It feels like summer this morning in my house. The birds are chirping, the sun is streaming through the window and all is quiet, except for my needy dog. The boys are upstairs sound asleep at a time they would normally be at school. But they aren’t because our schools (for the second day) are closed for the Teacher Walkout. A walkout I fully support.
For my friends outside of Oklahoma who don’t know what’s going on or understand why teachers left the classroom, in my opinion, it’s not the teachers who walked out on the students, it is our legislators. Oklahoma is 50th in the nation in teacher pay; our legislatures are 15th. Because our teachers haven’t had a raise in ten years and can make significantly more by crossing into bordering states, they are doing just that. From 2010 to 2015 more teachers left the profession in Oklahoma than joined it. This year my school district alone will have more openings than there will be new teachers graduating within the entire state to fill the spots. So along with the low pay there is a teacher shortage.
But this walk out is more than teacher pay, it’s about the lack of education funding.
Funding education is not a priority in our state, and our students – the very future of Oklahoma – are getting the short-end of the stick. Thankfully, where I live we have very strong community support and a school foundation to help fill in the gaps, as much as possible. But this is also why rapid growth continues in our district, which gains about 550 new students per year. Year after year; we’ve seen it in the nine years we’ve been here. People want to live here. But that means our classroom sizes are too big, and our per pupil spending low.
This overly simplistic explanation of what’s happening in Oklahoma is what led my husband and I to go down to the Capital yesterday to rally alongside our teachers. It’s why we will support this walkout for as long as it takes for the legislators to come on board with the change that needs to happen.
But to increase education spending means new taxes somewhere, and with so many lobbyists bending legislators’ ears and funding campaigns, they are at a crossroads. So the question becomes whose voice carries more weight? Or, to put it this way: Who do I care more about – myself or my neighbor?
To me resolution requires stepping into the shoes of another. It’s about putting personal interests aside to see someone else. Now, I know there is no way the legislators don’t “see” all the thousands of teachers rallying outside the Capital, but clearly for most of them they have not identified and entered with them. Instead they are being governed, or ruled, by their own self-interests.
But, oh, how easy it is to point the finger at them here, when the truth is in different ways we all do this. We all live for ourselves. We all step on others for our own gain. We all seek to benefit ourselves and fail to love our neighbors well. By God’s grace alone do we put our own self-interests aside for the good of others.
Only Jesus did this perfectly. He came to live a life of suffering and pain so he could enter in with us, and understand us completely. And then he gave up his life, so that we might have life. So at the end of the day regardless of whether other people understand us, enter in with us, help us, fight for us, love us, Jesus did.
And because he did- Teacher, Jesus sees you. Legislator, Jesus sees you. Christian, Jesus sees you.
May we draw comfort and courage knowing he is with us, even when others turn away from us. But may we also seek to be the embodiment of Christ to those who need a friend. For when we seek to walk in someone’s else shoes, this is where we see Jesus show up at the Walkout.
