My teaching life and union life are intertwined in a lot of ways. The things I try to empower my students to be able to do are the things I want for educators: To find and recognize the power of their voice. This drives me, and I hope it translates into tangible things that make a difference for kids and the adults that work with them.
This is my 26th year of teaching English. I also coach speech and debate. I get to teach so many great kids and talk about many interesting topics.
We talk about controversial topics, too, and approach it from the standpoint of debating multiple sides of an issue. This helps them recognize varying viewpoints that are unlike their own. With many echo chambers and isolated opinions that live on social media, the Internet, and in the news, kids need to differentiate between what's real and fake. In my classes, they also learn to recognize that everyone has different stories, and the more they understand them, the better off we all are because of it.
My administration recognizes that kids need to be exposed to different ideas, and I am trusted as a professional. I am currently the vice president of the Cherry Creek Education Association, and this is the thing I care most for my colleagues to also have, not just in my building but across our district and state.
My previous district, also in Colorado, fell apart. In 2012, an incredibly conservative board took over and we lost our collective bargaining agreement. I watched seven people destroy a school district. While I had always been an active member of my union, this galvanized me to increase teachers’ voices. And so, we work to make sure what happened in my previous district does not happen here. We maintain the association’s strength and use our teacher voice.
This is how I view myself as a teacher: Ensure my students’ voices are heard, while ensuring people understand teachers are the ones that know best what should be happening in classrooms. We need to hear them and recognize their professional opinion.
