Washington Teachers on Strike

1) We like unions. "Union" is not a dirty word.
2) However, we are formulating an intelligent response to what we perceive as the lack of aggressive advocacy by our organizations on teachers' behalf.

3) There are many thorny issues this blog will explore:

• Do unions effectually collude to suppress teacher pay?
• Why do we not take lessons on professional treatment from college level teachers? Why do we align ourselves with the low end of the professional spectrum? Our work is highly intellectual. When will WE regard it as such?
• Have we traded away wages for security, a truly professional wage for good health care, a truly HIGH wage for societal approval, kind gestures, and tender feelings--everyone likes to be liked--it is so lovely to hear people say nice things about teachers--have we been "tamed?"
• Is teaching social work? And if so, why is social work less valuable than other sorts of work? Do teachers create value? Perhaps science and math teachers should band together and demonstrate to corporations who MUST have a stream of scientists that without high school math-sci teachers, their billions will dry up in a matter of years--just by way of example. [Of course, pharmaceutical giants could hire low wage intellectual labor from other countries....we could refuse to buy those products. Et cetera.]
• Should we explore performance pay? (Is there ANY fair way to implement this--our inclination is "no.")
• Should we all become independent contractors and individually negotiate our salaries?
• Should teachers remove their labor--what used to be called a strike--in a more radical way, setting up tutoring companies, coaching groups, unschooling chapters, homeschooling services--i.e. Starve the Beast.

Some of these notions might seem cuckoo, but as any good English teacher knows, we need to put all ideas out on the table before censoring them.
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And we still find a weird lack of concern about DAY CARE. We find it entirely ironic that people who care for, teach, and are in loco parentis for other people's children do not demand the ability to have their own children on site, and demand that any child they have may attend the school system in which they teach--that should be Requirement One. More on this very soon.

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In the meantime, thank goodness some teachers have the guts to stand up for themselves:


A judge is expected to weigh in Thursday on a teacher strike that has shut down the fourth-largest school district in Washington during the first week of classes.