December 2003 Edition

Burr, winter is coming, winter is coming and here comes the snow. The happiest time of year will soon be here. Santa Claus and his elves are very busy right now. It’s a most exciting time for children around the world and holiday planning is underway.

What can children do to make a difference this holiday season? After-school activities or volunteering their time is what students may want to do—so why not connect them with the Skills For Tomorrow website for ideas and additional information on high wage careers in growth industries. 

We would love to hear from you. To submit information on your organization, or career development curriculum, please email Linn Nguyen at lnguyen@teamster.org.

If you missed previous issues, check it out at: http://www.ibtstw.org/listsubscribe.asp

Thank you!

IBT Education Staff
http://www.ibtstw.org

What's in This Edition

Teamster Updates

        ~  Teamsters Local 429 Christmas
        ~  Skills For Tomorrow Project Partners Meeting

Conferences & Meetings Nationwide

~ State of Georgia School to Work

Resources to Build Your Own Education Curriculum

~ Job Shadow News
~ Want to Be an E-Mentor
~  Project for High School Students
~ LabourStart   

Articles of Interest

~ Camp Teaches Teens about Labor Unions
~ Preparing Youth for Employment
~ Rags to Riches

Get Connected: Web Site Links

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Teamster Updates

~~~~> Teamsters Local 429 to hold Christmas Party

Teamsters Local Union No. 429 will be holding its 3rd Annual Children’s Christmas Party for children and grandchildren, 12 years of age or under, of its members. Come out and have some fun and refreshments with Santa Claus and Wayne Hoffman, the Magician.

DATE:      Saturday, December 6, 2003
TIME:        12:00 Noon to 3:00 p.m.
PLACE:    Teamsters Union Hall, 1055 Spring Street
                  Wyomissing, PA 19610

For more information, please call the Union Hall at (610) 320-5521.

~~~~> Skills For Tomorrow Project Partners Meeting

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters will be holding its Skills For Tomorrow Annual Project Partners Meeting and Awards Ceremony on December 4 & 5, 2003 in Washington, D.C. The goals of the meeting are to strengthen interaction and relationships among project partners, to disseminate labor studies information and resources, to recognize and award 2003 project winners, to plan how to market your School-To-Career project, and to celebrate project progress. For more information please contact the Education Department at: (202) 624-8117.

Conference and Meetings Nationwide

~~~> State of Georgia School-to-Work

8th Annual Georgia Tech Prep State Conference
February 8-10, 2004
Renaissance Waverly Hotel/Cobb Galleria
Atlanta, Georgia
School-to-Work
1800 Century Pl.
Suite 3103-B
Atlanta, GA 30345
Phone: 404-327-6950
Fax: 404-679-1661
gastw@dtae.org

Resources to Build Your Own Education Curriculum

What to include in your youth outreach programs and activities to educate young people about unions, workers rights, solidarity and child labor. Here are some ideas:

~~~~> Job Shadow News

Once again, winter is just around the corner. And, as you may have seen from the recent press release and eCard, planning for Job Shadow Day 2004 is underway! This year, the Job Shadow initiative will officially kick off on Monday, February 2, 2004!

Job Shadow Day is the start of a year-round effort that gives young people a chance to see various occupations up close by shadowing "career mentors" in the workplace. This year the Job Shadow Coalition, consisting of Junior Achievement, America's Promise—The Alliance for Youth, and the U.S. Department of Labor, anticipate that more than one million young people will job shadow during the course of 2004 as a result of this effort.

"Job Shadow Day gives many young people their first real glimpse at the world of work," says Stuart Shapiro, Executive Director of the Job Shadow Coalition. "As for adults, it can serve as an introduction to the mentoring experience. This makes Job Shadowing a rewarding experience for both the student and for the volunteer."

Materials
If you are planning to participate in Job Shadow Day, there are many resources available at the jobshadow.orgwebsite. The website and materials on it have been updated and are ready to be used. The download center for the "How-To Guide" and other materials can be accessed directly at: http://www.jobshadow.org/get_started/download.php?file=getstart_pdfs.

Other materials available on the download center include a Brochure/Poster, a postcard, and web-ready banners. Additionally, if you prefer a hard copy of the How-To Guide or Brochure/Poster, you can place an order with our fulfillment house by calling (800) 373-3174. Finally, the download center has other materials you may find useful. These include "Frequently Asked Questions," sample e-mails, sample press releases, and newsletter stories.

Share your Success!
Over the next few months we will be sending these E-Xtra Newsletters to nearly 10,000 Job Shadow supporters. We are always looking for good success stories or new ideas to share. If you have some innovative approaches or a great initiative you wish us to consider for this newsletter, please e-mail the details to us at press@jobshadow.org. In the meantime, we look forward to working with you on Job Shadow Day 2004!

~~~~> Want to Be an E-Mentor?

Introducing a new, innovative way for Teamsters to reach out to young people across the nation. E-mentoring through icouldbe.org is your chance to share your time, talent, expertise, and personality to make a difference in the lives of young people all over.

icouldbe.org is an online career mentoring program for high school students. Educators find that students lack access to information on high wage careers in high growth industries. They often bring in speakers or refer students to counselors to obtain information on a limited number of occupations.

Young people make career choices based on inadequate and impersonal information. icouldbe.org provides a rich resource of mentors in high wage, high growth occupations. E-mentoring allows young people to cross geographic and industry lines to learn about a wide variety of possible careers, one-on-one, from the people who do them.

If you would like to share your knowledge about your industry and union, log onto icouldbe.org. Links to icouldbe.org can be found at the Teamsters Education Department website (www.teamster.org) and the Skills For Tomorrow Project website (www.ibtstw.org).

You can help thousands of kids and build our union with a click of the mouse!

• Registration and training take 15 – 30 minutes.
• You commit to at least 20 minutes of mentoring each week for one year.
• Be sure to identify yourself as a Teamster member during registration.

To read more about being a career mentor visit: http://www.ibtstw.org/tools/ementorinfo.html

~~~~> Project for High School Students

Brothers and Sisters:

I have agreed to edit a series of essay collections for use in high school libraries and social studies classes. Some six new books a year will each focus on an aspect of the future, such as the future of: employment, sports, the family, pop culture, information technology ... and, if possible, of labor unions.

I would like to create an Advisory Council made up of high school students from all over the country, and as diverse as possible. I am particularly interested in getting help from the teenage children of unionists, as they are too often left out of projects of this sort.

I would ask Council members to comment on certain essays, and help me decide the order of release of book titles, etc. Very little time would be entailed, and no preparation.

While I have no funds to pay for this help, a teenager's presence on the Council would be acknowledged in every book, and they could cite this on college applications. Better still, they should learn a bit from the entire exercise.

Can you please refer any interested sophomores, juniors, or seniors to me?

Many thanks,

Cordially,
Art

Dr. Art Shostak is a sociologist and labor educator at Meany National Labor College and at Drexel University, Sociology Dept., Phil., PA 19104 (Phone: 215-895-2466).

E-mail: shostaka@drexel.edu http://www.futureshaping.com/shostak/index.html

~~~~> Books for Kids and Young Adults: Look for the Union Label

So ...what is the best gift for your children this holiday season? The following books are just some of the titles available through a partnership between LabourStart and Powell's Books (Portland, Oregon), the nation's largest unionized bookstore. This season give your children the gift of reading!

Lyddie by Katherine Patterson. Tells the story of a child laborer in Massachusetts fabric mills in the 1800s. Goes into great detail about working conditions at that time, without being overbearing. For ages 12 up. Priced as low as $2.99.

After her father abandons his failing farm, ten-year-old Lyddie and her younger brother must leave the family to try to earn money to help pay their father's debts. After a stint at a tavern, Lyddie ends up working in a cloth factory, where a fellow worker introduces her to books. Determined to make a better life for herself, Lyddie immerses herself in reading, and when she learns that there is no home left to go to, decides she will use her new knowledge to help her go to college.

Fire! The Beginnings of the Labor Movement by Barbara Diamond Goldin. A fictionalized account of the infamous 1911 Triangle factory fire in New York City. For ages 7 - 11. Recommended by the California Federation of Teachers in their "Labor Education for the K-12 Curriculum: Research Guide for Teachers". Only $4.99.

In this story, set in New York City in 1911, Rosie wants to quit school and get a job like her older sister, Freyda, who works at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. Freyda's descriptions of the harsh working conditions at the factory do little to discourage Rosie from her plans, but when a tragic fire occurs at the factory and more than 140 workers are killed, Rosie reconsiders her decision and her feelings about unionization. This true story is based on the deadly blaze that led to safety reforms in the American workplace and laws protecting factory workers.

See their website at http://www.labourstart.org/kids/

Articles of Interest

~~~~> Camp Teaches Teens about Labor Unions

By Steve Rosen

Youngsters attending the Romeo Corbeil Summer Camp typically play a game that involves a walk into the woods.

Except there’s a twist.

The point of this game is to show the income disparity between a corporate chief executive and an everyday laborer. While one camper marks off a few paces to symbolize the laborer’s salary, another camper playing the role of the CEO keeps walking and walking deep into the woods.

Clearly, this is not your traditional recreational summer camp where days are filled with canoe trips, Ping Pong, games of leap-frog, and even short-sheeting a roommate’s bed.

Camp Corbeil, held annually for the last six years at Lake Wappapello near Poplar Bluff in southeast Missouri, is considered the only one in the country where campers join mock labor unions and examine workplace issues in our society.

The approximately 15 to 18 campers who attended the last session learned the meaning of terms like collective bargaining, shop stewards and human rights in exercises and classroom-like discussions. They also learned about the history of the labor movement and participated in role-playing games to gain a broader understanding of the world of work.

The camp, modeled after a program in Saskatchewan, Canada, is named after the late Romeo Corbeil, a French-Canadian and former secretary-treasurer of the Office and Professional Employees International Union. The union sponsors the camp along with Missouri AFL-CIO, the International Association of Machinists, and the labor education program of the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Campers, generally ages 13 to 17, are a diverse group of Canadian and American boys and girls. They are selected by the Office and Professional Employees union and the other union sponsors, which provide camp scholarships and other financial assistance.

Though campers come from families with union ties, not all the kids have a good understanding of their heritage, said Paul Rainsberger, camp director and head of the labor education program at the university.

Rainsberger starts the week with a basic orientation about the role unions play in society and an overview of union administration and collective bargaining concepts. Part of the opening program is aimed at dispelling the notion that unions are involved only in disruptive strikes and conflicts.

After learning the basics, campers are organized into local unions and select officers and representatives to serve on bargaining, education, recreation (yes, there is free time) and environmental committees.

Rules are negotiated between the campers’ bargaining committee and the staff—everything from recreation games to mealtimes and curfews. “The goal is to keep heavy-handed adult rules out,” Rainsberger said.

If problems arise during the week, the bargaining committee “works with the staff to assure that a fair and equitable resolution is achieved,” according to a camp brochure.

Instructors cram in exercises throughout the week that deal with child labor laws, problems that young workers may face, and strategies for dealing with working exercises, hours, sexism, racism and other human rights issues.

“Some of the kids don’t understand that they do have rights and can ask questions without being treated poorly or harassed,” said Jan Mammen, a volunteer instructor at the camp and business manager at Local 320 of the Office and Professional Employees Union in Kansas City.

Campers also receive instruction on deciphering a paycheck and devising a household budget for a factory worker, Mammen said.

Rainsberger hopes the kids will go away with a better understanding of “work and the workplace experience.”

Another goal of the program, he said, is to instill in the campers the importance of being role models“ in their city, their neighborhood, their school.”

Herb Johnson, Secretary-Treasurer of the Missouri AFL-CIO, said the development of the campers in one week is impressive. “They get just about as good an education in a week that you can ask for,” said Johnson.

~~~~> Preparing Youth for Employment

by Dr. Glenda L. Partee

Preparing Youth for Employment provides an overview of five leading U.S. youth employment programs. The easy-to-ready report was designed for practitioners in both the public and non-governmental sectors who implement youth employment programs, the policymakers who support them, and youth leaders who wish to:

• learn more about principles and characteristics of leading youth employment programs now operating in the United States; and
• identify components or entire programs which may be transferable or applicable to their work or in the settings of other nations.

Youth employment program models discussed in this overview include:

• Job Corps
• National Guard Youth Challenge Program
• STRIVE (Support Training Results in Valuable Employment)
• Youth Build
• Youth Service and Conservation Corps

Each of these program models has documented evidence of effectiveness in contributing to positive youth outcomes, including increased levels of employment, higher earnings, high school completion (or its equivalent), postsecondary attendance, reduced rates of reliance on public welfare assistance and involvement in criminal activities. Each of these models has been replicated widely in the United States.

Preparation for employment in the U.S.A. has a number of characteristics:

1. The primary avenues for employment preparation for young people are through the formal secondary and postsecondary education system or through business-supported on-the-job training. These are not discussed in this brief paper.
2. Federal government support for youth employment preparation is limited and primarily targeted to economically disadvantaged youth and those with significant challenges to successful employment (e.g., school dropouts with low-basic skills, youth with disabilities, young parents).
3. Many youth employment programs that have recently been replicated and supported by the U.S. federal government were originally developed by privately-supported or local community efforts.

To learn more about the programs featured go to: http://www.aypf.org/pubs.htm

The report was made possible by the Ford Foundation.

The activities of the American Youth Policy Forum are made possible by the support of a consortium of philanthropic foundations: Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ford Foundation, Ford Motor Company Fund, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, General Electric Fund, William T. Grant Foundation, J & M Foundation, Walter S. Johnson Foundation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Charles S. Mott Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Joseph and May Winston Foundation, and others.

~~~~> Rags to Riches

By Bess Keller, Teacher Magazine, November 2003

At Hawkins Elementary School in Brighton, Michigan, nothing's out of the ordinary for the suburban school a week before the close of the 2002-03 school year. Jack Yates, the principal, still has a heap of thank-you notes to write to parents who helped at the spring fund-raiser. The courtyard garden - with its native wildflowers, its butterflies, and its timid bat clinging to the wall - goes largely unvisited as teachers try to squeeze in final bits of the curriculum. And a stomach virus may be rampaging through the younger pupils.

Pale and anxious, one little girl is sitting on the edge of the nurse's cot at the end of the day when Von Hardesty, a classroom assistant who helps get the children on the buses, walks into the main office.

"A 1st grader just threw up on the sidewalk," she reports to the two secretaries and a teacher or two milling in the office. At that moment, Yates walks by.

"Just slosh a bucket of water," the principal says, stopping for a second.

"Ah," responds Hardesty, who hadn't thought of that.

Yates would know. Twenty-six years ago, he entered the education field not as a teacher, not as an administrator, but as a custodian. His is a story of ambition. Gentle ambition.

Consider the broad strokes: A man takes a job as a school janitor and works his way to school principal, never blind to either the good or the harm he might do. The man, at once dogged and easygoing, finds his true métier. That seems clear, watching Yates go over a mental checklist for the Principal's Pals lunch earlier the same day—pizza ordered, certificates in hand, Kool-Aid in the fridge. By the time he gets to the school library, six tables have filled with squirming honorees.

"Hi, guys," the principal begins, speaking just loudly enough to be heard at the back in a voice with no rough edges. He's dapper in a dark suit and bright white shirt, but it's hard to take the baseball player out of him—the ruddy complexion, the gap between the front teeth overhung by a generous mustache. He looks powerful and friendly at the same time, a combination not lost on Derek, who gets a certificate for exercising self- control.

The old principal was "scary," the 5th grader remarks. "She had long fingernails."

Yates, on the other hand, "doesn't lose his temper, and he doesn't raise his voice," Derek explains. "And he makes sure kids don't push other kids around."

Heather Allen, a classroom veteran of more than two decades, helped interview Yates in 1992 when he first applied for a teaching job at Hawkins Elementary. But she had met him years before at another district school, Lindbom Elementary School, where he had come to her classroom to fix a radiator. A good encounter, and a working radiator, she recalls.

The teaching job in leafy, well-clipped Brighton, where a subdivision immodestly called "The Dominion" recently opened, drew about 60 applicants. But thanks to his years in the 7,000-student district, Yates stood out as a known and respected quantity.

And so it was that one day Jack Yates set up chairs for the district's new-teacher orientation, and the next, the 32-year-old former custodian sat in one.

Yates says he managed to work his way into teaching, and then the principal's office, with the help of many people along the way. But questioning him in his office at Hawkins Elementary, you know there's more to it than that. He was the one who did double duty as custodian and student teacher, sat through more than a dozen years of night school in two decades, and left his 3rd grade classroom to take the job that, he jokes, hoarfrosted his full head of brown hair. At 44, he may not have more than the usual load of debts, but he's unusually ready to acknowledge them.

Starting with his parents. Yates grew up on the northwest edge of Detroit, the son of a homemaker and a city policeman. His father, Ray, got lucky and drew crowd-control duty at the old Tiger Stadium, passing his keen love of sports to his only son. At 9 or 10, Jack started collecting baseball cards with their romance of names and numbers—which today may account for his facility with student names. He has most of the 530 or so children at Hawkins down pat.

Playing mostly shortstop as a kid, Yates dreamed of life as a pro. "We tried to talk him into going to college," says his mother, Ruth, "but he said he didn't want to go."

By the time Jack graduated from Henry Ford High School in 1977, his father had retired and both parents had moved out of Detroit, into what was then the country town of Fowlerville. Jack's sister, Barb, was driving a school bus for Brighton Area Schools. The young Yates needed a paying job, and his sister suggested he try the district's maintenance department. Filling in for others led to a full-time position, at what was then Miller Elementary School, and the beginning of a long career in the district.

"I realized," Yates later wrote in an article for Principal magazine, "that if I worked hard, I could become a head custodian, work days, and make a little more money." And sure enough, he was 19 when he landed the job of head custodian at Lindbom Elementary, supervising two older people on the afternoon shift.

A few years later, he signed up for some classes at Washtenaw Community College. More important, he was about to meet his future wife, Debbi Walker.

In summer 1983, Walker was working as a custodian while Yates had a temporary assignment stripping and refinishing the district's gym floors. He came to her school, and co-workers made sure they sat together at lunch. They were married two years later, making Yates an instant father. Debbi, six years older than her new husband, had from a previous marriage a 7-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy whom Yates adored from the start.

"We knew I could further myself in my life," he says now about those years. But he needed to find the way forward, a calling that could compete with his old baseball dreams.

At Lindbom, that started to take shape. The school's teachers, who'd allowed him to make up for the temporary loss of P.E. classes by supervising games of floor hockey and volleyball, told him he had a gift for working with children. And the youngsters made him feel good.

Soon Yates was taking classes toward an education degree at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. The drive from Brighton was 35 minutes each way, and he did it several times a week for more than eight years, adding three minors—science, social studies, and English—to his elementary education major.

Yates transferred in 1988 to another district school, Maltby Middle School, where he supervised a maintenance crew of five and made more money. But he had another reason for moving to Maltby. The middle school then occupied the same building as the superintendent, and Yates wanted to be seen. He decided, too, that he would try to teach elementary or middle school, where men are rare.

When at last it came time for Yates' student teaching in 1992, administrators rearranged his custodial schedule so he could be in the classroom at nearby Hilton Elementary School in the morning. To fit it all in, Yates, then 32, worked from 7:45 a.m. to midnight every weekday.

"I would go to Maltby in my shirt and tie and then change into my T-shirt and jeans," he recalled for the Detroit Free Press the fall after he started student teaching, when he won the coveted job at Hawkins. "I just put it on automatic pilot."

Just as at Lindbom, he had boosters at Maltby, among them Principal Rae Ann McCall. She recalls putting 250 youngsters jostling for places in the lunch line in Yates' care for a minute when she was called to the office. By the time she came back, he had gotten all the kids in line to sit down. "We've used his technique ever since," McCall told the newspaper.

That same year, Yates won the job at Hawkins Elementary and began teaching in earnest. In professional terms, that first year was the hardest of his life, he says now. But soon the tension melted into a new goal, his wife recalls. "He would always say, 'You know, I'm going to be principal. I'm going to be Hawkins' principal.'"

Yates returned to Eastern Michigan University in the mid-'90s, earning a master's degree in educational leadership in 1999. By that time, he had proved himself as a teacher and a professional peer.

"He's a delight as a colleague," offers Allen, who taught alongside him in 3rd grade for his eight and-a-half years as a teacher. "Easygoing, wonderful with kids, fun to be around."

Those qualities served Yates well when the principal's job at Hawkins opened up in 2000. "Somebody like Jack, who's been on the inside, has an advantage," says Brighton's superintendent, David Pruneau. Roughly translated, that meant Yates pulled ahead of the pack because, in addition to knowing the school and the district, he had gained people's trust. He also brought a style to the job different from that of his predecessor, who had been known to clash with a teacher or two.

Yates got the job, but only as an "interim" principal because he lacked administrative experience. A year later, the modifier was dropped. With the new position came a $22,000 salary hike, a considerably larger increase than many educators get going into the principal's office, as teachers moving into administration are typically higher on the experience ladder.

About the only downside to the change, according to Pruneau, who has pushed promotion from within the district, was the loss of Hawkins Elementary's only male teacher. He cautions only that "being a nice guy, [Yates] sometimes struggles with the tough decisions."

Within the school, the principal wins kudos from teachers and support workers alike. And one classroom assistant wants to make sure it's understood that when students plant themselves beside Yates during his classroom visits or lunge at him for a hug, they're not just putting on a show.

"I think students don't want to disappoint him," says Hardesty, who works in the school's special ed classroom and calls the principal "a father figure."

This morning, Yates is a guest of honor in Hardesty's classroom, where the children have prepared a complete eggs-and-pancake breakfast for him and other notables such as the school's part-time social worker and its speech pathologist.

Amid the many words that adorn the walls, one stands out. On a big red cutout of a heart, bold black letters spell "effort," the classroom's watchword.

Ally, 9 years old but small for her age because of a thyroid ailment that for some time played havoc with her physical development, bounces over to Yates and pipes, "I love you."

"What did we learn about Mr. Yates this year?" asks her teacher, Peg Regruth. Then Regruth answers her own question for the students: "We used Mr. Yates as an example of someone who put forth effort and made a success of his life. They know him, so it means more."

When Regruth is done, Ally eagerly responds to the question. "I learned you used to be a janitor," she recites, "then a teacher, then a principal."

And he did so without forgetting his origins. Just ask Timothy Parks, the school's current head custodian. He says that Hawkins "feels like a family."

Coverage of leadership issues in education is supported by the Broad Foundation

For more stories like this, please logon to: http://www.teachermagazine.org/

Get Connected: Web Site Links

~~~~> Labor Awareness Program

LAP is a 15-lesson curriculum for high school students, apprentices, new entrants into the workforce, union members, etc. It aims to familiarize students with the world of work and the labor organizations that represent workers. Hats off to Judy Ancel and the University of Missouri’s Labor Studies Center for making a difference with this new program.

http://www.umkc.edu/labor-ed/lap/index.htm

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is a formal Sponsor of LAP.  Skills For Tomorrow Project Partners look forward to hearing from Judy Ancel at their upcoming Skills For Tomorrow meeting December 4-5, 2003.

End of Issue

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