Berger- post week 3

These past few weeks have been a very interesting time to be a student teacher in CPS. Although it is a very unsettling time for a lot of people, I am very glad that we have been able to be a part of this experience. This will be something that we will remember for the rest of our life and I feel fortunate that I was able to experience the strike first hand.

Today, when we returned to school I was talking with my mentor teacher about the strike and the contract details that are being worked out. It was very interesting to hear from a teacher's point of view, rather than all of the information we have been hearing in the media. The first thing he said was that he was exhausted. Picketing and standing around for hours was not an easy task and he often went home and took a nap, which he stated was very unusual. My mentor teacher told me that although the teachers were asking for a 29% pay raise for the 3-year contract, they are at 7% right now. Although 7, is clearly better than the 2% that was being discussed previously, he explained the insurance is going up dramatically so this pay increase really will not be that substantial. We also talked about the teachers being payed based on their students' performances on tests, which he said will not be in effect until next year. However, students' performances will account for 30% of the teachers evaluations, as well as 30% coming from principal evaluations. My mentor teacher said that the state of Illinois only requires 25% of the teachers' evaluations to come from students' test scores, however Rahm wanted 40%.  We also talked about how there was a lot of attention on class size, air-conditioning and other variables around the school that are affecting students' abilities to learn. Mr. Casimiro explained that although those are big issues that need to be addressed it really did not have to do with the strike, which was based on the teachers' contracts because those issues are not in the contract. Those are separate issues that need to be resolved.

When the students came in, my mentor had all of the students take out a sheet of paper and write what they had heard about the strike, what they knew, and their thoughts. Some of the students said their parents didn't let them watch the news, others said they really enjoyed playing video games all week. The students knew a lot about the strike, such as the additional hours for no pay raise, the percentage pay raise and the evaluation of teachers based on their students' performances. It was really interesting to hear what the students had to say about the strike and good to know that a majority of them were excited to be back.