A Year After the Night Before the First Day of the Strike...

This winter break, it was hard to not remember how we were feeling a year ago. We are a two-UTLA salary home, so the looming strike brought a whole lot of worry and stress along with sign-making and rain-gear gathering. All we had to say this year was, "Aren't you glad we aren't getting ready to go on strike?"

photo by ESA alumni Sophie Sanchez

And we are glad. We are proud of the gains that came from the strike: class-size caps, movement on teacher-librarians, nurses, the end to random searches, and increased charter school regulation. It was also amazing to feel supported by so many in our city and across the nation, and then to see educators in Denver, West Virginia, Oakland, Sacramento, the Carolinas, New Haven, Washington State, and Chicago using strikes to demand more for our public schools.

But this year, as I look to celebrate my parents' birthdays over the next two days, commemorate the strike, and start the second semester of the year, I'm also seeing how much remains to be done. Public education continues to be threatened by underfunding, the "reform movement" pours money into campaigns to undermine our schools, and we still need more of the public to lean back into our schools.

My students this year are wonderful, but so many of them are sad and recognize their mistreatment in this system. They deserve so much better: smaller classes so teachers can give them more, counseling services to help heal trauma, safe and clean schools where they feel loved and valued as learners and people, not as attendance dollars or test scores. And that's just what I can think of in these waning moments of winter break.

Tomorrow, I will stand at my door to welcome my students back, and the amazing thing about teaching, is they will show up ready to give so much. They give me new perspectives and insights. They remind me what is really important and give me hope.

They want a better world, and they inspire me to try to create it with them. Let's work to give them a 2020 that turns things around.