On Monday evening, just hours after the Minneapolis Public Schools announced that its teachers would strike, I logged on to ARTrageous Adventures’ Web site, because I knew our amazing local art studio had scheduled strike-week programming for elementary school students, and my third grader loves being there. Every spot was taken for the entire week. It occurred to me that there are parents who need this more than I do.
My kids are old enough to be home on their own. My husband and I both have flexible jobs that allow us to be home more than usual to give our kids some structure. And my kids navigated the independence of nearly two years of COVID disruptions beautifully. This would be hard, but we could do it.
I was asked to write about how the strike is impacting local families, and I feel deeply uncomfortable with that task, as I know that the impacts are as diverse as our community. Here’s what I can tell you.
First, families are exhausted after two years of pandemic juggling of work and school and meeting their children’s basic academic, social, and emotional needs. Second, families are worried yet again about the social impacts of disconnection from peer groups— this time without Google Classroom to bridge the gap. Finally, families are struggling to balance increasing in-person workplace demands while their children are again at home and in need of academic stimulation and emotional support.
I know that the above is true because it is all true in my own family! Just under one week into the strike, I can tell you it has been hard. There have been more video games and television programs than usual. There have been long days and short tempers and not a little bit of stress baking. There have been valiant attempts at honoring the school day structure and anger at an enthusiastic parent’s independent learning dreams.
What has surprised me is that this has been harder than the early days of COVID, when no one knew how to distance learn (or teach). This has been harder than the nearly entire year of being out of the classroom. And this has been harder than the heart-breaking omicron surge in December and January.
This is because for the first time, my children’s teachers have not been with us in the struggle. Teachers are heroes to me—over the past two years, I have had a new window in to the incredible work that they do as they have entered my home to teach my children. As a friend whose children were impacted by a strike in Chicago earlier this year said to me last week, “It’s amazing to me how anyone who sends their kids to school doesn’t think teachers deserve it all.”
We now know how dependent we are on our teachers, and without them, we feel alone. For some, that may result in anger at the very people we have depended upon day in and day out, who are seen to be failing us now. But our teachers are standing up for themselves and their peers and the future teachers in this district. They are asking to be heard and they are asking for change that they see as necessary to do the very difficult work that got infinitely harder in the last two years – and will continue to be hard as we continue to understand the impact of the last two years on our children.
I know that budgets are complicated, funding is finite, and interests are varied, but it is this tired and frustrated parent’s fervent wish for an agreement to be reached that values teachers as much as we need them right now.
