More than 550 educators have converged on Foxwoods’ Conference Center for the next two days for the CEA Summer Conference—an opportunity to learn from one another and take part in 40 different sessions on a variety of education and union topics.
CEA President Kate Dias welcomed the record number of attendees and emphasized the power in their numbers and voice.
“The unity we have gives us the collective power to ask for, dare I say demand, what we want and need to do the work we do for kids.”
She told members, “You’re never out of the minds of your leaders. Your being here and having the opportunity to share with people like me and my fellow CEA leaders is so critical because everything you tell me I turn around and share with political and education leaders, and our collective voice becomes a powerful statement that we make about the condition of our profession.”
In her remarks Dias encouraged attendees to take full advantage of the conference experience and come away with one new connection, on new thing to do, and one new interest.
“Maybe your new connection is someone who is not in your district but somebody you can learn from, a new inspiration, maybe it’s your karaoke partner tonight.”
She said the new thing to do could be an action taken such as emailing members of Congress to encourage the repeal of WEP/GPO. “Or maybe you’re just going to commit to talk about the union with your colleagues. What is it that you can take from this conference and turn into something to do?”
When it comes to a new interest Dias said she hoped educators would discover a passion they hadn’t considered before.
“Maybe you just learned that we have a CEA Pride committee. Maybe you said, ‘I didn’t know we did political fundraising,’ because we keep that separate from your dues. Maybe you thought, ‘I really care about equity issues and and there are opportunities for me to engage in those conversations.'”
Jessyca Mathews, an English and AP African American studies teacher from Flint, Michigan, was the conference’s keynote speaker.
Path to leadership
Jessyca Mathews, an English and AP African American studies teacher from Flint, Michigan, shared her own leadership journey with teachers in the conference’s keynote remarks.
While NEA has called Mathews a racial, environmental, institutional activist, she told teachers that early in her career she thought ignorance was bliss.
“I thought leadership was what I did just within the four walls of my classroom. A wonderful woman came up to me during a training that my department was doing and she was like, ‘Hey, Jessyca, have you ever thought about doing leadership with teachers?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m in the classroom, right? That’s enough, I’m good.'”
Several colleagues encouraged her though, and eventually Mathews wondered, “Maybe they see something that I can’t see.”
After attending a program at Michigan State University Mathews started to see that teacher leadership has an important role outside the classroom.
Then the citizens of Flint learned their water was full of lead and other contaminants.
“I stood in line getting bottled water, doing lead tests, feeling like I was part of some very weird dystopian adventure. Because my city had leadership who didn’t work for the people I could not sit back and be quiet. There has to be a time when you sit up and realize, ‘Injustice is here and I’m going to speak up.'”
Mathews and her students took part in a project that brought greater visibility to the crisis in Flint. “I started to realize that it’s important for me not only to be a leader but to build other leaders too.”
For her work with her students around the water crisis, Mathews was a 2017 finalist for the National Education Association’s Social Justice Activist of the Year award. Previously Mathews had supported her union, but she hadn’t been actively involved. She started to realize that her voice and power to create change could be more powerful when she engaged with her union.
“I can’t just sit back, wait, and hope that things go well. When they’re choosing classes for my school I’m going to speak up and say, ‘Yes, you better have African American studies because my kids said they want that.'”
She told attendees, “There’s so much to be done, but with the number of people we have in this space today we can get it done. Over the next two days, don’t ignore the greatness others see in you. There’s a reason you’re in this space. Don’t ignore it.”
Read more about the CEA Summer Conference in the next issue of the CEA Advisor.
