a new world view:
a high school stage set with love
inclusive of all
clouds that light the sky
over friends who will still play
childhood’s sunset
sometimes a good meal
can open the door to love
with a pinch of spice
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.
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
snow miracle wins
even with bus fiasco
the ice is melting
our governor heard
five thousand teachers’ requests
for pay redemption
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.
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.
Is there a prettier Denver sunset than this ‘red’ sunset over teachers rallying to strike??
I don’t know what you were thinking, DPS. Did you not realize you are a district in a union-led hotbed of liberals???
Did you think we were going to sit down and shut up??
We’re going to rally. We’re going to win.
Even the sunset says so.
snow swirled around
in exchange for a strike
(we’ll save our signs though)
only a few came
to fill the seats of our schools
(because weather bites)
even in winter
no teacher will miss a day
(we’re there for our kids)
someday they’ll see that
(through blizzards of ignorance)
until they see us
Step Write Up 