Chicago Teachers: Caught Between Their Students and Their Union

Chicago’s public schools are finally resuming in-person learning after another titanic battle between Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration and a militant teacher’s union that is also mourning the loss of their charismatic former leader, Karen Lewis. With those two new developments in mind, I offer an insider’s perspective on teaching in a troubled city I know and love:

Chicago’s public schools are about the kids, right? If only!

To the legion of dedicated teachers this column is about, the answer, fortunately, is “yes”—that is, until the Chicago Teachers Union says it’s not.

And to the CTU—the nation’s most militant, powerful and successful teachers’ union—it’s only “yes” after they’ve achieved their economic and political goals, and reaffirmed their clout.

This disequilibrium is a by-product of the decades-old hierarchy of CPS priorities—changing, thankfully, but too slowly—as delineated by the old “Chicago Way:” Powerful unions, led by the CTU; subservient, patronage-friendly administrators; campaign-contributing contractors, bureaucrats, and finally—oh yes—students. Last and least. Sad but true.

And that invites a corollary question: Can any job generate more pain, anxiety, guilt and ambivalence than teaching in a public school system with a strong union and a pandemic that’s still not under control?

I ask those questions from a unique perspective: As the son of a passionate Chicago high school English teacher who was also a loyal union member; a concerned parent who sent three daughters through an excellent but strike-torn CPS grade school in the 80’s; a serious journalist who covered the daunting education beat for many years; and now a worried grandfather who’s been tracking the conflicting emotions of teachers who’ve missed their students, kids who’ve missed their teachers and classmates, school officials who want to resume in-person learning after a bumpy on-line year, and a teachers’ union that’s been claiming classrooms aren’t safe enough to protect teachers and kids from coronavirus exposure.

I could digress here to defend the return to K-8 in-person learning based on the research on younger kids and COVID transmission, CPS efforts to safeguard schools, experiences in other districts that are re-opened, and expert opinions on what’s best for the kids, but you can read about that in other places.

And I want to get back to the word “ambivalence,” which is defined as “a state of having simultaneously conflicting reactions, beliefs or feelings toward some object.”

In real time it’s the dizzying roller coaster Chicago teachers have been unfairly forced to ride as they bounce between their commitment to students, their legitimate concerns for their own safety, and their union’s chronic distrust of the school board and administration.

I still remember my late mother—who loved introducing Lane Tech students to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Twain, Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald—complaining during a 1970’s teacher strike that her colleagues felt I was too pro-CPS in my news reporting.

My own mother, dedicated to her profession and proud of mine, but also enmeshed in the painful pressure of union politics. How do you spell a-m-b-i-v-a-l-e-n-c-e?

The same conflicts emerged during teachers’ strikes in the ‘80’s, when our kids were in grade school. Some of their teachers walked picket lines in the morning and then, worried about their students, surreptitiously instructed our kids in make-shift basement strike schools.

In recent years I’ve appreciated the warm, committed teachers in Chicago and Brooklyn who’ve taught and enriched the lives of our young grandchildren. But I’ve also ached for one of our daughters, a Teach for America alum and professional educator who headed a chain of Chicago charter schools that faced an ugly teacher strike two years ago.

At one point the teachers’ union ridiculed her non-involvement in strike talks—she was right because negotiations were the responsibility of her contracted charter operators, not her—by posting her picture on a milk carton on the CTU web site like she was a missing child.

Does an educational labor dispute have to include character assassination? CTU apparently thinks so.

Let me emphasize that I appreciate the value of teachers’ unions in the fight for fair wages, benefits, working conditions, and protection against political and personal hiring and firing decisions, but I’m afraid those noble goals have been overshadowed by a massive power grab.

Maintaining and expanding their cadre of dues-paying members, using union campaign cash—those are our tax dollars, by the way—to curry politicians’ favor, brandishing strike threats to win contract disputes and delay in-person learning, and safeguarding their stature as the country’s preeminent teachers’ union.

All of that is apparently more important than meeting the educational and social needs of children who’ve been isolated and traumatized for almost a full year without a regular classroom education.

For most teachers it is about the kids. But for their union it’s too often not about the kids, and there’s not much the rank-and-file can do about it.
They are, unfortunately, victims of a political reality that breeds a painful ambivalence.

And I say that, sadly, without a scintilla of personal ambivalence.

Andy Shaw is a veteran Chicago journalist and good government watchdog and advocate. He can be emailed at andyshawchicago@gmail.com