I’m marching for the teachers who joined me for the last 3 years in having the temerity to develop our own alternative licensure program for St. Paul: CareerTeacher--a better alternative to diversify our teaching force and meet the needs of all students.
This coming Saturday, July 30, thousands of teachers, parents, and other supporters of public schools will gather on the Ellipse near the White House. We will hear music and poetry, famous and less famous speakers, and then march around the White House. It may be as hot as this past Saturday. It does not matter. This is important to Save Our Schools. This is part of a series of events known as the
Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action.
This diary is to introduce you with the words of another person explaining why she is marching. Mary Cathryn Ricker is President of the St. Paul (MN) Teachers, which is part of the American Federation of Teachers. She also participates in the Executive Committee of Save Our Schools March. She posted the words from which I quote on Notes from Mary Cathryn, her personal blog, on Saturday, July 23. I have her permission to share as much as I need to.
The paragraph with which this begins is the first of the reasons Mary Cathryn offers for why she is marching.
Please keep reading.
Like many of us, Mary Cathryn sees many ways in which education "reform" as it is being done is wrong. What got her committed to our effort was
finding a national community of people who matched the indomitable hope and determination that exists within me and the members of my union that we can do better together despite setbacks, insults, attacks and deliberate mischaracterizations.
Each of the paragraphs in which she gives a reason for why she is marching carries a punch.
You should read the whole piece.
For example, there is this:
I’m marching for the 4 years of work we’ve spent intentionally developing a full-spectrum, career-long, continuous-growth model teacher support and evaluation system based on peer assistance and review. I’m marching for an administration who believes in doing this work with us and not to us.
and this
I’m marching with and on behalf of the St. Paul teachers who wanted a better, more direct relationship with parents and instituted a thoughtful parent home visit program.
You have now seen Mary Cathryn's first 3 reasons, all of which show a commitment by teachers to make changes that better serve their students and their community, including by improving their own profession, efforts that are threatened by the direction of national "refrmers" who ignore the voices of teachers and seek to impose changes that will be destructive of real improvement in our schools.
Here are two more of her reasons, including her family connection:
I’m marching for every child who deserves a well-prepared and effective teacher, which is every child, by the way. Including my own. I march for my two children who, like their fellow public school peers, have one shot a great K-12 learning experience.
I'm marching for my dad and his peers who worked to improve the teaching profession I inherited from them with the understanding that I would not rest on their legacy
Mary Cathryn is from Minnesota, a state with a legislature that is threatening all public services. As she writes
The timing of the March could not be better for me to march for the State of Minnesota. We just finished a difficult and, in some cases, damaging shutdown by coming to some difficult and, in some cases, damaging conclusions.
Here are four more powerful reasons:
I will march for a statewide teacher support and evaluation framework that intentionally supports a teacher’s natural instinct to get stronger, not a system designed to play ‘gotcha.’
I will march with determination to reject someone’s intent to end integration aid and turn it into a vibrant, committed statewide conversation about ending racism and improving equity instead.
I will march to prove collective bargaining is the most powerful tool we have to reach our common goal as a state to meet the needs of every child.
I will march to do whatever I can to include parents in our work and in the conversations we’re going to have.
Let me parse these four one at a time.
1. Teachers do not object to accountability. We are accountable to our parents, our students, our profession. We want our evaluations to help us improve on behalf of all of them, not merely to be used to further undermine effective teaching, to reduce teachers flexibility and responsiveness by fear and intimidation, by playing "gotcha."
2. Too much of what we are seeing in "reform" is leading to resegregation of our schools. Charters somehow seem to be even more segregated by race than are public schools in general, those reflecting the unfortunate resegregation of part of American society. Perhaps our commitment in Save our Schools is getting noticed by people who care about this - there is a group of new freedom riders, co-sponsored by the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation, which is supporting our March and Call to Action.
3. Collective bargaining has been important in improving the working conditions of all workers. Those who seek to undermine it want compliant workers from whom they can profit. They want to reduce workers to dependency upon the whims of those in authority. That is contrary to democracy. Working conditions have improved as a result of the power of collective bargaining. American workers owe their 40 hours weeks, paid holidays and vacations, and many benefits, to the efforts of those who struggled for collective bargaining. Unions were necessary to build the American middle class, now under severe pressure. In schools, collective bargaining has been an important part of how we have improved the quality of our education, preventing administrators and school boards from operating on the basis of nepotism, favoritism, political preference or who belonged to the right church.
4. This point is critical - it is important to note that parents are playing an active role in the organizing and planning of Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action. Those of us who teach know we do not do so in isolation from the larger community, that the most significant influence upon our students is their families, that we must work together for the benefit of the children, and thus the benefit of us all.
There is more in Mary Cathryn's post, more reasons, more that will help you understand our commitment - hers and mine - to this important effort.
The March is not the end of our efforts, but rather the beginning.
The journey will continue.
And I will end as Marcy Cathryn does, like this:
So, while my list of education reform gone off the tracks is long, my list of everything that suggests our best days in public education are ahead of us is longer, and more motivating. We can do this work together and so I invite you to join me where ever you can along this march.