BTU: The True Insult

I also saw the article that Ms. Smith commented on (“Contract for teachers ‘insulting’”) from the April 25 Baltimore Sun, and the headline jumped out at me as much as it did for her and so many other young, energetic teachers. For the past two years, I would say that my relationship with the Baltimore Teachers Union has been less than desirable or remotely productive, and reading this article disenfranchised me even more from the organization that I am forced to pay over $60 a month to yet whose operations am still excluded from.

Yes, BTU, we are thankful for everything that you’ve done to ensure great benefits and pay for our teachers. But that’s about it. The promises to improve our working conditions, foster relations with district officials, and decrease our workload are hollow and unnecessary. BTU may have wide-reaching power throughout the city, but the organization is so defunct that no real change is going to happen. If it were, then the promises and stipulations of our BTU contract (which, by the way, I’ve never gotten a copy of because my building representative refuses to talk to me) would ALREADY be upheld.

Regardless, I don’t mind. If my current working situation had bothered me that much then I would have complained before now or quit. However, this type of reaction is inconsistent with my personal philosophy and purpose as an educator, and so I pursue. The fact that union head Marietta English calls the district’s new demands “insulting, degrading and downright disrespectful” frustrates me even more.

If what the district is asking for in a new contract will improve my school culture and increase student achievement, then I’m going to do it regardless of if my contract calls for it or not. THAT is my real purpose as a teacher in Baltimore City. I’m at school each day longer than most other teachers, I have never come close to using all of my sick days (in fact I think it’s ridiculous that we even get so many), I have taken on far greater responsibilities than lavatory duty, and I write a structured lesson plan every day even though no one but me has ever seen them. These are the things that I feel I do to make myself be the best teacher I can be, and it’s absurd to think that BTU is making a dramatic scene about something that should have been required years ago.

Marietta English, the fact that you are lowering your standards for excellent teachers and enabling the bad ones by using BTU as a crutch is the TRUE insult.

I don’t mean to make it sound like only bad teachers support BTU – there are plenty of great ones who do and there are plenty more who don’t – but I see the organization as propogating a gap in our mission as teachers. I’m sure that if I were teaching for 30 more years, I would feel equally disenchanted and bitter with the system, but maybe that’s the root of the problem. Yes, I’m retiring from teaching in about a month, but I’m calling it quits because I can foresee this passion slipping away in the next year or so.

Maybe it’s time for BTU to stop worrying about how many hours we work and how many days we can take off, and start worrying about the fact that we are allowing a generation of children to slip by as uneducated products of Baltimore City. The responsibility comes back on us as teachers… and should come back on BTU as well.

Read “Contract for teachers ‘insulting’” published in the Baltimore Sun.