Quote:
Originally Posted by Antithesis
Well, it may be splitting hairs but I'd like to offer my perspective on this issue as I haven't seen it from the teachers' side (and yet I've seen us at least partially called out for the current economic situation - laugh). The ATA is a professional association, I guess when you get down to the nitty gritty, it is a union (collective bargaining) but provides me with so many other benefits that I am not confident I would get without it like professional development and such.
Professional Associations/Unions are indeed very much a necessity for teaching, I think. It provides me with protection in case some kid decides he/she didn't like how I discipline them or teach them or whichever that I would not normally be able to provide myself. That IS necessary and is not necessarily a safety issue. You would see huge numbers of teachers leave if we were not unionized for exactly this reason. It's a risky enough environment as a teacher as-is.
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Thats odd because my wife is a teacher and every thing that she and I have seen from the ATA has been negative. Teachers losing out on positions because they needed to fill the job with an incompetant teacher from another school, teachers that are woefully inadequate keeping their job over more qualified but less experienced teachers because they have "seniority" and teachers screwing up but getting off without punishment because the union stepped in.