Teachers United Will Never Be Defeated

I had two intentions when writing this post. The first being for my own mental clarity and processing. There is so much going on in my professional and personal life already; my healthiest way of processing through big emotions is through writing. The second intention, by sharing this work I hope that I can connect or clarify for at least one person. 

As of this morning, Arizona teachers plan for day 3 of a statewide walk out after the five demands were ignored by Legislature for too long (at least that’s how most teachers and many parents feel in Arizona).

The following information is found on the Demand page from www.arizonaeducatorsunited.com.

1. 20% raise for all teaching and certified staff
- 2018-2019 school year

 - Built into the salary schedule at the district level, mandated by the state

2. Competitive wages for all classified staff

- Based on inflation of previous year

 - Aim to pay job families comparatively/competitively with similar jobs in the local market

- Honor years of experience in school district of employment 

3. Return school funding to 2008 levels

- Decrease class sizes to 23:1

- Provide 21st century resources and curriculum materials

4. No new tax cuts until AZ per-pupil spending reaches national average
- Reapportionment of tax revenue should not hurt programs that help the low socio-economic status families and individuals

- Tax revenue should be generated from sources that are generated within the state economy. 

5. Yearly raises until AZ teacher salary reaches the national average

- Steps based on years of experience with no comparison or reduction of years that qualify

- Lanes based on amount of education including work beyond an earned degree

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I’d like to start by filling you on my current career game plan. After four years of teaching, all of which were in Arizona, I am planning to return to my home state at the end of this school year. For the purpose of this piece, the only important detail is that my initial and strongest reason for leaving back to Ohio is due to personal relocation. Something else that is an important factor to understand is the following fact. I will directly receive ZERO benefits of the demands if they are met.

In my eyes, the Walk Out is still something worth fight for. Teaching is very different than what I expected and my actual experiences have been nothing I’ve felt super prepared for. Part of that is due to me gaining my education in Ohio and I have only taught in Arizona. When I think back to my college experience spending countless hours in different classrooms learning and reading about different scenarios, I never guessed this would be my future reality. I would say that I had a pretty great educational experience at Walsh University, and I honestly don’t think they could’ve changed anything to make me more prepared for what I experienced; you just have to learn through experience for some things. 

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The following is a breakdown of the demands and a first or second hand  account of the negative impact on Arizona education.

Demands number one, two, and five are all about providing raises for all school staff.

From the experience of a young educator, I can tell you that I knew going into education, I wouldn’t be rich. However, I can also confidently say that I also didn’t think I would need to find side jobs to make ends meet or to provide for my own students. I also knew that teaching meant spending a lot of hours uncompensated for at home and school to make sure my students had the best learning opportunities tailored to them. As a special education teacher, I spend a lot of time planning and collaborating to ensure my students can access curriculum and to ensure that all adult team members know how to best set each student up for success. I didn’t realize that meant I’d be at work most mornings at 5:30 in the morning and still take work home at the end of the day. I know, I know, not all teachers do that, but I couldn’t successfully provide the best with what I have if I didn’t put in that time and effort. I am one of many teachers that have had to find other ways for additional income in order to pay the bills. Speaking of, I am currently an Usborne Book Lady. I do love that the company’s purpose is to help promote literacy for families. It’s definitely fun to help friends and families earn awesome rewards for their little ones all while earning free books to support my classroom and some extra cash to help with the bills. 

~If you are at all interested in checking out some
crazy awesome books for kiddos or learning
how you can help support my (or start your)
business, e-mail me at c.smithmihi@gmail.com.~

Classified staff also need a livable wage. For both classified and certified staff, no livable wage means higher turnover rates and less people to fill those positions. That also means, less qualified adults working with the children of Arizona... or less adults in schools overall. 

This year, I am teaching a 6th-8th grade self-contained classroom for students with social and/or emotional disabilities. Due to the nature of our classroom and typical student behaviors, my classroom typically has one teacher and two support (classified) staff members. The main reason my classroom needs 3 adults, is because at times, my students can become violent and my number one job, even before instruction, is maintaining a safe learning environment. This school year, I have been short staffed for all but a few months. We have held interviews, but we haven’t found someone qualified that wants the job mainly due to the money.

This year, my students have been negatively impacted due to school staff not making enough money in many ways.

1. We’ve had a revolving door of adults in and out of my classroom with many substitute Educational Assistants not having proper training to work with students with social/emotional disabilities. This ended up being a trigger for my students and caused more behavioral escalations. My students typically have trust issues and behaviors stem from anxiety or feeling unsafe. How would you feel if there was a different adult in your classroom everyday when you were in middle school? I can imagine feeling overwhelmed getting used to new faces and a whole new set of expectations on the daily. Many of the subs also were not CPI (Crisis Prevention Institute) trained in order to assist with restraints as necessary, nor were they able to maintain the 10 other students independently. Students learned to escalate, so they could evacuate and go to the computer lab and be supervised by pulling staff from other rooms because that was often the option when things become too unsafe for all students to be there. Also, due to lack of trained staff and lack of a safe environment (no padding on any walls or a safe area for de-escalating physically aggressive students), I suffered not one, but two concussions. This impacted my students, because I had to miss work for appointments (that I had very little say in scheduling through the agency my district uses for Workman’s Compensation), and because I attempted to teach with a concussion. Again, I am aware that working with students that struggle processing and appropriately expressing their emotions poses risks; but many of our staff injuries could be prevented with either more trained staff or a safer area.

2. The program I am required to run is based on a point system dependent on an opportunity to purchase daily. There are very few funds to help the teachers that run my program out when filling the store. I have often had to tell my students I am sorry, I have to wait until next Thursday (payday) to restock the store. I have also asked parents and friends/colleagues to donate. That always works for a little while.

3. I teach middle school and 9 of my 11 students are boys. Hello hormone stage, body changes, and body odors! Also, my students eat breakfast AND lunch in my classroom every day. Each classroom gets so many wipes when our school or our PTA has funds for it. Other than that, you’re on your own. There are days that I think we literally go through a whole pack of wipes in its entirety. I’m trying really hard to teach healthy and clean habits and to stop what seems to be the never ending cold/flu/stomach virus that has been playing tag in my classroom since roughly December. Again, sometimes I wait for payday, and sometimes I have to reach out for more donations. Parents that are able to are always willing to help, but I don’t think I mentioned that currently 98% of the students at my school qualify for free and reduced lunch, so they often don’t have a lot of extra lying around either.  Currently, the one Educational Assistant that I do have donates wipes to my classroom all the time. I even have a student that donates hand soap so we can wash our hands before breakfast and lunch without making two daily whole class trips to the bathroom.

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Demand three deals with high class sizes and a lack of resources.

My first three years teaching, I worked at the same school I now. I still worked with students that qualified for special education services, but I provided services through an inclusion model. An inclusion model means that I worked alongside to plan a co-teach with general education teachers to assist all students in their classroom; identified or not. There is much research on the benefits of inclusion. My favorite benefits are that it allows specialized instruction to be more closely aligned with grade level curriculum, sometimes at-risk students have better access to support to find more success, and it allows for general and special education teachers to work together to create opportunities for the most success for each student. Another benefit is that there is a positive correlation on decreasing the achievement gap between identified and non-identified students in comparison to the resource model for services. The resource model is when an identified student leaves their grade level non disabled peers to receive specialized instruction in a separate classroom. There are benefits to the resource model in some situations depending on the individual student. Currently, my school does a combination of both models. Unfortunately, there are still some major roadblocks that negatively impact students (and teachers).

1. High class sizes causes high staff turnover rates, which does not benefit students. 

At one point, I had a caseload of 30 kids among 3 different grade levels. I provided services in up to 7 different classrooms a day, meaning I need to regularly meet and plan with up to 7 teachers. This spread me way too thin and the high caseloads (one of the current positions has 38 identified students on her special education caseload). On top of planning, teaching, and meeting, special education teachers also need to find time for progress monitoring to collect data on IEP goals as well as write IEPs annually for each student.

This negatively impacts students because there are not enough hours in the week for all of those things to happen with 100% effort. For example, federal law allows for states to control whether there are caps on caseload sizes for case managers. Arizona does not have any regulations, meaning there is no limit. This makes it harder for good and qualified special education teachers to stay for numerous years due to burnout. To give you a point of comparison, according to the Ohio Operating Standards for the Education of Children with Disabilities, Ohio has state caps for ALL case managers. This keeps numbers smaller which allow more effort can be put into truly giving each student what they need. This allows for more data to be used for IEP decisions such as service time. I have seen districts choose to determine service minutes based on a teacher’s availability to provide minutes rather than determine minutes based on what the student needs.

All of this works the same in a general education classroom. I have many friends/colleagues who are general education teachers. I also happen to be dating one. The highest class size at my school this year in a general education classroom was roughly 40 students. Also.. They were eighth graders. Eighth grade typically presents with many behaviors and it can be very difficult for one adult to manage/monitor, teach, assist, and create meaningful relationships with 40 students. Having cap sizes on classes would allow for Arizona students to make gains and stop performing at the bottom of the nation. 

This very reason has also caused many great educators to flee the state or even education all together. There are many days teachers end their day feeling defeated because they gave all they kid and it still wasn’t enough. See, I can handle that if we provided the best opportunity that the student had the legal right to access due to his/her disability, but there are just so many factors out of my control that many times, I do everything I can given the available resources, but it is often not exactly what the student needs; and I can’t control that

2. Another negative impact this has is it can decrease the effectiveness of teacher instruction. When there are too many students, often times instruction moves slower and every student can’t get individualized instruction because there aren’t enough minutes in the day. When you’re pulled too thin, you can only do what you can do to push through and make any progress you can. 

3. The third, and potentially most impactful, reason is that when you have high class sizes, often times there are physical and emotional needs of students. Our nation’s youth have been presenting with more mental illness and emotional instability than ever before. Academic gains can’t be expected when a student’s physical or emotional needs aren’t met. The reason being, physical and emotional needs are essential. If they aren’t met, the brain is not capable of being in its best condition to obtain and retain new concepts and skills, nor to demonstrate knowledge or mastery of previous learned concepts and skills.

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Demand four relates to the amount of money Arizona spends per pupil.

Arizona spends more money per inmate than per student, and many people see a problem with that. The people in support of the#RedforEd movement are demanding they there are no new tax cuts until Arizona’s per-pupil spending matches the national average. 

These issues have negatively impacted my students and instruction.

1. We’ve had programs cut due to tax cuts that are extremely necessary to have. For example, we had a Newcomer Program that allowed for us to best support the refugee students and other ESL students that attend our school. When this program was cut due, those students, many of whom have never seen a wall with buildings let alone spoke English, was mainstreamed into a general education class. This meant general education education teachers, often times with zero to limited formal training or experience, were now responsible for teaching English to those students. 

2. Often times, tax cuts impact after school programs such as tutoring, clubs, and sports. These cuts often negatively impact the families and communities that need these programs the most. This further increases the achievement gap between low and high socioeconomic communities. 

3. Similar to a recent proposed plan, often times proposed budget increases actually take money from other necessary departments within education, such as the Special Education Department. Many people are unhappy that there haven’t been proposed solutions that don’t hurt students.

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Honestly, this walk out is hard for many of us and it’s quite inconvenient. We have and continue to put a lot of time into this movement and fighting so that our students and colleagues can have better because they deserve better. I firmly believe I this movement regarding the following negative impacts it has on me personally...

1. I won’t see any direct benefit to me by any changes.

2. This has caused for a lot of impertinent meetings that impact students to be cancelled or rescheduled. 

3. This is actually currently halting my life plans to move. Depending on how long this goes, it has potential to extend the school year.

4. This is prolonging the start of my official transition to teach in Ohio and get things set up with HR for next year.

Teachers aren’t just walking out because they want (need/deserve) more money, they are walking out and staying out because they are sick and tired for giving all that they have and it still not being enough for kids. We are not content nor complacent with the public education system in Arizona and are willing to fight for what’s right. We constantly teach our kids to advocate for themselves and to stand up boldly and confidently for what’s right. It’s our turn to lead by example on a large scale. If we don't stand up and fight and advocate for our students than we wouldn't be providing the best for them.

-Ramblings of a young, determined, passionate educator.