Dawn on Tuesday came and went, and for once, Kai slept. Past 7 and then 8, and it was right around 9 when I finally heard his feet on the stairs. I’d hoped to take the kids to visit the striking teachers, who were supposed to be on the picket lines until 10:30.
Of course, I was woefully unprepared. I had no sign, I didn’t have time to stop at Dunkin’ Donuts and get them breakfast and coffee. I didn’t even have a red shirt to wear in solidarity.
Red isn’t really my color, you see, and I have only one article of red clothing in my entire closet: an off-the-shoulder mini-dress, questionable attire for hanging out with striking teachers and my two children.
I finally found a red t-shirt in Scott’s closet. It said “World’s Greatest Dad.” I ripped the tags off and threw it on. I had given it to him for his first Father’s Day five years ago. He doesn’t wear it because “World’s Greatest Dad” is not his official title, as you can see here.
I dashed off a quick sign and tossed the kids in the car, hoping to catch the teachers before they went off to the downtown rally, or home to watch their own kids.
:::
I know that you know one reason I’m all for this teacher strike. But I’m all for it for some real reasons, too.
This weekend, I spent several hours with a friend, a special education teacher in another district, going through Kai’s IEP line by line. This is the mythical, magical document that entitles Kai to whatever services he needs in order to get an education, things like speech therapy so he can talk to you and occupational therapy so he can use a pencil, special education services to help modify his work so that he has a chance of completing it ever.
In another district, a child with autism might get 90-120 minutes a week of speech therapy. Kai gets a grudging 30. Then the therapist spends 15 minutes telling Kai’s teacher what to work on.
In another district, Kai would have more time with a social worker to work on the social-emotional component to his education, creating social stories, working with peer groups. Ours spends 30 minutes with him, and then tells the teacher what to do for the rest of the week.
In another district, our teacher and our son would get a lot more help.
Our social worker is only at our school two days a week, the speech and occupational therapists are only there on Mondays. In our district, they just don’t have enough people. They can’t afford them.
There are 375 social workers in the whole of CPS, a student body of between 350,000 and 400,000. That’s one social worker for 1,000 kids, in a city where 80% of the student body qualifies for free and reduced price lunches, a city that saw one of the bloodiest summers we can remember.
How can someone be expected to teach, and also be a speech therapist and an occupational therapist and a social worker and child psychologist, and have a kid come to school hungry or traumatized, to a school in some cases with no air conditioning and no playground and no textbooks? How on earth can you educate a child that way and hope to compete on a global scale?
How?
And you know what else? Mayor Rahm Emanuel campaigned on the longer school day for CPS, and he did exactly as he said he would, lengthening the school day without any idea how to do it or how to fund it. In our school, it means that Kai’s teacher has to take a break in the middle of the day. It was during this break that Mr. X was able to hurt Kai. If his teacher had been there, it never, ever, ever would have happened.
Just sayin’.
This strike isn’t about money. No one goes into this profession expecting to get rich.
It’s about a district that’s failing the students and blaming the teachers for it.
It’s enough to make you long for the green grass, the extra-wide parking spaces, the pizza shooters and extreme fajitas of a land I like to call The Suburbs, which is exactly where we went afterwards, to a place where the floors are made of trampoline, and two frozen treats and a Diet Pepsi only costs $4.
A place I never thought I’d want to be.
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