Last year, Oklahoma's state superintendent Ryan Walters left his elected role to become the head of Teacher Freedom Alliance. The group bills itself as an anti-teachers' union group.
This summer, the alliance held its annual meeting in Dallas, and Tulsa teacher Micah Cash decided to attend with an open mind. Last week, he published a write-up of the experience in the Tulsa-based publication The Pickup. He spoke to KOSU about what he saw. He spoke to KOSU's Lionel Ramos about what he saw.
Ramos: So, you get this opportunity to go to the Teacher Freedom Alliance conference in July. What is the Teacher Freedom Alliance as you see it, as an educator?
Cash: They're an affinity group is the best way I could describe it. You know, they're a group of like-minded people who've united over kind of a common outlook, if not a common cause. There's a lot of diversity. So they're an affinity group. And then they're also, I think, a political advocacy organization. So they might not view themselves as that. And because they're a nonprofit, they have to be careful. So they don't officially endorse candidates. They can't do stuff like that. But from what I saw at the conference…You can't understand them without seeing them as a group with political goals.
Ramos: I guess I'm wondering about your civic disposition, we'll call it. And I'm kind of ebbing toward the Teacher Freedom Alliance. What attracted you to just look into that organization and then what compelled you to attend one of its large annual gatherings this July?
Cash: I've been interested in politics since high school. I like to read about it. I like to argue about it. I've never, like, worked in politics or actually been involved in that world. I have friends that do, and I feel like I talk about it with them a lot. Right as I was going to move back to teach, it was interesting that so many of my friends in New York at the time, or friends from college, as soon as I said what I was doing, like they'd heard of Walters. I think Ryan Walters is just, if you are a, you know, political person in Oklahoma, and especially if you got involved in teaching, you just couldn't not be interested in the story and kind of be thinking about him…And he was putting Oklahoma on the map in, well, from what I thought, in a really bad way, you know, it was like the first thing that people would think of when they thought of Oklahoma politics was Walters at the time. That part of it was really what interested me…You know, Oklahoma is getting portrayed in like a certain way because of what he represented.
Ramos: How were you approaching the event? What were you looking for? What did you expect to find?
Cash: I think that some teachers that might, that teach at public schools and that are proud members of the union would tend to sort of dismiss people that would join this group as quacks…I really tried to go in with not having that perspective.
Ramos: Tell me more about the people that showed up and, and maybe why they were showing up.
Cash: I met all sorts of teachers there. The thing that they all had in common was that they were unhappy with their working conditions. You know, it's interesting that that's a framing that they might not put on it, but I think that's the truth. Some of them were unhappy because they think they're having woke ideology forced on them. Some of them are unhappy because they want to teach religion in public schools, but others are unhappy for a lot of the same reasons that union members are unhappy. They're unhappy because they're working too long and not getting enough salary. They're unhappy because the subjects and curriculum they teach changes every year. They're unhappy because there's too many students in their classroom. They don't have enough support professionals at their school. There's all sorts of reasons that they are unhappy with their working conditions…And I hope that I was able to get some sense in the piece of, of what these people were like and the diversity of the people that were there.
Ramos: What about the presenters? You mentioned people connected to the MAGA movement and its culture wars. You also talk about some of those presenters who have what sound like maybe good ideas for America's education reform – reading books from beginning to end – How did the presenters differ amongst themselves and maybe from the attendees that were there to listen to them?
Cash: I think the first thing I would say, which I state in the piece, is that very few of the speakers were teachers. That was something that was hard not to note; it felt like a lot of the teachers really came here to hear about strategies for teaching professional development, you might think of it, but instead we heard a lot of lectures on, you know, the threat of socialism in this country…Constant attacks on the teachers' unions themselves. You know, that was a big theme for lots of speakers. But at a certain point, you know, I'm not sure how it helps me as a teacher to just hear about how bad the unions are, even if I. Even if you agreed with that, I guess, the question I really have is like, well, what next? You know what, what should we do? What is that positive vision? So, the speakers that I liked the most were definitely the ones that did offer that.