WHAT TEACHERS CAN TEACH US ABOUT WORK.

• Author: Jaffe, Sarah
• Position: WORK WON'T LOVE YOU BACK

According to Ma-Riah Roberson Moody, a big part of the reason that Minneapolis and St. Paul teachers and educational support professionals (ESPs) voted to strike in March was that they were "feeling disrespected in our jobs."

Moody is a special education assistant at Minneapolis's Roosevelt High School and the first vice president of the ESP chapter of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. She spends her days assisting students with assignments, advocating for them to teachers and school officials, and generally making it possible for them to attend school. When school buildings were closed, she notes, the people staffing emergency child care sites were ESPs. And workers like her make an average starting salary of $24,000 a year.

Since the pandemic, the pressure on teachers and education workers to return to school buildings has been more about reopening the economy than about children's needs. Education workers around the country were already "doing more with less" before COVID-19 put their health at risk every time they stepped into a classroom. Only the organizing and strikes of teachers in places including Chicago, West Virginia, Los Angeles, and St. Paul had been able to push back some of the worst attacks on public schools.

Corporate education reformers and their allies in public office often blame poor student outcomes on teachers' lack of effort and care. But the pandemic-era demand that schools be physically open no matter who is standing in front of the classroom, no matter how many students or teachers get ill, has exposed this argument as fraudulent. It's now clear that many pundits and policymakers see public schools simply as places to supervise the children of the working class during the day so their parents can return to productivity. And around the country, those teachers are rebelling.

"For a long time, the employer has benefited from dividing us all and siloing us," Moody says. This time, though, across two cities, the workers who make public schooling possible, from the teachers to food service staff, have coordinated their contracts and their bargaining issues, and most importantly, their strike votes.

"We have these shared issues, especially across districts," Moody says. "St. Paul has some things that they've bargained for, they went on strike, and we have admired some of the things that they've been able to secure through that process."

The demands that teachers are making--and have been making--in active...