Got Justice?

Many of us (teachers) may see ourselves as basically apolitical. Maybe even “aunion.”  I know I did. 

When I entered the profession in 1985 I was full of confidence in my ability as an individual to transform education one student at a time. “Why in the world would I need a union for that, I thought.” Not only did I think it; I said it.  I remember telling a colleague in my department (and also the Vice-President of our district’s union) that I believed that, while unions had once had their use, we were in a new time and that perhaps unions were no longer needed.

Plus, I was a professional who had been raised by professional parents.  Weren’t unions for blue collar workers?

And I was pretty sure I didn’t need politics either.  My life was fine. Things were good. While I was interested in politics in general, (I followed Presidential politics) I saw no reason to be politically active as an individual.  I was here to help kids. That's all that mattered.

As I gained more experience, my attitudes changed.  That experience included:

• Working with some good principals and superintendents, and working with some very bad ones as well.

• Watching elected policy makers lurch from one educational fad to another

• Seeing the end of meaningful professional development replaced by a focus on testing, parsing the results, more testing and more parsing of the results

• Seeing my purchasing power eaten up by inflation, health care expenses and pay cuts

• Watching expectations for my performance and workload increase while resources to accomplish the task decreased

• Witnessing a Corporate-backed education reform regime that stresses testing and firing teachers as a form of “accountability” while continuing to refuse to invest real money in making educational opportunities equal for all students.

And all of these things occurred while I worked as hard as I could to be the best teacher I could possibly be. 

 

But how come that wasn’t enough?  When and why did teachers become the enemy in some people’s eyes?  

As I’ve become clearer about my role as a teacher, I am beginning to get some answers to this question.  Yes, I am a teacher of children, but I’m also an advocate for justice.   

Advocating for justice has never been popular.  Ever.  As we organize to change the status quo that I have outlined above, there are many forces who want to keep things just like they are, or make them even worse if it suits their economic or ideological needs.  Teachers and our unions are one of the few organized groups left to resist injustice in education, and that makes us a target of the powerful. We’re solidly in the way of those who would like to reduce teachers to a kind of interchangeable part on an education assembly line and who see public education as an untapped opportunity for profitable privatization. 

The irony is that those with the most power are charging teachers with being an obstruction to progress.  To this I plead guilty; especially if that “progress” is unjust and ultimately, hurts my students’ education and opportunity rather than helping it. 

I’d like to believe that the privileged, naive kid who began life in the classroom at age 22 has learned a thing or two about expanding his understanding of what it means to be an educator that fights for justice.

Political activism is one way we work for justice for our students and for our own families. I hope you will join me this fall in the fight for what is right.

The "U" Word

It’s a conversation that I bet many of us have had from time to time.  There I was Sunday morning prior to church, socializing with an old friend of mine prior to the service.  He asked me how the beginning of school was going, how my students were, that kind of thing.  I reminded him that I would not be in the classroom this year, but would instead be serving as the President of our union.
  

That’s all it took.  Suddenly the expression on his face changed from one of happy encouragement to a puzzled, questioning look.

The first thing he wanted to know about my new position was whether those “bad teachers” were getting fired. “Does anyone ever get fired,” he asked? (They do, but that’s a subject for later on)   He went on to expound upon the importance of teachers and their unions being about the kids and not about themselves. 

This would have been easy to dismiss if my friend could be simply pigeon holed as a far conservative, anti-public education individual, but he can’t.  I’ve worked with my friend on a variety of social justice related issues.  I know he cares deeply about immigrant rights, ending homelessness, providing equitable and effective support for the mentally ill, and the list goes on.  What’s more, he knows me as an activist in this vein as well. 

But the “U” word, that word union, tripped him up, as I suspect it may do for some of us as well. 
   

There are strong and well-organized voices out there that have expounded on a theme that goes something like:  “Teachers Good, Teacher Unions Bad.”  Or sometimes it’s just as plain as “teachers are greedy, they don’t really care about the kids.” 

Whatever form these assertions take, they serve to identify the very real work we have to do to help our citizenry understand what we do and identify genuine education reform needs.

The good news is that the conversation with my friend is only beginning.  The next time we chat I know we’ll get to talk about the following:

• Teachers do care about kids. How could we not?  It’s the very core of who we are and the nature of our jobs.
• Taking care of our own families and taking care of our students are not mutually exclusive things. Teaching is a profession, not a call to martyrdom. 
• Collective bargaining is the key way in which educators advocate for our students.  Really.  Because working conditions for teachers are also learning conditions for our students. 
• The Teacher’s Union cares about teacher quality. 

These aren’t hard things to talk about because, well, they’re true! 

I’m looking forward to telling the truth next Sunday already.