#redfored

If I retire as a teacher fifty years from now—likely just days after my student loans are finally paid off—you can tell me I was wrong. But today, on day one of the LAUSD strike, I am quite sure, that teaching is not my forever career. 

UTLA isn’t asking for anything unreasonable. They are asking for the same thing all educators are: to give kids a fair and fighting chance to be learners. And man, are we doing it wrong. 

LAUSD teachers have not left their classrooms because they are willing. Or because it is easy to walk away. They left because they are unwilling to put up with a system that refuses to service their kids.

While the jury is out on whether class size matters (it does), I can tell you that it’s clear that it takes a village to raise a child. Or, in the case of LAUSD, 600,000 children. That village should include teachers, paras, nurses, guidance counselors, social workers, and more. So teachers, who are spent and overwhelmed trying to be all of those things at once, are asking for help. 

There is no perfect resolution in this strike. No way to make everyone happy. And really, no amount of money in the world to adequately address the problems. 

At this point, it’s important to note that these struggles noted by the UTLA are not unique to LAUSD. 

So let me say it loud for the people in the back: WE ARE DOING IT WRONG. Education. Here. In America. 

I don’t have all the answers. But here’s what I know. 

• My students would be more successful if I had less of them at one time OR a second teacher or para in my classroom (although I want them all with me every day, I breathe a little easier when two or three are absent, knowing I can get to more kids.)
• My students would be more successful if my school had more professionals who dealt with nutrition, community outreach, and mental health. (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, anyone?)
• My students would be more successful if I, as their teacher, had adequate time to build relationships with them (because there is no gray area there—relationships are what matter!)
• My students would be more successful if I, as their teacher, weren’t asked to serve in quite so many roles. If I weren’t stretched quite so thin mentally and emotionally. (I love them. These are MY kids. And I will not let them fail.) 
• My students would be more successful if I were not continuously and deliberately deprofessionalized by being asked to teach scripted completely curriculums built around standards that, I’m sorry, just don’t seem developmentally appropriate all the way around. (I will continue to do what is best for my kids, who aren’t made to fit into boxes or be defined by standards.)

I show up every day and I do the best I can for my kids. And yet. I have never been so worried about test scores, even though I believe they tell me very little about my kids. The problem is that these test scores seem to matter very much to other people, people who aren’t in classrooms everyday seeing the trauma these kids come in with, the anxieties they develop from being here, and the little things that take our day off track—because those “little things” are actually pretty big things when you are ten years old. 

Thus I am feeling ineffective. Drained. Disenchanted. Disempowered. I will give it some more time. But things have got to change. 

#UTLAstrong #UTLAstrike #Strike4ed #redfored #WeareLA