Oh, I think it's stupid. It would be great if more children had teachers they could identify with. I also really dislike when it's a school full of female teachers with a male principal.

I'm not saying they have to go to work in a suit or heels (ugh, heels) or anything, you know? Just don't look like you rolled out of bed and/or from the bar down the road.

It really depends on where you are. There's a weird hippie/alternative/hipster vibe mixed with some serious white supremacy going on here. (Example: I see way more confederate flags here than I ever did living in the South. It's bizarre.) Portland and Eugene are kind of progressive, but no one wants to pay taxes.…

We did some things like that too. It was usually for a different charity. Make a Wish, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, things like that.

I feel like there are some white teachers who focus on schools in these areas out of the same mindset as those who do "alternative spring break" trips in Central America/parts of Africa and that's not really best for the students.

states' rights.... to keep slavery legal. They always leave off that part. Ugh.

If it's an elementary school, there probably aren't many male teachers. In general, men are discouraged from teaching elementary school because they might molest children or something. I had a principal once that got rid of all of our male teaching staff because "I don't trust men who want to be around children who…

teachers get paid time off to go protest and shit all the time.

School funding in Oregon is terrible, for the most part. It depends on where in Oregon you want to go.

If teachers were protesting terrible school lunches, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate supplies, lack of air conditioning and ventilation, unsafe conditions for students, excessive standardized testing, and other such things that directly relate to students' safety and learning? Go right ahead. But not this.

In my current job I supervise student teachers and in this area, teachers (and admins) wear jeans and t-shirts all the time. I tell my student teachers they have to dress professionally. No jeans, no flipflops, no tank tops, no tshirts. They all do and they are great. But they will invariably come to me after a couple…

re: #3: I would rather see people posting about genuinely handmade stuff they are selling (even if it's kind of crappy) rather than 234938475 people posting about their damn pampered chef/scentsy/cutco/pure romance/mary kay/monavie crap. a former coworker/friend of mine never posts anything anymore except her damn sex…

YES. exactly. thank you for articulating what I haven't quite been able to get out.

I disagree. I think they can suck, but they don't suck by virtue of existing. I taught in a state where public sector unions (specifically teachers) were illegal, and we were constantly taken advantage of with unpaid furloughs, clawed back bonuses, etc. I'm currently in a state where unions are not illegal and I'm in…

Either way, there's no need to wear the shirts at school where the kids, who have nothing to do with what the union does or does not do, have to see it. Especially with younger kids, who may have no clue that the rally exists or what it's about, but may have had cops beat down their doors or arrest their parents or…

Get a prescription for trazodone. It's an antidepressant that, at low doses, really helps with sleep with no 'sleep hangover' or weird sleepwalking or sleep eating strangeness like things like Ambien. Also, it's generic and dirt cheap. I take 25-50 mg right before bed and I sleep like a rock.

I really like the Hemnes line.

I don't know enough about the rally to have an opinion. I'm just saying you can't compare something happening right in front of the students' faces, something they can't avoid having pushed on them, to something that doesn't take place during class time.

where I used to teach they would have been reprimanded for flipflops/jeans/tshirt no matter what the tshirt said. We had a pretty strict dress code for faculty. Sometimes it irritated me, but it was nice to be able to walk into a building and tell who were teachers and who were parents or other adults. At my child's…

When I taught public school we were told repeatedly that we weren't to talk about our personal politics. Somehow that didn't stop the die hard republicans from doing their thing, but as the lone liberal in the building I was very aware that I better keep my mouth SHUT and not ~bring my politics into the classroom~