Justin Parmenter writes here about a state legislator in North Carolina who denounced the teachers who plan to protest on May 16 as “thugs.”
He says, here come the teacher thugs!
He writes:
Brody is right to be concerned about the more than 13,500 thugs who will be storming Raleigh on Wednesday. After all, these thugs bring a very special skill set that make us extraordinarily effective advocates:
We are black belts in sarcasm and penmanship. Just wait til you see our signs.
We can hold our pee all day long.
We reserve a special teacher voice that demands attention.
We are very good at waiting in line (no cutting).
We can go 8 hours without sitting down once. The secret is in the shoes.
Most importantly, these thugs are experts in fact-based arguments.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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OMG….We can hold our pee all day long….my laugh for the day! Sorry, I know it’s true, but I can’t believe someone put it out there like that!
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Nice sarcasm. Let’s hope these state teachers recognize the power already in their hands, the power of solidarity and a general strike, the power stay out until they get everything they want. Do not listen to teacher union leaders urging a quick return to the classroom. Do not trust politicians promising future catch-ups and blue-ribbon commissions. Do not forget other school employees with a dog in t is fight, or parents and students as allies, or educators out-of-state. Do not settle for less because this society cannot function unless its 3 million k-12 schoolteachers care daily for its 50 million public school students. Stay out until this is absolutely clear to those who demean, loot and derange public education.
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Amen, Ira! Your words are so true. N.C. Public School Teachers, DO NOT SETTLE FOR LESS.
We know this is about our children and our country.
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This is so typical of the teacher haters to characterize teachers as thugs when they finally stand up for their rights. When all else fails, slander and smear teachers as big bad thugs; it’s all part of the anti-union pro privatization movement. “Unionized teachers are thugs” and “Social Security is a Ponzi scheme” are bogus talking points bandied about to undermine and discredit teachers unions and Social Security. Chris Christie often characterized teachers as being selfish and greedy though he denied it and claimed that he was just referring to the “thug” union leadership. Jersey Jazzman caught Christie smearing teachers and not only the NJEA leadership.
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Brody: “Your biggest legislative support comes from the Republican State legislature. Your greatest enemy for the causes you strive for is the Teacher Union, your incompetent and/or spineless local administrations and, the biggest problem of them all, the NC Department of Public Instruction.”
I get angry just reading this pile of BS. Brody needs to be voted out of office. Teachers’ “greatest support comes from Republicans”? This fellow has NO idea of what he’s talking about. Bashing unions is a cheap shot in a right to work state.
I have no idea about what the NC Dept. of Public Instruction does. I’d guess they aren’t doing much to support teachers. They should be screaming about the injustices that have occurred. Are they?
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Teaching is a career prone to UTIs from all the water holding and knee and hip replacements in old age from all the standing. These politicians have no idea! Most of all teachers know how to think and respond. North Carolina should start valuing and respecting their teachers. They are helping the state to build a better future.
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Several years ago to cut energy costs our superintendent had classroom printers removed and one of my elementary school’s buildings had none. I could just imagine how well the superintendent would do if he had to flag down a coworker to watch his office while he went across the street, got in line, and made copies. Hopefully it would be raining. Life’s a b*tch and then you die.
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Ms.Cartwheel….Librarian: one of the schools I worked in gave plastic keys to each teacher. These keys fitted into the copy machine. Teachers were allowed to copy only so many papers each month. At the beginning of each month the numbers would start over again and the line ups at the copy machine would begin.
I was given a key but most of the time there wasn’t enough copy paper left so, as a traveling music specialist, I had the ‘privilege’ of traveling to the district office and printing out stuff.
What a drag on teaching to have to do this every so often. Good grief. Some teachers would just go to places like FedEx and pay to get copies printed.
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That eventually happened to the schools where I taught too, and I went out and bought my own copy machine to use at home where I turned worksheets into overhead transparencies that my students worked from when I turned the overhead on. That way I kept the toner and paper bill down but overhead transparencies were not cheap.
But once I had a transparency, I could use it again as long as it was useful.
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Lloyd: People have no idea how hard it is to teach. Who else has to put up with this nonsense. Can you see business people coming home to copy papers and the cost coming out of their pockets?
I also had to purchase my own masking tape, bulletin board decorations, stapler and staples and other teaching materials. I normally spent around $1000 each year out of my pocket.
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I spent thousands using my credit cards. I even bought computers for students to use in my classroom so there would at last two that worked since the old ones we had kept breaking down. That cost me a lot and the new computers had students lining up to use them because they didn’t want to risk the loss of their work on the old crap.
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“Teachers in a nutshell”
Thugs in Uggs
On classroom rugs
Giving hugs
To kids with bugs
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fabulous!
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We “teacher thugs” are also great at working at home nights and weekends after teaching in our classrooms at school, because we have to correct all that work the students turned in for those students that turned it in. We can work until our vision blurs and we have to stumble off to bed. We also have to carve out time outside of the classroom to plan those lessons we teach in the classroom unless we stay late after school to plan in our empty classrooms after the children go home to watch TV, send out endless texts to their friends or play video games. No time for video games for those teacher thugs. Little time to send texts for those teacher thugs. To find that time, they have to give up some of their sleep time if they can sleep with all the concerns, the burden, they carry home for the children they struggle to teach that come from dysfunctional homes and/or live in poverty.
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Lloyd: “We also have to carve out time outside of the classroom to plan those lessons we teach in the classroom unless we stay late after school to plan in our empty classrooms after the children go home…”
I had a large music room in one of my schools. The boy scout leader told the principal that I couldn’t stay in my room when she came. I put a small student’s desk in one corner, hoping to do my lesson plans. She reported me to the principal. I was told to get out of the room.
I ended up going to the lunch room and doing my lesson plans OR I’d just leave the school and go home. I was also told that I couldn’t talk with anyone in the office.
The principal allowed the custodian to clean up individual teachers’ closets during the summer. Teachers would come back at the beginning of the school year and find their stuff having been thrown out because they had messes inside their closets.
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Reblogged this on What's Gneiss for Education.
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LMAO. Love this post.
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Wonderful, including the list of facts about cuts to essentials for teaching.
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