I spent 8 of my 13 years of K-12 education in Oklahoma schools. So when I saw that Oklahoma teachers were striking in order to get a) better pay and b) more investment in education, I wasn't surprised. I was only surprised it took so long. My 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Alloway, was a finalist for Oklahoma Teacher of the Year. She left for Texas. Last year's Oklahoma Teacher of the Year left for better pay in Texas. One of Alyson's good friends went to school to be a teacher and taught for a few years in the Tulsa area. As a single woman at the time, she decided it made more sense for her to leave teaching and go into the business sector, because it allowed her to make enough money to survive.
Lawmakers in Oklahoma and Kansas just don't get it. Both state legislatures have made cutting education a priority, and don't seem to understand why their teachers are turning on them.
Kansas, for one, has had to have the state Supreme Court intercede not once, not twice, but three times since 1991 to force them to fund education to state constitutionally approved levels. A Kansas GOP study (read: expected be sympathetic to the GOP) found that the state needed to add $2 billion to education funding. Needless to say, the GOP-dominated Kansas legislature has responded rationally and calmly by ... just kidding, they're trying to rewrite the state constitution so that the Supreme Court can't get involved and they can just determine the funding themselves.
I don't know Oklahoma politics as well as Kansas, but I do know that before the strike, the Oklahoma legislature offered to give the teachers what they thought they wanted: a pay hike. The teachers are still on strike, however, because they saw through the ploy. The ploy was that the pay hike had no additional funding measures, so would have likely been paid for through cuts elsewhere in education. It was not just about the teachers getting a pay raise: It's about their schools and students getting the funding needed to do their jobs. We're now on a full week, when the students should be in the middle of standardized testing. The latest is the Legislature offered a school funding increase of $40 million (a pittance in state funding) and the teachers said thanks, but that's not enough. Teachers also want funding measures in place rather than promises for more money but really just a reshuffling of money. It'll be interesting to see what happens and who cracks first.
Gun Control and Vitriol
I'm usually a person slow to block people on Facebook. But I've seen the most hateful, vitriolic things from the right on the gun control issue and done just that. It's largely either baseless or downright awful things that are said about the Parkland teens. Let me remind you: These teens are asking/demanding gun control provisions stronger than what we have now. They want to prevent what happened to them and their friends from happening again. I haven't seen incidents of them being particularly nasty or vile toward anyone to earn ire — their presence, publicity and pressure has been an irritant, I guess. They have not called for repealing the Second Amendment in its entirety that I've seen, nor have they attacked anyone who hasn't attacked them first.
Much of this has been directed at two teens (both under 18, mind you) David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez. I've seen people say that David Hogg keeps tampons in his backpack (HE'S A GIRL! HAHAHA WHAT AN EMBARRASSMENT! DURHURHUR SO FUNNY!). I've seen people say they want to literally barbecue David Hogg. I've seen people wish he were knifed. Then there's this story. I've seen the thoroughly debunked PhotoShop image of Emma Gonzalez tearing up the Constitution, though the original was a target.
I've also seen numerous people say that the Parkland shooter did it because he was bullied, including one meme that included Emma Gonzalez by name and picture as his bully. This is ridiculous for several reasons: 1) We have no evidence that the Parkland shooter was bullied 2) We have no evidence that Emma Gonzalez bullied him. In fact, we have evidence of the opposite: Emma Gonzalez spoke about his classmates having concern about him, and another classmate/peer counselor saying that no amount of befriending Nikolas Cruz mattered. Let's get past this silly idea that if only his classmates had tried harder to be Cruz's friend, that he would not have attacked his school. It's baseless and distracts from better arguments.
In short, I've been incredibly disappointed in many of my right-leaning friends on this issue. There are a few who use logic and actual arguments in their stances, and I learn a great deal from them. However, the vast majority have been categorized as hateful and angry. If anything has happened in the last 2 months since the shooting, we've only seen looser gun regulations in red states and tougher gun regulations in blue states. Teachers can now be armed in more schools than before. Surely we can do better as a society.
Summary Judgments
My mom sent me this article that talks about how our rush to teach kids earlier and earlier is missing a lot of brain development in their heads. It feels like we, as parents, are expected to have our children reading, counting money, doing advanced calculus, and interpreting the works of Nietzsche by the time they enter kindergarten. It's a lot of pressure on parents, but that just trickles down to the kids. Maybe it's time to reconsider our pressure to educate earlier and earlier and let kids be kids a little. • • • Please don't suck. The Dark Tower movie sucked. This is one of the few books/comic series I truly care about not sucking. • • • I've run up to 2.25 miles lately, and should be on track to be running 5Ks by the time of my first/only current race, the Warrior Dash in early April. I want to be running a 5K by the time of vacation in mid May, so I can pick up where I left off after we get back. I also need to start working much harder, because I'm far heftier than this time last year. • • • The Kansas City Star did a tournament to determine who has the best burnt ends in Kansas City. Zarda's BBQ won. I grew up in Blue Springs and I've been trying to get to every BBQ place in a town known for its BBQ (I'm going to write up our rankings here some day soon). So with that all said, let me state this unequivocally: Zarda's is trash BBQ. Their burnt ends are nothing special, and at least four places off the top of my head do them better. Hell, Zarda's isn't even the best burnt ends in Blue Springs -- that's Plowboys. I could honestly rant for hours about this. Zarda's is garbage barbecue, and they didn't deserve to win. • • • I just learned the term Milkshake Duck, so now that's something I'm sharing with you. • • • Evie gets in trouble a lot at day care because she's... let's put it at "often emotional." I don't want to get into it. But the other day, Roland got into trouble at day care, and when the director came in to check on him in time out, Evie was sitting at the table smiling. This happens at our house, too. When Roland is in trouble, she'll be particularly helpful, reminding us often that "I'm good! I'm not being bad!" For now, kid. For now.
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