A Chicago Teachers Union action. (Photo credit: Flickr user JeanPaulHolmes)
At 10 PM central standard time last night, 29,000 Chicago teachers and support staff declared that they are going out on strike (read about their grievances and how you can help them here).
On his blog Teacher X, Chicago Teacher Xian Barret explains one of the most important things to understand about the teacher strike: it’s not just about teachers, it’s also about defending kids. Here’s an excerpt from his blog post, where he responds to Chicago Public Schools administration claiming that a strike hurts kids:
When you make me cram 30-50 kids in my classroom with no air conditioning so that temperatures hit 96 degrees, that hurts our kids.
When you lock down our schools with metal detectors and arrest brothers for play fighting in the halls, that hurts our kids.
When you take 18-25 days out of the school year for high stakes testing that is not even scientifically applicable for many of our students, that hurts our kids.
When you spend millions on your pet programs, but thereai??i??s no money for school level repairs, so the roof leaks on my students at their desks when it rains, that hurts our kids.
When you unilaterally institute a longer school day, insult us by calling it a ai???full school dayai??? and then provide no implementation support, throwing our schools into chaos, that hurts our kids.
When you support Mayor Emanuelai??i??s TIF program in diverting hundreds of millions of dollars of school funds into to the pockets of wealthy developers like billionaire member of your school board, Penny Pritzker so she can build more hotels, that not only hurts kids, but somebody should be going to jail.
If you want to learn more about the strike in Chicago and how you can help, see our blog post “Chicagoai??i??s Teachers Just Went On Strike ai??i?? Hereai??i??s Everything You Need To Know About Why.“
True stuff;
1. I taught intermediate classes (6th to 8th grade) in Brooklyn NY about a decade ago. After a year of teaching the principal asked me what I thought of the school and all they were doing. He said he was asking me because of my many years as a corporate executive in the financial field and wanted a different perspective. So I told him that I had heard there might be some racism in the school system but didn’t know if it was true. A year here and witnessed racism that hurt the kids. He looked astounded and asked me to explain. I told him I had a student in 6th grade and it took me a few months before I realized he couldn’t read at all. I called the kid’s mother and she was screaming at me like crazy but I realized quickly that she was nit screaming at me but at the whole system. She explained that she had been coming to schools so many years to complain but also to plead that her son be helped. Then she said the magic words that “at least if someone would just tell me what to do.” The kid was then taken out of my class and I assumed he was now somewhere where he could get help. Follwing the summer I had a 7th grade class and lo and behold the same kid was there and he had made no progress in learning to read. I looked at the principal right in the eye and told him that promoting an unqualified minority kid year after year was probably the worst kind of racism that could be practiced.
Very sad. Someone should at least help that kid learn to read if at all possible.
Did anyone give this child an IQ test? It sounds like there is a good chance of retardation. Relocating the child to a more appropriate special education program is the solution. I often see the same situation in Los Angeles schools. Retarded children are not properly evaluated and pushed in with the normal kids. It’s disheartening for them and they become withdrawn. I encourage parents everywhere to not do drugs while pregnant lest they birth a retard and compounds the difficulty of everyone’s life. That’s the problem with CPS students. Drugs and gangs. Parents on drugs and in gangs. Endless cycle.
I feel for you. I teach Rdg. support to 6-8th grade students in Minneapolis. It’s astounding the number of students I see who are very far below grade level in their reading skills when they get to middle school. It’s a huge issue in our city, I can’t imagine the numbers of under supported and “pushed along” children you must see in Chicago. A few years back a 6th grade student came to me from Chicago not even able to identify the ABC’s and the numbers 1-10. It saddens me that teachers are not getting the support, resources, and power to make decisions about how to help our students succeed. Billionaires may know how to make monetary profit margins fatter, but they don’t have a clue on how to educate underprivileged students. Chicago teachers shouldn’t sign a contract unless it includes the resignation of Mrs. P (hotel billionaire) and others with their own financial agendas from the board.
I’ve been a NYC special education teacher for 30 years. I’m familiar with some students who never learned to read. Most of them have severe dyslexia. There are methods that do work with these students. I’m certified in one of them, the Wilson Reading System, and I have been given the opportunity in some cases to work with them with good results. The results vary with the degree of the disability a student has, and the amount of time put in to individual tutoring. One story is amazing. IL, one of my students, at the age of 18, finally learned many of the sounds and how to blend them together. He had a real hard time saying the words with fluency but was improving. Ultimately, he was able to get his driver’s permit. He took a few hours to decode each and every word and passed. They learn to “tap” out each sound and then blend them together. He did confide in me though that he still couldn’t read street signs because he couldn’t tap out the sounds fast enough while driving.
I also worked with another very severe case. It took several weeks for him to learn about 10 sounds and blend some of them together in order to read words. After reading several words using the methods he learned, he was so proud and exclaimed that he could now read a little. This is the same person who loves to discuss religious ideology with me! Fortunately for him, my friend and colleague, found a great vocational high school program and got him into it. He’s learning real job skills. They also use the same method for teaching reading. This is a child, who at 16 years old, will hopefully be successful because the right intervention was finally found and pursued by the loving professionals who worked with him.
Unfortunately, there’s no cohesive policy that tries to identify these students, and specifically give them one of these programs, along with more appropriate instruction for them. Many of the powers that be know how to make money on useless tests, but don’t know how to organize school systems to help these students.
2. I had triple bypass surgery during a summer, in August, and was ordered back to teaching by November 1st. My doctor wasn’t happy and told me to watch myself as it was too early to go back. I arrived at the school and was given 3 Special Ed classes (I had no Special Ed training at all) and a 4th class that was part of the Chancellor’s experiment to try to help all those kids who couldn’t get into high school to take one term to take two tests in math and reading in order to get into H.S. Now remember my coindition and consider the kids in this class; there were over 30 kids in the class, average ages were between 13 and 17 and all were what one could call juvenile delinquents. Most teachers will say “as long as my kids don’t end up going to jail I’ll be happy” which is understandable but folks I had kids in that class who were out awaitng trial and even a couple who were fresh out on parole. I rememebr asking one girl if her mother knew she was a prostitute at age 16 and she said “Are you kidding me? Who do you think taught me to do this?” I was told by the assistant principal that all they wanted me to do is make sure those kids stay in the classroom because they didn’t want those kids mixing with the rest of the students. But the main problem was that so many of them were bigger than me so each day I went to the princ and asst princ explaining that I was in danger daily and and every time was told that it will be taken care of. Then on the next to last day before the Christmas holiday two of those kids hit me hard in the chest. I was in excruciating pain and went to my doctor who then told me I had a fractured sternum and that the two sides of my chest could not come together again. I was told I was now permanently disabled. I received a call from my union and was told that they were there to help me in any way thay can. I asked if they would advocate for me and they said they would go with me to the Board of Education Medical Referree with me when the time comes. I told them is was old enough to not need anyone to hold my hand when I go there. Then the Board showed me that they were not only racist but just as corrupt as well.
CPS schools let kids fight all time. Teachers just look the udder way or go out of room til we done. All they want is money.
Many of your accusations, though sensational, are not credible. But let’s not start there.
The teachers strike in Chicago is looming. Both the head of the CPS, and the head of the teachers union are acting like children. Yet, I side with the CPS and not the teachers. The union leader said she was insulted at a 2% pay hike, now they claim it’s not about the money. Ha. Teachers make more money here in Chicago, than in N.Y. The average teachers salary in Chicago, NOT INCLUDING BENIFITS, is around 70, 000, that’s right, seventy grand a year.
Sorry folks, nothing against unions, but sometimes they go too far, Christ, are unions above regulations? I think not. Teachers are government employees, they have a duty not to strike. I say the CPS should stick too their offer. How many Americans have lost jobs, pensions, and homes. I know teachers are important, work hard, and are educated, but there is a limit to their attitude of entitlement. They are holding our kids hostage, I say tell em take it or leave it, plenty of teachers will work without a union, and they can always form another, or join later. the point is this is a militant tactic and should not be tolerated, they are disrupting the lives of millions, for what?
Roosevelt openly opposed bargaining rights for government unions.
“The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, “I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place” in the public sector. “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government.”
And if you’re the kind of guy who capitalizes “government,” woe betide such obstructionists.
Roosevelt wasn’t alone. It was orthodoxy among Democrats through the ’50s that unions didn’t belong in government work. Things began changing when, in 1959, Wisconsin’s then-Gov. Gaylord Nelson signed collective bargaining into law for state workers. Other states followed, and gradually, municipal workers and teachers were unionized, too.
Even as that happened, the future was visible. Frank Zeidler, Milwaukee’s mayor in the 1950s and the last card-carrying Socialist to head a major U.S. city, supported labor. But in 1969, the progressive icon wrote that rise of unions in government work put a competing power in charge of public business next to elected officials. Government unions “can mean considerable loss of control over the budget, and hence over tax rates,” he warned.
We democrats all talk about a collective sacrifice during the economic recovery, but when push comes to shove, this union leader won’t do it. IMHO teachers are the people who are models for our children, yet their union leader needs to grow up. This union leader, I think her name is Lewis,, could use a lesson or two!
Certainly there is room for improvement in administration, but as someone who has researched in several CPS schools, and has taught, and is a parent in the CPS school system, most teachers are paid pretty well, relatively speaking. Unions need regulation too, especially when it comes to government workers. Teachers need to accept they evaluations are important, and getting fired is a fact of life, like it or not.
Vicki, it is sad but someone has to step up to right a wrong. That school is considered one of the good ones yet they are so proud of their most famous graduate, Stephan Marbury, who also coudn’t read when he graduated.
Kristine, well written and it isn’t as if I disagree with you but let’s go back a little. When I was much younger I felt this country had its priorities screwed up. A shitload of money to the military each year while teachers were not paid enough and they were the ones taking care of our children. I am not into unions that much either because my only experience wth them was during my case against the BOE. But what I learned was this; I always thought that the job of a union was to protect its memebrs meaning when the member is being abused then the union should step in and say something to protect the member. Instead what I got was my union behaving subservient to the BOE. When the Medivcal referree asked for more info for me I got it and went to my union rep. I asked if he would take this and then advocate on my behalf and all he kept saying was I can take it to them.
Would you like to teach summer school in a building sans AC, that reaches 96 degrees? Seventy large isn’t a whole lot of money for purposes of residing in Chicago. How would you like to teach in a dilapitated facility,often to the point of risking injury to yourself by virtue of requirement to be there? I suppose you would willingly submit to being paid less while being forced to work longer hours? You believe it’s fine to force educators to abdicate their own training and waste critical learning hours for purposes of teaching kids how to take a rediculous test that provides little or none, useful information toward gathering real empirical data about how best to teach children? These “tests” paid for by our tax dollars, only serve to swell the bank accounts of the faux education industry that write them. Poverty and it’s many related societal illnesses are what trouble public education. These teachers are standing up for their students toward making them productive critical thinkers, and all you can do is rail against their union?! In times such as these, unions are all that separate democracy from plutocracy. In this instance I doubt Mr. Roosevelt would be against a teachers union, he was smart enough to sniff out the ‘rats of capitalism’. He’d likely send a message to Rahm and tell him to cease and desist or risk political ruin. This union leader isn’t giving into the ruse you apparently have bought into, regarding a need for austerity measures. You’re no Democrat either.
I stand with the teachers and students of Chicago. I am against Mayor Rahm Emanuel for he is anti student, anti teacher, anti labor, anti union. I am against charter schools and privatizing public education. Emanuel is acting like a Republican, not a Democrat. I am pro labor and pro union. I live in San Diego, CA.
I hope teachers strike forever so no school
Maybe all of the teachers who dislike their jobs so much and who dislike the Chicago Public Schools so much should get another job. You know, start a business, make payroll, plan and save for your retirement, pay for your own health insurance, pay for the air conditioning. Take a financial risk in the business world. Do what a large number of Americans who do not eat at the trough of the Chicago taxpayer.
Oh, and the student who was obviously dyslexic (first post) was passed along by teachers and administrators.
I would not let my children step inside a Chicago Public School. These teachers are thugs!