Teachers union president says Mayor Emanuel ‘exploded’ at her

[n2doc]

BY ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporter/[e-mail] September 9, 2011 11:44AM


The president of the Chicago Teachers Union says Mayor Rahm Emanuel “exploded” at her during a debate over a longer school day, pointing his finger in her face, yelling and cursing.

CTU President Karen Lewis made the allegations in a Friday morning press release detailing a complaint filed by the union to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board over the ongoing battle between the union and City Hall.

“A couple of weeks ago I sat down with the mayor in his office to talk about how to roll out a longer school year and what components would go into making it a better school year for our students but he did not want to have that conversation,” said Lewis. “When I explained to him that a longer school day should not be used for warehousing or babysitting our youth he exploded, used profanity, pointed his finger in my face and yelled. At that point the conversation was over — soon thereafter we found ourselves subject to a full-scale propaganda war over a moot point.”

Asked for his version of the incident at an event Friday with U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Emanuel said “I’m not going to get into a he-said, she-said. ... We had a good meeting. ... She hugged me at the end of the meeting.”



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http://www.suntimes.com/7558652-417/teachers-union-president-says-mayor-emanuel-exploded-at-her.html

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Lorien]

4. +1. nt

[DeSwiss]

2. K&R

- Not Rahm?? Little skinny Rahm who used to pirouette so well!?!? Boy, what a jerk!

[xchrom]

3. Rahm is a jerk wad. Nt

[gateley]

5. Sounds like Rahm. nt

[msongs]

6. Always video meetings and talks with public officials. for your own protection. nt

[provis99]

7. Newsflash: Emmanuel is a corporate shithead Third Way Democrat.

What the heck was wrong with Chicago that they voted in this asshole? Then again, Chicago consistently voted in the monstrous Daley family for decades.

[LWolf]

16. +1

[Reader Rabbit]

8. Rahm's a bully; he yells and cusses to intimidate.

Hopefully Ms. Lewis will not allow herself or those she represents to continue to be bullied.

[NYC_SKP]

9. This kerfluffle aside, I wonder how DUers feel about the 90 minutes longer school day.

Aside from the impact on teachers, thinking just about the students' needs, I think it's a terrific idea.

Out here in CA there are a lot of abbreviated days, minimum days, and some schools are furloughing teachers, cutting days down from the 180 or 182, so that kids have even less instructional time.

My observation is that at-risk kids need more time with productive activities, remediation, and instruction, and sending them home early is a recipe for disaster.

Meanwhile, privileged kids who don't need the same level of attention will succeed just fine.

So who really suffers from short school days?

And how is a 90 minute longer day a bad thing (for students)?

:shrug:

[Reader Rabbit]

11. Depends on how the 90 minutes is used.

If it's solely for more mind-numbing canned curriculum, then it's not doing anyone any good. Far too many kids get that all day as it is. In order to maximize learning of any kind, a human being needs to engage in a variety of different activities and experiences. Right now, kids aren't getting enough music, art, and just plain old free play.

All this relentless remediation and test prep is doing an incredible amount of neurological damage to the kids who are being subjected to it.

[NYC_SKP]

12. That's the truth. We just added additional minutes to the day. And more...

Totally voluntary, we provide space and projects for students, every day after school and all day Fridays.

Because the challenge isn't so much giving them time as it is finding staff for supervision, at our high school we've hired two graduate interns, recent graduates, to interview and support an intern program.

The task for interns is to coordinate activities with any and all students who come after school or on Fridays, and this can be just having time and support for catching up on work or remediation, or it can be learning and using our robotics labs, laser cutters, multimedia and video, and other projects.

We're a public charter, all union, but with lots of flexibility because we don't take Title I funding (NCLB can go screw itself). Despite the flexibility, many of the teachers have fallen back into that trap of fixed curriculum and teaching to the test, so it's even more important that students get some time at school to explore and expand, instead of being forced to conform.

:hi:

[proud2BlibKansan]

13. How is that 90 minutes being used?

[NYC_SKP]

14. Exactly. I worry that a lot of schools would use it for more test prep, drill & kill.

We use it for projects, exploration, semi-structured time in the labs, kids-teaching-kids time, a lot of ways.

And it hardly costs a dime. The 5 full-time staff are delighted to have kids around for the extra hours, it brings the place alive.

Because we have two very trustworthy intern managers to make sure the interns are keeping the other students engaged, the adults really don't need to do much but be sure one of us is present at all times.

It would be hard to pull off in many of the larger schools, this "extra period" of freedom, but I think it makes school fun again for the kids.

:P

[bvar22]

10. Typical.

I feel sorry for Chicago.

When Obama appointed Rahm as his Consigliere,
I felt sorry for America's Working Class and the Democratic Party.
I knew what President Obama was all about the day he appointed Rahm as the Gate Keeper to the White House.


The DLC New Team
Liberal Democrats Need NOT Apply

(Screen Capped from the DLC Website)
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=254886&kaid=86&subid=85

Downhill ever since.


"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans.
I want a party that will STAND UP for Working Americans."
---Paul Wellstone

photo by bvar22
Shortly before Sen Wellstone was killed


You will know them by their Free Trade & Tax Cuts.


Solidarity!

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[Starry Messenger]

15. Everything I want to say about this would probably get deleted.

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. ROFLMAO