“It’s like the Arab spring, but it’s a teacher spring,”

In some schools, teachers don’t assign homework because their budget for books is so small that they can’t afford to risk a student losing a $200 textbook. ( Sue Ogrocki/AP)

By: April 4, 2018

From Oklahoma City, Payday Senior Labor Reporter Mike Elk filed a dispatch for the Guardian on the Teacher’s Strike:

Leaning over the overpass going under the Oklahoma State Capitol Complex, a group of a dozen women in rain jackets hold signs as oil tankers pass under, honking their horns in support for the striking teachers.

“It’s like the Arab spring, but it’s a teacher spring,” geography teacher Toni Henson said, smiling as thousands of teachers march past picketing the Oklahoma state capitol and calling for higher wages and funding for schools.

The protest takes to the street Wednesday as hundreds of teachers will begin a 110-mile march from Tulsa to Oklahoma City stopping at closed down schools along the route to rest. Teachers in Kentucky have gone out on strike too and Arizona may be next.

Go to the Guardian to read the full dispatch. 

 

 

About the Author

Mike Elk
Mike Elk is an Emmy-nominated labor reporter and alumni of the Guardian. In addition to filing nearly 2,000 stories from 46 states, Elk traveled with Lula from Sáo Bernando do Campos all the way to the Oval Office in the White House. Credited by the Washington Post for being the first reporter to track the strike wave systematically, Elk started Payday Report using his NLRB settlement from being illegally fired for union organizing in 2015. He lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh and works frequently in Rio de Janeiro, where he attended college at PUC-Rio. He speaks both Portuguese and Pittsburghese fluently. His email is [email protected]

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