Teacher Action Week
It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, which can leave a sour taste in my mouth. I certainly appreciate the gifts and minor accolades I get from my school as well as parents and students. In the past, my sourness has led me to complain that this is the kind of thing we do for care-giving professions in lieu of compensation and autonomy. We have appreciation days for secretaries and nurses, too, but not for doctors, lawyers, and bankers. They already have their reward.
This year, instead of being grumpy about it, I decided it’s time to treat Teacher Appreciation Week as a springboard into something more profound: Teacher Action Week.
Teacher Appeciation Week, despite its potential for patronizing attitudes, does show that a lot of people out there really do respect and honor teachers. We live in a time when the forces of hate and reaction are being directed against teachers, but we are not alone. If educators are going to be able to protect themselves from the onslaught, we will need allies outside of the profession. It’s time to stop ceding the public sphere on these issues to Moms for LIberty and Ron DeSantis.
Our side has an advantage that theirs does not: partnership. Their side is targeting educators and students, ours has the potential to bring educators and students together with parents alongside us. There is strength in numbers, and feckless politicians will turn tail and run if they get concerned about losing voters. This won’t dismay the hardcore freaks like DeSantis, but will certainly get others to rethink their actions.
We can also find ways to get non-ideological conservatives in our everyday lives to rethink things. Like I said, the true freaks are unwinnable. However, there are a lot of parents out there who have a mentality similar to everyday racist white people I’ve encountered my whole life. They might hate or mistrust educators in the abstract as a group of people, but treat teachers they know and who teach their students as “the good ones.” (During the pandemic I would hear the worst anti-teacher stuff said to my face by people who still wanted me to know that I was “one of the good ones.”)
If these conservatives can learn that the general attacks on educators and schools are having a really negative impact on “the good ones” they might pull back a bit. Many of these folks are just going along with whatever the Republican Party, conservative media, and their right-wing neighbors are doing. If they can perceive what’s happening to real people in their lives they care about, they are likelier to change their tune, or at least not participate in the worst of the abuses.
The attacks on public schools and educators have gone on far too long and need to stop. I propose that we make this week Teacher Action Week. Educators should talk to their friends and family about the impact these attacks are making on them. Flood social media with your stories, but also talk to people one on one. Contact your PTA, school board, and elected officials en masse and let them know your concerns. If you can, give money en masse to politicians in key races who have a chance to bring sanity back to education policy in your town or state. While the NEA and AFT are great organizations, we should do this independently to illustrate that this is not an action by “the unions” but something supported by rank and file teachers.
The anti-educator onslaught is meant not only to push an extreme agenda, but to destroy our will to fight. It is crucial that we do not give in. I firmly believe teachers and their allies outnumber the Moms For Liberty crowd, it’s time for us to step out of the shadows and meet the challenge.