Teacher Protests Are Student, Worker Advocacy
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, I was a public school English teacher, and for part of that time, I was also a coach.
I taught more than 100 students each year, meaning I responded to about 4000 essays and 6000 journal entries every academic year along with thousands of other assignments and mountains of paperwork. I was responsible for preparing students for state testing, Advanced Placement testing, and the SAT.
While coaching, and during the soccer season, I would run to the gym between classes to wash and dry the soccer uniforms. Most days, I had to find time to go to the bathroom, and rarely had moments alone even during lunch.
I have never loved more deeply anything than teaching, and I so deeply loved all my students that is often overwhelming to think about no longer being a high school teacher. Facebook has provided me some connection with those students, but I miss intensely being that teacher and that coach.
When I left high school teaching for higher education, I was wearing a wrist brace because I could barely move my right hand from almost two decades of marking essays and trying my damnedest to teach young people to write well.
If you have never taught, you cannot appreciate the psychological and physical toll of being on throughout the day and in the service of dozens of CONTINUE READING: Teacher Protests Are Student, Worker Advocacy | radical eyes for equity
