I literally almost had a stroke on Sunday night when Rahm
Emmanuel got on television and said that as a result of the longer school day,
Chicago Public School students were getting an hour of reading and an hour of
writing each day. Well, I am the
reading and writing teacher for most of the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders
at my school, and based on what is happening where I teach, that is plainly a
lie.
I have one hour in which to teach BOTH reading AND writing.
One of my classes is broken into two sections – 30 minutes in the morning and
25 minutes at the end of the day.
There are 41 seventh graders in one classroom, and since I have only 31
desks in my room, we have to start the period by borrowing chairs from two or
three different classrooms. Oh,
and the solution to an overcrowded class of 41? No, no, it is not to hire a new
teacher. It is to take ten seventh
graders out of their seventh grade homeroom and add them to my eighth grade
homeroom, making a seventh/eighth grade split class. For me, that essentially means teaching four different
classes in the same hour. If
reform is the order of the day, start with the radical reforms of reducing
class size to 20, providing enough teachers so that each grade level can have
its own instructor, and providing an instructional period for every subject.
Let’s not even talk about the fact that I could not give
each student a literature textbook because I do not have enough of them or the
fact that many of the books I did distribute were missing covers. I will spare you the details of the
email I received from my principal telling me that I have to teach my students
fiction story elements that was followed by an email telling me that I am
required to use nonfiction books on the Industrial Revolution in my
instruction.
Last year my students had both a reading class and a writing
class. This year there is just a
reading class. Last year my
students had Spanish three days each week. This year they have it once. Last year my students had P.E. two days each week. This year they have it once. My students are definitely getting a
longer day, but I am hard pressed to see how it is a better one.
To add insult to injury, my classroom was a blazing inferno
last week, I was not even given accurate lists of the names of the students in
my five classes, and did I already tell you that one of my classes is broken
into two discontinuous sessions?
This strike is a strike of no choice. When the mayor gets on television
spinning fairy tales about the conditions in our schools and does so with
conviction, when my professional judgment is preempted by illogical
instructional mandates, when my students and I are given challenges to
overcome in the place of the resources we need to excel, and when the Board sets me
up for failure and then evaluates my performance based on test scores, I have
been left with no choice.
You picked the wrong union to try to bust, Rahm. You are not going to create the perfect
conditions for failure, close our schools, and sell our students to your
political cronies and their corporate educational outfits. Teachers, united, will never be
divided. I will be shouting that
from the picket lines for as long as it takes to get teachers a fair contract
and for as long as it takes to get students the schools they deserve.
Leslie Russell
CPS Teacher & CPS Parent
