Just think about the possibilities when children develop a joy of reading from the time they are read to, to when they can pick out words in a book or on a street sign, to when they can read a whole book on their own, to when they can write a thoughtful essay. Confident readers are confident learners and the sky’s the limit.
It is the mission of the Washington Teachers’ Union—its teachers and other staff—to encourage our students and their families to make reading a priority. Developing strong readers happens at home and at school. We are committed to promoting literacy as a real solution to improving academic achievement so that children can thrive and be productive citizens. It is truly the building block to everything else.
Improving literacy has been a major focus of the WTU’s work over the past three years. Our teachers have persevered on this and other classroom issues to make sure our kids excel, despite serious challenges such as lingering learning loss and emotional effects of the pandemic and the fact that our contract expired nearly a year ago with no progress on alleviating the problems that are causing great teachers to leave and inhibiting great ones to be recruited.
While school districts around the country shamefully ban and censor books, the Washington Teachers’ Union gives books away. We have promoted literacy by giving away free books to children at events throughout the city. As just one example, we distributed over 1,000 books at the District’s Pride Festival. We invited two popular authors—Sharon Flake and Elizabeth Acevedo—to meet with middle-school and high-school students, which was exciting and inspirational and actually helped kids believe that they, too, had the power within them to write whatever they are feeling or thinking about and maybe even become an author one day. We’re also giving our teachers strategies and other resources to boost their expertise when it comes to teaching reading, including offering an online resource called Reading Universe, which provides ready-to-use strategies, printable instructional materials, tutorials, real classroom videos and more. And we’ll be working with the state Board of Education and our kindergarten teachers on the science of reading.
When kids get much-needed social, emotional and academic services at school, it can be a game-changer. The WTU was instrumental in the development of two well-resourced community schools that have officially become District of Columbia Public School community schools. We hope to move many other DCPS schools towards the community school model in the coming years.
Another big win for our kids’ future was the exciting announcement that the District received a $9.5 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies for CTE (career-technology education) programs focusing on careers in medicine. These kinds of programs give young people a head-start on a career path and a confidence boost when they begin to think about college and other future choices. We look forward to working with the District and our teachers on implementing the programming for this amazing grant.
Lurking in the background of all the great work that our teachers are doing is the difficulty of getting a fair contract. This has been a recurring problem year after year and frankly, it’s getting tiring. Our current contract expired in September 2023, at the start of the last school year. We want to work with Chancellor Lewis Ferebee and Mayor Muriel Bowser on a contract that will help retain great teachers and recruit terrific and motivated new ones. We need a contract that will provide better school safety protocols, improve conditions so that teachers and other staff feel respected and heard, and we need to find ways to keep our diversity staff. These things can only happen if DCPS’s officials are willing to listen to the people who teach our kids every day and keep coming to the bargaining table until we get this contract finalized. We are the classroom experts and know what’s really going on and what is needed to bring the next level of quality to our schools.
We won’t let up on the accelerator, whether it’s in the classroom for the sake of our kids or at the bargaining table, where we can make real progress that’s good and fair for educators and kids alike.