On the Road
with Rachel Hendrickson

I just attended a meeting at the George Meany National Labor College in Maryland, just up the road from NEA headquarters in Washington.

The meeting was about a new partnership that's linking NEA, the Industrial Relations Research Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in an innovative effort to produce and pilot labor-related curricula for high school social studies or economics classes.

Tom Juravich, an NEA member from the University of Massachusetts and a labor scholar, is part of the Labor-Management group working to review the curriculum materials.

The process should be interesting. Labor members of the higher ed and K-12 education community will be working with folks representing the American Federation of School Administrators, the National Alliance of Business, and the County Executives of America to agree on a collective bargaining project and other modules for the pilot programs.

The project will involve recruiting mentors and coaches, both labor and management, to work with students in the pilot programs, and students will experience collective bargaining from both a labor and management perspective.

Seems to me that all of us in higher education should get more involved with what elementary and secondary students are learning about unions and labor rights.

Taking the long view, some of these students will be teachers, faculty members, and education staff. With any luck and a lot of good planning, they will also be our future union activists.

—Rachel Hendrickson coordinates NEA higher ed activities.