AFT President Randi Weingarten visited University High School in Newark on Sept. 14 to hear from former and current students about their experiences with the Red Hawks Rising Teacher Academy, the grow-your-own program involving the AFT, the Newark Teachers Union, the Newark Board of Education and Montclair State University.
Speaking inside the high school’s media center, Weingarten talked about the origins of the program and acknowledged it’s not easy to make a commitment to teaching “when the world doesn’t think about teachers as the cherished individuals they should be.”
Weingarten solicited feedback from the alumni and the current students, asking them what they like about the RHR program and what could be improved.
Near the end of her visit, Weingarten said to the students, “The skills you learn in becoming a teacher and [also in] teaching, those skills are transferrable to virtually anything you ever do. You develop eyes on the back of your head; you just develop a sixth sense about what people need. And you also develop a sense about how to deal with everything when something doesn’t work.”
She added, “We need to make sure people see that this professional is cool, regardless of where we started and where you end up. … You are making it cool for Black women to want to come back in to this profession, for Black men to want to come in to this profession.”
TOP: AFT President Randi Weingarten speaks to Red Hawks Rising students inside University High School’s media center on Sept. 14.
ABOVE: Weingarten, AFT New Jersey President Jennifer S. Higgins (eighth from left), AFT Local 1904 President Laura Field (ninth from left) pose with University High School students, Principal Genique Flournoy-Hamilton (fourth from right) and Montclair State University professor Mayida Zaal (far right), the founder and director of the Red Hawks Rising Teacher Academy. (Photos by Chris M. Junior)
