#RedforEd movement garners support for America’s teachers and students

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Arizona teachers strike

Arizona teachers go on #RedforEd strike to demand pay raises and increased funding for public schools. Photo by NPR

Perhaps you have seen news reports about the teachers #RedforEd strike that is currently taking place in the state of Arizona.The Arizona teachers join their colleagues in Kentucky, Oklahoma, and West Virginia who in recent months have conducted similar strikes to focus attention for their demands for increased support for public education. In Arizona’s case, 50,000 teachers and their supporters clad in blazing #RedforEd T-shirts marched on the state capital in Phoenix last Thursday in 98 degree heat to make their point. The action forced the closure of over 1,000 schools statewide.

The teachers and their supporters are demanding higher pay and more funding for Arizona’s public schools. According to National Public Radio (NPR), federal statistics show that Arizona teachers are among the lowest paid in the country. They say that average teacher salaries last year were actually $8,000-$9,000 below salaries in 1990, when adjusted for inflation. (See NPR article at Arizona Teachers Strike).

In other states, #RedforEd strikes like the Arizona job action have yielded positive results. Teachers in Kentucky scored a victory when their state legislature increased money allocated for schools and overturned unpopular changes to the teachers’ pension system. Striking Oklahoma educators won a pay increase of about $6,100 and additional funding for their schools. The West Virginia teachers ended their strike in March when that state’s legislature signed a 5% pay raise into law.

I fervently hope that a solution that is fair for teachers and students will be found soon in Arizona, and in other states where declining financial support for schools and teachers has become a boiling point. I agree with Ira singer, author of What’s the Real Point of a Nation at Risk? He once commented, “The public schools are America’s children and require the continuing encouragement, nurture, and support of America’s people.”

Acclaimed author Pat Conroy most relished his role as teacher

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Pat Conroy

Educator and author Pat Conroy

Sometimes in history a talented educator earns fame, fortune, and acclaim in the literary world. One teacher like this is Pat Conroy, considered by many the leading figure of Southern literature of the late 20th century. Pat Conroy is the author of two acclaimed novels: The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini. Both these novels have garnered Academy Awards as films. He also penned the successful novel The Lords of Discipline.

Donald Patrick Conroy was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 26, 1945. His father was a Marine Corps fighter pilot, and for this reason his family moved frequently. Pat once said he attended eleven different schools before his sophomore year. Also, he has often described his father as abusive and his childhood as traumatic.

As a college student, Pat attended The Citadel, an all-male military college in South Carolina. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in English in 1967. After earning his degree, Pat accepted a position as an English teacher at Beaufort High School in Beaufort, South Carolina. While there, he wrote his first novel, The Boo, which he self-published using money he borrowed from the bank.

After two years, Pat spent a year teaching at a two-room school on Daufuskie Island off the coast of South Carolina. There he worked to expand the horizons of his African American students, poorly-educated kids who spoke the Gullah dialect and had very little knowledge of the world beyond their island. Pat’s unorthodox instructional methods caused the superintendent of schools to fire him after just one year. Nevertheless, Pat relished his job as an educator. “There’s no word in the language I revere more than ‘teacher,'” Pat said in 1986. “My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher, and it always has. I’ve honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming a teacher.”

This dedicated educator and outstanding author passed away from pancreatic cancer on March 4, 2016. He was 70 years old. He is interred at St. Helena Memorial Garden on St. Helena Island, South Carolina. To read the 2009 interview with Pat Conroy published by Low Country Weekly, click on The Power of Circles.

 

Science teacher and Civil Rights activist Theodora Smiley Lacey

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Theodora Lacey

Teacher and Civil Rights activist Theodora Lacey

Throughout American history, teachers have often been the agents of positive social change. Science teacher and Civil Rights activist Theodora Smiley Lacey is a fine example of this.

Theodora Smiley was born in 1932 in Montgomery, Alabama. Her father was a high school principal, and her mother was also an educator. Theodora’s mother and Rosa Parks were childhood friends, and as a child, Theodora was surrounded by individuals who sought to improve conditions for the African American community.

Theodora graduated with her Bachelor’s degree from Alabama State College. In 1965, she earned her Master’s degree at Hunter College in New York City. She started her career in education as a science teacher at George Washington Carver High School in Birmingham, Alabama. Later she taught in schools in Louisiana, New York, and New Jersey. By the time she retired in 2007, Theodora’s career as an educator spanned 42 years.

When Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress, was arrested for sitting in an area of a public bus that was designated for white customers only, the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott was launched. Working side-by-side with Dr. Martin Luther King, Theodora worked tirelessly for the Movement. She drove boycotters to their jobs, raised funds, typed press releases, conducted voter registration, and worked as a general go-fer. During the boycott, Theodora met fellow activist Archie Lacey, a science professor at Alabama State College. They married on April 29, 1956. Four children were born to the couple, two of whom were baptized by Dr. King.

In the late 1950s, Theodora and her family moved north to escape the racism and segregation of the South. By 1961, they landed in Teaneck, Bergen County, New Jersey. There she and her husband worked to integrate local public schools. In addition, they joined the Fair Housing Council of Northern New Jersey, which became instrumental in helping to pass the 1968 anti-discrimination federal legislation known as the Fair Housing Act. Before Archie passed away in 1986, Theodora and her husband founded an organization called Teens Talk About Racism, an organization for young people which encourages teens to take action to bring about the positive social change they seek.

For her outstanding work as an educator, Theodora has earned many honors. She was recognized by the New Jersey State Senate as one of the Garden State’s Outstanding Women of New Jersey. She was also named Most Outstanding Secondary School Teacher by Princeton University and Teacher of the Year from the Teaneck School District. She earned the Outstanding Educator Award from the Teaneck Chamber of Commerce, and the Teacher Training Institute gave her a Master Teacher Award.

To learn more about Theodora’s work, you can read the article Civil Rights Activist Recounts Her Struggle, or check out the website Teens Talk About Racism.org.

Alaska teacher and State Senator Jan Faiks

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Jan Faiks

Alaska teacher and state senator Jan Faiks working with her llamas.

Talented classroom teachers often go on to have successful careers in politics. One teacher who proves this to be true is Jan Faiks, a math teacher and school counselor who served in the Alaska State Senate.

Janice O. Faiks was born on November 17, 1945, at Mitchel Air Force Base in New York. As a young girl, she attended Choctawhatchee High School, where she graduated in 1964. After her high school graduation, she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics at Florida State University in 1967. She earned a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, in 1975.

After college, Jan taught mathematics and worked as a school counselor in the Anchorage School District. She worked there from 1968 to 1978. In addition to her work in the classroom, the educator was well known for operating a llama farm.

In 1982, Jan was elected to the Alaska State Senate on the Republican ticked. She served two terms, and became the first woman president of the Alaska State Senate. While there, her biggest claim to fame was that she was one of the key legislators to create the Constitutional Budge Reserve, a savings fund for surplus tax revenues that could be used in times of economic downturn.

After her service in the state senate, Jan moved to Washington, DC, where she earned a law degree from Georgetown Law Center. She worked for several years as a Congressional staff member. She also served briefly as an assistant secretary with the Mine Safety and Health Administration at the US Labor Department. Finally, she became a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). She retired in 2013.

After her retirement, Jan relocated to Amelia Island, Florida. There the former teacher was diagnosed with brain cancer, and five months later passed away on April 10, 2017. She was 71 years old. You can read her obituary at Anchorage Daily News.

The amazing story of Texas teacher and suffragist Annie Webb Blanton

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Women in Texas

On a vacation to Texas a while back, I picked up this slender volume of biographical sketches, Women in Texas, by Anne Fears Crawford and Crystal Sasse Ragsdale.

When I bought the book, I was primarily intrigued by the chapter about Annie Webb Blanton, which the authors described as the foremost woman educator in Texas.

After her graduation from high school in LaGrange, Texas, Annie taught at a one-room county school in Pine Springs.  After the death of her father, Annie moved to Austin and taught in public elementary schools, and later at Austin High School.

While teaching, Annie attended classes at the University of Texas, Austin, earning a degree in English literature in 1899 and her Master’s degree in 1923. She earned a PhD from Cornell University in 1927.

By the time she finished her undergraduate degree, Annie had been teaching for several years in rural schools and schools in the Austin area. She went on to become a professor of English in Denton at the North Texas State Normal College, an institution that trained teachers, from 1901 to 1918. For the next 22 years, she taught at her alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin. She was only the third woman to hold full professor status at that university.

This amazing teacher, once president of the Texas State Teachers’ Association, was encouraged and financed by the State Suffrage Association in her 1918 bid to become the first woman elected to the state superintendent’s office. Texans gathered in droves across the Lone Star State to hear this remarkable teacher speak, and to witness the novelty of a woman campaigning in Texas’s male-dominated political arena. Apparently, the campaign was a dirty one, with opponents charging that Blanton was divorced (yikes!) and that she was an atheist (yeesh!).

You can read more about what happened in that 1918 election in the book Women in Texas, available on amazon.com.