Several pieces in the little newspaper should raise the blood pressure of progressives. I read it, thinking about Labor Day, so one small piece caught my eye. Teachers in the Township of Burt, Michigan (Grand Marais in the UP), have disaffiliated themselves from the NEA and MEA, becoming a “local only” union. The writers of the Michigan Education Report were pleased, and hope that many other district’s teachers will take similar action. I hope the teachers will understand the consequences of their action before too much harm is done.
This is just a bit too familiar to me. I saw this happening all over the state of Texas when I was an undergraduate in the 70s, hoping to get a job as a teacher. I did. My school’s teachers had disaffiliated from the NEA just as I began teaching. Actually, the teachers in my new district had never come close to having a union. There was no collective bargaining, no representation in setting policy, and no contract.
If there are readers here who are opposed to unions, if there are readers who do not know what a non-union school environment is like, keep reading.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Being born and nurtured in strong, anti-union Republicanism is my family's tradition – though most of my siblings have departed from tradition and moved on to other things.
The first time I uttered a profanity in the presence of my parents without being punished was when I was 6. Being an early reader, I had just seen some anti-union editorial in a magazine or newspaper, and I was revved up with political furor. At the supper table, I announced that we had do something about these g*d-damn unions! My parents fell out laughing. It was a miracle, they weren’t mad! Being against unions was great!
Of course, where we lived, there wasn't a union in sight. No right-thinking small town in our area had any room for unions.
Teaching is another family tradition.
I don't really know how far back the teachers go, but our 10th great-grandfather, who died in 1629, was a historian, geographer, and teacher. Many teachers cropped up in the following generations. All my siblings became teachers, and both of our parents were teachers.
When my oldest sibling began teaching in a far-off city, she joined the teachers’ union. On her visits home, she began to hint that the union seemed to have some good points, at least. She slipped further into apostasy, and became her school’s union rep. Eventually she fell all the way into the devil’s clutches (my father’s words), and became a full time union organizer in Colorado.
My parents were deeply ambivalent about my sister’s work, but they had begun to see some cracks in the family occupation. My dad couldn't support our family on a teacher's salary. He had left teaching, returning to it as a volunteer only when he retired from a job he really didn't like.
Still, they were pleased some years later when I began teaching, and they happily discussed the high salaries that teachers got in my sister's school district. My dad insisted this had nothing to do with being unionized, and assured me I'd get good pay also in my non-union school in Texas. He was delighted to learn that my district was not linked to the NEA. They have “thrown off the shackles of unionism”, he said. “You’re a professional. You don’t need a union.”
Right. He didn’t have a clue.
I was hired in a Texas city that had never even thought of a union without attaching "evil" or "communist" in the front of the term.
School started at 8:30am, but my students came in the room beginning at 8am. However, we were not to teach them before 8:30, when the tardy bell range, lest any child be "left behind". We were in charge of our children all day long. All day means, in this case, ALL day. No breaks. None. We ate with our students. We went with our students to the school library and to the music teacher and to the restrooms.
Lunch was 17 minutes, door-to-door, meaning from leaving my room to coming back to my room we had exactly 17 minutes. Teachers ate at the tables with their students, no exceptions. We could not leave the cafeteria for any reason while our students were eating. I was quickly advised not to drink anything at lunch, because I'd have to take my entire class to the restroom with me.
Our Superintendent was a former football coach - a common qualification in Texas.
Texas-Related Joke: What’s the difference between a principal and a teacher? A Master’s degree and three losing seasons.
He demanded complete obedience from his "team", and sent out memos telling us if there was any policy we didn't like, that the roads out of town ran north, south, east, and west. The second year I taught, he lengthened the school day 45 minutes. In my third year, he decreed that schools would open at 7:30am rather than 8, so kids could come into our rooms for one hour before we were to begin teaching. Teachers had no input into these decisions, and he threatened to fire the committee who politely protested these changes.
We were given a standard calendar so we would be on the same page in the same textbook in every class in the same grade throughout the city. We were given “teacher directives” to say word for word to our classes as we taught. We marked children each week in each subject, on a special folding card over 4 feet long. Roving inspectors visited our classroom unannounced to verify our fidelity to the calendar & curriculum. Two teachers in my school who were found "off calendar" twice had their art paper and supplies confiscated as punishment.
One reaction to the hyper-control was to go along with the standard lessons, which were terrible. Other teachers became adept at "Plan B", my personal creation. This consisted of a signal that we passed quickly from room to room when an inspection was being held, giving the far rooms enough time to get out the required lesson for the hour. We kept the "official stuff" at the ready at all times, and could switch over at a moment's notice.
Other requirements weren’t aimed at teaching, but at reduction of teaching. No contact paper in classrooms. Homework was to be filed daily in alphabetical order. Mechanical pencils and ink pens in any form were verboten. Each child was to have his or her own box of tissues not to be used by any other student.
I remember some requirements with real fondness. The Dental Auxiliary got the Sup to make another decree: All elementary grade children were issued toothbrushes and personal toothpaste tubes. Everyday, we were to have all children brush their teeth when they arrived at school, and do this again right after lunch. With 38 children in my classroom, this decree, if followed, would have taken up most of the morning and afternoon. Oh, and the mess, of course, that was to be the teachers' responsibility. A new regulation stated that children were not to touch dirt in any form.
Our pay scale was based on experience and education. My first year's salary was $16,402 in today's dollars. Over the next two years we got "big raises" from the state legislature, so my pay went to $17807, and then $20,543 (today's dollars). My other benefits included 5 days of sick leave per year, which would not accumulate if I didn't use them, until I'd been with the district for 5 years. I got one personal day off to deal with a list of approved personal business items. Anything not on the list resulted in being docked a days’ pay. I had health insurance, which at that time was not terribly costly. I was not covered by social security, but 2 percent of my pay was deducted for retirement, unmatched by the district or state.
When I saw my sister over the holidays, I met one of her district’s senior teachers. We discussed my district, and his. He had much smaller classes, much better pay, good retirement, and a reasonable amount of control over his teaching and his schedule. His district had once been much like mine, until the teachers became unionized. They won collective bargaining. Many of the things that were true of my school – micromanagement, treating teachers like serfs, completely unrealistic rules, were gone.
Twenty years later, I’m teaching in Michigan, with working responsibilities and conditions laid out in a union contract. I will never go back. Few of the people in my old school who began teaching when I did, are still at it. Most left within a few years for work that paid a better salary, and offered better working conditions. Their absence is a great loss.
I support John Edwards for many reasons. One of the most important reasons is because he understands the importance of unions. He also knows how to talk to people - like my father - who have been raised with extreme prejudice toward unions. He is very good at reaching people who do not understand unions, but who can benefit from strong labor and good working conditions. And he understands the important contribution of strong labor to our citizens and our country.
Some of this was published last year, in a labor diary I wrote for Booman Tribune. Since then, the attacks on teachers, on public education, and on unions have grown stronger. I was asked to post that piece again, by someone who said he didn’t understand why teachers needed to have a union.
0 comments:
Post a Comment