On the Teach-In, teaching #NAWD & some history

…a revisited and only moderately updated 2011 newsletter article that, given distribution and placement, I should have blogged here in the first place. So now, thanks to #NAWD and revived Teach-In interest, I'm getting to it. Defend Public Education emerged in 2009, grew, peaked in 2011 and then seemed to fade into Occupy ~ now in eclipse as well. The teach-in / walkout connection is clearer now. 

Not all walkouts are strikes, nor are all labor related. Social injustice, not labor, is the real connection. Students are among likeliest out-walkers. Google walkout and you get more students than unions. Considering workplace inequities, labor practices are a natural target. The last major U.S. walkout was by students in Wisconsin in 2011. 

By way of the sit-in (which also connects to occupy), there's a clear walkout/teach-in connection. I'm somewhat puzzled by the paucity of meaningful online material on both but chalk it up to Eli Pariser's filter bubble. We are not encouraged to remember these connections. Somewhat more history follows below. For the complete newsletter, see the link at the bottom of the post. A more extensive collection of resource links is being bundled and will appear later -- but still in time for teaching-in later this month.

March 2011 was a month of action, in part planned by Defend Public Education and other groups as a coordinated series of actions supporting public education continuing and expanding on those of October 7, 2010 and March 4, 2010. This round, Wisconsin upped the ante. March actions, spreading into April and beyond, moved from previously planned to reactions supporting a broader cause. The massive attack on collective bargaining, public services workers, and public services was not limited to public education. Proposed legislation called for cutting public services drastically and, as part of budgetary package, dismantling or severely restricting collective bargaining.

In March we watched the actions on TV, followed it live online, web streamed and tweeted, and participated when and where possible. Protest manifested in petitions, rallies, marches, demonstrations, and teach-ins, with one California campus holding a "ramen-in."

(Update Notes)
The best covered and recorded, at least in terms of what has lasted, yields results to searches, 2011 Teach-In would have to be the April 5, 2011, National Teach-In on Debt, Austerity, Corporate Greed and What Can Be Done. Like the Defend Public Education page (which would have made a splendid model for NAWD), the event website is gone. The FB Event page infested with spam and bad links. Teach-In coverage remains on The Guardian and elsewhere as well as on a full set of YouTube videos. And now here too.

(back to the original article)

#newfac12 TWTSTW

Press Release-National Higher Education Summit Meeting Links Faculty Working Conditions to Student Learning Conditions.pdf Download this file

= That Was The Summit That Was, an acronymization that dates me in this era of information half-life shrinkage. Considering #newfac12 Summit twitter action, TWTSTW could also be read as Tweets To Watch, remarkable for an event put on by a distinctly "tweet lite" group. More tweet now than did before the Summit. You may consider that as either progress or a further sign of the collapse of Western Civ as we have been imagining it. New Faculty Majority President Maria Maisto (@MariaMaistoNFM) and VP Matt Williams (@ohioadjunct) are giving the Twitiverse a try, as is Board member Alan Trevithick (@eValerick) to a lesser degree. There are a few others, mostly account holders in name only but a few lurking on the bank watching the twitter stream go by. 

 

Apropos #NewFac12 Summit 2012, this means anyone could, and many did, follow the Summit live online. Still missed the Summit? Catch the rerun online. The Summit Resources page has a Final Schedule/Program, Reports, Tweets, and Published Responses to NFM Summit (naked links to be embedded, expanded and annotated in another post) and other links. But this is neither history lesson nor social media cautionary tale. It's about outcomes, actions and change. 

Outcomes ~ in addition general consciousness raising/ increased awareness and revitalization, an growing list not limited to:

• Network building manifested by increased membership, online traffic, discussions, information sharing, independent and group actions large and small as well as...
  
• Widespread public sharing of adjunct stories, as yet informal and diffuse across multiple threads and locations, that could coalesce into a more organized project 
  
• A Chapter Toolkit page right here (check the tabs at the top of the page) in response to a  post-Summit surge of interest in starting new NFM Chapters (a page for existing chapters is on the drawing board)
• NFM Foundation's Framework for Change and Task Force ~ both pages are interactive, please visit and comment
  
• Josh Boldt's Adjunct Project and crowdsourced data collection compiling information on adjunct pay and working conditions
  
• Other new networks, projects, individual actions we can't wait to learn more about and share. (Spoiler Alert: John A Casey Jr of the splendid and influential Adjunct Manifesto and Occupy English has plans afoot well worth watching for)
• Your own ideas and plans for change ... take Lee Bessette's excellent advice, "there is always something you can do" to heart ... and share them with us. A nifty new feature if I do say so myself.

Posted via email from Academentia