A Challenge To The TeachStrong Campaign - Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association:

A Challenge To The TeachStrong Campaign

By:  Marla Kilfoyle, Executive Director, The Badass Teachers Association 

Yesterday astroturf groups launched a new campaign to fix teaching.  It was called #TeachStrong.  It sadly included my two national unions.  I say “my” because they are my unions.

…and by the way, I did not give them the permission to align with groups that have a long history of destroying our profession and public education.

I’ll just leave that here…

The TeachStrong campaign seeks to “modernize and elevate the teaching profession.”   To many career teachers, we have a problem with this statement, a HUGE problem.   It insinuates that the teaching profession needs “fixing” and that once again teachers are the problem. 

Reality check is this – many of the organizations that have joined the TeachStrong coalition are:

Education policy organizations that have done nothing but damage to the American education system

Education policy organizations that choose to make the teacher the scapegoat but refuse to address how poverty influences a child in school. 

Education policy organizations who choose to use the millions they get not to address the things that kids need in public education like a neighborhood public school, nurses, psychologists, librarians, small class size, and much more.

Education policy organizations that choose to ignore the gentrification of neighborhoods throughout America and the institutional Badass Teachers Association: