MSTA President Clara Floyd's speech to the Representative Assembly
Good morning MSTA. First, let me thank you for the confidence you have placed in me as your president and leader for the next three years. I am excited about the important discussions we will have over the next two days. I look forward to hearing from you about how we can work together on critical issues that support the achievement of our children. You have come from all over the state for this meeting. This demonstrates your commitment to outstanding performance in this profession.
If this is your first time as a delegate to the MSTA, I’d like you to stand. You are in for a real treat, and I hope this is the beginning of more involvement in your Local Association and in statewide events. You may be seated. Will the Local presidents please stand? Ladies and gentlemen, join me in welcoming the leaders in our Local Associations! Thank you. You may be seated.
This year, we have a wonderful opportunity to spread our message—that great public schools are a basic right for every child. When you see students, no matter what they may be doing or how they might behave, if you look closely, there is a spark, a flicker of potential in each of them, just waiting to be ignited by an understanding teacher or caring adult. Regardless of their readiness or background, every child must have access to attend a great public school where that spark can turn into a raging fire.
There is a quote by William Butler Yeats that says, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” That is what I want to speak to you about today: the fire that is waiting to burn, the fire that cannot and should not ever be extinguished; yes, the fire that will lead to success for all of Maryland’s public school children.
This is a time of change in our organization and change in Maryland as we prepare to elect the next governor and many other national, state and local leaders who will have an impact on the quality of our schools. Our economy is changing, the student population is changing, and expectations are changing, and we must change, too, in order to be effective in how we serve students and what we do as an Association. We are shifting—must shift—to a proactive vision that puts the needs and potential of our children first.
We must engage our students, parents, communities and public officials in understanding that education is truly a collaborative effort. If we want our students to perform at the highest level, we must be prepared to hold ourselves and all other stakeholders accountable for their success. We must be committed to taking that spark of potential and fueling it consistently and with high expectations. And we must not let a wind of doubt cause the flame of learning to ever die.
Our children need adults who believe that they are capable of learning regardless of where they live, the color of their skin or the status of their families. Every child has the ability to learn, and we must work together to make sure no student is shuffled into a corner or written off for any reason.
Children need that kind of attention from the earliest age. The research clearly shows that a strong beginning in education plays a major role in leading to an impressive finish. That is why MSTA has worked closely with the Maryland State Department of Education to look at ways to make early learning available to every child. As your president, I represent you on several coalitions around the state that are all concerned with the total well-being of our children and their families. We know that children need adequate health care, good nutrition and emotional support from the very beginning to do well in school.
We need to ensure this strong support continues throughout each student’s career. We work towards greatness every day, but it takes adequate tools and resources to teach and serve our students with excellence. That means no more portable classrooms. That means getting the kind of training that will help us understand how to better use data to drive quality instruction. That means having smaller class sizes and up-to-date technology and textbooks. In summary, that means focused and embedded professional development for all educators.
You may be thinking that I am preaching to the choir. Of course you know what it takes in a school building to have employees working together as a team for mutual success. What we must do is talk more among ourselves and to the general public about what it will truly take to create a great public school for every child. I need each of you to turn up the heat in your schools and buildings and take responsibility for being vocal about your concerns and challenges.
We can not wait for legislation to pass to fix workload issues. We have to go to the table in our local counties, insist on language and solutions that will not have us working ten- and twelve-hour days. We all have to speak up and say we can not teach from twenty-year-old textbooks and our students can not learn in rooms with poor heating, poor ventilation or no air conditioning. MSTA is your advocate; we are working to create better environments for all educators and children. But, MSTA can only be strong if our members and local affiliates are strong. We—your MSTA—need each of you to be on fire for change and on fire for progress. You have the power to do that.
This is our profession. We chose it because we care about the future. Whether you are an administrator, teacher, instructional assistant, administrative assistant, bus driver, media specialist, school nurse or psychologist, hall monitor, custodian, cafeteria worker, keeper of the grounds, or whatever your profession, we are all educators, and we share the responsibility of making sure our children are well educated and well cared for when they leave Maryland’s public schools.
In a few weeks, we will be electing political figures on the local, state and national levels. Many of them have come to us because they know that every day, we are the ones who look into the eyes of Maryland’s future. We are proud that the citizens of this state have identified education as the issue they care about most, and we are proud of the candidates we have endorsed who have proven track records for putting education first.
Yet we must remember to make sure our candidates who celebrate victory in November will not let it stop there. We insist they continue their commitment to helping us work towards great public schools for all of Maryland. The children we serve need us to hold these candidates’ feet to the fire, and hold them accountable for their promises. Our children need us to remain watchful and vocal so that elected officials remember why they were chosen to serve in public office.
What we need is shared responsibility and collaboration among educators, parents, the community, and our elected officials—shared responsibility that will achieve results, not just for some students, but for all of our students. And what are these results I’m talking about?
Yes, we must raise test scores, but we also need to engage our students to create a lifelong love of learning, igniting a flame that awakens talents and skills and a passion to settle for nothing less than their very best. We have to steer students into contemporary careers that speak to their interests, while still preparing them to be active and productive citizens.
We must make sure that not 60 percent, not 70 percent, but 100 percent of Maryland’s public school students graduate with a high school diploma. Colleagues, we have the expertise, we have the commitment, and we have the collective power to get parents involved, build support in the community, and convince elected officials to provide the resources we need to succeed in our efforts. We are 65,000 members strong, fighting for the great public schools that every child in Maryland deserves.
Most of you who know me know that I am not one to shout rhetoric or to make promises that can’t be delivered. What I can do is challenge you, to rekindle that fire in you that caused you to come to the profession in the first place. There are many successes out there. Charles County, a county that has become racially diverse, had no schools on the “needs improvement” list, thanks in large part to the work of our members and Local.
We are seeing a greater number of nationally board certified teachers in Maryland than ever before. I would like to encourage each of you in each county consider applying to this process, and MSTA right now is developing a program to help more members succeed in the rigorous journey of national board certification.
Let me tell you that MSTA just held our first-ever Workshop to help our Locals develop instructional professional development (IPD) committees that will put school reform and professional development on the front burner of local priorities.
We know that we must continue building on those successes and spreading them to other parts of the state. We must work together so that we can rise to the highest level of performance that will help every child receive a high quality public school education.
We want all of our children to GLOW with success. We can’t afford to settle for lukewarm instruction, lukewarm service, or lukewarm communication with the community or our elected officials. Do you remember those eyes of a child with the little sparks I talked about at the beginning?. Those eyes are the reason we get up in the morning. They are watching us, and we must do everything in our power to not let them down.
We must take those little sparks and turn them into flames that will set the world on fire with a well educated and curious generation. We must inspire our children to burn with new motivation, burn with high anticipation and burn with the clear knowledge and belief that they can succeed in any career they choose. Together, we can and we will have great public schools for every child, period! Thank you!