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As the primaries wrap up and we prepare for the November elections, Texas teachers suddenly find themselves in the headlines. Talk to any teacher, and we'll confess: the last two years in the classroom have been the most brutal of our careers. Our voices and our votes should be more important than ever as we try to fix the current teacher exodus.

Not only have we faced great challenges in our classrooms, but were suffering from wild whiplash. Two years ago this month, educators were hailed as heroes for our ability to adapt and overcome like the Marines.

Down my street, our local elementary school led a caravan of cars covered in balloons with teachers hanging out of windows and poking out of sun roofs holding posters with messages of hope and persistence. We miss you! they called to our children. As a mother and a high school English teacher, I struggled to keep my own classroom going while making sure my two daughters kept up with online and in-person classes.

Commercials celebrated us, families thanked us and we landed the plane despite the uncertainty of the end of that school year.

Today, Gov. Greg Abbott accuses us of distributing pornography. He introduced an adversarial Parents Bill of Rights whose main tenets already exist in both law and practice to pit parents against teachers.

Why, our Texas leaders have gone as far as calling university professors loony Marxists (to the shock of many of my conservative friends in education).

So when the news came out that Abbott wants to initiate a task force to investigate the teacher shortage in Texas, its no wonder so many of us laughed out loud.

For one, Abbotts task forces are simply political stunts. After countless mass and school shootings in Texas, his roundtables on gun violence amounted to nothing. Hes signed a bill allowing permitless carry despite the aggressive outcry of police officers and Texas License to Carry instructors. We educators see this task force as another empty gesture.

The wild whiplash of the last two years delivers a pain no chiropractor can fix.

One week, Abbott is threatening jail time and the next he wonders why teachers are leaving in droves. He need only reflect on his agenda to understand why educators have no patience for political games right now.

Before there was a vaccine to protect vulnerable adults, we were there. Despite a shortage of nurses, substitute teachers and mental health professionals, we were there. Texans with children were able to return to work and regain some normalcy during these turbulent times in large part because teachers were there while the governors mansion was still closed for tours and visitors.

Instead of supporting bans on books and threatening to defund schools, our governor could have thrown us a life jacket.

Any of your teacher friends or acquaintances can share the long list of resources that couldve made a difference in our classrooms during this crisis:

We needed more nurses to handle the influx of testing, contact tracing, and care our students and staff required.

We needed more mental health professionals. This year, Ive had multiple students drop out because of suicidal thoughts, self-harm and other heartbreaking diagnoses that we couldve helped treat or manage at school. We have more anxious (and even violent) students than ever before.

We needed more personnel: more teachers, more administrators, more support staff. But there was no plan to entice retired educators to come back and help, or propositions to encourage college students to get teaching experience by stepping up as teachers assistants or substitutes. From cost-of-living adjustments for retired teachers to student loan forgiveness for those studying to become teachers, our leaders had a buffet of options to help attract true educators to come to our aid instead of sending military personnel, police officers or anyone with a pulse to babysit the countless classrooms who had a teacher out with COVID.

But instead of a life jacket, we got thrown anchors: extra STAAR tests through House Bill 4545, bans on critical race theory curricula that arent taught until law or graduate school and attacks on our very character.

Framing educators as pornographers and indoctrinators is not a joke. Our state is hyper-aware of the consequences of rabid rhetoric. In August 2019, a Texas terrorist took to heart President Trumps propaganda repeating the decades-old Great Replacement theory and drove 650 miles to kill innocent people in El Paso. Just last week, the former president encouraged his supporters at a rally to lay down their very lives to fight CRT. American classrooms are already targets of terrorism, but Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick put a bullseye on Texas teachers when they perpetuate propaganda.

Maybe we need a task force on the effects of the GOPs demoralizing and dangerous attacks on educators and how that impacts teacher recruitment and retention.

A teachers true task: vote. The truth is that we Texas teachers can heal this whiplash. We can take the reigns from a mercurial governor who cant decide if he wants to attack us or play pretend and waste our time with task forces.

Teachers need to show a united front to save our profession. This week, educator Amy Lambert charted the backgrounds of the 28 members initially selected for the TEA task force: she exposed their experience, compensation and years since leaving the classroom (if these administrators spent any time there at all). After it was evident that only one of the two teachers selected actually spent time in a classroom during the last two turbulent years, TEA expanded the task force to include more teachers.

The truth is, teachers dont need a task force; we need a show of force at the ballot booth in November. We need leaders who will commit to raising teacher pay, update retired educators cost of living and stop the culture wars that do nothing to improve our classrooms and everything to drive good teachers away.

Research candidates, rally your peers to elect leaders who value educators and volunteer to support these campaigns to ensure that we build a future for Texas where our schools are a priority and our teachers are respected once again.

Gabriela Diaz is a high school English teacher in Houston. This is her 16th year in a Texas public school classroom.

Here is the original post:
Opinion: Teachers don't need a task force. We need a new governor. - Houston Chronicle