It's day five of the teachers’ strike in Chicago, which has become THE national education story of the week. Here are some of the perspectives generating a lot of buzz:
First off, Marilyn Rhames blogs about being both a teacher and a mother in Chicago, and why she's chosen to be a “student advocate.”
Several New York Times columnists have addressed the situation, too. Nick Kristof calls education "the most important civil rights battleground today." David Brooks says Chicago has the potential to “move toward the forefront of the reform movement.” And Joe Nocera laments the any outcome from the “hot, buttery mess” in Chicago is “unlikely to change much.”
Photo credit: Jean-Christian Bourcart
Andrew Broy (Eastern North Carolina ‘95) is President of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. Ten days before the strike started, he blogged about what it would take to solve the strike threat in a post that originally appeared on Catalyst-Chicago. We have reblogged it in full with permission.
With the unfortunate news that the Chicago Teachers Union has set a strike date for September 10, we are in desperate need of creative solutions. The core problem is easily stated: The Chicago Public Schools does not have any additional revenue. In an attempt to balance the budget this year, it raised property taxes to the maximum extent allowed by law and drained all its reserves.
In this fiscal climate, teachers want a raise that the district cannot afford.
Photo Credit: MisterJayEm via Wikimedia Commons
Editor's Note: This week, our hearts and minds are with the people of Chicago, who are experiencing the city's first teachers' strike in 27 years. As Wendy wrote this summer , Pass The Chalk aspires to be a forum for "engaging in candid discussion and debate about the biggest issues surrounding education today." In that spirit, over the coming days we'll be featuring a range of perspectives on the strike and what it means for teachers, students and families in Chicago. We encourage you to join the dialogue on our Facebook page and on Twitter @PassTheChalk.
It’s Thursday morning, and Chicago’s 617 public schools should be welcoming their 350,000 students back for their second (and in some cases third) week of classes. Kids should be filing into classrooms, opening their books, and getting to work. They should be practicing sight words. They should be annotating, multiplying, and experimenting.
Photo credit: Jean-Christian Bourcart
Lindsey Rohwer (Chicago‘06) has been teaching for seven years.
Editor's Note: This week, our hearts and minds are with the people of Chicago, who are experiencing the city’s first teachers' strike in 27 years. As Wendy wrote this summer , Pass The Chalk aspires to be a forum for "engaging in candid discussion and debate about the biggest issues surrounding education today." In that spirit, over the coming days we'll be featuring a range of perspectives on the strike and what it means for teachers, students and families in Chicago. We encourage you to join the dialogue on our Facebook page and on Twitter @PassTheChalk.
NO ONE wants to strike.
No teacher wants to interrupt the school year. No one wants students to not have a safe place to go. No parent wants to scramble to find childcare. This is the last resort.
Photo courtesy: Lindsey Rohwer
Olubunmi Fashusi is a member of the 2011 Teach For America—Baltimore corps.
Between 8:40 and 8:50 a.m. on the third day of school, I sat at my desk with my head nestled into the palms of my hands. I was feeling overwhelmed and defeated. I had just finished testing a sixth grade student whose family arrived from Vietnam in July. Throughout the exam, I watched in anguish as he struggled to understand what he was being asked to say, read, and write. I wanted to stop the test so he wouldn’t have to struggle further, but I didn’t. Having the test results would help me understand exactly what he needed to learn, and that would be more beneficial in the long run.
Photo Credit: Alex E. Proimos via Flickr Creative Commons
Elisa Hoffman was one of the founding teachers at Edison-Friendship Public Charter School, Woodridge Campus in Washington, D.C. (where she was on 9/11).
On September 11, 2001, I was in my classroom teaching reading to twelve wiggly, yet incredibly attentive six-year-olds. It was a gorgeous day and the sun was pouring in through the windows when Ms. Fox, the teacher I shared my space with, came in and motioned for me to join her by the door.
Photo courtesy: Elisa Hoffman
Lora Cover, ’96 Washington, D.C., works on TFA’s Human Assets team.
I first met Avi in Moody Towers. For those of you that weren’t TFA corps members circa the mid ‘90s, that was where every corps member lived during institute in Houston. We were meeting our fellow D.C. corps, playing an uncomfortable game of two truths and a lie, and trying to sound cooler than we were. I highly doubt I succeeded. Avi, on the other hand, was cute and confident, seemingly the opposite of how I felt in that first week as a corps member.
People love institute. They have fond memories of being part of a larger group of like-minded people living and working together. I wasn’t one of those people. I spent the summer incredibly anxious. How in the world was I going to start teaching on my own in the fall when teaching in a collaborative group was so hard? What if Teach For America had made a mistake selecting me? Would I actually have a placement in D.C. at the end of institute? (We were routinely reminded to “bend like a willow tree” when discussing things like where we would be living in the fall.) So even though I wanted to impress the cute, confident guy over Blimpie subs, I was way too preoccupied to even have a conversation with him.
Lora Cover with her family. Photo courtsey of Lora Cover.
Five links that made us think this week:
Anyone else think former President Bill Clinton should have ended his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte like this?
I’m proud of being an immigrant, and this only makes me prouder: A report from the New York City Independent Budget Office found that immigrant students graduate from city high schools at a slightly higher rate than those who were born in the U.S.
Photo by: Jean-Christian Bourcart
Robert Cook is managing director of Teach For America’s Native Achievement Initiative.
Hau Mitakuyapi,
Recently, our youngest son began his journey as an eighth grader in the Rapid City School District and today he is firm in his schedule: pre-algebra, science, English, Orchestra, PE, reading and social studies. Last week, my wife and I had the opportunity to meet all of his teachers and tour the school and his classrooms. I feel good about the educational opportunities provided for Caleb and his friends. Unfortunately, that is not the case for many of our Native students here in rural South Dakota or on my home reservation of Pine Ridge, located just 80 miles away.
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