ski like life needs it
soon the powder will be gone
and we’ll miss this choice
Fresh Powder
choices
Give Us a Choice, and We’ll Take It from You
Give us a choice, and we’ll take it from you.
This could be the motto of the education reform movement that has gripped Colorado and the nation.
I know because I am part of the problem.
I fell for school choice when the idea was nearly unheard of. In 1991, miserable after two years at Merrill, I heard an announcement that changed my life.
There was going to be a new arts school opening with theatre, creative writing, visual arts, and music. To me, it sounded like a dream.
I spent two weeks preparing for my audition.
And, even though my family thought I was crazy, I took the bus every day that fall and for the next five years to attend Denver School of the Arts, located in the low-income Cole neighborhood.
What did I learn at my school of choice? I learned that it takes a village, led by amazing teachers, to put together a literary magazine. A theatre production. A music concert.
And that village could include kids whose experiences and faces and belief systems looked and sounded nothing like my own. And that art could provide a guttural release of emotion more meaningful to me than anything I’d experienced in education. And that the “low-income” village included the most tenacious, beautiful people I would come to love.
That is why, twelve years after graduating from Denver’s premier school of choice, I bought into the idea of charter schools. An 80/20 bilingual pre-IB program starting as young as kindergarten? Sign my daughters up!
My fifth grader getting bullied at the regular school? Let me put her in the super-structured, flawless-reputation charter network where culture is king. Let her sister follow her.
Let us white privileged parents with the ability to chauffeur our children choose their schools for them.
School choice is all about privilege. I have the privilege, as a highly-educated, middle-class white woman, to send my kids to a charter school. To sift through school ratings. To take over something that was intended to bring better schools into “bad” neighborhoods, and, upon seeing their successes, the privileged flocked to.
And the schools? They run the gamut of success stories piled on top of failures. They pay teachers so minimally that the majority leave the profession within five years. They are plagued with mismanagement of funds and classrooms. They are run by people who have no experience in an educational setting and by people who want “something better.”
But I’ll tell you what’s better.
Not having the choice. A regular public school in every neighborhood that meets the needs of every student. Teachers with decent salaries who love the diversity of where they work and paychecks that help them sustain their families.
And a district willing to see that the phrases education reform, charterization, and school choice are synonyms for privilege.
You gave us a choice. In turn, we privileged took that choice away from those who needed it most.
This needs to stop. Now.
My Heart Breaks
Students,
I am going on strike tomorrow. I hope that you come to school, are respectful towards your substitute teachers, get your breakfast and lunch, visit the food bank on Thursday, and keep up with what your teachers have posted on Schoology.
I’ve heard the district will not allow us to access Schoology or emails this week. I am so sorry that I will not be able to respond to any messages from you. Please come see me outside the school if you have any questions about anything. I will grade all of your hard work when I get back.
We all know this is more than grades. This is more than a few assignments. This is more than a week of school.
I love you, and I want you to understand that when we see inequity in our world, we must stand up to it. That is why I’m striking. I want what is best for you, the students. You need teachers who will continuously stay at South. You need a school and district that values students over dollars. You need a chance to see that corporate greed cannot, and will not, define where you graduate from.
In Solidarity,
Ms. Vittetoe
Fly Us Home
Wanting a better life for her family, my mother uprooted us to move to Denver when I was 11. Contrarily, her own parents had ripped her from Park Hill Elementary at the same age 33 years prior in the 1960s “white flight” migration. Always burdened by this blatant racism, my mother told us, “We’re moving straight to Denver, and you girls will learn the value of diversity.”
I attended Merrill and Cole middle schools and Manual High School, the latter two hosting the burgeoning Denver School of the Arts.
Unlike my tiny town in upstate New York, DPS offered me a side of society I’d never seen: racial violence in forced-integration hallways, a Chicano Mathletics coach, and a set of friends from multiple races, language backgrounds, and family dynamics. DSA offered me a spotlight into the world of LGBTQ acceptance and the privilege of the most inspirational teacher anyone could ever imagine–Mrs. Jana Clark.
Mrs. Clark and DPS are the reasons I became a teacher and the reason I came back to this district after teaching stints elsewhere.
Because Denver is my microcosm of what the world could be. What my mother wanted and what I was lucky enough to proclaim: I am a DPS graduate. I am a DPS parent. I am a DPS teacher.
DPS represents our world. Its teachers represent DPS.
Listen to the teachers. Their right to strike is your right to make this city the one we want to fly to, not fly from.
My Livelihood is ‘Political Theater’
I have twenty-eight students with one to two essays due EACH WEEK in my new University of Phoenix class, my second job that pays $225/week on the occasional basis that I am granted a class.
I haven’t taught this particular class in over two years, so of course, they’ve changed the entire syllabus, I have to read two different textbooks, and I need to update all my rubrics. Also, all of the online discussion questions have changed, so I will need to respond to thirty different questions with a new set of thirty 200-300-word responses.
Part of the reason I keep this job is that it’s online, and I can squeeze it into (every possible free moment of) my day.
Another reason I have kept it, at the moment, is to fund the $2000+ I’m paying, in addition to doing hundreds of hours of work, to try to obtain my National Board Certification, which is the only possible way to get a raise at this point in my career without investing thousands of dollars and hours in another degree (I am MA+30).
The disheartening reality of what every teacher I know does to survive, every teacher who isn’t lucky enough to marry rich, or at the very least marry someone with guaranteed job opportunities and a forever-steady income, is that we must jump through every hoop imaginable to make ends meet.
We teach summer school. We do home visits. We spend our own money on advanced degrees and credits with the hope of improving our instruction and earning mediocre raises.
This is on top of the fifty or more hours a week we spend planning lessons, grading papers, counseling students in trauma at lunch and after school, attending meetings, sports events, professional development, and student recruitment events (because we have to sell our schools now).
So when my state, my “blue” but really purple (perhaps leaning red) state, calls us actors on a “political theater” stage, I am at my wit’s end:
“Criticizing the most recent teacher pay bargaining session as ‘political theater,’ the head of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment urged the Denver school district and its teachers union Monday to work harder to find common ground — even as he expressed skepticism that the two sides would reach a deal” (Chalkbeat).
Was it theatrical that we gave up the tenth evening in as many weeknights to wait for our district to come to the table with an actual proposal rather than a cost-of-living increase already in the budget?
Was it theatrical that young children stood behind the fraudulent superintendent with signs begging her not to deport our teachers after the HR department more or less threatened their right to work?
Was it theatrical that we have negotiated for fifteen months, yes over “philosophy disagreements” because the PHILOSOPHY OF OUR DISTRICT IS TO SHUT DOWN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, TAKE OPPORTUNITIES AWAY FROM STUDENTS OF COLOR, AND GENTRIFY EVERYTHING FROM NEIGHBORHOODS TO CURRICULUM?
And. Just. Like. That.
All the hours. All the years. All the goddamn blood, sweat, and tears have been put on stage for the world to see, chart-paper and all, chants in the background, livelihoods on the line.
For political theater of the worst show you will ever wish you didn’t buy a ticket to see.
Oh, Susana (Cordova)
Oh, I came from no advancement
with my income on my sleeve
I’m g’wan to leave Denver
my true rate for to see
Oh, it rained all night the day I left
the district it was dry,
the burn so hot I froze to death
Susana, don’t you cry
Oh, Susana, oh don’t you cry for me
I’ve come from no advancement
with my income on my sleeve
I jumped aboard the income gap
And traveled down the schedule
The ‘lectric lie magnified
My college’s credential
The district bargaining went bust,
I really thought I’d die,
I shut my eyes to hold my breath,
Susana, don’t you cry
Oh, Susana, oh don’t you cry for me
I’ve come from no advancement
with my income on my sleeve
I had a dream the other night
When everything was still
I thought I saw Susana,
a-coming down the hill
The ProComp deal was in her cheek,
The tear was in her eye,
Says I am coming for you, meek,
Susana, don’t you cry
Oh, Susana, oh don’t you cry for me
I’ve come from no advancement
with my income on my sleeve
I soon will be without a check,
And then I’ll look all round,
And when I find Susana,
I’ll fall upon the ground,
But if I do not find her,
This bargaining will die,
And when it’s dead and buried,
Susana, don’t you cry.
Here’s Your Answer
no. we won’t shut up.
no, thank you. we won’t sit down.
we’re here. we’re watching.
we’re ready to strike.
we’re ready to fight for them.
we’re ready to win.
Fifteen Reasons Why: We Deserve More, DPS
Denver Public Schools has filed a request for state intervention to prevent the teachers’ union from striking next week. In the 19-page file, Superintendent Susana Cordova and her school district legal team have laid out reasons A-O (fifteen reasons) why the state should intervene.
Fifteen reasons why we, the teachers, deserve to be paid a fair, living, predictable wage.
Fifteen reasons why schools are targeted as the saviors of society in the same moment that teachers are vilified by the press and the public.
Fifteen reasons why we need a strike: let’s draw national attention to our plight, to the plight of a society that devalues education and the teachers who work to change the world.
Below, I have copied and pasted the fifteen reasons with haikus that represent teachers like me who have dealt with every one in some form or fashion:
A. Loss of Instructional Time from Teachers on Strike:
six hours a day
with every kid, every need
(and six more at home)
B. Students with Special Needs:
making learning plans
for families who need voices,
for inclusive rights
C. English Language Learner Students:
try writing our wrongs
again: try righting our wrongs
to build fluency
D. Potential Denial of H1-B Visas:
immigrant teachers:
First Amendment denial
(freedom, too, revoked)
E. Students Enrolled in Affective-Needs/Autism Center Programs:
routine disruption
tears students from what they need:
teachers who love them
F. Students Receiving Mental Health Services:
so much more than school
SSPs save our students
(sometimes from themselves)
G. Students Receiving Medical Care Services:
our school nurse gives them:
medicine, patience, advice,
hope for the future
H. Students Dependent on Schools for Food and Nutrition:
every teacher here
has given to the food bank
(lunch is not enough)
I. Students Dependent on Schools for Shelter from the Elements:
the prison pipeline
could stop with these school buildings
and a teacher’s love
J. Gifted and Talented Students:
let them be leaders
led by those who see their light
(you guessed it–teachers)
K. Student-Athletes Seeking Scholarships:
cultural veto:
to remove a student’s chance
of avoiding loans
L. Students Taking Concurrent College Classes:
what teachers give them:
highly-educated guides
for college keenness
M. Financial Hardship on Families:
double-income trap
means no parent waits at home
(they need our service)
N. Absence of Childcare for Families:
after all, aren’t we
glorified babysitters
asking for too much?
O. Fewer Resources for New American Families:
I beg taxpayers:
come visit our newcomers
to grasp sacrifice
Fifteen reasons why we fight every day for our students’ needs. Our society’s needs.
Thank you, DPS, for laying out our reasons. For proving to our country how badly we need to strike. For creating a legal request to clarify how heavily we carry the weight of the world.
For showing us all how little we earn as we carry it.
Dear Governor Polis
I am begging you, as a father, a son of a teacher, and a former superintendent, not to intervene in the possible teacher strike at Denver Public Schools.
DCTA has been negotiating with DPS for fifteen months. All we are asking is for a transparent salary schedule similar to every other school district in the state, not one plagued with unfair bonuses given to some teachers and MANY administrators. We are asking for deep cuts to central administration, where millions of dollars are wasted on positions for non-student-facing employees. We are asking for a salary that will help us pay the exorbitant healthcare costs this district offers (I’m talking $12,000 deductible for a family of four!!).
We have already had a mediator who used to be the head of the Colorado Department of Labor. We have done everything we are supposed to do to make fair proposals and meet the district at the bargaining table in good faith.
We need your support, not your intervention.
We give our lives for our students. But all of us will leave this district–this profession–if we must face a future where we are vilified by the press and our superintendent, where we are not paid adequately for our high levels of education and certifications, and where our governor doesn’t support us.
You have the chance as our new governor to show the world where you stand as a human being. Rather than giving into the corporate greed of charterization, I’m begging you to support the faces who face those children, who love those children, for more hours than anyone could ever put a dollar to.
Please, Governor Polis. Show us who you really are, and who you really aim to be as the leader of my home state.
Back of My Mind
the gray sky hovers
over our impending strike
as Portland rain drops
Step Write Up 