities.
Tech support powers online classrooms behind the scenes
Classified employees make the connections and keep them strong
Computer geeks have been on the front lines of online learning since March, when school and college districts across urban and rural California closed to avoid the COVID-19 pandemic. Tech staff are the essential employees who are turning digital classrooms from a pipedream into a working educational system.
College instructors rise to distance learning challenge
Extra hours, perseverance, union support assist in transition
Palomar College child development teacher Barbara Hammons definitely found the idea of distance teaching a challenge. For years, she and her department chair had a running joke – if she ever wanted to get rid of her, no need to fire her, just give her an online class.
Paraeducator steps up, makes face shields for medical workers
Gilroy family applies 3-D printing skills from campus STEAM lab
By Arti O’Connor, President, Gilroy Federation of Paraeducators
Diana Torres, a paraeducator in the Gilroy Unified School District, has been instrumental in establishing the STEAM lab and program at Las Animas Elementary School. I met her several months ago and was extremely impressed when she showed me the lab — with a 3-D printer — that she uses to teach students about that form of technology.
Undocumented students more vulnerable than ever during pandemic
How faculty can make a difference
By Jessica Silver-Sharp, San Mateo Community College Federation of Teachers
When I first wrote about undocumented students in October 2017, I couldn’t have foreseen how things could change so much in less than three years. Two out of three of our campus Dream Centers in the San Mateo Community College District were established during this time when young “Dreamers” were forming a national youth movement and “coming out” across the country. Then, a majority of the hundreds of undocumented students on campus enjoyed legal protections under DACA.
Allan Hancock College teachers and the ‘new normal’
Union presidents surveys part-time faculty for newspaper column
By Mark James Miller, Part-Time Faculty Association of Allan Hancock College
“I miss the face-to-face contact.”
“Something is missing.”
“I miss being with my students.”
As Hancock College’s part-time instructors adapt to the “new normal” brought on by the coronavirus, one theme is constant: With all classes now being taught remotely, they miss being in the classroom with their students.
Part-time faculty face the travails of remote teaching
Stories of teaching from home during the pandemic
Within the span of just two weeks in early March, California Community Colleges, along with the rest of American higher education, were forced into the perhaps the largest and most radical pedagogical shift in its history.
Nearly 300 classified employees have become teachers, 2000 in pipeline
Update: Classified Employee Teacher Credentialing Program
An innovative state program has helped transform nearly 300 classified employees into credentialed teachers, with about 2,000 more staff in the pipeline, according to a report from the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
The changeover at Allan Hancock College
Challenges and rewards of teaching online
By Mark James Miller
Even before Gov. Gavin Newsom’s shelter-at-home order, Allan Hancock College was gearing up to meet the challenges the COVID-19 virus presents to an institution of higher learning.
For faculty and students, this new normal brings with it many issues regarding how best to continue the mission of education — providing the students with the highest quality of instruction — while trying to remain free of the virus and maintain social distancing.
What does the overnight transition to “remote learning” mean?
For classroom faculty with traditionally scheduled on-campus classes
Note: This helpful article was written for a local community college audience, but many of the principles apply to all of higher education as well as K-12 education.
By Jim Mahler, President, AFT Guild, Local 1931, San Diego and Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community Colleges
Has Calbright lost its legislative support?
Senators take online college to task in February 13 hearing
It may have taken over two years, but the Calbright online community college has apparently lost any support it might have enjoyed in the state Legislature when the CFT first warned about the potential for failure. In December 2017, Jim Mahler, president of the CFT Community College Council, sent a seminal letter to Gov. Jerry Brown, Calbright’s main promoter, pointing out key flaws in its proposed structure.
Special education in crisis
CFT SPECIAL REPORT
Marcela Chagoya, a special education teacher in Los Angeles and chair of the CFT Special Education Committee, has been teaching at the same middle school for 21 years. And she’s never seen special education in such a bad state.
“First and foremost, it’s the elimination of programs,” she said. “Districts seem to think it’s one size fits all or fits most when it comes to special ed.”
CFT leading voice of opposition at Calbright hearing
Community college faculty speak out at February 13 Senate hearing
Community college faculty mobilized on February 13 to let the state Legislature know that they want the enormous resources wasted on the Calbright online community college project redirected to the needs of the existing, underfunded campuses around the state. These campuses serve tens of thousands of students, while this one project has absorbed $120 million for fewer than 500 students.
Finding “common ground” in higher education
Campus Equity Week conference brings together contingent faculty from all higher ed systems
Members, officers, and activists from higher education unions throughout California came together for a full day during Campus Equity Week to chart a strategy for defending public higher education. They denounced especially the way education institutions, under corporate pressure, increasingly rely on contingent instructors while treating them as outsiders.