JUST SAYING Teacher Appreciation Week

 

How about we do something different this Teacher Appreciation Week?

1. Sates stop requiring advanced degrees you do not pay for,

2. A real pay increase above inflation for a change,

3. Stop reducing our pensions and medical benefits,

4. OMG, stop wasting nearly 2 billion dollars every year on standardized test that have no real instructional value,

5. Stop trying to speed learning up; it doesn't work,

6. Try respecting our professional knowledge,

7. Stop pushing school choice scams without equity,

8. Stop passing laws to ban the three things that motivate learning, Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity,

9. Almost anything more than; thank you teacher stickers and donuts,

10. Just let us teach!

If you want to listen to the tune that inspired my morning walk today? It is Barry Lane's. +If  I'd never had a teacher" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eoMnTesZ90 

BADASS TEACHER ALERT: CT Professor Labor DAY Walk for School Equity

 

BADASS TEACHER ALERT!

I was raised out of steel here in the swamps of Jersey, some misty years ago

Through the mud and the beer, and the blood and the cheers, I've seen champions come and go

A week to for year 25, 50 semesters of speaking truth to power in my classroom and outside as well. At 67, I feel like 27, and like Ali still standing in the 15th round, still got plenty of fight to go.

Just in case you missed it, I'm Jersey Born, and I ain't no wrecking ball going to put me down.

"So if you got the guts mister, yeah, if you got the balls

If you think it's your time, then step to the line, and bring on your wrecking ball

Bring on your wrecking ball

Bring on your wrecking ball

Come on and take your best shot, let me see what you got

Bring on your wrecking ball

Now my home's here in these meadowlands where mosquitoes grow big as airplanes

Here where the blood is spilled, the arena's filled, and giants played their games

So raise up your glasses and let me hear your voices call"

I'm Jersey born, a Ferris Bulldog, and ain't no Ed Reform scammers going to knock me down.

You see I have the years, I could step down, but Damn I do love a good fight. I feel another Equity Walk growing in these bones, 12 miles from CCSU to the Capital. It is going to be a LABOR DAY event. I won't be going to the beach, I won't be dinning out, I be Like Martin Luther with his 95 Theses.

I am going to hang a 95 Theses for Equity 4 All on that Supreme Court of shame that ruled in 2018 that Connecticut is not responsible for an equal and high quality education for all...

I need walkers to join me,

I am calling out to every CT BADASS Teacher to meet me at the capital,

Call your union leaders,

Call our Civil Rights Leaders,

Call our Parents and children denied an equitable and fair public education.

Dr. Jesse P. Turner is Jesse The Walking Man.

Did those justices, ed reform scammers, really believe we would go quietly into that good night?

Bring on your Wrecking ball,

Jesse P. Turner

If you like to listen to the tune that inspired my morning walk, it Bruce Springteen's Wrecking Ball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1mL_Z1Adao

The sham of America: School Choice without Equity Monsters

 

"People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster." ~James Baldwin

Dear Policymakers and Legislators, we see your cowardice. 

You dance and sing those old minstrel lies:

Testing will save Black, Brown, Special Education, and Poor  children,

Charter schools will save them,

Magnet Schools will save them,

School Choice will save them,

Teach for America will save them.

Schools for profit will save them.

The song you dare not sing is about quality and equality for all children.

This tune would make you moral heroes to all; you run from, hide from, and dare not imagine it. 

Justice is too costly in your world.

But, our nation's dreamer Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke from his Birmingham prison cell in 

"Justice too long delayed is justice denied."

Heroes speak the truth; they never run from it or deny it.

We see you.

You can't do equity, 

Your minstrel dance of lies, 

Reveal your lies, and they damn you.

They expose your cowardice,

They show us, 

Monsters of injustice.

We see you,

Dr. Jesse P. Turner 

Uniting to Save Our Schools

Badass Teacher,

If you like to hear the tune that inspired my walk this morning? It is Pete Seeger's version of We Shall Over Come  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gmTxc2wGTI

Academics not only have to write, and speak about justice, we must TURN UP for JUSTICE! 

Bishop John Selders is an academic who TURN UP!