LeAnna Erls Delph is a veteran teacher of sixth grade students in social studies and language arts in Asheville, North Carolina. She is a member of the Governor’s Teachers Advisory Committee, is the North Carolina Association of Educators regional director for the far west, and is a member of the Red4EdNC advisory board.
She explains here why teachers owe it to their students, their communities, and their profession to become politically active.
On a recent Sunday morning, I woke up to see tremendous chatter on social media concerning the budget impasse in the North Carolina General Assembly. The discussion included the lack of educator raises, the failure to expand Medicaid, unacceptable working conditions, and a shortage of support staff. This discussion quickly evolved into the formation of a new social media group discussing the possibility of a large scale collective action or strike of North Carolina educators.
This kind of discussion is not new to me. I’ve been a sixth grade social studies and language arts teacher for 18 years, working my whole career in a diverse community confronted with significant economic struggle. I love my community, and they have always inspired me to advocate for my students and their families. Recently, I decided to take an Inquiry to Action class through the Western Region Education Service Alliance (WRESA) to earn continuing licensure credits and build my activist skills. Here, a small group of educators studied educator activism in both theory and practice. Each week we discussed a different education-related activist tool, theory, and issue. The culminating project was to take our “inquiry” and put it into “action” in some way.
The group decided to focus on “making the invisible visible.” In other words, we seek to deepen critical consciousness — the notion that we go through life oblivious to the world around us on the largest scale. A famous example of this precept is the analogy of the fish in water. If you asked a fish what water is, the fish wouldn’t understand the question because it has a fish brain.
Joking aside, it is because the fish is completely immersed in the water and always has been. The fish just doesn’t notice because it is so “normal” and so ubiquitous. In human life, this would be like the systematic racism that we all live within. Or, it may be ideas that are simply taken as “common sense.” For educators, we may struggle to apprehend fundamental truths about our own environments. I believe that public educators swim in a sea of politics which is all too often invisible — so that is the concept I choose to render more visible.
Most North Carolina local school boards have policies which hold that employees may not engage in political activities during the school day. However, because public schools are supported by public monies which are controlled by politicians, the very act of teaching, while not partisan, is an inherently political activity. In fact, North Carolina’s evaluation instrument for educators insists upon educators taking part in political activities. Standard 1 (Teachers Demonstrate Leadership) states, “Teachers advocate for schools and students. Teachers advocate for positive change in policies and practices affecting student learning.” What is advocating for policies if not political?
Please open the post to see her wonderful infographics and finish learning her thoughts on teacher activism.
LeAnna is a member of the Resistance!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Delph calls for action instead of conflict avoidance. She makes a connection between silence and the failure of a citizen’s duty in a democracy threatened by oligarchs.
The book, Dark Money, about the Koch network shows Americans that the freedom and the rights of this and future generations hang by a thread.
A huge debt is owed to the teachers who stand up against the formidable forces aligned and intent on destroying America’s foundation.
The theocracy, an alliance of two major religions in the U.S., Catholic and evangelical and, their engagement in politics along side the richest 0.1%, embodied by the Kochs, Waltons and Gates represent a two-headed monster that must be exposed and stopped in order for democracy to be re-established and colonialism rejected
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Teachers, in my opinion should look to the Nurses and their actions. Unless they speak out, conditions won’t improve.
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national nurses’ union leadership has been so immovably inspirational: the teachers must step up and demand the same
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The truth is the only people who have been effective advocates for public school students are public school teachers.
In state after state. The budget cuts and denigration of public schools and public school students would have continued if teachers hadn’t walked off the job in these states.
I mean, look at what had to happen here to get the attention of the powers that be! They have had to SHUT DOWN schools before anyone in government would listen to them.
If they hadn’t have done that nothing would have happened. No one else was interested or could be bothered.
Indiana is one of the states ed reformers point to as a huge success. But look at Indiana. Real life. Teachers organized a huge protest. What does that tell you about the state of public education on the ground in Indiana? It’s not good! Hello! If half the schools in your state are being shut down your ed reform plan is not going well!
There’s the massive disconnect between our elites who set policy and the people who actually do the work. It’s like two different countries.
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“Making the invisible visible” is a good goal for there is a lot of wool that has been pulled over our American eyes that has become “common sense”, but in reality couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s so many examples:
•”There’s no way government healthcare can be cheaper than privatized healthcare” when in reality every other developed country provides socialized healthcare for half the price.
•”The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” when America’s lax gun laws enable 5x the gun violence per capita.
•”We must fight Islamic terrorist there so that we don’t have to fight them here” when our children are much more likely to get shot by a white nationalist at school.
“Teacher’s unions are destroying our schools” when the states with strong teacher’s unions have the better test scores.
The list goes on and on. But what should we expect from a society of sales people trying to out sale pitch each other. Americans would be better served with the reasoned-based democracy our founding fathers originally created, one based upon researched facts instead of the the most elaborate sells pitch.
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Well stated, David. The hypocrisy of Ohio Republican politicians was evident when they prohibited guns from the capitol while simultaneously they claimed that citizens who had readily accessible guns in all other locations would be safer.
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The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has a Secretariat of Catholic Education. A conclusion from a report which may have been written about 2014, titled, K-12 Catholic Schools and Parental Choice follows – the growth in private school parental choice programs resulted in a ten fold increase in students enrolled in private schools between 2000 and 2012. Only the states of N.C. and Alabama have parental tuition tax credit programs that provide a credit sufficiently large enough to affect a family’s ability to enroll their child in a private school.
If the plan of racist Georgia Gov. Talmadge who first proposed privatization in opposition to integration is behind current privatization efforts funded by billionaires, it warrants an awakening of conscience, particularly in N.C. and Alabama.
Also from the aforementioned report, “Catholic school students are more likely …to preserve civic order.. The Catholic School Advantage: Forming Children for College and Heaven”.
From Christian teachings, the meek shall inherit the earth
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Such a great sign pictures:
As long as POLITICIANS
Are involved in EDUCATION,
EDUCATORS
MUST BE
Involved in POLITICS
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pictured
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First, teachers will never see change until they inconvenience those in power. These one day walkouts or before and after school pickets are laughable. Next, when we have a rally or a walkout, the NCAE needs to bring more groups in. VFW, motorcycle clubs, Civic groups have to March with us. Show the GA that others care too. Also stop playing this happy music and dancing around at the rally. It looks like a party. Then we look stupid. There needs to be force and anger. There needs to be a strong ad campaign explaining what schools need. All the time, show the problems on the news in commercials every day. The DPI runs smear campaigns against us, we need to aggressively push back. Teachers in NC will never be taken seriously until we make or demands in a far more aggressive and militant way.
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I’ve found that friendly works best. When I stood in the picket lines with the BC teachers in their strike a few years ago I noticed how it was lagely a friendly contest, or who’s plan is best for the children. They sang songs too. It helped to build the spirit of community, which is what they were ultimately offering the children at school.
One of my neighbors helped stopped a pipeline planned to go through Vancouver by approaching the friendliest policeman guarding the picket line and asked to be arrested please. Other police lines refused to remove protesters after the protesters had talked to the policemen personally in a friendly manner.
Make clear demands, yes. But always in a friendly manner because that’s the example that we need to set for our children and our community. The friendliest wins. Betsy DeVos is playing that game. Teacher’s becoming militant plays into her narrative and hurts us.
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The successful fight against Kasich (Ohio’s Governor) when he tried to destroy public unions, was won in part when firemen stood in uniform at the Capitol. It sent a powerful message. One sign held by a fireman said, “Call the Koch’s when you have a fire.”
In states across America, the Catholic hierarchy (bishops and state Catholic Conferences) are well organized, leading the way for the billionaires’ school choice agenda (the Koch vision). Charles Koch was given a hero’s welcome at the Catholic University of America. Two board members of CUA are the head of the Knights of Columbus who was a legislative aid to Sen. Jesse Helms and, the head of Napa Institute which has an offshoot poised to legally erode separation of church and state. Koch was praised as a “closet Catholic” at CUA. Bill Gates “participates in the Catholic Church that his wife attends with their children.”
A site linked to the bishops posted as a “Catholic school advantage” that they “preserve civic order”. 1,000,000, Irish died of starvation because their overlords practiced social Darwinism. The Catholic Church preserved civic order, benefitting the Charles Koch’s of the era.
John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president said, “I believe in an America where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or non-directly upon the public acts of (government) officials.”
The current cash-strapped Catholic hierarchy dishonors Kennedy with their efforts to take from America, its important common good.
The theocracy’s plot for parallel schools to destroy public schools is posted in the Weyrich training manual at Theocracy Watch.
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