Union leader to Mike Pompeo: Teachers aren’t a threat, they’re the solution | Commentary

If you have a teacher in your life, you know we dedicate ourselves to creating safe and welcoming environments for all our students and try to prepare them for life — including college, career and civic participation.

Teachers want what children need: safe and well-resourced schools; lessons that engage students, not just prepare them for tests; school counselors and nurses and class sizes that allow teachers to meet every child’s needs.

But we often come up against bullies, and sadly, Mike Pompeo has decided to lob slurs and smears (Pompeo: Teachers’ union ‘a true threat to our nation’ Wichita Eagle, Feb. 6) rather than work with educators and their unions on the real solutions needed for kids and communities to thrive.

Pompeo has tried to use America’s teachers and their unions as political props — first to run for office, then to sell books, and now, it seems, to stay relevant for whatever he plans to do next.

He’s back to calling what teachers teach “filth” and claiming I’m the “most dangerous person in the world” — more dangerous, presumably, than Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un or Xi Jinping!

The name-calling rather than problem-solving is exactly what’s wrong with politics today.

Wichita knows better. In local elections last year, including for school board, pro-public education candidates won handily. Voters and parents made crystal clear they didn’t want Pompeo’s culture wars and instead wanted the resources and supports to help kids get back on track.

That’s exactly why I was in Kansas last month, to lift up programs to boost reading and math, part of the AFT’s agenda that rejects the division and the attacks on public schools in favor of real and practical solutions to address literacy, learning loss and loneliness.

In Pompeo’s former congressional district, the United Teachers of Wichita is using an AFT grant to run after-school reading sessions and distribute more than 5,000 books to kids whose reading skills need help. Educators identified 62 third-graders across five schools whose scores were in danger of declining.

After three months of one-on-one time, students gained an average of nearly five percentage points compared with third-grade readers nationally. When compared with other third-graders considered “at risk,” they gained nearly 10 points.

And progress is not only measurable in numbers. Gloria Pitts, who teaches English language learners at Cloud Elementary, told us, “I have one parent who I know is struggling, and she asked me to please read to her daughter as much as I can. These sessions have built relationships and trust with the families. They know they can reach out to me if they need to.”

Another teacher, America Sanchez, had a very shy student. “Since we started reading, she has just bloomed. She is so excited to read. Reading was hard for her, and she would never try to sound out words that she didn’t know; but now she does. She actually loves reading.”

Perhaps next time I’m in Wichita, Pompeo might want to read to kids with me rather than attack me.

And it’s not just Wichita. We’ve distributed $10 million in grants and support for AFT locals around the country to work with parents to help kids learn. And over the last decade, we’ve handed out more than 9 million free books to children and families.

That’s not to say it’s easy: The road to recovery is long, and the scars of COVID-19 won’t be easily healed. But while Pompeo smears, teachers are solving problems, doing the real work inside classrooms to bring joy back to learning, engaging students with hands-on experiences, and offering kids the mental wellness support they need to do better in school and in life.

Mike Pompeo may have exited stage right, but America’s 4 million teachers are still on the front lines.

While he issues insults, educators and their unions will continue their laser focus on real solutions for kids and communities.

Randi Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers.