[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6751-6753]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              HONORING NATIONAL TEACHER APPRECIATION WEEK

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I wish to talk about teachers. In my State, the 
legislature just passed something called SB 5, and the Governor in Ohio 
signed it. It was a direct assault in many ways on the teaching 
profession.
  The discussions I hear from conservative politicians and their allies 
in the media--and they have many on editorial boards, especially in 
central Ohio--and the lack of respect they show for people who choose 
to teach as a profession is mind-boggling. We trust our children to 
teachers, yet we attack them--or too many politicians attack them.
  I am going to make it personal. I am going to start with my mom. My 
mom was a high school English teacher born in Mansfield, GA, in 1920. 
She taught in the era of segregation in Florida and Georgia. Raising my 
two older brothers and me in Mansfield, OH--she met my dad coming back 
from World War II, ending up in another Mansfield at the end of the 
war--she taught in an era of a growing American middle class. Like 
teachers throughout our history, she taught her students and her sons 
that education is a gateway to opportunity, that it can integrate a 
segregated nation and create a prosperous nation.
  At a time when our Nation needs our teachers the most, when our 
economy needs our students to succeed, it is appropriate to remind 
ourselves--in spite of this background noise I hear from so many 
conservative politicians about teachers' unions and about teachers who 
don't care, about teachers taking off in the summer and being done at 3 
o'clock and all the kinds of attacks they like to make on teachers, I 
think it is important to remind ourselves of the importance of our 
teachers.
  This week, our country recognizes National Teacher Appreciation Week 
to give thanks and gratitude to teachers across our country to whom we 
entrust our children and who have made a difference in our lives.
  Let me share a few stories about great teachers in Ohio.
  Linda Michael of Pomeroy, OH, in Meigs County, down on the Ohio 
River, works with homeless students from K-12 to make sure they have 
equal access to the same education as other students, from Head Start 
to preschool to doctor referrals. She locates students in shelters, 
motels, and homes of relatives to make sure they have what they need: 
housing assistance, clothing, food, utilities, and mental health. Is 
this a teacher who quits at 3 o'clock and doesn't work during the 
summer? This is above and beyond the call of duty that most of us do in 
our society. Imagine growing up homeless, going to school, not having 
your own room, not having a room to share with your sibling, not having 
a place to go at night. We need teachers to take care of them. We need 
to do better as a society, but teachers are really a safety net for 
these children.
  Michelle Rzucidio-Rupright is an elementary school teacher in 
Cleveland. For her, teaching is not a 9-to-5 job. It means going to 
homeless shelters after school where her students live. It means buying 
supplies out of her pocket for her students in the classroom. She is a 
role model in the community.
  I know Senator McCaskill talks to teachers a lot and hears these 
things. How many teachers tell us they reach into their pockets? These 
are not Wall Street bankers. They are making sometimes as little as 
$35, $40, $45, $50,000 a year. Do we Senators reach into our pockets 
and buy folders for our office or buy pens? Do Senators do that? Do 
most businesspeople reach into their pockets to take care of these 
children? So many teachers do, to buy construction paper--the ones who 
teach grade school--to buy pens, to give kids money for lunch 
sometimes. Clearly, teachers play a role most people in this country 
don't play.
  David Fawcett is a Columbus drama teacher. He has helped generations 
of new immigrants and low-income students see something greater in 
themselves--more than just a poor immigrant child trying to make it. He 
encourages students to learn language and speech and culture through 
lines of a play or a musical, through elocution lessons under his 
guiding presence. He is another teacher who focuses on the individual 
unique needs of a child who may have been born in another country and 
may have parents who don't speak English. That child has different 
challenges from what I had with educated, English-speaking parents in 
Mansfield, OH, with lots of ideas and privileges. I was taught by my 
parents to read before I started kindergarten because I was smarter 
than other kids because I had parents who knew that mattered for me to 
get ahead and for the advantages I had. Mr. Fawcett clearly focuses on 
each child's individual, unique personality needs, situation, all that.
  John Keller is a government teacher in Orange, a suburb 15 miles east 
of Cleveland. Mr. Keller addresses the complexity of a subject with the 
simplest of tools: a sense of humor. He engages students as soon as 
they walk in the classroom, ensuring a passionate debate and empowering 
students to always stand up and speak out about the world around them. 
He makes them laugh. What better way to teach than engaging the 
students, having a big personality and making people laugh, and 
sometimes the teacher himself, I am sure, being the butt of the jokes, 
the humor about himself.
  Deb Lammers and Paul Lenz, teachers in Miller City in Putnam County, 
OH--one of Ohio's smallest counties, southwest of Toledo--are the kinds 
of math teachers every student deserves. They are patient and kind. 
They adapt teaching skills to student needs, arriving early and staying 
late. Again, all this stuff: Oh, teachers quit at 3'oclock; teachers 
don't work in the summer. All of this kind of thing from conservatives. 
Why they don't like teachers is beyond me, but why so many conservative 
politicians attack teachers for all kinds of things, I don't even 
pretend to understand. But Ms. Lammers and Mr. Lenz, teaching in Putnam 
County OH, arrive early and stay late, being accessible to students 
whenever they need help.
  Delette Walker is a retired grade school teacher in Shaker Heights. 
For decades, she helped children overcome the insecurity of shyness, 
instilling in them the confidence to read out loud, to sing in a 
musical to confront their fears. We know how young children--I have 
four, my wife and I do. And when they were young--they are not so shy 
now, but when they were young, they were fairly shy, and they had 
teachers who helped bring them out of their shell sometimes. As 
parents, we try to do that, with some success, but I have watched 
teachers with my own children. I have watched them help them believe in 
themselves, particularly young girls. I wanted to teach my daughters 
that they could accomplish anything--anything--and the fact of their 
gender, especially in that generation a few years ago, especially when 
I was a kid--girls were treated differently, and girls were not 
expected to achieve the way boys did or in too many cases the way boys 
were expected to. I saw teachers, with my own daughters, help them 
believe in themselves and in a big, important way. That is what Ms. 
Walker did, now retired, but with grade school children she taught in 
Shaker Heights.
  Diane Skelley, Vicky Hilliard, and Pat Carson are high school 
teachers in West Carrollton, OH, outside of Dayton. Through the written 
word, chemistry equations, or musicals, they are teachers who encourage 
students to try harder and reach higher, never to doubt one's talents. 
I know a young woman in my office was taught by these three teachers, 
and I know she believes she can--I know her parents too--take on the 
world and grow and learn something that women maybe a generation or two 
ago might not have

[[Page 6752]]

been so successful at, and Diane Skelley, Vicky Hilliard, and Pat 
Carson--all three of them at West Carrollton helped her achieve that 
and helped countless others in Montgomery County in southwest Ohio to 
move forward, whether it was in English, music, or chemistry.
  Vicki Speakman was a Grandview high school teacher. Grandview is 
outside of Columbus. She was a Spanish teacher, a dedicated mother, a 
bedrock of the community. She was diagnosed with cancer. Ms. Speakman 
remained a constant presence at games and concerts, never missing a 
chance to share a smile, tell a joke, reach out to a lonely student. 
Ten years ago next month, she lost her fight with cancer, but, like all 
great teachers, her memory lives in the countless students whose lives 
are better because of her--not just her memory but the impact she had 
on these students. Whether they think of Ms. Speakman every day or 
every week, they live a life differently because of Ms. Speakman. That 
is true with so many of these teachers.
  When I think of this teacher--and I did not know Ms. Speakman, but 
when I think of her presence at ball games and school plays and I think 
of so many teachers I had at Mansfield Senior High School--my junior 
high was one that will probably make the pages here today laugh. The 
name of my junior high school was Johnny Appleseed Junior High School 
in north central Ohio, where Johnny Appleseed, 200 years ago or so, 
used to go around--it was a peculiar life he lived. He went around a 
country that was totally forested planting apple trees. But to each his 
own. He became a legend as a result. But I remember, in grade school 
and junior high and high school, so many teachers who would come to our 
plays. I played basketball in eighth grade and played baseball and 
basketball in high school. I would see teachers--not just the coaches 
but teachers--come to the games, the Friday night basketball games or 
the Tuesday afternoon baseball games or the school plays on Saturday. 
They were part of the community, cheering on their students, not 
showing favorites but caring particularly for students who were a 
little more shy or a little less talented who might need a bump up or 
encouragement from their teacher.
  The same goes for Jackie Geary, who taught reading for nearly 45 
years in Dayton. She was the matriarch of a family of educators. Her 
husband Mike is a professor at the University of Dayton, one of our 
great universities in Ohio. Her daughter Beth is a special needs 
teacher for families of U.S. military personnel in the country of 
Japan. Aside from her constant smile and laughter, she reminded all who 
knew her that one of her great responsibilities was to read to a child 
each and every night. Jackie passed away last month after a long battle 
with cancer. Up until her very last days, she insisted on teaching the 
most valuable lesson of all: compassion and love and commitment.
  Again, these are teachers who go above and beyond the call of duty 
not just to collect a paycheck, not to go home at 3 o'clock, not to be 
off in the summer and not be a part of the community. Ms. Geary and Ms. 
Speakman gave so much of their lives to their students. Both passed 
away, Ms. Speakman some time ago, Ms. Geary more recently. Both will be 
remembered, and their impact will be seen throughout.
  Sandy Ryan is a special-ed preschool teacher in Cleveland. She first 
taught special needs adults. She then went to college later in life to 
earn a master's degree to teach special needs children. She buys her 
students coats in the winter, supplies, including book bags, and coats 
for children who can't afford them. Again, we don't pay teachers a lot. 
They are barely in the middle class in terms of their income if they 
are a single parent and on a teacher's salary. Yet they reach into 
their pockets. This isn't just buying pencils and pens and occasional 
lunch money; this is a teacher who buys coats in the winter sometimes 
for her students because she teaches in a low-income area.
  Ms. Donna Marie Shurr is a high school teacher in Oberlin. She 
partners with local and international projects--water projects in the 
community, to building homes in Jamaica, to schools in Pakistan and 
Afghanistan. She inspires students to believe that education is 
continuous and service is a lifelong pursuit that extends beyond the 
classroom. She is a teacher who, by showing by example, teaching by 
example, helps these students navigate the rest of their lives. They 
have a commitment to service beyond the classroom, beyond their 
workday, beyond their family, a commitment to service in the community, 
and it doesn't stop at our borders. With Ms. Shurr from Oberlin, not 
far from where I live, it is international also.
  Ms. Dean Blase is an English teacher at Clark Montessori School in 
Cincinnati. I visited Clark last year. It was a finalist for the 
competition for President Obama to deliver its commencement speech, 
losing out at the last minute to a school in Michigan. Teachers such as 
Ms. Blase instill values of curiosity and wonder in their students from 
diverse backgrounds, encouraging academic achievement and community 
service.
  Teachers are counselors, coaches, mentors. They serve as surrogate 
parents. They are friends of students at the right time. They are 
advisers, they are cheerleaders, they are partners, they are--fill in 
the blank--that any of us can do because we have had good teachers in 
our lives. They so often go the extra step. They drive talented pupils 
to competitions and scholarship interviews. They are an essential part 
of our communities.
  Yet, in Ohio, SB 5 is an amazing thing. It basically takes away 
rights from teachers, collective bargaining rights. I know teachers--
when they collectively bargain, they sit down at the school board and, 
sure they negotiate for decent wages, health care, and a pension, but 
they also negotiate for class size.
  I was talking to a teacher at a roundtable at a church right off 
Capital Square a couple of months ago, and she teaches in a Columbus 
suburb. But she talked about in negotiations how they negotiate class 
size because she knows, no matter what she is paid or no matter what 
benefits she has, she wants to be a very good teacher. She cannot be as 
good a teacher if there are too many students in the classroom because 
she cannot give them the kind of individual attention she would want to 
give them.
  Yet the Governor, the legislature, because of this ideological 
mission they are on, want to bust teachers unions, they want to, 
apparently, downgrade the respect teachers have in the community. Maybe 
they think they should become bankers or doctors or lawyers so they can 
make more money. I do not know why they think that.
  But what that means is--I am tired of hearing parents tell me and 
young people tell me: My daughter or I or whoever was going to be a 
teacher, and they were studying at Miami University or Ohio University 
or Toledo or Hiram College, whatever, and they decided--when they hear 
all these politicians, conservative, mostly Republican politicians, in 
Ohio, Columbus, downgrading teachers and criticizing the profession of 
teacher--they think: Why do I want to do that? I am not going to make a 
lot of money. If I am not going to have any respect from the people who 
run my State, why do I want to be a teacher--in spite of the fact they 
did want to be a teacher.
  I am also hearing from young teachers who are now in the classroom 
waging these fights that it is not easy teaching kids who do not have 
much advantage, it is not easy teaching kids who have discipline 
problems, it is not easy teaching kids whose parents are not 
particularly engaged for reasons of dysfunctional families or income or 
all the reasons parents are not as involved as we would like them to 
be. It is hard enough to do that without a bunch of Republican 
conservative politicians criticizing the profession in saying: They 
quit at 3 o'clock, they do not work in the summers, they are lazy, 
whatever they say about them.
  So I wished to talk about teachers who have affected my life. Most of 
these teachers I have mentioned have taught people in my office. We 
walked

[[Page 6753]]

around the office and said: Tell me about some teachers. Almost every 
one of these teachers is somebody who has helped to produce stars, 
absolute stars, in my office. That is one reason I wanted to share 
their stories, and I wanted to share their stories because I think most 
of us who are fairminded--unless we are elected to legislatures and 
rightwing politicians--most of us care about education, most of us care 
about teachers, most of us appreciate what teachers gave to us, most of 
us honor them and respect them.
  But you are not honoring and respecting teachers, you are not 
honoring and respecting perhaps the most important profession in this 
country, when you take away their rights, when you downgrade them, when 
you go after their unions in the name of some ideological mission you 
are on. It is tragic, and I am sorry. I apologize for them and their 
behavior to the teachers of Ohio and teachers around the country. It is 
too important a profession to do that.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________