Hello,

In a few moments, at 1 p.m. Eastern, I’ll be gaveling in our TEACH conference—the biggest professional development conference we do—this year on Zoom. TEACH will honor educators for their amazing work during the most challenging year of our professional lives, pressing the powers that be to focus on community schools and project-based instruction and less testing, rebooting our literacy and civics work, and offering a full-throated defense of our professional obligation and freedom to teach the honest truth about the nation’s history.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve fought to reopen school buildings safely, because we know—you know—the importance of in-person education. We are getting ready for next year, working to create a safe and welcoming environment to help students recover socially, emotionally and academically and to spark kids’ passion and critical thinking. But it won’t be easy, and some people will try to make it harder, like those who have demonized teachers and scapegoated our unions for school closures—closures caused by a global pandemic.

But this pandemic has given us more than just the chance to recover: It has given us the chance to reimagine our schools as places where parents want to send their children, where educators and support staff want to work, and where students can thrive.

This is our moment to reclaim the promise and potential of public education, and to seed a renaissance—which I’ll discuss in my speech at 1 p.m. Eastern. Click here to watch it on YouTube or here to watch it on Facebook.

Our conference will go on all week. During the plenaries, we’ll have incredible guests, including first lady Dr. Jill Biden, Fair Fight founder Stacey Abrams, bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi, Harvard University professor Danielle Allen, LiberatED founder Dena Simmons and U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten. And we are honoring musician and activist Steven Van Zandt. It’s not too late to register for the conference, and our general sessions will all be livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.

I hope you’re able to join me. Click here to watch the speech on YouTube or Facebook.

In unity,
Randi Weingarten
AFT president

P.S. For more information about AFT TEACH, click here to visit our conference schedule and to register.