| Proud to be (an) Uppity (Teacher) | for everyone |
How dare these public servants think they deserve to stay in the middle class! Who needs teachers, policemen, firemen and all those other feeders from the public trough!!? Who do they think they are!?!
They mentioned numerous careers to my brothers and me, but teaching was never one of them. Neither were fireman, policeman, nurse. Why not? Because teaching wasn't good enough. It didn't earn enough respect, didn't engender enough status because, in society's rating system, it didn't generate enough dollars. My parents had ambitions for us, that we would surpass them, move up the class ladder, continue on the path of upward mobility they had forged. The American dream....
When I started my career as a teacher (just one more in the litany of ways I disappointed them), the profession was on the lower edge of the middle class. I made less than my wife, a nurse (another profession never known for high wages). Hancock's salary schedule didn't budge for the first three years I taught, so upward mobility into the solidly middle class was effectively stalled. After Nicci was born and Carolyn moved to part-time, she still made more than I did with a Masters Degree.
Understand, I'm not complaining. We certainly weren't poor, but there were times we had to wait for a paycheck to buy groceries, couldn't pay off credit cards at the end of the month, didn't take vacations, only went out to eat on very special occasions, etc. But we had a couple pretty beat up used cars (and not high end used cars -- one was a Chevy Vega, for crying out loud [and we did cry out loud when we had to put a new engine in it!]), a small but comfortable house, food in the refrigerator.... We were certainly better off than many.
Through our teachers union we pushed and shoved, marched, cajoled, fought, scraped, and, using political action, lobbied our way into the middle class. Teachers still don't get rich, certainly don't have any personal concern about the issue of tax cuts for those making $250,000 or more. Thanks to the efforts of teacher unions, and our own hard work for those organizations, however, we have moved beyond the lower rungs of the middle class. Our salaries now support us, and, if there's a second income, allow us to live at a certain level of comfort. Incidentally, my wife, the non-unionized nurse who made more than me at the beginning of her career, saw her salary fall farther and farther behind mine.
Make no mistake. This didn't happen because people felt sorry for us; it didn't happen because politicians, out of any sense of respect, obligation or generosity, decided to increase funding for education. The funding increases for education came as a direct result of political action and collective bargaining efforts by teachers and their organizations. We followed the model of tradesmen and industrial union workers a generation before us in leaving hand-to-mouth behind and moving more securely into middle class America. I can tell you from personal experience, we generated animosity and even jealousy, just like those before us did from those who don't understand our jobs or how hard they are.
Woo-hoo! We've made it to the middle class. I'm not going to be intimidated by Fox News talking heads or vindictive politicians, I'm not going to apologize for where I am or how I've arrived. Ironically, the argument that public workers no longer need those unions is directly contradicted by the events in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere over the past month and clearly demonstrate why we continue to need our unions, not that they've run their course.
The reaction from the right? You uppity teachers need to get yourselves back where you belong. You don't work long enough or hard enough to enjoy the privileges of middle class existence. Who do you think you are (bankers, investment brokers)? History shows that when you start breaking the ceilings put in place to keep you in your place, you become a threat to those whose ranks you wish to join. You better be prepared to hear how undeserving you are; you better also be prepared to stand up for your right to sit at the same table or you'll find yourself at the back door begging for those same scraps of the life you thought you had left behind.
Uppity? To quote the Clown Princess of the Right, "You betcha!"
P.S. Without tenure I am willing to bet I would have been fired by at least two administrators who would have preferred a more compliant, less vocal teacher. I like to think that would have cheated a fair number of my former students. Take away tenure and you'll lose the individualists who advocate for their students and their profession. I, personally, don't want meek sheep teaching my granddaughter. The only bad teachers (in Missouri) that tenure protects are those with principals who are either too lazy or too incompetent to do their job. I've seen tenure hearings. Have you? (Teachers lost all three cases.)
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