The picket sign sits in yard, blown over by the recent storm, mud splattered and tattered but with the same bold message: Support our Teachers on one side and Support our Education Support Staff on the other.
You see the same signs in storefronts, restaurant flower pots, taped to the rearview windows of cars.
On Monday, you gathered and marched down SeaLion Ave to 3rd, past Safeway and the Seward Market Place, no chants, just educators, children, and supporters, wearing mostly red, with a range of signs:
I’d Rather be Teaching but this is Important.
Make Academics Great Again.
I Teach my Children to Stand up to Bullies, Now its my Turn.
Don't Make my Mom use her Outside Voice.
All Professions Begin with Teachers.
Modeling Self-Advocation for our Students
I will Always Support my Students, I Want to Support my Family too.
Fair Contract Now.
You Don't Put Kids First when you Put Teachers Last.
Lots of drivers honked and waved their support as they fled past. No-one loudly voiced their opposition, at least not to your faces.
Against your better judgment you read the comments under articles about the looming strike and it took restraint not to respond to the older woman from town who wrote something like: What about the children, our teachers would have never done this to us, we we were lucky.
You hold your hands above the computer for a moment but do not fire off a response. What you want to say to this woman, at least 20 years your senior, is yes, you were lucky, not because your teachers were better people than we are, but because the profession was more deeply valued-- teachers received honorable pay, benefits, support, and respect from the community.
Alaska once claimed the highest paid teachers in the country, not the lowest, and we had governors and presidents who fully-funded education instead of cutting public funds and supporting private investments.
We strike not because we don't care about children but because we do, we want them to experience a full vibrant education with high quality teachers who don't have to work second jobs just to pay the bills. We want our music and art programs back, fully staffed schools and smaller class sizes.
Yes Mam', you were lucky because schools weren't stripped to the bones back then, with more and more responsibilities heaped on educators, but fewer folks to do the work. Schools are expected to not just teach children academics and meet specific standards but fill in all the holes that our fast-paced fragmented society imprints on families and kids today. In any given moment a teacher may also act as a social worker, a parent, a nurse, a food bank, a seamstress, a shelter…and this is the short list.
And to the commenters who wrote: There's lots of people looking for work in AK; they can always get another job; no ones making them teach--you know nothing about the heart of an educator.
This isn't just a job, a way to collect a paycheck at the end of the month, we serve the children and families of our communities because we are called to be in classrooms and academic spaces, whether we clean the rugs in the hallway and turn off the vacuum to speak to every kid we pass, not just knowing their names but specifics about their life, or we spend weekends reading and re-reading students papers to give them both a fair grade and informative feedback, or we get to school early everyday to shoot hoops with our basketball team pre-season. We do this work with love.
We can't just find another job. We are teachers. This is the community we call home. We live here. We are teachers.
And yes, we prepared to strike so that we can stay and do the work that calls us.
Early Tuesday morning, the day of the announced strike, the bargaining teams reached an agreement and instead of reporting to the picket lines, all the emotionally exhausted teachers and support staff reported to their schools to greet the confused children.
Blurry eyed you try to explain to your own children, as well as those you work with what just happened. The two negotiating teams reached an agreement on health insurance, it is still expensive, with high deductibles, but it could have been much worse.
Besides a two hour delay, and a lot of missing kids who went to bed thinking school was cancelled, classes resume, as they always do.
The new contract your union fought so hard for gives you a 1% raise. 1%. You are not asking for riches. You are not asking for diamonds and bonbons and that endless pie in the sky. What you do want is fully-funded schools and fully-sported teachers, so children can ride the bus, walk, bike, or drive to a vibrant place where they can thrive.
Is that too much to ask for?
So very well said. I am very happy the KPSEA and KPEA were able to reach an agreement! Congratulations to all. The staff deserves this and the students deserve to have their educators able to focus on what they were hired to do.
Posted by: BOBBY LASALLE | 09/21/2019 at 03:01 PM
We are going through very similar things here in KY where I teach. I love my job and my students. That doesn’t mean that I (or others) should be taken advantage of BECAUSE I love my kids. Yes, I could go do something else, but I don’t want to. I want to be fairly compensated and allowed to keep the pension that I have funded basically on my own since our state has been borrowing against it for years. Keep your promises and honor our contracts!
Posted by: Shelley | 09/23/2019 at 06:31 PM