By Leslie Littman, Secretary Treasurer of the California Teachers Association - Guest Columnist
Photo courtesy of the California Teachers Association. *This photo was taken before the COVID-19 mask mandates.
Even 18 months of a pandemic cannot dampen the excitement that this new school year is bringing across California. Teachers are thrilled to be back in the classroom. Students are excited to see friends. Parents welcome the return to normal routines and the hope of a new year. All of this will require us to stay vigilant against the highly contagious Delta variant through masking, testing, vaccinations, physical distancing, and other measures.
We’re committed to safety because more than ever, we recognize that schools are a lifeline. We understand the cascading effects of the pandemic on working families and that includes the many teachers who are working mothers too. We recognize the mental health impacts on students who have been isolated from their peers.
We know teachers did heroic work translating lessons over Zoom to ensure that learning never stopped, even when buildings closed. Everyday, I saw teachers brainstorming ideas in online forums, juggling multiple screens to create functioning classrooms, and helping students get through difficult times as family members fell ill from COVID.
But we’ve seen technology’s limits. There’s no app or technology more powerful than the snap-crackle of human connection that flows from teacher to student and back again in a classroom that is alive and learning.
Will this newfound awareness of the importance of our schools and teachers lead to a renewed commitment to a public education system that provides every student with the opportunity to succeed? There’s reason to be hopeful. Thanks to Governor Gavin Newsom and the Legislature, significant new resources this year are leading to historic investments in students, social and emotional supports to recover from the pandemic, more investments in special education, community schools and early childhood education.
But as critical as these investments are, I believe it’s going to take more than just financial resources to strengthen our schools. I believe we must address an unspoken “elephant in the classroom” that has gone unchallenged and unnamed for too long: our society’s devaluing of teachers, a predominantly female workforce, that has its roots in sexism.
To understand what I mean, picture a teacher in a classroom right now. As someone who has taught high school history for more than 20 years in the William S. Hart Union High School District in Santa Clarita, this is not a stretch for me.
Back to in-person instruction, students are required to mask up and socially distance. Photo courtesy of the California Teachers Association.
Imagine she – and yes, imagine it is a woman, because close to two-thirds of California’s more than 300,000 teachers are female - has decades of classroom experience. She is a content expert. A learning expert. She knows how to capture her students’ attention. The time she is teaching she has to be “on” for every second or classroom management will elude her. She is consistently adjusting her teaching as she picks up on what works with the students and what falls flat. She spends hours grading papers and preparing for her class. She recognizes and knows the complex life situations of her students. She takes care to create a safe space in class so students take the learning risks she asks of them. She loves her job. Her students keep her young. She might also speak a second language and bring extraordinary cultural competence to her work with a diverse student body.
Yet even in California, the fifth largest economy in the world, the schools she teaches in are perpetually underfunded. California remains just 37th in the nation when compared to other states in per pupil funding levels. Everyone claims to love teachers, yet teachers have to routinely spend up to $1,000 of their own money every year on school supplies. With their unions’ help, many fight regularly for salaries that keep pace with the cost of living and the improvement of classroom buildings that have been neglected for decades.
In the news, we see new proposals for education “reforms” put forward by mostly male politicians and pundits. We’re seeing that now among some of our gubernatorial recall candidates. But rarely do these candidates ask teachers their opinions and if these so-called “reforms” address the challenges they see in the classroom. Many school board members and administrators routinely ask teachers for their opinions on pertinent education issues, then disregard them when decisions are made. During this pandemic, teachers’ safety and health have at times been treated as unimportant – how dare they advocate to be vaccinated before returning to the classroom? - when, in fact, a school that’s safe for teachers is also one that is safe for students.
A gubernatorial recall candidate has recently suggested that thousands of teachers should be fired to address our complex education challenges. I cannot help but wonder if he’d propose this same solution if teaching were a male-dominated profession. Other public voices regularly vilify teachers’ unions as if a union exists in isolation from its members. Unions are simply a group of teachers speaking together with a common and more powerful voice. Perhaps it’s not the union, but the power of it, that they find threatening.
If this all feels familiar, it’s because to women, it is. I believe these attacks on and devaluing of the teacher workforce are rooted in our society’s disrespect for women. Our fight to have our expertise respected and our voices heard is nothing new. Our fight for fair salaries and benefits is part of the larger equal pay battle women have waged for decades. This inherent sexism and devaluing of our profession does not just impact teachers – it corrodes and weakens our entire educational system, a system critical to a functioning society and the success of future generations.
For this predominantly female workforce, teachers unions have played a vital role.
Far from simply negotiating for salaries, they routinely ensure that teachers have a meaningful seat in decision making, adequate leave and benefits, and safe and healthy classrooms. Beyond the bargaining table, the California Teachers Association has proudly fought for its educators’ working conditions, understanding that a strong working environment for teachers means a strong learning environment for students. At one time, female educators faced the prospect of being dismissed from their jobs simply for marrying. In 1927, CTA won a legal victory when the State Supreme Court ruled that a school board cannot fire a female teacher for marrying. In 1913, CTA called for the creation of a statewide teachers’ retirement pension system, a key step for ensuring that years of work did not result in poverty for women and their families later in life.
California is facing a teacher shortage and the future of our schools will depend on a new generation of women and men who choose teaching as their profession. As we emerge from this pandemic, let’s not forget that we’ve learned that schools are a lifeline and teachers are too. When sexism devalues teachers and dismisses their voices, students, schools, and society suffer. It’s time to treat teaching like the feminist issue that it is.
Leslie Littman is Secretary Treasurer of the California Teachers Association and a high school history teacher in Santa Clarita.