Teachers who strike when they are the highest paid in the nation and come out and say that the kids shouldn’t be first, should be ashamed of themselves.
As someone going into teaching, I would want to be slapped if I ever put myself before my students. These people have no accountability and no sense of decency. Why be a teacher if you’re going to be greedy and drop your responsibility every time you don’t get what you want? Didn’t you know going in you weren’t going to make immaculate amounts of money?
Why is it that whenever someone wants to say something negative about the Chicago strike, that person always seems to forget that THIS ISN’T REALLY ABOUT THE PAY. Of course we’re not getting paid “immaculate” amounts of money (I don’t think that word means what you think it means). We’re striking for better evaluation systems so that we get evaluated on our teaching and not on how well the kids can take a test. We’re striking for better learning conditions (smaller class sizes, air-conditioning). We’re striking for full-time nurses, counselors, librarians, art/music/PE teachers.
The decision to strike was not made lightly. Just within these past few years, a law was passed requiring at least 75% of the union members to vote for a strike in order for one to be possible. NINETY PERCENT of the CTU members voted last year. If this strike was just about the money, there is no way that 90% of the CTU would have agreed.
This morning, I woke up at 1AM, stressed out and anxious. I had to throw up because of the anxiety. Yeah, I’m feeling twisted up inside because of money.
Maybe you’ll end up in a wonderful school district that has all the money and parental support it will ever need and more. Maybe you’ll end up with kids who come from wonderful, happy families and need no counseling. Maybe you’ll end up in a school where the class sizes never exceed 20. Maybe you’ll end up in a school with a fantastic arts and music program with a full-time librarian and daily gym.
Realistically, that’s probably not going to happen, so I hope for your sake, you’ll never find yourself in the position that 26,000 CTU members did this past year.
Guys, I told you that annaslibrary is awesome.
(Source: queenoftheashes, via windycitylibrarian)
