She Was Both Steel and Velvet

She was both steel and velvet. Helen Bernstein was the toughest union leader that this nation’s teachers had. And the most tender.

As president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, Helen fought hard and minced no words when it came to the needs of educators. She was irrepressible. Anyone who would attempt to dispute her strong notions was “clueless” and simply “didn’t get it.”

“Now let me get this straight,” Bernstein would launch in. “How many oversized classes have you taught today?”

But Helen’s heart was always on the side of the kids. “Teachers want what students need,” was her mantra. And she worked furiously within her union to make sure that this was, indeed, the case.

During her tenure as president, Helen helped UTLA become the nation’s model of professional unionism. She was the indispensible ingredient for launching and sustaining real reform in Los Angeles’ classrooms. And subsequent to leaving UTLA, she spread her message and shared her passion as the first director of the newly found Teacher Union Reform Network.

What was Helen’s vision for the teacher unions that she lead? What would they look like in the near future if her vision becomes a reality? Here’s a peek at a scenario just a few years’ hence, written for Teacher magazine in my words but from her heart:

“The teachers’ union has changed in tandem with the profession. In fact, the union is responsible for many of the reforms that have transformed schools and education. It has accomplished these changes by working with other partners whenever possible and by promoting reform without permission when necessary.

“Instead of two major teachers’ unions, there is now one merged organization that acts as an advocate for all of America’s educators and all of their students. Features of industrial unionism have yielded to changes that offer the promise of making public education more effective. The scope of collective bargaining, for example, has been extended to include negotiations on professional issues--in addition to wages, benefits and working conditions. The union now promotes such practices and dynamics as peer review, differentiated staffing and pay, public school choice, professional accountability, the transfer of teachers based on criteria other than seniority alone and the involvement of parents, students and peers in teacher evaluations.

“Considering itself to be the voice of professional practitioners, the union now spends as much energy and resources on the professional needs of its members as it does on collective bargaining, contract enforcement, economic benefits and other basic traditional union functions. Recognizing that the welfare of the union and its members hinges on the effectiveness of the profession and industry within which it exists, the teachers’ union has formalized its commitment to reform.

“This new teachers’ union considers unionism and professionalism as complementary and not mutually exclusive. It helps its members become agents of reform rather than the passive targets of reform; it views the negotiated contract as the floor and not the ceiling for what union members are willing to do for students and it acts as the guardian of professional and educational standards.”

This can and will happen because those of us who were inspired by her will continue to aspire to it. It will be her legacy, her gift to the teachers and to the children of this nation that she loved so well.

For that and so much more, we love her, too. The Los Angeles community should be so very proud of this great teacher-leader. The rest of the nation should be so very grateful to Los Angeles for sharing her.