On Wisconsin

JUNE 29
On Wisconsin
When you don’t live in Wisconsin it is hard to keep track of the flood of new laws implemented to bust unions, eliminate environmental protections, destroy infrastructure, target immigrants, dismantle state health care and all else that is held in common. In fact, those of us outside of the state may be more focused on visions of rallies of unprecedented size and pizza for all. We may feel giddy contemplating a level of global/local solidarity that we didn't know was possible.
We are not attending those long meetings where everyone disagrees and unity seems illusive. We are not around to keep tabs on the electoral and legislative leaps backward; the newly elected judge, a Walkerite, who assaulted a fellow judge in the first days of his office; the cold fact that collective bargaining has been eliminated, come August, for those public employees whose contracts are up. We do not see or feel the effects of school closings, lay offs, speed ups and slow downs.
A teacher of developmentally disabled children in Verona was told her classrooms will have 40 students next year. She has decided to quit her job, knowing she cannot serve the needs of her students with those numbers. For all the talk of getting rid of bad teachers they are doing a great job of getting rid of the good ones- educators with standards, who need to teach and cannot continue in a position where the conditions make that impossible.
In our three days in Madison I had the opportunity to interview three exemplary educators. Elizabeth (Beth) Miller is a bilingual teacher of 4th and 5th grade Latino children. She had lucrative career as an architectural historian before returning to school to get her degree in bilingual education.
When her son was young she volunteered in his bilingual classroom and discovered she loved it. As he grew up she longed to be around young children. In addition she was motivated by a a need to address a pressing social justice issue: filling the educational needs of non English -speaking immigrants.
So she took a large pay cut to become a teacher.
For Beth it is not just the attacks on teachers and public sector workers and collective bargaining that affect her personally. She is also acutely aware of how the anti-immigrant rhetoric and legislation hurt her students and their families. In addition, the elimination of Badger Care will leave many of them without health coverage.
Like Beth, Larry Iles also traded in a much more lucrative career for a life as a teacher. Larry was an engineer, working for a big company, flying around the country. Like Beth Larry also began moving down the path twoard becoming a teacher when he volunteered is his child’s first grade classroom.
Larry teaches math at West High School, where his wife teaches science. They arrive at school early and stay late and weekends are spent grading and planning for the next week. They share students, trade tips; living and breathing teaching... and loving it .
Both LArry and Beth told me about their experience participating in a four day work stoppage organized by the Madison Teachers union (MTI) last February. They called in sick 4 days in a row. and lost four days wages as a consequence. Said Beth "I conisdered it my job, during those days to go down to the Capital and protest." Larry talked about how beautiful it was to see students from rival schools marching together. Beth was inspired by some of her undocumented students and their families who had the courage to come out and join the protests. Both of them said that what happened was unprecdented. Like the 1960s but--- according to Beth--, much more diverse, with people from all walks of life involved and –according to Larry—lcking in the violence he remembers as a kid growing up in Madison during the “War at Home” against the Vietnam War. Now “everyone was polite and cared for each other”.
I also interviewed Donna Vukelich-Selva, a professor of Education at Edgewood College. As a teacher of future teachers Donna is acutely aware of problems in our current education, especially for students of color. She is passionate about training teachers who are culturally competent and understand the needs of children experiencing poverty. Teachers in Madison learn soon enough that many of their children are hungry when they come to school. 50% of Madison’s children are receiving free and reduced lunch. Notes Donna: “The teachers I work with are all bringing in granola bars, cheese sticks and raisin to feed their students”
AS Donna tries to ready her students for the classroom she fears that cuts will make their jobs impossible. The move is to increase class size of every level. High school kids on trips abroad with 40 kids instead of fifteen will get less out of it. More critical is the increase in kindergarten class size. “When you add four five or seven more kids to a classroom more kids are going to fall through the cracks. Beth echoed this concern: “It is about money” she said. Kids need attention and they are not going to get what they need in bigger classrooms
For these three, educators, teaching is a calling, a social justice commitment, a passion. It is their life’s work, not just a job. However, it is possible to turn away even such dedicated teacher. “I’m starting to think about early retirement, said Beth.
Wisconsin uprising is truly inspiring to those of us out side of the state. However, the struggle to protect the common good here has just begun.