When you offer an New Business Item, they have to call on you.

Illinois Teacher of the Year, Annice Brave from Alton.

The trick to speaking at the IEA RA turns out not to be about orange shirts or sweaters.

The trick is offering an amendment or submitting a New Business Item. Then they have to call on you. And they have to call on you first!

The morning session started out badly as some colleagues from higher ed offered a legislative platform amendment having to do with the availability of financial aid to undocumented students.

Suddenly the hall turned into a Tea Party rally. It wasn’t so much the differences of opinion. It was the mean and nasty tone of the debate. Lots of “those people,” and “our people.”

I guess it should not surprising that race should be an issue in the IEA. But I was taken aback by how course the discussion was. It was extremely disturbing to many of us.

We have a lot of work to do on this.

Annice Brave spoke. She’s Illinois Teacher of the Year. She’s also nominated to be US Teacher of the Year. She admitted that it would be unlikely for her to receive the honor.

It was suggested to Annice that to win she would have to appear neutral about what was going on in Wisconsin.

Annice is anything but neutral. “I’m a good teacher. I know that. But I misbehave. Thank God for tenure,” she said.

The election results are a mixed bag. IEA leadership is never going to be Cesar Chavez or Walter Reuther. Since that isn’t really the standard, I’m setting the bar a little lower.

Cinda Klickna beat the pointless Bob Blade. Klickna has been part of the leadership team for years, so she is not about to make any major breaks with the Swanson policies of give even when you’re not asked to.

But she refused to go along with Swanson on the issue of taxing retiree benefits, so that’s something anyway.

Kathi Griffin, also a long-time leader, won VP. She went further in being self-critical for supporting some of the sit-at-the-table strategy of Swanson.

Even more self-critical was Rainy Kaplan. I was sorry to see her lose as Secretary Treasurer to the too accommodating Al Llorens.

New Business Items in support of the Dream Act, leaving public service worker pensions alone, boycotting Pritzker-owned properties and boycotting products produced by companies owned by the Koch brothers all passed.

The last one was mine. That’s why I got to be called on.

Although I wore the sweater just in case.