Thursday, January 07, 2021



Teachers Union Head Has 'Safety' Concerns About Returning to the Classroom. Here's the Problem with Her Claim

Throughout the course of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, we have heard teachers and administrators say they are afraid of teaching in-person out of fear of catching the virus. School districts around the country decided to conduct school online through "virtual learning."

It turns out that one of the biggest proponents behind the push, Chicago Teacher's Union's (CTU) Regional Vice President, Sarah Chambers, is afraid of teaching her students in a classroom but she is not afraid to travel internationally.

Chambers posted a photo on her Instagram account showing her lounging at a pool in a resort in Puerto Rico, WGN-TV reported. The post reportedly said she previously had the Wuhan coronavirus, tested negative for the virus and consulted her doctor before traveling across the world.

The kicker is Chambers posted the photo hours after the CTU stated they had concerns about the district's HVAC system, which includes air filtration.

“This is the most difficult time. Transmission is highest. It’s dark and cold. People are indoors and the holidays are coming, so there’s going to be a lot of transmission,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said as the union fought district administrators.

Chambers herself tweeted she would continue to participate in online, virtual learning with her students.

"I have signed [a] pledge, along with over 8,000+ union educators to continue to work remotely," Chambers wrote in a tweet, Just the News reported.

Once the CTU head came under fire for her hypocrisy, Chambers took to Twitter to defend her actions.

"I got 4 covid tests (2 rapid, 2 PCR) b4 coming here & wore 2 masks (N95)," she wrote. "Scientists said airplanes are safer than grocery stores bc airplanes have ICU level filtration & everyone wears masks."

"My doc said it's extremely unlikely for me to get Covid again since I had it so badly," Chambers explained.

Since this story has gained national attention, Chambers has made her Instagram account private and protected her tweets from the public.

This is not the first time Chambers has come under fire from union members and the public. In the summer of 2019, Chambers and a handful of other people traveled to Venezuela under a "CTU trip." During that trip, they met with Venezuelan government officials, visited a commune and participated in local media interviews, the Chicago Tribune reported.

To make matters even worse, Chambers and those on the trip with her "were excessively complimentary of President Nicolás Maduro" in their writings.

“I am appalled a delegation representing themselves as CTU went to Venezuela, not to support striking teachers, not to object to human rights violations, but to go on what appears to be a state-chaperoned propaganda tour," Karen Moody, a teacher and union member, told the Tribune at the time.

Chambers is another example of a union boss who enjoys rules for others but not herself. If the Wuhan coronavirus poses so much of a threat that she cannot show up to in-person classes and teach her students, then the virus is dangerous enough for her to stay in-state. Hell, she would be staying home, not traveling to a foreign country.

Biden's Education Plan: Dumb, Woke and Indoctrinated Kids

Puppet President-elect Biden has been trotting out his Cabinet nominations and all of them are as potentially nightmarish as one would expect. The old coot actually thinks that Mayor Pete should be put in charge of something, a sentiment with which most of his former South Bend constituents would probably not concur. Grandpa Gropes is really not a guy you want to put in charge of personnel.

I’ve written several times here about my admiration for President Trump’s secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. She was a Big Education outsider when she arrived to the position and the Left hates her because she hasn’t been a pawn of the teachers’ unions. That will all greatly change in a Biden administration, as Joe is literally in bed with the National Education Association, which is the most evil labor organization in America. DOCTOR Mama Jill Biden is a member of the NEA, which will now be in charge of public education because of her complete control over her mentally debilitated husband’s brain.

A lot of what DeVos has accomplished has been at the collegiate level. Union opposition to her has made it more difficult for her to have an impact on the K-12 kids though. Those kids are getting dumber, sadly. The Democrats and the unions are forever telling us that a lack of money is the problem. There is never enough, according to them.

Kamala Harris recently seemed to accidentally touch on the real problem, which is how the resources are allocated:

No doubt Madame Vice President-elect has a very different reason for the resources being improperly allocated than I do, but she would be wrong.

Biden’s choice to run the Dept. of Education looks like another real winner:

Joe Biden’s choice to head up the Education Department is the Connecticut commissioner of education who played a key role in developing a statewide minority-studies course that analyzes “how race, power, and privilege influence group access to citizenship, civil rights, and economic power.”

Miguel Cardona based the curriculum on “critical race theory,” which claims America is systemically racist. The choice has pleased left-wing education advocacy groups and teachers’ unions.

Once again, the focus is on indoctrination, not education. It’s what public education in America has been all about for decades while in thrall to teachers’ unions. This insanity will have the direction and the blessing of the woman pulling the puppet strings of the man whom everyone will be calling the president of the United States.

The resources will still be improperly allocated by the bureaucracy because that’s what bureaucracies do — it’s a given.

The teachers will still be in it for themselves while masquerading as saints who only care about the children — another given.

And now the focus will be on making sure that the kids become woke progressive automatons. It’s what they’ve been doing for years, but on steroids. They know that if the American children ever get back to learning anything about real history and government they won’t want to vote for the far-left fringe party that the Democrats have become.

Unfortunately, the brainwash fix is in.

Maybe we shouldn’t be so eager to get the kids back in class with these people.

UK: A honorary black??

A teacher has voiced his bewilderment after his Left-wing trade union insisted he was black.

Jason Wardill, who is a design technology teacher, was surprised to be invited by the National Education Union (NEU) to a meeting of black teachers last year.

Mr Wardill, 42, is of Mediterranean and Jewish heritage and has been trying to stop his union referring incorrectly to his ethnicity ever since – with no success.

He says he feels its actions are 'discriminatory' against other ethnicities and religions.

The NEU – which has been at the forefront of the campaign to keep schools closed during the pandemic – says it treats black as a political term rather than a signifier of African heritage.

Therefore the term includes 'all members who self-identify as black, Asian and any other minority ethnic groups who do not identify themselves as white'.

When Mr Wardill – who now works as an area site manager for an academy trust in Lincolnshire – contacted it to say he was not black, the NEU informed him that since he did not consider himself white, he had to be registered as such.

He told the Daily Mail: 'It made me feel pretty helpless. BAME would be absolutely fine, as it encompasses everything.'

The union has been accused of putting political battles before the interests of pupils, bragging that it had 'made the running in this crisis' when schools across the country were shut and children's education was in tatters.

Mr Wardill said when he registered to join the union and was asked for his ethnicity, he ticked 'mixed other' because it was 'the only option available for me'.

'Jewish was an option in the religion section only, which leads me to believe the NEU doesn't recognise Jewish as a race. They only appear to recognise it as a religion,' he commented.

'They said they could put an asterisk next to black to show it was political. I said that shouldn't make a difference, because I am not black.'

He added: 'I don't feel that a black member would necessarily want me down as a black member, and rightly so.

'I think the union are more obsessed with political arguments than they are about their members.'

A spokesman for the NEU said it 'uses the term 'black' when communicating about some union activities to members who self-identify as black, Asian or any other minority ethnic groups who do not identify as white.

Mother Rips Liberal Arts School for Letting Strikers Shut Down the Campus

When students effectively shut down the campus in the name of social justice last month at Philadelphia's Bryn Mawr College, the administrators effectively let them.

Bryn Mawr College, a small liberal arts school, a group of students introduced a strike, reportedly precipitated by the police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr., “to dismantle systemic oppression in the Bryn Mawr community.” It lasted for 16 days and ended with concessions from faculty to "address racism" and "increase diversity."

In fact, school president Kim Cassidy even thanked the students for the disruption.

“This strike has challenged us to face our history in new ways, to confront persistent institutional barriers to progress, and to commit to change,” Cassidy said in a statement to students. “Our way forward will require building new relationships and engaging in repair, even as we remember what members of the Core Strike Collective made clear: this is not a return to ‘normal.’ What was considered normal is unacceptable, given the harm it did to so many.”

A concerned mother of a Bryan Mawr student wrote a scathing and well-worth-your-time op-ed about the scandal over the weekend, under the pseudonym Minnie Doe.

As the parent of a Bryn Mawr student (and the parent of a Bryn Mawr alumna), I found this profoundly unsettling. I kept expecting that, at some point, the administration would take decisive steps to restore order on campus (where, as at Haverford, in-person learning was supposed to be occurring, under COVID-19 testing and social-distancing protocols). But that never happened. Instead, a small group of largely unidentified students effectively shut down the campus—not because their views attracted majority support (only about a quarter of the student body seemed to really be on board, from what I could tell), but because the administration simply never pushed back. (Quillette)

Doe later shared a glimpse of her personal past to argue why she has no empathy for anyone who is "apologizing to their tormentors."

This is a feminist women’s college, where one might think that administrators would be educated about the need to reject coercion, intimidation, and brute force as negotiating tactics. Yet here they were, apologizing to their tormentors. Having been married to an abusive husband, I’m sadly familiar with the temptation to justify one’s own abuse by insisting that the problem “must be me.” I never thought I’d see that same attitude exhibited by the women charged with educating my daughter.

She goes on to recall several instances that proved the strikers didn't want to have real, productive conversations - but only to "showcase their claim to moral leadership."

Doe found solidarity with some fellow mothers and high profile figures. Media personality Megyn Kelly, for instance, explained why she too has "zero sympathy" for the school officials.

"These children will continue to protest and demand things be done their way. IF they actually make it to the adult world, they will whine and complain their problems are someone else's fault. And why do we tolerate this type of behaviour?" wrote Twitter user Kimberly Poisso.

The Twitter user "War Machine" had a similarly dire take on higher education: "It seems that college has degraded to an adult daycare. Learning has been relegated to an unimportant consideration."

In her op-ed, Doe could only empathize with the rest of the student body.

"As for the majority of students who came to Bryn Mawr to actually receive an education that goes beyond anti-racist bromides, they’re out of luck," she writes.

***********************************

My other blogs: Main ones below

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

*******************************

No comments: