Unions and Professionalism

School unions have been around for quite some time. If you were to research about school unions you would see that they have held the same standards throughout history. Their purpose is to be another voice for the workers or in this case the teachers. The unions are to make financial decisions and to be a collective voice for bargaining. They are there to provide preofessional development for teachers through workshops, conferences, and grants. They are there for protection against arbitrary firing and unreasonable demands in the workplace. From what I have seen I believe that unions do have a strong relationship with teacher misconduct legislation. Unfortunately I believe that in many cases the unions are the escape route needed in order to protect the teachers who have committed crimes and should not be in our classrooms. If you think about it there are a ton of cases that have never been reported and have passed through the system because school unions protect their teachers. How do they protect their teachers? One way is that they unite and agree that "taking an employee to court to get him or her dismissed can be expensive and time consuming" according to the article in Education World (12/9/98) regarding "passing the trash" issues. On the other hand I do believe that with the current legislation of (HB 79, 190,428) teachers will be held more accountable for their actions and the unions will not be able to protect them because of the crimes that they may commit. Finally the teachers who any parent would not want around their child may be dismissed and possibly have their license terminated. I was astounded by reading recent reports in Education World that 16 states do not require criminal background checks for first time applicants for professional certificates. If someone does have a history of past offenses, these states will never know. Also in 16 states educators convicted of a sex crime against students will not automatically lose their licenses, therefore a teacher who has a history of having sex with students may teach again! In response to the reflection question there is proof that the legislation that is currently being reviewed and updated will play a major role with teacher unions and professionalism. On another note I will share two quick stories with you. The first one is that an eighth grade teacher at my jr.high school when I attended was arrested for having inappropriate relationships with three of her students. I believe after being convicted of different counts of sexual crimes she remains in prison today. It was found later that a previous district had dismissed her for what they called "inappropriate conduct" just two years prior to her arrest. Where was the background checks then? Who wants these teachers in our schools? I actually cringe to the thought that I could have had this woman as my teacher. I think it is fairly obvious that more needs to be done with the legislation issues so these so called teachers can teach where they belong and that is behind bars. Our unions do need to make clear to their employees their intentions, their job responsibilities, and the consequences that can occur as a result of breaking the law.