Statement of Solidarity from the Graduate Employees Organization at UIC: CTU’s fight is our fight!
I am writing to you as a Co-president of GEO and a family member of a Chicago Public School teacher. My spouse, John, is a member of CTU and an elementary music teacher at Dominguez Elementary in Little Village. John has been a teacher in the public schools for 12 years. He has worked inmany different classrooms with kindergartners who never went to preschool, cannot read (much less tie their own shoe), and cannot speak English. When Mayor Rahm Emanuel was pushing for a longer school day and advocates for school “reform” were decrying Chicago’s short school day, John was working from 8:30 am to 2:30 pm and only had a 20 minute break to eat his lunch. Often he was not scheduled time to prepare his lessons during the day, so most of the preparation for his lessons happened outside of the school day—the work he does cannot be measured only by the time he spends in front of his students.