After Friday’s tragic massacre of 20 school children and six adults in Newtown, Conn., AFT President Randi Weingarten told "Meet the Press" yesterday, “Schools have to be safe sanctuaries…[there] has to be a conversation and action about both mental health as well as gun laws.”

Check out an excerpt of the AFL-CIO's new Innovators website feature, "Learning to Share: Teachers Collaborate on Quality Lesson Plans."

Think about facing a classroom of kids every day and being expected to walk in the door with something new, fresh, compelling and challenging.

Creating the massive volume of quality instructional material required is among a veteran teacher’s greatest challenges. Needed resources are often hard to come by, expensive and it can be difficult to evaluate their effectiveness.  So a group of teachers attempted to solve these problems by creating a valuable new online resource where educators can share their best lesson plans, Share My Lesson.

In a time of widespread calls for education "reform" that are little more than thinly veiled attempts at privatizing schools, the AFT has a new proposal that would actually help solve some of the problems American education faces. The AFT Teacher Preparation Task Force released a report, Raising the Bar—Aligning and Elevating Teacher Preparation and the Teaching Profession, that recommends the equivalent of a "bar" exam for teachers, similar to the tests that lawyers have to pass before they can legally practice.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that when cities, school boards and other public bodies bargain with workers’ unions, they must do so in good faith with the intention of reaching an agreement. While that may seem like common sense to most of us, two earlier rulings, including one from 1957, said that while such public entities are obligated to recognize the workers’ unions, they did not have to bargain.

A historic three-year deal was struck between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Newark teachers on Wednesday. The Newark Teachers Union is the first in the Garden State to include merit bonus pay based on classroom performance in its contract. Gov. Christie and AFT President Randi Weingarten met on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" today to talk about the bonus pay agreement. Watch the video below. 

Weingarten says:

This is a dynamic, new contract that's fair to the teachers, but most importantly, that's good for kids. That's why when people looked at this, they voted it up by more than 60%....In all this, Sandy happened and the governor did an extraordinary job in terms of all the work in New Jersey, and this is the way government should work whether it's at the collective bargaining table or whether there is a public disaster. You have lots of public employees who, every single day, are trying to make a difference in the lives of kids of the community. We worked hard at the table to come up with something that is good for Newark.

Thousands of AFT members immediately volunteered in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy to help the affected communities in any way they can. AFT represents about 365,000 workers in the area damaged by the storm, and many members who felt Sandy's impact still jumped in to help out others in need.

Here’s a roundup of reactions to last night’s election victory by President Obama and other working family candidates from national and state union leaders.

AFT President Randi Weingarten:

The American people voted today to create opportunity and shared prosperity by sharing responsibility, and to reject the cynical "you’re on your own" philosophy.

AFT’s "Your Vote–Your Right–Their Futures” bus tour is rolling through Florida this week building support and getting out the vote for President Obama and other working family candidates. AFT President Randi Weingarten, AFT Secretary-Treasurer Lorretta Johnson, along with local and state AFT officials and members, will meet with union and community election volunteers and activists for rallies, marches and neighborhood walks.

Students at the 19 schools in Jefferson Parish, La., are getting more than 50,000 new books and, best of all, those books are free. Last week, the Jefferson Federation of Teachers (an AFT affiliate), union and community volunteers began sorting the 2,000 boxes of books that will be distributed during the next month. The book distribution is part of a nationwide joint project between AFT and First Book, a nonprofit organization that distributes books to children from low-income families

AFT leaders and teachers are hopping on the bus today for a swing through Ohio and Florida as part of a huge member mobilization and get-out-the-vote effort for President Obama, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) and other pro-worker candidates. "Your Vote-Your Right-Their Futures” starts in Cincinnati on Friday, Oct. 19, and on Saturday, hits Toledo and Cleveland.