With all of the political drama thrown at teachers by administrations or the city, and with all the constant changes – often quite dramatic – to how our jobs are done, I really don’t want to imagine what it would be like if we didn’t have a union to fight on behalf of teachers. School administrators basically require teachers to work for free, on their own time, spending their own money on often basic resources, and constantly doubt and question nearly every move and approach teachers make, trying to turn us into obedient automatons*. All that WITH a union behind us. Imagine what things would be like without it.

I shudder at the thought.

*I probably wouldn’t have said that before this year and some of the things I’ve witnessed.

“We screw up royally by making people feel they don’t have a mighty important role in contributing to their children’s education,” she says. “Don’t do it by assimilating children into a language in such a way that they’ve got to put aside their native language to succeed in school. We do that at our peril.”

“What do teachers need to know?” she asks. “They need to know how a language is learned, what role they’ve got to play in supporting it, how languages work and how they differ. It’s akin to a school of medicine turning out doctors who’ve never had a course in anatomy. You just wouldn’t do that.”

-Lily Wong Fillmore, San Francisco Chronicle (July 18, 2004)