Labor of Love: One Chicago Teacher's Experience

A personal account of one teachers journey through the labyrinth that is urban public education. While claiming to need teachers meeting the highest of intellectual and professional standards, the educational bureaucracy really demands bureaucrats who execute decisions, not professionals who make decisions. The teacher whose life is at the center of this book, turns, surprisingly, to her union to reclaim what she believes to be the legacy of her profession. Thus, begins a parallel journey into the inner workings of the teachers union movement. She finds another contradiction as compelling as the first: Does the teachers union represent "workers" or "professionals? Is it to focus strictly on bread and butter issues or are professional issues also its concern--even its obligation? Written by someone who knows both the school system and the union from the inside out, this book asks the tough questions, explodes the erroneous myths, and exposes the conflicting contradictions in public education and in its union movement. Most of all, however, it describes the enormous stakes that await the decision that the teachers themselves have to make. It comes down to one critical question: Are they workers or are they professionals? [author bio]Deborah Lynch Walsh is a Chicago Public School teacher, an activist in the Chicago Teachers Union, and an advocate for teacher empowerment and education reform. She holds bachelor and masters degrees in education, and a Ph. D. in educational policy analysis. Walsh has worked in schools and unions for 25 years.