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The Eggplant

  

in the collection  

AFT Ships Out Common Core Avatar

Press Release

In line with their commitment to "solution-driven unionism," the Innovation Fund of the American Federation of Teachers, a union of professionals, is sponsoring professional development avatars for use by union locals.

The avatar, known as Concordia, can stand in a faculty room, outside the principal's office, in a school hallway, or on the front steps of the school. Whenever someone holding a union card comes within three feet, she issues a greeting, "Hello, I'm your Common Core assistant. How may I help you?

Concordia holds a 42-inch interactive screen programmed to offer the AFT's Share My Lesson, 254,757 approved Common Core lesson plans. Also part of Concordia's offerings is Pearson's Powerful RTI Assessment Tool.

If no one comes within three feet of Concordia for 18 seconds, she pleasantly recites the new American Federation of Teachers mission statement, adopted at the 2012 convention in Detroit:


"The American Federation of Teachers is a union of professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do."

Concordia follows this with recitation of all Common Core anchor standards in ELA and all practice standards in math.

AFT president Randi Weingarten is enthusiastic about Concordia's possibilities. She is "an entrepreneurial solution to provide for the needs of children, making it crystal clear who we are, what we believe and what we will fight for."

Union locals may order the 6-foot-tall female avatar in white or black.

This professional development opportunity is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and approved by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices.

In New York City, the UFT has enthusiastically signed on, ordering a Concordia for each of the city's 1,700 public schools.

The Chicago Teachers Union website makes no mention of Concordia. There, union members seem to be thinking about other issues.







— The Eggplant
Press Release

2012-08-09

INDEX OF THE EGGPLANT

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