I am a 2003 graduate of the Washington state public school system (Tacoma and White River districts, respectively), now living and working in Portland, Oregon. I’ve remained friends with several fantastic, supportive and inspiring teachers from my past, including several that are now working in the Kent school district. As my K-12 school memories fade further into nostalgia and my agenda focuses more and more on my future theoretical children, the issues that the Kent teachers are fighting to amend have a new sense of importance and urgency.
We can’t afford to let our kids suffer in large, anonymous classrooms and become nothing but a number in a district database. Not in a recession, not in a rebound, not ever.
Teachers and education are institutions that stay with us past high school, past college, into our daily lives to create successful and contributing adults. With attention and guidance from a young age, they teach us how to behave well and listen to others in classrooms and future board meetings. They teach us to respect each other and stop gossiping on the playground and around the coffee pot. They help us find how we learn and work best, so we can get our homework and our business proposals done. Lessons like these, begun in the home and nurtured in the classroom, are much too important to compromise. It is with all this in mind, and at stake, that I put all my support behind the Kent teacher’s strike.
And like any good, worthwhile strike, it deserves a song. This is mine, written to the tune of the great Kermit The Frog’s Rainbow Connection:
Why are there so many
kids in a classroom?
And how do they fit inside?
Kids need attention,
it’s not just a lesson,
and they’re getting lost from sight.
We’re cheating them and some choose to ignore it,
I know they’re wrong wait and see.
Someday we’ll find it,
a kid-first agenda,
the teachers, the admins and me!
Tabitha Blankenbiller
Wilsonville, Ore.
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