What Unites Us

our mission

Teachers Unite is an independent membership organization of public school educators in New York City collaborating with youth and parents to transform public schools.

We resist institutions that segregate and criminalize Black and Latinx youth, such as the school-to-prison pipeline, by organizing educators to work as allies in campaigns for social and economic justice.

We develop and share resources for restorative justice and school-based power-building that promote grassroots leadership in public education, and we conduct collaborative research on pressing educational issues.

We believe that schools can only be transformed when educators work with and learn from parents and youth to achieve social and economic justice.

our principles of unity

We believe in collaborative leadership and grassroots democracy. We build this democracy through the use of restorative practices in schools, which embodies and models this form of organizing.

We work in alliance with youth and parents to build this democracy in our schools. We use restorative justice to build those alliances.

We are part of a movement to abolish the prison industrial complex (PIC) and challenge “the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe.” (Critical Resistance)

We resist the PIC by promoting belief in, and practice of, transformative justice as well as advocating for systemic change of how public schools contribute to the PIC.

We see structural racism and capitalism as the core of the problems in public education. We recognize restorative justice as a historical tradition of resistance developed by communities of color – from undocumented immigrants to First Nations. We chose to use restorative justice to honor this tradition and build from this long-standing history.

We believe that the NYC public education system should be democratic and reflect the communities it serves. We see the NYC DOE, and the UFT as being the major systemic institutions at play in our education system.

We believe in popular control of schools. We believe that public schools should be funded entirely by the public, governed by the public and accountable to the public.