What’s more powerful than the voice of the worker? District 20 teachers got to show just how powerful their voices were on the 18th of February when a good portion of the teachers said no to a proposed policy change and protested, causing a shutdown of all D20 high schools.

Well, the reason for the protest was a change in policy regarding the amount of classes teachers needed to teach in a year, this was changed from 11 to 12 to be considered full time. I understand where the teachers come from and since their pay isn’t receiving a bump. And a lot of different thoughts on this are present.

“Well, I could see the aspect of losing a planning period being hard, but through my mom being a teacher most of her life I don’t get it entirely,” senior John Patchen stated.

“It was unexpected, I really wasn’t expecting everyone to just call out on that day, but I understand why, I mean it’s a greatttt change in policy,” senior Marley Bailey stated in opposition to Patchen. 

However, I do sympathize with them even if their words were a bit over the top at times.

However, it seems that things seemed to have mellowed out even if it is at the expense of the teachers. I wonder about this experience since the district kind of just threw out the teacher’s opinions on the matter, which makes it unclear about what will happen next.

“I assume nothing will happen, unless someone gets too big for their britches, and does something they should not be able to,” Patchen stated.

What do you think will happen with the teachers?

“I think an agreement will eventually be made, but for the time being I don’t really know,” Bailey noted.

Will the teachers try to protest again?

I mean they should, it’s the right of Americans to show how they feel about policies and the only way to get policies not passed or passed. Even if you cannot outrightly protest, it’s just a shame that all the teachers tend to be sick that day.

It’s my belief that when the tools to protest are robbed from a person they must find ways to make their voices heard and with the rules of protesting at a school being extremely strict, it is hard to make your voice heard to the school without it being deemed as disruptive to the learning environment.

I understand that if the protest starts to get violent and they shut it down but it seems that the school can just kill the protest if they deem it interferes with learning and sometimes that is what is needed to achieve a goal through non-violent means.

To quote JFK, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”; and with the district’s bull’s headed idea to screw over the teacher it gives me the idea that eventually there will be a massive shift in district policy because eventually they will push the teachers as far as they can and there will be a mass exodus of teachers.