I am glad that Amy Bastarache tackled the issue of teacher protests in her response to an article from Cnn. I have also been reading about these kinds of events in the news, and struggling with the seeming conflict of interest between showing displeasure for my working conditions or pay and sacrificing a day of instruction for my students. Yet, to me, the two are not mutually exclusive. As Amy pointed out, calling in sick to show your displeasure with your salary demonstrates a strong point, but on the other hand it takes away from your students, and I totally agree. However, even though students may lose out a little on the lost day, they will lose out even more if the teachers in their school are fed up with what is going on and lose their interest in working within a system that, while never overwhelming in its support of public educators, is becoming more and more blind to their needs.
From what I have heard, it is increasingly hard to find teachers and keep them in urban public schools, so every now and then I think it is important for those educators to speak up about what they feel. If they do this, I think the students will ultimately benefit in the long run. After all, if the teachers can at least feel that their concerns are getting some attention, then they will probably not see the need to take another day to all call in sick or similar action. Also, if the benefits and pay for teachers in these school districts is fair, it will be easier to draw in and retain more teachers. Not that, as Amy points out, all we want from teaching is money, but not paying teachers for the work they have done is definitely not going to attract new educators to the area where they are needed most.
All of this being said, I have to say again that I am glad that this topic has come up because, as a future teacher, I need to be thinking about how I will handle these situations. As Amy said, teachers are professionals and need to be treated as such, but how would I approach the idea of a “sick-out” as a professional? I want to say that, if I felt strongly enough about the subject that I really needed to participate in the protest, I would try to do it in a way that minimizes the impact on the students, who of course should be first in the thoughts of all teachers. Perhaps this would mean organizing the protest for a half day of school or a day when there are already assemblies scheduled so that the students will not actually be missing that much more instructional time anyway. I know I would still have ethical issues with this, but I think that in the event of extremely unfair treatment I would still feel compelled to act.
