Why Do Wisconsin Protesters Matter To Me and You?

Back in the olden days of 5 years ago, I was a teacher in a public school. I loved what I did, I loved the other teachers, and I loved doing something that meant something. I don’t know if I was the best teacher ever, or even if I was a bad teacher. I earned my Master’s Degree in Elementary Education with the hopes of changing lives and doing my best to make an impact on my student’s lives. For the most part, I was happy doing what I was doing.

My first two years teaching
My first two years as a teacher was in a new public Charter school on the other side of town where I had to drive 45 minutes each way to work. My first year, I worked in a 25′x15′ partition of a trailer with no internet access and nearly no supplies. I was the first 6th grade teacher in the 2nd year of the school that the previous year had only gone up to 5th grade.

I LOVED it. I loved the school, I loved the kids, and I loved the freedom I had to make the most of my teaching. Aside from following the Sunshine State Standards (a Florida public school outline of required learning), I was given free-reign to teach how I wanted with whatever resources I could find. I spent nearly $1000 of my own money on my classroom that year. I made about $26,000 a year in salary with no benefits. Still, I loved it. My director was open to any idea I presented to her, and I think she liked that I was a brand new teacher, still in graduate school, with endless ideas on how to teach the children. My students performed very well on the state standardized test (FCAT) even though I didn’t change what I taught to accomodate the test.

That year, I think I was a pretty damn good teacher.

The following year, the school added a 7th grade and started breaking up the 5th-7th graders into class subjects so they would rotate from subject-to-subject like any normal public middle school. I was given the Language Arts class, and to say I was elated, would be an understatement. I chose the textbooks, the curriculum, and how to teach my kids. I was pregnant with my first that year and still driving nearly, and sometimes over, an hour each way to work every day, so my enthusiasm for my work waned a bit, but I still did everything I could to be the best teacher for my students.

My last 2 years teaching
My 3rd and 4th years was as a 5th grade teacher in a typical public school close to my house. I was excited to learn how a “real” public school worked but having attended a typical public school all through my grade school years, I knew generally what was expected.

What I didn’t expect was the micro-managing from the principals and leadership from the school. I didn’t expect weekly and daily requirement changes and spreadsheets and data collecting and pressure put on myself and my students to “make appropriate gains.” These “gains” weren’t set forth by myself or the student’s teacher the previous year or even based on the student’s ability. These “gains” were put into place by government officials much higher up on the proverbial totem pole than anyone I knew. I’d never seen the officials in my classroom, much less my school. They’d never visited my students or myself to see what we were doing or what we were accomplishing.

Government requirements in learning and teaching
These government officials were laying down the law of what was appropriate for my students and all other students across the county, state, and country by putting all kids on an even playing field. It’s just not natural for everyone, kids especially, to be judged the same by the same test taken at the same time, based on the age of the child. All kids don’t learn the same way. All teachers don’t teach the same way.

Yet, sameness is what is required in public schools. The principal I had my last year of teaching required all teachers on the same grade level to be teaching the same lesson at the same time from the same sub-lesson at any given point of the day. In her words, “I want to be able to pop into your classroom and see you’re doing the same thing as the teacher across the hall.” That mandate, I believe, did not come directly from her ideas on how to be a good principal. I believe the county officials funneled this “ideal” way of learning and teaching from higher government officials who had the idea that all children must achieve the same goals at the same time in the same way.

My last two years (years 3 and 4) of teaching was difficult. Filling out paperwork, keeping track of every single mandate, putting children in after-school tutoring for under-performing on a (dull) computer program, all to make sure the students would perform adequately on a state-wide standardized test.

Individual student abilities and achievements are never taken into consideration when testing them for their “appropriate gains.” Yet, performance-based pay is being considered for teachers. Not the performance of the teacher to individualize his or her teaching to accomodate for different learning abilities or styles, but the performance of the student’s to “make appropriate gains” on a standardized test.

Why teacher’s unions are important
Without teacher’s unions, county, state, and national governments would put into place a Performance-Base Pay for teachers. Without unions, teachers would be required to give over their limited personal time to principals’ requests. Without unions, teachers would not have a voice in their own defense from principals. The union active in my county has negotiated a pay freeze for teachers that was in place for several years because of budgetary limitations. The teachers gave in to making the same salary as the years prior so more teachers could have a job.

One aspect of the union contract with which I contend is permanent tenure after 3 years of teaching. I don’t feel it’s enough time to prove that a teacher is good at what she does or is it enough time to give a lifetime license to be in the classroom.

My point (finally)
My point (and I think I finally have one) is that unions for teachers are necessary for providing a good education. Students need their teachers to have bargaining abilities with the county governments. Without unions, teachers would fear for their jobs if they didn’t perform to the government-enacted “sameness appropriate gains.” The unions are fighting to help teachers do the best for their students. What’s happening in Wisconsin is coming to Florida and New Jersey and many other states around the country. The governors are taking away the union’s abilities to do what’s best for teachers and students. Without the unions, your children would likely become a stamped version of the kid next to him or her.

I’m not anti-public school. I taught in a public school, I attended public schools (in 44th-ranked Florida, no less!), and my children attend public schools. But I’m glad my kids’ teachers have a collective voice to help them do their best for my kids.

For now.

I support the protestors in Wisconsin, and if it comes to it here in Florida, I will stand with other teachers and parents and protest the stripping of collective bargaining by the governor.

Teaching is an art.

Teaching is not a methodology that can be handed down with a list of requirements to be met on a point-by-point basis ending in a standardized test that measures the student’s ability to take a test.

I stopped teaching for good
I had to stop teaching because putting two babies in daycare was nearly the same costs per month as what I brought home from my paycheck. It just didn’t make sense for me to continue working to keep my girls in daycare. I stopped teaching with the idea that I could return to teaching once they were both in school full-time, and that teaching would always be there for me. At this point, I don’t plan to go back to the endless paperwork and documentation and rote teaching methods. It’s not what I believe is the best for the students I’d have the pleasure of teaching. At least with my own children, I can educate them beyond the classroom of sameness. And especially lucky for them and me, they attend the best “individualized” school in the county in which we live.

We are lucky. Most students and teachers are not.

Action
PLEASE find out what is going on in Wisconsin if you don’t already know. What is going on there now can affect every state in the union if it is allowed to progress. Your child’s education is on the line right now in the capitol of Wisconsin, and unfortunately, the news isn’t paying attention.