Members take new skills home from conference

"WE'RE HERE, PROUD and loud," declared Lorretta Johnson, president of the paraprofessional chapter of the Baltimore Teachers Union and an AFT vice president, to launch the opening session of the annual professional issues conference April 25-27.

The meeting featured workshops on everything from "green" building maintenance to school security to helping young children master reading, but some of the most important lessons came in a talk about former AFT president Albert Shanker by his biographer, Richard Kahlenberg, whose book Tough Liberal chronicles Shanker's push to bring school secretaries, paraprofessionals and other support staff into the United Federation of Teachers in New York City.

"The secretaries paved the way for the paraprofessionals, whose addition was absolutely critical to the growth and future of the UFT and the AFT," Kahlenberg said. "To his credit, Al Shanker said that he would not want to be part of a union that did not include paraprofessionals."

Shanker felt the union ought to embrace everybody in education except supervisors, and called the members' decision to include everyone "the greatest thing the union ever did," Kahlenberg recounted. As UFT president, Shanker fought not only for better wages and benefits but also for a career ladder of training and advancement.

Johnson credited Shanker with prodding her to become an activist. In 1978, when she joined the AFT executive council, "I thought I had arrived—but Al Shanker had more in store." He sent her all over the world as a spokesperson for the union.

The opening session speakers, including Michelle Bodden, a vice president for both the UFT and AFT, and Merlene Martin, president of the newly affiliated Oregon School Employees Association, agreed that Shanker was extraordinary.

U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) shared a story about another extraordinary man, theologian Howard Thurman, who as a teenager was literally handed the ticket to his future when a stranger paid his train fare to college. Noting that the stranger had done this good deed for free, asking nothing in return, Thurman described it as being "good ... for nothing" and compared it to the good work and low pay of school employees.

"You are the ones who make the schools ready," he said. "Your work is critically important. The schools around this nation will be great not just because teachers matter but because you prepare them for greatness."

During a general session, AFT president Edward J. McElroy acknowledged the hard work of school support personnel and counseled them on how to deal with adversaries.

Asked what he would tell the school board of Wood County, W.Va., which refused to consider pay raises for school support staff, McElroy replied, "Well, I would say: ‘I hope you enjoy your last few months on the board,'" drawing laughs and cheering from hundreds of school support workers. Then, he said, speak to every person in your union and elect board members who will help you achieve the mission of better education for all.

"Feel good about who you are, what you do and that you are participants in this great organization," said McElroy, who will be retiring in July.

For their part, the PSRPs offered him a word of thanks. "You have made us feel better about ourselves than any school district we have ever worked for," said Symantha Lancaster, a member from the paraprofessional unit of Local 1 in Chicago. "You have let us know that we are appreciated."