Kids First

While we're on strike, some folks are claiming that the teachers don't really care about the kids - that we (teachers) only care about ourselves. EXCUUUUUUUSE ME? Have you BEEN to an elementary school? Have you spent time INSIDE the classroom? Teachers spend their entire careers sacrificing their time and money as a labor of love for their students. We eat, breath, and sleep our students. I drive home everyday thinking about how to improve a lesson I'm teaching or how to get little Kareem to focus in class. I have a colleague that grades papers while she's at red lights. Others go into school every weekend to catch up on work and prepare. We do field trips, enrichment classes after school, homework help before or after school, etc.

My friend M and I were walking her painfully cute pup today and she pointed out that we are SO all about the kids everyday, but it just so happens that right now we have to watch our own backs. We are usually standing up for the children, our whole careers are based on child advocacy, but this time we have to stand up for ourselves. So, YES, the students are missing school while us teachers are on strike. And, teachers, above all, realize that the two weeks of lost instruction time (added to the layer of fog surrounding students after a week of spring break) have us further behind than we want to think about. But that is an unfortunate byproduct of the strike. We LOVE our kids. We really do. I miss those 32 sets of eyes looking to me every morning wondering what's in store for the day. I miss the way they light up when they learn something new. I miss picking pencils up off the floor at the end of each day so we don't run out again. I can't believe I miss the musky "kid smell" of the room, and I also miss the learning, and the laughter. Heck....I even miss straightening out the desk aisles everyday - one of my least favorite jobs.

One of the Hayward School Board Members, J.C.,(that's not Jesus, by the way) wrote an OPINION piece in the local paper claiming that the union does not have the best interest of the students at heart. Well...DUH! That's NOT the union's job. The union represents the teachers and we, the teachers, stand up for our students. What really chaps my hide is when he spends a coupla paragraphs giving lip service to what the students need. Quote: "If students really come first, why have I not heard HEA (nor anyone but the school board) ask first, "What educational 'raise' or increase do the students 'deserve' and 'need'?" DUDE! WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?!
Every teacher and school site can give you a nice long list of what we've been asking for and NEEDING for years. I was insulted when I read his opinion piece. I had to breathe. Breathe, Sal, Breathe. It's an opinion. But the sad part is that he is one of the school board members.

Where was Mister "get the students what they deserve" when I had 43 students in my class for 3 weeks at the beginning of the year? There weren't enough desks or supplies for all the students in my class AND it was a safety hazard. Kids were perched in chairs, without desks, all over the class, blocking doorways and aisles. Where's the school board OR the district when we don't have enough books for all the students? Where are they when a troubled student is constantly disrupting the learning of others? Where are they when one teacher is given two grade levels to teach in the same amount of time that we teach one grade level? What about the general upkeep of the school sites? Some of these schools look like war zones. What message does that send to the students? Does it say, "Hey, we want you to go to Stanford!" ? When you claim that you wanna do something for the kids,frankly, you're talkin' outta your a**.

Don't talk to me about the kids suffering or about what they need. We know that they suffer everyday in the public education system. But it's the teachers and school staff that find creative ways to make the short-comings of a broken school system transparent to all of our students.