Joanna Pendleton is a school librarian with 20 years of experience in Guilford County Schools. She loves learning about organizing (both people and library books). She is dedicated to defending and transforming our public schools by building worker power, working with community coalitions, and organizing each work site in Guilford County Schools.
Edwena Miles is a 7th grade science teacher at Northwest Middle School. She is considered a friend of animals and loves learning new things. She is working for the schools we and our students need and deserve through GCAE organizing work, including coaching member organizers through the GCAE Organizing Fellowship and NCAE Summer Member Organizing.
What are our values?
- Leadership. We are a team that develops union leaders with the intention of standing shoulder to shoulder with them, not in front of them. Shared responsibility makes our union stronger and our power greater.
- Power. We are a team that builds working-class, multiracial power with all public school workers. Our power is our people, and we save us. Collective power is effective power.
- Effectiveness. We are a team that is committed to being effective- we’re not here to fight the good fight, we’re here to win.
- Solidarity. We are a team that knows that public schools are only possible because of the work of every single public school worker, and we are in this fight together.
- Community. We are a team that sees that our schools aren’t separate from our communities. Stronger schools mean stronger communities.
- Learning. We are a team that views principled struggle as an expected and healthy part of doing this work with integrity. We value the courage to be vulnerable as we protect, correct, and reflect.
- Trust. We are a team that operates from an understanding that this work is deeply and profoundly relational and that our union is built on trust between our people.
What are our goals?
- Build worker power through growing rank-and-file members into skilled leaders who not only feel a deep sense of ownership of our union, but who are also empowered to notice and raise concerns when our union needs to course correct.
- Hold our union (ourselves) accountable to the goals, ideals, and priorities of rank-and-file members, and accept the responsibility that this accountability entails.
- Defend and transform public schools.
- We must build solidarity across the lines of race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, and everything else that has been used to divide us.
- We must address the myriad crises we face with clarity and urgency in order to stop the privatizers who seek to dismantle our public schools.
- We must win the public schools that we and our students need and deserve.
“Leadership is accepting responsibility for creating conditions that enable others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.”
Marshall Ganz
“One basic principle unites us troublemakers. We believe democracy, meaning broad member participation at every level of the union, is the heart of union power.“
Alexandra Bradbury, Editor, Labor Notes
Guilford County Association of Educators 