humanity

Give Us a Choice, and We’ll Take It from You

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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 Livelihood is ‘Political Theater’

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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.

Even the Sunset Says So

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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.

Frostbitten

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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

Fifteen Reasons Why: We Deserve More, DPS

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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

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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.

On Deaf Ears

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our union may vote
to strike down inequity
would anyone care?

This Is Why I Will Strike

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I just want to think about how hard-won this moment is. This day. This five of us skiing down a mountain together. This money we didn’t have before that we have now.

This fresh powder.

This view. Could you beat that view if you went anywhere else in the world? Well, could you?

I don’t want to think about the five years we, a family of five, lived on a frozen, constituents-unwilling-to-vote-on-a-mill-levy teacher’s salary of $48,000. The $10,000 out-of-pocket expenses we paid to give birth to our third child. The penny-pinching. The laying-out-$400-every-three-months to earn those goddamn fifteen credits so I could get a raise if I … changed school districts.

I don’t want to think about how Spain screwed me out of a decent salary and we came home afterward with $19,000 in debt, more than any we’ve had as a married couple.

I don’t want to think about the TWO 1998 cars we have outside our house right now, car-payment free.

I don’t want to think about a teacher’s strike. I don’t want to think about my refugees trekking across town on two buses and being huddled into the auditorium to wait, without teachers, the long seven hours until they trek back, because if they don’t wait, they might not have a meal that day.

About the hundreds of hours I, and every teacher I know, has put into grading, planning, meeting, educating (ourselves and them), in the ten months between August and June. Hundreds of hours outside our contract day listening to students tell us their traumas that are greater than any soul could bear, listening to our admin and school district rate us as failures when we wake before dawn and go home after dusk to bring our best selves into that classroom every day, listening to our coworkers decide between renting a slumlord shithole or buying a house an hour away…

Listening.

I don’t want to think about the thousands of union workers who died for this day. For this choice. For a society where corporate greed is not the only answer.

I just want to see my husband and my three girls gliding down this Colorado slope, this Colorado hope.

I want to ski. To smile. To rejoice.

I don’t want to go on strike.

But I will.

Just like I walked in and out of Manual High School in 1994 when my teachers asked me to support them.

Just like I lived on pittance pay for the early part of my children’s lives.

Just like every other union member everywhere who’s looking to find empathy in the eyes of the corporate monsters that rule our society.

I will strike.

And I will ski.

And we will win ourselves a bluebird day.

A Little Broken

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I wish I could write you a letter.

But I have.

And sometimes it hurts to BREATHE.

To know the truth of the world we live in. To face the daily struggle that is parenthood in all its lice-ridden, ailing-dog, money-stealing reality.

To know that Failure begins with a capital F and follows me every turn I take. A teacher, a mother, a wife, a leader, a human.

Why is it so hard to be a human?

That’s all for today. And some lice and torn-ACL puppy pics for good measure.

Almost Invisible

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I wish I could say I am a set of skis, but this is not the case. If I were a set of skis, I’d be flying down the mountain right now, powder billowing up around me in glittery fury. I’d be turning over moguls and clapping flakes off from the lift and racing my daughter’s skis down.

I’d be free.

But I am not a set of skis. I am a louse.

I am the louse found at the nape of my oldest’s neck, as pale brown as her hair, almost, almost invisible.

I am the louse that enters your classroom and tries for twenty minutes to think of positivity and negativity and mix it all together with nits for words in an online documentation that we all try to wash away with Nix.

I am the louse that enters your friendship, trying so hard to show you how genuinely I love you, laying my eggs in every place you thought you’d never find in hopes that with one, with just one minuscule combing, you’d choose to keep me there, tenacious and prolific and ever-loyal to the warmth of your scalp.

I am the louse that enters my classroom, sneaking between desks, reaching out with my frail antennae in the somewhat-silent attempt to encourage students to reach up, scratch, and move their eyes away from their phones and onto the idea, just the idea, that a good comb-through could bring them an education.

I am the louse hiding at the base of the bristle on the brush, in the stitches of the winter hood, in the soft cotton bedding bought from the bargain store. Waiting. Breathing in my twenty-four hours of life one solitary pull of oxygen at a time, hoping for a single strand to clasp, to scurry up, to hold on to until I reach the warmth of humanity, until I can rejuvenate my weakened heart with the blood of someone else’s life.

I am the louse of motherhood, the constant irritation of teen angst wishing to be rid of me, my frail footprints finding no real response to my desperate attempts to make a home on these humans’ hearts.

If I were a set of skis, I’d be flying across a Colorado bluebird day. Over mountain passes. Into a bowl so deep with powder you couldn’t find your tips.

But I am a louse. And lice don’t ski.

They breed.

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