No, YOU Shut Up! (What Matters In Education Discussions)
One of my favorite moments last year was meeting Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis. At the time, her name was floated around as the author of my book’s foreword. I was super-excited to get the chance to meet her, especially in light of the backlash against her and CTU after the epic teachers’ strike of 2012. What’s most appalling about people’s perceptions about her was that, despite her obvious passion and intellect, they confused the role she had to play as the leader of CTU and the loving person she actually is. I understood this long before I met her, but few people do. In order to fight for what’s right, we sometimes have to step out of ourselves to make something happen.
In light of that, my work on elevating teacher voice always brings me back to the question of who gets heard and why. I’ve said multiple times that women’s rights and teachers’ rights are inextricable. Most teachers are women, and most higher-level administrators are men. Thus, we can attribute the disconnect, at least partially, to the fact that, when men make laws, they do so often to exclude. Anytime we don’t make language easy to access for everyone, we can very deliberately find ways to exclude people who don’t have access to said language.
As such, even male teachers who want to speak up are often disregarded because teaching is