TEACHERS UNITE INC
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Mission Statement
Teachers Unite is an independent membership organization of public school educators in New York City collaborating with youth and parents to transform public schools.We resist institutions that segregate and criminalize Black and Latino/a youth, such as the school-to-prison pipeline, by organizing educators to work as allies in campaigns for social and economic justice.We develop and share resources for restorative justice and school-based power-building that promote grassroots leadership in public education, and we conduct collaborative research on pressing educational issues.We believe that schools can only be transformed when educators work with and learn from parents and youth to achieve social and economic justice.
About This Cause
Since Teachers Unite (TU) was founded in 2006, we have built a membership of hundreds of NYC public school educators dedicated to resisting institutions that criminalize Black and Latino/a youth. Our goal is to interrupt the School to Prison Pipeline—a set of punitive practices and policies that disproportionately push Black, Latino/a, LGBTQ, and special education students out of schools and into the criminal justice system. TU’s advocacy, coaching, and development of resources has led to hundreds of students and educators being trained in, and leading, Restorative Justice (RJ) programs in over one hundred NYC schools. We believe in collaborative leadership and grassroots democracy; our members work with youth to use RJ practices that build shared community, as well as resolve conflict by repairing harm and transforming school climate in the process. Our 2013 documentary Growing Fairness prompted hundreds of schools and organizations from across the U.S. to reach out to us for support with building RJ in schools. While we are proud to have helped explode the national conversation about this, we receive significantly more requests for these consultations than we can meet. TU has reached over 1,000 educators, students, and community members through workshops and resources focused on building community, including all voices, resolving conflict, repairing harm, and reintegrating students after suspension or incarceration. As a steering committee member of the youth-led Dignity in Schools Campaign-New York (DSC-NY) coalition, our collective advocacy has led to $50 million allocated to school climate and RJ initiatives in city schools. As Chair of the Pilot School Working Group in DSC-NY, we have led publication of three case studies demonstrating how schools holistically approach transforming their school climate (Building Safe, Supportive and Restorative School Communities in NYC: 2011, 2013, 2015). Because of our collaborative advocacy with DSC-NY in 2019, the mayor's DOE budget is baselining $30 million for hiring 218 new school social workers. In addition, the DOE is expanding citywide support for RJ in middle and high schools, and is capping suspensions to a 20 day max (down from 180 days). It is on this win that our work builds and continues. Our city’s leaders and bureaucracy has shown that they are willing to make investments for school supports, which underscores the need for us to intensify our focus on the less popular demand that schools divest from the NYPD. TU is in our fourth year coordinating Brooklyn, Downtown, and Bronx cohorts—supportive communities where schools come together to build school projects such as expanding a peer mediation program, or developing a RJ internship. TU members, without direct funding from the NYC Department of Education (DOE), pay money out of their pockets for the pizza, stipends, t-shirts, etc. that support their students’ leadership development as integral in growing a culture of RJ. With TU’s support, 21 teams collaboratively fundraised for their projects last year. TU staff supports these teams of educators, students, and parents to write and carryout action plans. In addition, our members lead workshops and coach colleagues on conflict resolution, community building circles, and more. In 2018, we launched On Our Terms: Students, Parents, and Educators Take Back the Conversation About School Safety and Accountability. In this Participatory Action Research (PAR) project, students and educators from TU cohorts are the principal researchers articulating their definitions of conflicts, violence, bullying, resolution, repair, and justice in schools. By doing research in their schools, students are giving these schools tools and capacity to have ongoing reflection about safety, climate, and accountability. In partnership with Public Science Project and Restorative Justice Initiative, TU organized a research institute during the summer of 2018 for 35 grassroots researchers, who were supported as the principal investigators on these issues. Sixteen of these researchers were between ages 14 and 22, representing all four of the outer boroughs of NYC.