Let's appreciate teachers by reducing screen time
and keeping the heat on charter schools!
It's National Teacher Appreciation Week, and Parents Across America wants to make it very
clear that we love our children's teachers!
To show your support for teachers, our Action of the Week is to participate to the extent possible in Screen Free Week, an event sponsored by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC).
How does going screen-free support teachers? Because in going screen-free, we are standing up for real personalized learning - the learning that is done when adult persons interact with student persons. Besides the obvious profit motive, we know that corporate reform is pushing hard for more and more online and digital learning simply to get rid of teachers.
CCFC has some great ideas for ways to enjoy your screen free time. Check them out
here.
The charter school angleYes, the same president who proclaimed this Teacher Appreciation Week also proclaimed this Charter School Week. And, as we know, one of corporate reform's motives for creating and expanding charter schools is to undermine the teaching profession.
So, we'd like to help shine a spotlight on charter schools by repeating a recent charter school
scandal uncovered in March by the Chicago Sun-Times, which simply confirms what most of us knew all along: that many of the rallies and other demonstrations of parental "support" for charter schools are bought and paid for by charter school agencies.
The Sun-Times
report found that the corrupt Chicago UNO charter chain used more than $11,600 of taxpayer money to pay for 42 buses that brought parents of UNO students to a September 2011 rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago for increased public funding of charter schools. The group also bused parents to demonstrate at City Hall, the Chicago Board of Education and the (Illinois State) Thompson Center.
Why not share this story with your elected representatives and your school board? And no doubt you have a favorite local story you could share that helps tell the truth about charter schools, so add that to your email.
