Dear NAME Members and Friends:
We write to express our deepest condolences to the Sandy Hook Elementary School community, and to join the nation in pausing to mourn, to pay respect, and to reflect on what it means to come together as a community to work towards a better tomorrow for all of our nation’s youth. The image of schools as places that educate, nurture, and embrace can be shattered when violence and trauma strike. Not all tragedies grab media attention, but throughout the year and across the nation, schools and communities confront tragedies that should call on us, as a nation, to do better for our children, for our underserved communities, and for the educators who work most directly with them. The courageous acts of the Sandy Hook educators serve as a profoundly visceral reminder that at the heart of what it means to be an educator is the deepest commitment to the well-being of our children. Throughout the year and in countless ways educators are caring for our children, are devoting their talents and their resources and their lives, often in direct contrast to the rhetoric and the “reforms” that would have us believe that teachers are to blame for all that is wrong in schools and society today. And perhaps one of the greatest ironies is that these “reforms” are recklessly eliminating the very things that can help to address the underlying problems, because rather than gutting public education, we should be ensuring that every school offers the best education that our nation has to offer, including supports for the social and emotional health and educational success of every child, and respect for every school personnel. As we mourn the loss of precious lives, our nation must stand up to the rhetoric and the “reforms” that are hurting our children, and insist on a more ethical, more effective, more courageous vision for American education.
Kevin Kumashiro, NAME President
Rick Ayers, NAME Co-President Elect
Francisco Rios, NAME Co-President Elect
Christine Sleeter, NAME Immediate Past President
Bette Tate-Beaver, NAME Executive Director
Rose Duhon-Sells, NAME Founder/Founding Director
Resources for educators are available online at the websites of organizations that share NAME’s vision of equity and justice for all of our nation’s youth,
including the New York Collective of Radical Educators (www.nycore.org) and Teaching Tolerance(www.tolerance.org).