BATs Weekly Roundup – Week of April 28^th

^{By: Marla Kilfoyle, General Manager, Badass Teachers Association}

BATs will always have a busy week.  This week we started off with our Empowering Praise Campaign.  Each month BATs commit to empowering praise on a person who is helping our cause to win back public education.  This week we empowered praise upon the amazing Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago Teachers Union.  We showered her all day with praise, love, and feelings of solidarity.  Thank you to BAT Dawn Neely Randall for that suggestion!  On Monday, over 3000 teachers showed up at a rally on Long Island, NY to protest a dinner that NY Governor Andrew Cuomo was holding as a fundraiser.  BATs showed up in numbers to support the rally and “boo” party guests!  BATs got their Thunderclap #nodegree4Christie fully supported on Tuesday night.  We were able to blast out over 200,000 tweets to ask Rowan University NOT to honor this bully with a degree or allow him to speak to future teachers.   This week we got amazing "Breaking News" that International High School in Prospect Heights, NY was going to refuse to give the ELA NYC test! BATs sent them statements of solidarity and support.  Then on Thursday we found out that a group of 7 Houston teachers decided to sue in court against VAM evaluations.  One of the 7 is BAT Daniel Santos!  45,000 Members of the Badass Teachers Association are honored and humbled by this courageous act against an evaluation system we know DOES NOT work!  Finally, today was the launch of Co-Founder Mark Naison’s short news programs.  His first program, Camp Philos, was hysterical and we invite you to check it out and LIKE it on You Tube!!!  http://youtu.be/q8caVCtnsxk