By Joanna Burt-Kinderman

May 30, 2018

Earlier this year West Virginia’s teachers shut down the schools to fight for better funding, better teaching standards, and better livelihoods for state workers. If you were casually watching from the outside, maybe you thought this was just about higher pay. It wasn’t.

I have been a math teacher and teacher-of-teachers for nearly twenty years, but I didn’t grow up intending to be a teacher. I wanted to change the world, to give a megaphone to the voices of the silenced and oppressed, to find an access key to power for outsiders.

Early in my adulthood, I realized that teaching mathematics was in and of itself a path to empowerment. In The Algebra Project, Bob Moses wrote that “Access to a solid math education is the civil rights issue of our time… a life and death fight for the future of our country and a passport to full American-dream-worthy citizenship for disenfranchised people.” I’ve embraced this philosophy and dedicated my career to the teaching of math.

Today, I live in West Virginia in the house where I grew up, in the most sparsely populated county east of the Mississippi. We have high rates of unemployment, drug abuse, and teen pregnancy, yet a deep sense of place, pride, and community. The public school system is all we have here.

Our teachers are world class, but they are asked to do too much — working in schools where teachers are overburdened and underpaid, where the craft of teaching gets buried, where there is no funding for extras. Severe undertraining is widespread: in West Virginia, nearly 40 percent of middle and high school math classes are taught by uncertified teachers.

We have legislators who do not understand teaching. They write laws that mandate how we do our jobs. They create constant upheaval while siphoning critical funding. Our representatives in Charleston have spent the last several years spewing uniformed opinions about how to improve our schools — proffering legislation to undermine unions, promote charters, lower teaching standards, and cut critical funding. By late last year, our frustration had reached a fever pitch; teachers were willing to take drastic measures.

Outrage grew last fall when our public employee insurance agency (PEIA) recommended drastic cuts to our health coverage. Huge, angry groups showed up at hearings. Board members held up their hands, saying they were powerless without more money from the statehouse.

So we turned to the legislature and collaboratively investigated the “no funding” claim, uncovering our state’s misguided priorities. Years of granting ever-higher tax cuts to out-of-state corporations undermined health insurance for government workers and undercut services to the hardworking people of our state.

As the ball began to roll, the PEIA board and the governor agreed to some less draconian changes to our insurance plans — but it was too little, too late. Teachers and service personnel had connected on social media and were growing aware of the glaring problems in our state. We were filled with collective indignation over stories of personal bankruptcy, colleagues working full shifts at fast food restaurants after teaching a full day, children going without necessary medication, and classrooms without proper supplies. We demanded a real reckoning.

Our anger was our fuel and our solidarity our strength.

No teacher, no cook, no bus driver in West Virginia would have walked off the job just for an extra dollar. But all of us were willing to walk so that our high schoolers could be taught by certified math teachers; so that our janitor’s family could get decent health care; so that all public employees would be treated with respect in policies and paychecks.

We came together in frustration. We found one another in teachers’ lounges, bus garages, and on social media in a private group that exploded from several hundred to 20,000 state workers in the span of a few weeks. We took turns watching hearings, sharing the action like sports commentators. We were connected, engaged, and focused by viewing videos of hearings and monitoring changes in legislation. Our anger was our fuel and our solidarity our strength.

We walked off the job for eleven days. We picketed at our schools and filled our state capitol to capacity. We won a five percent across-the-board raise for all public employees, re-instatement of workers’ voices on the insurance advisory board, and the death of bills that would have hurt unions, slashed public school funding, and lowered teaching standards.

This was a big victory for West Virginia. Teachers and service personnel stood for every child and state worker, and we made things just a little bit better. But we won something greater than a raise and a reprieve from ever-worsening insurance. We ignited movements in four other states, with more yet to come. We showed our country that our political system is not too closed and not too jaded to respond to its people. We remembered the truth of our union miner grandparents and great-grandparents: we can achieve the democracy and future we want if we show up united and demand to be heard.

The movement in West Virginia proves that when we are willing to focus our collective energy on fights worth fighting, we will deliver better laws, better governance, and a better future for us all.