I had to explain to a friend of mine from another country what the term “pink slip” meant. I had to explain that even though they weren’t actually pink these days, it meant that a perfectly hard-working, dedicated, competent person was losing his or her job because the employer didn’t have enough money to pay them.
I had to explain that hundreds of thousands of educators, teachers and support staff, were facing pink slips. And these non-pink, pink slips mean that students will find themselves in unmanageable class sizes sitting in rooms of 40 or 45 or 50 children.
I’m a teacher who knows something about what happens to children in unreasonably high class sizes. I had 39 5th graders one year when I taught in Utah.
Fifty years ago saying you were a “poor teacher” was redundant. Teachers were mostly women who wanted to teach, not to get rich, but because they loved kids.
However, 50 years ago, teachers and education support staff such as school secretaries and lunch ladies were expected to be polite and obedient and accept what they were given. They had no power to come together and bargain a better salary with administrators, who were, coincidently, mostly men. They were constantly exploited and underpaid.
Wisconsin, 50 years ago, became the first state in the country to do something about that.
They gave public employees, like teachers, the right to come together and negotiate for something better. When you negotiate, you have to work within a budget; you don’t get everything you want, but it stopped the exploitation of individuals. It meant that teachers and school support staff could move into the middle class and be treated with respect. Wisconsin should be proud of that.
And Wisconsin should be ashamed of .
Governor Scott Walker says it’s all about the budget. But that doesn’t make sense. The teachers and support staff and their unions have already agreed to sit down and work together for what schools need, acknowledging that it will have to fit within an austere budget. They’re not at impasse. No unreasonable demands have been made.
This is about politics and payback. This is about punishing people who didn’t support his election, and it’s shameful.
Teachers today are still mostly women. They are still modestly paid. They still become teachers because they love kids. But because they have had a voice in education issues, they have become a powerful force in making Wisconsin public schools some of the best in the country.
What possible good can come from silencing that voice? (more…)
The United States of America has some of in the world.
May I repeat? The United States of America has some of the best teachers in the world. And some of the best teachers in the United States are leading us to something better… through their unions.
Now, you wouldn’t know that listening to the Talking Heads’ pontificate during National Bash a Teacher month. There is a convergence of politicians, activists, venture capitalists and even movie-makers for heaven’s sake, looking for a slick, simple storyline as to why, in neighborhoods with growing crime, unemployment, drug use and incarceration rates, students are failing and dropping out.
Their answer: Those kids must have bad teachers.
You hear it from the liberal-leaning; you hear it from the conservative-leaning. They have different motives, but they need things boiled down. They need a sound-bite answer. They need a villain. They decided, without research or evidence or analysis that the one-size-fits-all finger points to: The Teacher…
…and that teacher’s union.
Our critics are fond of saying that “we are for the teachers” and not the students.
It makes me angry, because I know something they don’t know.
