Register to attend three remaining dates in CMAE Leadership Development Academy

Three training dates remain in CMAE's "Leadership Development Academy" series, and members are encouraged to register to attend. The schedule of remaining dates, and a description of each training module, is found below. Each module in the series will only be offered once under this grant.

Please click here to register and indicate your commitment to attend the training dates. Register to attend any dates that you can commit to attend.

The trainings will be delivered in the Media Center at Kannapolis Middle School, 1445 Oakwood Avenue, Kannapolis. Each training date will begin at 9 a.m. and conclude by 1:30 p.m., and lunch will be provided.

November promises a busy month for CMAE

Candidate recommendations approved by CMAE Association Representatives

CMAE officers and Government Relations Committee members pause with recommended candidates for CMS Board of Education following the monthly meeting of CMAE Association Representatives in October. From left to right are (front row) CMAE Secretary Lakisha Mills, candidates Elyse Dashew and Lenora Shipp, and committee member Amanda Thompson; (second row) CMAE President Lawrence Brinson, candidates Monty Witherspoon and Stephanie Sneed, and committee members Jennifer Anderson and Phyllis Washington. Municipal elections will be held November 5, 2019.

Public officials, candidates to attend "Educational Issues Breakfast" on October 28

CMAE's Government Relations Committee will host a Legislative Breakfast on Monday, October 28, at the Covenant Presbyterian Church Fellowship Hall, 100 East Morehead Street, from 9 to 11 a.m. CMAE members are invited to attend.

The Mecklenburg County legislative delegation (members of the state House and Senate representing residents of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County) have been invited to the breakfast, as well as members of the Mecklenburg County Commission and the CMS Board of Education.

Committee members will introduce CMAE's four recommended candidates for the CMS Board. Earlier this month, the committee interviewed nine candidates for the three at-large board seats, and asked general and specific issues around advocacy and policy-making which impacts public education in Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, and North Carolina.

Based upon candidates' responses and its deliberations, the committee recommended candidates Elyse Dashew, Lenora Shipp, Stephanie Sneed, and Monty Witherspoon to CMAE Association Representatives at their monthly meeting on October 17. The CMAE Executive Board approved the recommendations.

Current officeholders and the recommended candidates will have opportunities to speak and to answer questions from members in attendance.

Committee chairs and members also plan to review CMAE's and NCAE's legislative agenda for 2019-20, and to discuss developments from the current biennial session.

Register: CMAE BTOP Summit for early-career educators, November 16

CMAE's Beginning Teacher Organizing Program (BTOP) is sponsoring a Summit for early-career educators -- those with fewer than five full years in the classroom -- on November 16 in Charlotte. The Summit will be held at Newell Elementary School, 325 Rocky River Road West, Charlotte. (This is the same location where the Regional Association Representative Training was held on September 7.)

Educators in CMS and surrounding districts who have completed fewer than five full years in the classroom are invited to register. Use this form to register by November 12.

CMAE President Lawrence Brinson has announced that CMS Teacher of the Year Kim Tuttle will speak to attendees, and more guest speakers may be announced soon. Vendors, including school supply companies and local businesses, will be on-site to describe various products and services.

Several sessions have been planned for educators with specific interests. These sessions will be rotated and are offered more than once, to allow participants to attend up to three.

Sessions already named include the following:
- Blended Learning
- Trauma Informed
- Classroom Management
- Vocabulary Instruction
- Teacher Evaluations
- Fun for Math
- True Colors
- Strategies for Resilience
- Working with EC Students

After completing the registration, educators are urged to share the notice with other early-career educators at your school.

Members are invited to serve on CMAE committees

CMAE is expanding its outreach to members who wish to participate in the organization's leadership.

President Lawrence Brinson invites all CMAE members to consider serving on one of the organization's several standing and special committees. Standing committees are perennial committees named in the CMAE Constitution and By-Laws, and special committees are those created by the President and/or the Executive Board to address specific tasks and topics.

Some committees meet as often as monthly, others on a less-frequent regular basis. Current standing and special committees include the following:

- Communications and Public Relations Committee- Constitution and By-Laws Committee
- Early Educators Committee
- Education Support Personnel Committee
- Elections Committee
- Government Relations Committee
- Grievances Committee
- Just Schools Committee- Leadership Development Committee
- Membership Committee
- Organizing Committee
- Student Services Committee

If you are interested in serving on any of these, indicate your interest to CMAE officers by completing the interest survey here. Officers will contact you with more details.

Government Relations Committee will recommend candidates to CMAE

Earlier this month, members of CMAE's Government Relations Committee interviewed nine of 13 candidates for the three at-large seats on the Charlotte Mecklenburg School Board. (Eleven candidates accepted the committee's invitation to interview, but two of these couldn't or didn't attend.) Candidates were asked about general and specific issues around advocacy and policy-making which impacts public education in Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, and North Carolina.

After careful deliberation, and based upon candidates' responses, the Committee will issue to CMAE's monthly meeting of Association Representatives its recommendations of Elyse Dashew, Lenora Shipp, Stephanie Sneed, and Monty Witherspoon.

Association Representatives will meet Thursday, October 17, at the CMAE office.

According to Chairwoman Winifred Muhammad, committee members applied several criteria in weighing the candidates, their records and positions, and their responses to members' questions. Among the criteria were these priorities:

Register now for CMAE's Leadership Development Academy

A grant has allowed CMAE to develop and host a "Leadership Development Academy," a series of eight training modules on five dates during the next three months. The schedule of dates, and a description of each training module, is found below. Each module in the series will only be offered once under this grant.

PLEASE NOTE that the first of the five training dates is this Saturday, October 19.

Because of material costs associated with some of the modules, participation is limited to 25 CMAE members. (Additional NCAE members will be invited from other local affiliates.)

We hope you'll participate, but seating is limited. Please click here to register and indicate your commitment to attend the training dates. The eight modules are part of a total training package, and those members who are able to attend all five of the training dates will earn a certificate that reflects your completion of the CMAE Leadership Development Academy. However, please register to attend any dates that you commit to attend, and we will extend invitations to other members to ensure that we get maximum participation and meet the grant's objectives.

The trainings will be delivered in the Media Center at Kannapolis Middle School, 1445 Oakwood Avenue, Kannapolis. Each training date will begin at 9 a.m. and conclude by 1:30 p.m., and lunch will be provided.

Association Representatives will meet Thursday

CMAE Association Representatives will convene their monthly meeting at the CMAE office on Thursday, October 17, at 5 p.m. Dinner will be available beginning at 4:30 p.m., and grade-level divisions will meet during dinner.

Mecklenburg County Commissioner Susan Harden is expected to present information about the pending sales-tax referendum. Committee chairs will offer other reports and presentations.

CMAE members are invited to attend. CMAE is located at 4523 Park Road, Suite 102.

Nhatisha Sturgis: “I care about them and their differences.”

Originally from Norwalk, Connecticut, I moved in 1999 to Greenville, North Carolina after a tour in the U.S. Navy. I completed studies in Social Work at Barton College in Wilson, NC. The paternal side of my family still lives in Connecticut, and the maternal side resides in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

In 2010, my children and I moved to Charlotte, and we love it here. I’ve served Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools for a total of eight years, including my experience as a long-term substitute in a middle-school science class, and as a financial secretary assistant. For the past four years, I’ve been a full-time teacher in the AU self-contained program at Oakdale Elementary.

I’m a single mother; two of my five children attend college, one attends high school and struggles with academics due to her autism, one attends middle school, and one has just begun kindergarten.

Before moving to Charlotte, I never saw myself as an educator, as my passions lay in behavioral health and social work. When it was difficult to find employment in social services, I began working as a substitute teacher and encountered children in middle grades who couldn’t read, or even add two-digit numbers. I used some strategies that I’d used with my children at home, and they worked for these students.

I found that my students wanted to work when they realized that I care about them and their differences. How could I not want to help create structure for, and teach, children who will be our future? As I began to see more students with special needs, who hadn’t been correctly placed and who struggled like my daughter, I knew I wanted to help, even if my help was minute.

One of my students couldn’t speak, couldn’t even attempt to verbalize a word. We practiced with mouth movements every day, and when that student began to say, “Mom,” I knew this was the right place for me. 

Another one of my students couldn’t name colors, and rarely spoke. But when I taught a lesson on tornadoes, he understood it, and began coming to school every day asking, “Where is the tormadoes (spellers how he said it)?”

More examples like these reinforce that I’m in the right place and doing the right thing.

I’m new to CMAE, so I’ve not had direct interaction with my professional organization yet, but I want to become an integral part, and be able to support other educators.

#phenomenallyurs

Area teachers attend NCAE Region 3 NBCT Support Session

Several members of CMAE and surrounding school districts recently attended the NCAE Region 3 (Fall 1) Candidate Support Session to become National Board Certified Teachers. The training was held at Steele Creek Elementary School on September 28.

Participants included MaryBeth Kubinski, Cynthia Hicks, Haven Blanks, Carleen Rummer, Khuanduen Toatley, Juanita Purdy, Jen Anderson, Tammy Hawk, and RoVirginette Tanner. The session was facilitated by Margueritta Brown.

MaryBeth Kubinski: “Teachers are the leaders for every other profession”

I’m from Erie, Pennsylvania, where I majored in Elementary and Early Childhood Education at Edinboro University.

After graduating, I moved to Charlotte and, for the next 11 years, taught kindergarten, first grade and second grade, and held several leadership positions, at Albemarle Road Elementary School. During the same period, I earned a master’s degree in Reading Education from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Seven years ago, I transferred to Crown Point Elementary and became an Academic and Intervention Facilitator, in addition to teaching first grade and holding leadership positions. Now in my 19th year, I’m a National Board Certified Teacher in Literacy, and I’m the Bus Safety teacher for Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools. I have a wonderful and supportive husband, Adam, along with two wonderful boys, Noah (12) and Alex (7).

Since I was three years old, I wanted to become a nurse and a mom. While I was a senior in high school, my counselor told me I didn’t have the math and science grades to become a nurse. My dreams were crushed! I took a career survey and its results suggested I should be a teacher -- or a nun. Ha! I didn’t want to do either.

So I went to college as an undecided major. However, all of my new friends were in the education fields, and I decided to become a teacher too. My mom told me I would be great at it. Thankfully, that quick decision was the best decision for me. I discovered that I have a passion for teaching, and I love seeing children’s eyes light up when they understand something new.

Being the bus safety teacher has led me to learning curves I did not know I had. I have to get a Commercial Driver’s License (so intense). I now get to work with adults to help them become better drivers, drive students home, and teach elementary students about bus safety. But when I stop learning, it will be time for me to find a new profession.

I really love learning new things, and CMAE/NCAE has provided me so many opportunities to do that.

Perhaps most valuably, CMAE has allowed me to form lifelong relationships with other educators. I have met so many great people who teach so many different things, and I believe it’s important to connect with colleagues outside of the classroom. Thanks to CMAE and those relationships, I’ve learned to speak in front of crowds, how to stand up for what I believe in, and how to enjoy teaching despite all of the state and district mandates.

I was always told that it’s important to belong to a professional organization. I joined CMAE because I wanted insurance to protect me in the event that something ever happened with a student or a parent. I never imagined I would get so much more from it, but I’m reminded constantly that teachers are the leaders for every other profession. For that reason alone, we cannot give up on ourselves.

CMAE responds to radio program that used violence against teachers as comedy

Educators in Charlotte, and in surrounding school districts in North Carolina and South Carolina, recently heard a morning radio program use violence against teachers as a subject of comedy. In response to members’ concerns about the content of this broadcast, CMAE President Lawrence Brinson sent the following letter to the radio station’s local management in Charlotte and corporate owners in Florida.

Readers are encouraged to follow the links embedded in the letter to learn more about studies and reports on violence against teachers, and to share these with colleagues and co-workers.

October 4, 2019

Bill Schoening, Senior Vice President/Market Manager
WPEG-FM
1520 South Boulevard, Suite 300
Charlotte, North Carolina  28203

George G. Beasley, Chairman
Beasley Broadcast Group, Inc.
Beasley Media Group, LLC
3033 Riviera Drive, Suite 200
Naples, Florida  34103

Dear Mr. Schoening and Mr. Beasley,

On Friday, September 27, three co-hosts of your WPEG-FM morning program (“No Limit Larry and the Morning Maddhouse”) posed this “Question of the Day”: “If there was a teacher you could slap, who would you slap?” Iterations of the question were repeated through the morning’s three-hour program, including, “Who is the teacher that you had, now that you can, if you could, you’d smack the crap out of?”; “What teacher would you go back and slap?”; and, “Which one of your old teachers would you slap?”

On at least three separate occasions during the program, the co-hosts identified by name, and described in negative terms, four educators who had been their teachers. In one example, a co-host recalled a teacher who “wore big Coke-bottle glasses; I’d slap the glasses off his face.” These references may still be heard by listeners who download the podcast of that morning’s program. Your co-hosts urged listeners to post answers to the question on the co-hosts’ own Instagram pages and on Facebook, and/or to call WPEG-FM and leave a voicemail that might be aired during the show.

Your program’s subject matter came to my attention when educators in the listening area, some of whom heard the discussion as they traveled to work, shared their concerns with one another by email and through social media. At least one educator communicated her disappointment directly with one of the program’s co-hosts, and posted the co-host’s response online.

The response read, “I understand you may not have liked this segment but that doesn’t mean there aren’t teachers out there who also disrespect students or talk down on them and that could have a negative affect on that child. There are some GREAT teachers out there also but being that you’ve been in the educational system I know you’ve seen those types of teachers come and go. In the profession we’re in nothing is off limits. We’ve also received messages from people thanking us for bringing this topic up because they didn’t know how to bring up the fact the negative impact that teacher had on them or express it. While I do understand your frustration for every 1 teacher that was upset about it, there were 5 students saying thank you. I love the conversation it generated both positive & negative. Thank you for being one if those educators that’s actually helping our students and thank you for listening to the Maddhouse.”

For 25 years, I’ve taught high school students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Schools. I serve currently as president of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Association of Educators, and as a member of the North Carolina Association of Educators Board of Directors, representing Mecklenburg, Anson, Cabarrus, Gaston, Lincoln, Montgomery, Rowan, Stanly, and Union counties, plus Kannapolis and Mooresville city schools. All, or parts, of these counties and school districts are found within the WPEG-FM coverage area, which stretches nearly to Asheville, Boone, Greensboro, and Asheboro, in North Carolina. WPEG-FM’s programming can be heard by educators who live or work in Rock Hill, Greenville-Spartanburg, Columbia, and Florence, South Carolina. As the Charlotte Mecklenburg School District alone includes 19,000 employees, it’s safe to estimate that upwards of 100,000 educators and their families live in the coverage area.

Making this incident more troubling is the knowledge that many students in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County region are familiar with the co-hosts, have seen them at in-person promotional events, listen to them regularly, and admire them.

On the same day this question was posed on your program, Yahoo News published a report titled, “Bite marks, bruises and dislocated shoulders: How America’s teachers are battling classroom violence.” It detailed examples of classroom teachers, teacher assistants, and other school district employees being assaulted, beaten, stabbed, even maimed and, in one example from South Carolina, left suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and clinical depression.

Reporter Mahira Dayal wrote, “A 2018 government study on school crime and safety, compiled by agencies from various U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, found that 10 percent of public school teachers... have reported being threatened with injury by a student. Six percent, meanwhile, reported that they’d been physically attacked — higher than in almost all previous survey years.”

Dayal reported that, in another study, Ohio State University surveyed 3,403 K-12 teachers and found that 74 percent had been a victim of violence, “of those, 25 percent reported actual physical abuse or assault, 20 percent reported threats of physical violence, and 37 percent described verbal insults or sexual advances.”

In a report published by the National Education Association three months ago, Dr. Dorothy Espelage of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said that violence against teachers is a national crisis. That crisis has led educators in Connecticut to pursue, and win, new legislation to protect them from students. It has led teachers in Rhode Island to organize a sick-out to get the attention of legislators. The Oregon Education Association published “A Crisis of Disrupted Learning” earlier this year, describing conditions of violence against educators, and recommendations for addressing the problem.

Members of every profession face varied challenges. Our profession faces institutionalized disrespect in the form of restrictive salaries, benefits, and diminishing rights. We meet increasing demands for credentials, increasing expectations of services, and increasing class sizes, with fewer resources. Yet studies show that the overwhelming majority of educators spend their own money to meet classroom needs, and to meet students’ educational and personal needs. In the past week alone, we’ve seen stories in the media of one teacher donating a kidney for a student, and another teacher giving a student a home through adoption.

While we understand the need of morning radio programs to attract listeners in creative ways, we hope that you, your company, and your advertisers would condemn, publicly and in the plainest possible language, the suggestion that any teacher deserves to be “slapped,” “smacked,” or disparaged in the media.

We also hope that you would establish and publicize a corporate policy, even in a profession where “nothing is off limits,” that protects educators in your listening areas from proposals of violence by your on-air representatives. Your on-air representatives could begin by making clear that no educator deserves disrespect or victimization.

Finally, in light of the heroism demonstrated daily by classroom educators and school district employees in service to hundreds of thousands of students, and their families and communities, in WPEG-FM’s coverage area, we hope that your on-air representatives would spend an amount of time equal to the segments of September 27 to seek out and highlight the abundant examples in their coverage area, and to express appropriate sentiments of gratitude for that work.

As educators have shared their concerns with me about this matter, I intend to advise them of my correspondence to you, and I look forward to sharing with them your response.

Sincerely,
Lawrence Brinson,
Teacher, Phillip O. Berry Academy
President, Charlotte Mecklenburg Association of Educators
Director for District 3, North Carolina Association of Educators