‘Stand With Us,’ Asks Teachers Union Rep
Fifty teachers showed up at the school board meeting to support their colleague. Here is their message.
Rebecca McKinney, an English teacher at York, spoke at Tuesday night’s board meeting. Her full remarks are below. Please email boardofeducation@elmhurst205.org with your support for teachers and freedom of speech.
I want to say thank you to those of you who have spoken up in praise of teachers tonight. It’s good to hear. I’m actually retiring early because things have been so difficult in the past couple years. So it’s nice to hear all of those compliments and defenses. I don’t know if everybody really understands how hard it’s been.
I’m a teacher at York High School. I grew up south of here in Kankakee, Illinois. My father actually served as the president of the school board while I was attending high school. That was fun for all of us (laughs). Linda Yonke taught me English. My father was a lawyer and growing up my brothers and I would debate law cases and the constitution over the dinner table. What I learned very quickly is the adage that is attributed to Voltaire and then Patrick Henry, which is that “I may not approve of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Henry or Voltaire simplified what the First Amendment later laid out, that we have rights to free speech. What that meant to me is that it is important to hear all the sides of an argument, to be able to say things and hear them. It was sacred in our house, as was the entire constitution and the laws and the processes that are derived from it. I grew up believing that those laws and legal processes went hand in hand and in fact my father was a defense attorney and sometime he would ask him, “Dad, how can you defend this guy?” And he would always respond that everyone deserved a defense and it was part of the process and the process was essential and this was one of my core beliefs. And the right to speak one’s mind, and the need to see and hear two sides of an issue were important parts of my education and to me an important part of how we teach at York—that we were able to hear more than one side of a situation and to teach that and allow students to hear that as well. It was clear to me that agreeing with someone has nothing to do with whether their speech was permitted. The law, specifically the First Amendment, determines that.
So why am I here? I’ve been lucky to teach at York for over 20 years, and my belief in process has led me to become a union rep, and it has come to my attention that tonight there was a disciplinary action for one of our members, for speech that was protected by that First Amendment, by our great constitution. And I felt compelled to speak for a number of reasons: my faith in law, rules and order, process; my faith in my colleague who is much admired and has a documented record of being an exemplary teacher, according to the district’s own measurements and has never had a mark on her record—no warnings, no notes, no letters on her file. And because in this particular situation I object to infractions against protected First Amendment speech. Our union members are teachers and citizens and our rights as citizens are not suspended because we’ve taken a profession requiring our heart and soul. We would hope that the board, rather attempting to discipline someone for engaging in free speech, would defend our right to do so. Encourage our teachers and students to have complete, comprehensive, and complex understanding of the Constitution, and like Patrick Henry or Voltaire, maybe stand with us in defending our right to engage in difficult but valuable conversations.