On April 2nd, teachers across Oklahoma walked out of their classroom to advocate for better pay and adequate public school funding. Today, on April 4th, classrooms are still empty.
Teachers walked out in order to walk towards something better for themselves and for their students. But what didn’t make the news is that I walked out of my classroom almost a year ago. After completing my second year of teaching, I walked out on my students and walked away altogether, convinced that I couldn’t heal the fractured system that is public education in Oklahoma.
I became a teacher knowing that I would work long hours for little money and little respect, and well aware that I was teaching in a school system that has been broken for decades. I knew that my students wouldn’t be able to bring in their own supplies because most of them couldn’t even bring their own lunch, and I knew that the resources I would have access to might be out-dated or scarce. I also knew that my students shouldn’t be underestimated, and it never crossed my mind to take it easy on them or think they couldn’t accomplish just as much as the students sitting in private schools across town.
If you’re picturing an innocent school teacher with a shiny apple in hand, you’ve got the wrong idea. I had done my research. I had a goal to get my students learning at or above grade level by the end of the year, and nothing was getting in my way.
And you know what? Like most teachers, I did that. Like most teachers, I worked every day (yes, that includes summers and breaks and all those other times people like to throw in teacher’s faces as “time off”) to get my student who couldn’t count to 100 to multiplying two digit numbers. I got to school at 6:30 am and left after 5 so that my student wouldn’t have to wait outside because her mom was working three jobs. I visited the homes of every single on of my kids so that they would know that I knew them, that I loved them, and I believed in them.
I don’t say this for your praise or your appreciation, because I also ultimately stopped teaching. After two years, this all-consuming job burned me out completely and I had to stop. I need that to sink in: that a successful, driven, young and educated person would enter a profession and two years later have to leave it because they have nothing else to give. Even having a team of the most inspiring and supportive teachers didn’t change the fact that there were days where I had forty kids in my classroom and only enough chairs for 25. Even being given a Golden Apple award by the superintendent didn’t dissuade the feeling that there was so much I needed to do for my kids and I couldn’t do it all, and how heartbreaking it was to fail at an already impossible task.
Because what I didn’t know about teaching was that you can never stop working when it’s for your kids. If you’re a parent, you get it. Now multiply your kid by 50. Now add 50 each year.
I didn’t know that teaching would become so ingrained in my life that it would take over my life.
I didn’t know how amazing it would feel or how bad it would hurt. In February of my first year of teaching, my students wrote short stories and then used crowdfunding to publish them into books. In December of my second year of teaching, my students showed the most growth on their math scores out of any other math class in the school. These memories come with the memory of a girl who missed two months of school because her family struggled to return from Mexico, and the boy whose uniform I would take home and wash each week because it was the only thing he had to wear and his parents couldn’t afford a laundry machine.
I didn’t know that it would be difficult for my roommate and I, both teachers, to qualify to live in a two bedroom apartment because of our income.
I didn’t know that when people asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was a teacher that their response would be, “that’s cute.”
I honestly can’t get into a debate with anyone who wants to discredit the merits of this walkout or say that teachers are asking for too much because obviously if I am a single person having to work a second job just to cover my basic living expenses, there’s a problem with teacher pay. And if the pencils I’m provided by the state run out in November and I spend the next six months buying them on my own, there’s a problem with public school funding.
What I can say is that every person, regardless of your beliefs about this walk out, should visit a local public school classroom for a day and see what it’s like to be a teacher in Oklahoma right now. Everyone should walk into a school at 6:30 am and leave at 5 pm and then look me in the eye and tell me that they still think this is what our kids deserve.
Being a teacher in Tulsa Public Schools for two years almost pushed me to a breaking point, but I wouldn’t change those two years for anything because they introduced me to my role models, a bunch of 4th grade students who taught me how to stand up for what I believe in with passion and conviction and have a damn good time doing it.
My students will be the ones growing up and growing in to our society. They will be the new teachers, entrepreneurs, legislators, and parents. I hope you’re on their side because trust me, if not, this is a battle you’re going to lose.
And also, fuck you Mary Fallin.
(((Want to support teachers but aren’t sure how? Check out this cheat sheet by the amazing educator Rachel Estariz!)))
