L.A. teacher strike may be cutting edge of a revolution against what’s rotten in America
Joseph Zeccola, a part-time playwright and full-time educator whose passion in the classroom earned him Los Angeles County Teacher of the Year honors just last year, said he heard something recently from an out-of-state union activist that really stuck with him, that “the thing about teachers that makes us different is that we’re always adjusting to the status quo.”
Zeccola said he’s seen his fellow teachers — even himself — calmly accept that status quo over the last decade as tighter and tighter budgets started strangling classroom education in America’s second-largest city, even as the rest of L.A.'s vibrant economy was booming. That meant passive acceptance of skyrocketing class sizes that often jammed more than 40 kids into a room, or forcing schools to make painful spending decisions whether to make nurses, librarians, or mental health aides only part-time — or to ditch those vital services completely.
At the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies where Zeccola now teaches English and drama after working for years in economically distressed South Central L.A., the school found the cash to pay a librarian two days a week — two days more than many other nearby public schools.
“As an English teacher, there’s nothing more important for success in life than literacy,” he told me by phone Wednesday night, adding: “They also cut out the custodians. At my old school in South Central you could have eaten off the floors — now they mop it twice a month.”
L.A. Teacher Joseph Zeccola: Nationwide we have not prioritized education https://t.co/0vKNoPdnDg via @msnbc— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) January 17, 2019
When the calendar flipped over to 2019, Zeccola decided that enough was finally enough — and so did 33,000 other unionized school teachers in the City of Angels. Monday’s walk-out by the United Teachers Los Angeles — the city’s first teachers' strike in 30 years — is CONTINUE READING: L.A. teacher strike may be cutting edge of a revolution against what’s rotten in America | Will Bunch
