The future of our country depends on unlocking the potential of every child through education.

Family Involvement:

        Technology:  We believe our nation's children require technological competence that would include online access to grades/assessments and teachers and administrators. Additionally, academic and social resource links for parents to learn child development and find tools to support their children's education are necessary. Mandatory technology systems must be provided for language interpretation to allow effective communication between all stakeholders.

        Accountability: We believe in a national movement of accountability for families, businesses and education communities which provide holistic approaches that would allow a child's potential to be fully developed using family involvement programs. 

        Partnerships:We believe partnerships between education communities, families, businesses and social organizations will provide the foundation for all children achieving their highest potential.

Service/Experiential Learning:

We believe that service/experiential learning is not supplemental to academic learning; it is academic learning for the 21st Century.  Experiential/service learning needs to be valued by schools and communities. We believe that the strongest experiential/service learning occurs when schools and communities have strong, accountable, effective partnerships that provide internship, volunteer, and mentoring programs for students.  Community-based organizations and businesses should have a valued advisory role in schools as well.  Educators and community members should develop national K-12 service/experiential learning standards that can be linked to the academic curriculum. Systematic/systematized structures should be in place as well as an allocation of human resources, such as an interested teacher to serve as internship coordinator, to support programs in the school.  We believe national policy should include both funding for the necessary resources and technology-facilitated authentic assessment so that the effectiveness of programs can be measured. 

0-5 Early Childhood Education:

We believe that all children should have access to high quality, fully inclusive standards based infant and pre-school education programs. These programs must be research-based and allow access for all staff and families to participate in comprehensive and ongoing professional development. This constitutes that these community based programs, families, staff and community are active partners in decision making that utilizes the strengths and skills of all its members.

Conclusion:

This was our second meeting. The first meeting was held on July 17,2008 and allowed us to break down and formulate our ideas for today's meeting. Public education has enabled countless success stories for people who would not otherwise have had a chance. We recalled a story for success about an educator is East Harlem NYC who began her career in education as a classroom assistant. Her principal encouraged her to continue her education so she could grow in her ability to educate students. She did go on to finish college and graduate school and became a teacher, but it didn't stop there. Today, she is a principal of her own school- all as a result of her principal's mentoring and support of career growth within the NYC Public School Education system. 

All the educators involved really enjoyed being a part of this discussion. It is such an exciting time for educators and it is empowering to be a part of a group that is sharing ideas that will affect education policy in the future. It gave educators the chance to really tap into our vast experiences and to reflect on what we have observed in education over the last decade in schools. All involved felt important and excited about meeting and collaborating with other teachers. This process reminds me how important it is to have a platform for educators to share their thoughts because it is us who are in classrooms every day and we see educational practice at it's best.

Claire Lowenstein is a New York City public school teacher at PS 333, Manhattan School For Children. Claire has taught middle school English, History, Special Education, and in Collaborative Team Teaching model for the last ten years in three different public schools in Manhattan. Claire has recently taken a leadership role at her current school to help plan a more successful framework for the upcoming school year. Last year, she was a Teachers Network Leadership Met-Life fellow conducting action research around cross age peer tutoring. This summer she is participating in a DFER fellowship for 2008-2009.