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Timely and experience-based guide to strengthening democracy within teachers unions.
About the author
Lois Weiner has been life-long teacher union activist, who has served as an officer of three different union locals. She also served as President of the AERA Special Interest Group on teachers’ work and teachers unions. She is the author of Preparing Teachers for Urban School which was honored by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) for its contribution to research on teacher education.
Summary
In The Future of Our Schools, Lois Weiner explains why teachers who care passionately about teaching and social justice need to unite the energy for teaching to efforts to self-govern and transform teacher unions. Drawing on research, her experience as a public school teacher, and as a union activist, she explains how to create the teachers unions public education desperately needs.
Lois Weiner is a professor at New Jersey City University and has been a life-long teacher union activist who has served as an officer of three different union locals. She is the author of The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and their Unions: Stories for Resistanc e .
Foreword
Promotion targeting labor and teachers union periodicals
Advertising in The Nation, The Progressive
Features will be sought out from Labor Notes, Monthly Review, and other publications which regularly cover labor issues
Publicity and promotion in conjunction with the author's speaking engagements
Additional text
“Lois Weiner has written the book we need right now. Drawing on scholarship and experience, Weiner outlines the potential power of teacher unions to reverse the corporate assault on public education and the necessity to transform the narrow business unionism that stands in the way. Everyone fighting to reclaim public education should read it.”—Pauline Lipman, professor, University of Illinois, Chicago
“This book empowers teachers to (re)claim their agency in the arduous fight for equity and social justice!” —H. Richard Milner IV, associate professor of education, Vanderbilt University
“This highly accessible book proposes shifting the focus to social movement–oriented unions in order to develop a counter-voice to neoliberal reforms. Kudos to Lois Weiner for this excellent, very timely must-read!” —Angela Valenzuela, author, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring and Leaving Children Behind
“Lois Weiner’s book should be a wake-up call for all of us who work in K–12 schools. Her analysis of the current political climate is clear, sharp, and desperately needed. The Future of Our Schools provides a template for rank-and-file members to be proactive in their unions and a nudge to union leadership to open the process to defeat the corporate agenda.” —Karen Lewis, president, Chicago Teachers Union
“This is a call to action, but also a thoughtful analysis, for teachers involved with union activism and those who have kept their union at arm’s length.” —Sally Lee, executive director, Teachers Unite, New York City
“With the present intense resistance of teachers globally to neoliberal education reform, this book could not be more timely. The lessons from the US experience, so well analyzed in this work, are relevant to us all.” —Mary Compton, former president, National Union of Teachers, United Kingdom
