The Teachers

Yesterday, I went to a rally in the small town where I used to work. I was a teacher in that town for six years. The event was a vigil for Renee Good and a rally against ICE abductions and ICE murders.

There were about 60 people who showed up on the sidewalk in front of the Methodist church…in a very red town in a very red district in front of their neighbors driving by during the lunch hour.

There were honks in agreement. There were women and men shaking their heads in anger at our signs. There were thumbs-up and thumbs-down. But I didn’t see even one middle finger, and I chalk that up to being in a small town where most people know most people.

If you flip someone off in this town, you’re likely to end up behind them in the check-out line at the Hy-Vee, and that’s just embarrassing.

That’s also community accountability.

While I stood with my sign in front of the church yesterday, I talked with an old friend. I hadn’t seen her in a long time. She was a teacher in another district, but I taught her daughter in my American Lit class. She is now retired, but went back to work to help kids pass the HiSET Exam — it’s the new version of the GED.

Next to my friend was another retired teacher talking about how she became a coffee drinker after being assigned morning cafeteria duty. And morning car line duty.

We talked about how much closer to being run over teachers are when working the car line each morning than Jonathan Ross ever was when he murdered Renee Good.

I heard someone yell my name, and I saw it was another friend from St Joseph. She is a retired professor from Missouri Western University. She said, “Jess! Come here. I want a picture of three former English teachers protesting.” I walked over for the photo with the two other teachers, and the woman who took our picture was a retired professor from Northwest Missouri State University.

The organizer of the event? Nancy. A retired teacher.

This rally/protest was no different than so many others I have attended and organized. The teachers are everywhere I go. Everywhere I speak. Everywhere I do the work.

You shouldn’t be surprised. Think of the best teachers you ever had. Think of what they would do in this moment.

They would show up and advocate for the oppressed and marginalized.

A friend and retired American Studies Professor holds a “No, ICE” baggie.

When I travel to speak, I am never surprised to find out the local organizer is a former teacher. When I speak in front of groups, I often ask if there are any teachers in the room…there are always teachers in the room. Sometimes they make up almost half the room.

This statement would lead many Republicans to say what they always say. “Teachers have a liberal bias.”

And this is the heart of what I want to write about. Yes, many teachers do have a “liberal bias,” but it’s moral, not partisan. Empathetic, not party lines. Evidence, not propaganda. Fairness, not force.

Liberal: willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas.

Many teachers hold Liberal Arts degrees — I have two myself, but did those degrees create my liberalism? No. It was the education itself that led me to my current belief system.

Reading. Writing. Thinking.

Like every other teacher I know, I wasn’t indoctrinated by fanaticism or activism. I was enveloped in literature and the arts and poetry and psychology and teaching methods. I learned to meet the needs of others. I worked with professors who assigned works I never would have read otherwise and they led me to gentle and egregious places I wouldn’t have gone on my own.

My Liberal Arts degrees did not make me a liberal. They made me a critical thinker. That critical thinking made me more likely to understand others — it opened my eyes to the plight of others.

Once you see something beautiful, or awful, you can never unsee it.

Now, I should mention that I was radicalized by my undergrad minor. No, it wasn’t Gender Studies…it was History. Black History and American History specifically.

Learning about the indecencies and the indignities and the absolute horrors of our history set something in me on fire. I couldn’t look away, and I couldn’t be the same person I was before I knew our true history.

But the teachers I speak to…the teachers I stand along highways with are not radical except in their radical love. Their radical acceptance. Their radical ideas that we should all follow the golden rule and look out for our neighbors. Our friends.

Teachers at rallies often hold signs that say “love your neighbor” and “be Good.” Their signs read, “Remember the Constitution” and “Peace.”

These teachers remind me of Mr. Rogers and Ms. Rachel. Gentle. Loving. Forgiving.

So what makes these teachers show up to rally and protest? The same thing that made them go into a classroom for decades.

Service to others and a love of community and children. A passion for justice. Fairness.

Three former Missouri English teachers.

I can’t speak for all the teachers I encounter in my travels, or speaking engagements, or protests, but I can say one thing: They know they have to do what their counterparts still in the classroom can’t. Speak up.

I know the burden of enforced silence in a moment like this. I know so many teachers who want to speak up, but their jobs are on the line. I live in a space without teacher unions. Where you can be fired for not mourning a podcaster well enough, much less showing up at an anti-ICE rally.

My own husband was fired from his job because of my activism. I was tenured, and he was not. When my activism irritated my former Superintendent, she fired my husband because she couldn’t get to me.

And that’s the way it is…

For now, I want to let you know that even in rural spaces, the teachers are on the front lines advocating for communities and children and the parents of those children. They have never stopped caring for those around them.

They were radicalized by love.

Standing in front of a church, standing with the teachers, I was reminded of the beauty of the profession and the pull of the work.

Their classrooms are long gone, and they are still showing up.

Showing us the good.

Being the good.

~Jess