Teaching is a vocation, as much as it is a profession. Most of us who become teachers do so out of a deep sense of a calling to educate young people, to nurture their intellectual and personal development, and to mentor them in the process of making lives of meaning and purpose for themselves. Many of us have passed on far more lucrative careers, and have forsaken lives of comfort, to fulfill that calling. And some of us, including most teachers in New York City public schools, have taken on the extra challenge of working in schools serving poor communities with the young people most in need of our services.
From the very first day we enter our classrooms, we confront a gaping chasm between the importance of the educational work we do every day, on the one hand, and the value American society places on that work, on the other hand. Teaching the young, especially children who live in poverty, is considered a low status job, one that requires only minimal support and remuneration. We labor in classrooms and school buildings that are often overcrowded and in serious disrepair, without up to date books, learning materials and technology, and with classes too large to allow for crucial individual attention to students. Among comparable professions that require a graduate degree, we are the most poorly paid.
This extraordinary divide between what is and what ought to be forces teachers to look beyond our classroom and our school, and to assume the role of steward of the interests of our students, our profession and American education in general. We learn very early in our professional careers that when we restrict our horizons to our immediate teaching, our ability to provide the very best education for our students is diminished, as outside forces undermine the support and the conditions we – and our students – need to succeed. We become teacher unionists because we learn that to be truly effective as stewards, we must act together, as a unified force.
Stewardship demands a vision for the future, as well as for the immediate tasks before us. And at times, it requires that we sacrifice in the here and now, in order to build a far better future. Sometimes, it requires an exceptional sacrifice. Any New York pubic school teacher who has ever gone on strike, and faced the draconian penalties of the Taylor Law, knows that a strike is an exceptional sacrifice, as they face the virtual certainty of being fined two days pay for every day that they are on strike. [Since one has to pay taxes on the fine, the penalty is actually heavier than ‘two for one.’] Teacher unions face fines which could bankrupt them, and union leaders face jail time. Students lose class time, but the lost class time can, and almost always is, made up when the strike is over. The biggest hardship for the public lies in parents having to find daycare for their children during the duration of the strike.
Precisely because it is such an immense sacrifice, teachers and teacher unions do not take strikes lightly. But precisely because we take our role as stewards seriously, and because we are prepared to make sacrifices to fulfill that role, we do not rule out strikes. If the leverage of a strike is required to move a city or a board of education to do the right thing for our students, our schools and our profession, and there are no other realistic choices, we will take on that burden. Our unions are in the tradition of Martin Luther King, and we are fully prepared to engage in non-violent civil disobedience and assume the penalties for doing so, when the cause of justice – and education – requires it.
As Joe Williams at the Chalkboard reports [somewhat belatedly], the UFT has been considering the adoption of a ‘no contract, no work’ policy. We have taken on this deliberation with the seriousness such a decision demands. In the context of a Mayor and a city that has unreasonably delayed past contract negotiations, refusing to negotiate in good faith, and then imposed a pattern negotiated by another union, and in the context of a Mayor and a city with announced intentions to gut the pension and health care benefits that are essential to attract and retain in teaching the ‘best and the brightest,’ we would be negligent if we did not give such an option serious consideration.
Joe Williams has been silent on all of the conditions that led to these deliberations on the part of the UFT. And he was silent when Governor Pataki vetoed reforms of the Taylor Law which would have created penalties for cities and boards of education which failed to negotiate in good faith.
But now he will say that in deliberating on whether or not to adopt a ‘no contract, no work’ policy, the UFT is entertaining “job actions aimed at kids who desperately need every ounce of education we can give them.”
Sometimes silence speaks as loudly as words.
7 Comments:
1 Objective Historian
· Jul 23, 2006 at 2:42 pm
Absurd; the UFT and the NEA are like blood sucking vampires draining the life-blood (and spirit) out of our children and their futures. If you were truly dedicated to the education of children, you’d want your profession to be thoroughly and constantly and immediately vetted and purged of all bad teachers. Moreover, current pay scales more than compensates for having a job one loves; rather than being an unhappy CPA and the like. Hence, you’d be against unionization of teachers just like any worthy soldier would be vehemently against unionization of the armed forces. They serve for the greater good of the USA and for it’s children just as you should. They WANT it to be about service, not pay; they WANT their ranks to be purged of the weak-willed, the under-performing, and the improperly motivated.
To be for unionization in public education is to be anti-children.
You should be ashamed.
TOH
2 Chaz
· Jul 23, 2006 at 6:31 pm
What a hypocrite! Didn’t you support 90 day unpaid teacher suspensions? Didn’t you agree to non professional duties such as potty patrol, cafeteria duty, and hallway assignments? You certainly agreed to three more days of teaching, two before Labor Day? Weren’t you the one who was the head cheerleader for more classroom time? Finally, you were satisfied that there were no longer grievences to Letters-To-The-File? Of course you haven’t been in the classroom for years so what do you care about the classroom teacher?
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. You aren’t fooling any of the classroom teachers with this article of yours.
3 NYC Educator
· Jul 23, 2006 at 7:39 pm
You went to PERB with full knowledge that they had endorsed pattern bargaining and you knew precisely what the pattern was. For you, now, to complain about a mayor who “imposed a pattern negotiated by another union” is patently absurd.
The absurdity is compounded by the fact that you not only accepted the pattern, but enthustically endorsed it on these very pages.
It is not Joe Williams’ responsibility to look out for NYC teachers. It is yours.
And it is not Joe Williams’ fault that you and the rest of the UFT leadership set us back well over twenty years with draconian givebacks, all for a contract that failed even to meet cost of living.
4 NYC Educator
· Jul 24, 2006 at 7:57 am
Objective historian knows little or nothing about the history of working people in this country, and is far from objective. The fact is, even adjusted for inflation, no one would be able to live on what teachers were paid before unions.
You’d think the UFT had instituted the 30-year policy of hiring substandard teachers. That was the city.
You’d think the UFT had chosen to retain teachers who’d failed basic competency tests, often dozens of times. That was also the city.
You’d think the UFT had gone to Albany to successfully beg for special dispensation to retain such teachers, and hire more of them. That was NYC school Chancellor Joel Klein.
You’d think the city had long demanded higher standards for teachers. That was the UFT, actually.
You’d think you could buy a home and live in NYC on a teacher salary. You can’t.
You’d think Nicole Byrne Lau wasn’t fired for letting her colleagues know what UFT teachers make. You’d think she wasn’t falsely accused of being a child-hating racist, but she was, of course.
You’d think she didn’t immediately determine to work in a union, but she did. If you believed objective historian, you’d think I could write this without fear of being fired if I were non-union.
Wrong again.
To be against unionization is to be anti-worker. We maight as well all go work at Wal-Mart, which is precisely what Chancellor Klein would have reduced us to in his 8-page contract.
Anyone who’d prefer to stand alone against Chancellor Klein, rather than beside 80,000 other teachers, is too stupid to teach. And anyone who has the audacity to refer to himself as a historian ought not to rely solely on John Stossel for history.
5 Ellie
· Jul 24, 2006 at 10:04 am
Objective Historian, you are an oxymoron. You are neither a historian nor are you objective. If you really did know anything at all about United States history, particularly in the 19th until the mid 2oth century, you would know the history of labor unions in this country. You would also have some knowledge of the fact that the rise of labor unions in this country also gave rise to a thriving middle class. Because you and other revisionists do nothing but revile and demonize “teachers’ unions” and all other unions, the concept of a government undercutting the present middle class just slips right past you. The criminalizing of union activity, such as the Taylor Act, was the beginning of the end for a comfortable middle class in this country. Speaking of history, Mr/Ms Objective Historian, what makes you qualified to talk about teachers? Have you ever been one? I doubt it, then you’d know the need for a union, even if it is the UFT. The UFT just barters and sells unionism from under the noses of its rank and file. They once were a great union, back in the ’60’s and ’70’s, when New York City set salary and work standards for the surrounding suburbs. That’s why the DOE doesn’t want older teachers around any more, we not only know history, we know how to communicate that knowledge to others. After all, we are teachers.
6 curious3
· Jul 24, 2006 at 4:37 pm
A few posts ago, Leo Casey bragged about the 15-page contract between the UFT and a charter school. Meanwhile, many UFT members rally around the evil of Bloomberg’s proposed 8-page contract from a few years back. Could someone go through the differences? Can I get access to the 15-page contract?
Without knowing the details, either length seems preferable to 800 pages. Perhaps UFT members can rally around a much shorter contract for the next set of negotiations?
7 Educat
· Jul 26, 2006 at 9:59 am
re OBJECTIVE HISTORIANS ill informed comments. if the unions mission is to make teaching more attractive (i.e.better pay,working conditions, benefits)thereby attracting better quality candidates for positions, thereby creating a better quality teaching force, how is that bad for students? nevermind history,OBJECTIVE HISTORIAN needs a course in basic logic.