Dirty Little Education Secrets Part 4: Teacher And Administrator Bullies



Former University of Missouri Professor Melissa Click fired after
refusing to allow a campus journalist access to a campus demonstration
Bing images

When I began teaching in the Oklahoma public education system, I was finishing my thesis, taking coursework to get my Alternative Certification and teaching part time at Deer Creek Public Schools outside Edmond. My daughter (I was a single mother at the time) and I lived on about $12K that year after taxes. It wasn’t easy, but my mother had been a public school English teacher for decades, my grandfather had been a law professor and my father was beginning his career as a Journalism professor. Not only is teaching a career path in my family, but I really enjoyed it, and as a TA in the Biology Department at the University of Central Oklahoma, I regularly had overflowing sessions for my Microbiology study review, so I conceived I might be ok at it.

How Do We Know Teachers Need A Raise If We Don't Do Our Homework?

In case you've been under a rock and haven't learned about the West Virginia teachers who have apparently inspired teacher walkouts in Arizona, Kentucky and Oklahoma, I thought it important to make sure anyone who wanted to do more than hear talking points and rhetoric have direct access to OSDE data.

In my next few blogs, I'm going to try and hit some of the talking points pushed by OEA (Oklahoma Education Association - the state arm of the National Teachers Association (NEA) - the UNION pushing the walkout), doing the calculations right in front of you and providing links to check my figures. I want to make sure readers have direct access to some of the more important links I'll be using for fact checking, however, so all this is public.