Teaching in California and Arizona

As a teacher I have taught in California which is a historical blue state and Arizona which is a historical red state. I want to share my observations as a teacher of color, working in special education in both of these states.  I will be going over differences in  state standards , funding, general vibes, unions, and talking about Critical Race Theory. 

Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:00  
Welcome to the Inclusive Education IRL podcast. I would love it if you rated this podcast five stars on the platform that you are listening to this podcast right now. In this episode, I am going to be talking about teaching in a red state versus a blue state, aka what you may refer to as the Arizona Tea. I've been out here for two school years now. And I think I've made a lot of observations. Some of the topics that I'll be talking about during this episode will be the state standards, the state funding, the vibes, the situation with the teacher unions, and I want to talk about critical race theory and how that relates to teaching in both states. And if you want to hear more about that, in my opinions on that, you can listen to my previous episode about critical race theory. At the time of this recording, from us, news.com, which is kind of like the biggest website for educational rankings and stuff, the state of California, which is the blue state that I have the most experience in is ranked number 40k through 12. Education in terms of the quality of education, and Arizona is ranked 47th for K through 12. So both of them are kind of bottom of the barrel states. And I guess I would say they're kind of in the same league. I think, when we think about California, it gets thrown up there as one of the best educational states because of the institutions of higher learning that are in the state. But the students don't necessarily come from the public education system from California except like the very wealthy students that are have opportunities to learn or go to well funded schools, a lot of students come from out of state or from other countries, that is what really propels California, as an as a in the rankings way higher. So overall, I would say look, as a K through 12. Educator, the state standards are basically the same in both states, K through 12, I've worked two years in Arizona, I got to do some elementary. And I did the same thing California did K through 12. as well. And the state standards are the same. The the quality of the education, like from my own experience, because I've been working in like Title One schools in both states, I would say is about the same, there's a little bit less teacher initiative to kind of change up some of the standards and what I've seen in Arizona. I think in California, there's a lot more threats of being sued through the IEP. And that's really a big threat. And because of that everything that we do in terms of special education is kind of magnified, and everything goes through a lot more checks. And my experience in Arizona has been that, although it's the same ideas and concepts, there's not as much fear of being sued as there is in California, which affects a lot of things it affects, I think the detail that goes into the IEPs. But good teachers are good teachers anywhere and they'll try to help help their students no matter what. But I feel that in

Unknown Speaker  4:01  
California, it was a lot more almost written in stone like how exactly how we would help students with their reading, writing and math. And what I see in Arizona,

Unknown Speaker  4:19  
it's a lot more like, how are we going to help them with their behavior. And then personally, I think that the behavior stems from not being able to do the work. So it's more important to just help them in the reading, writing and math that way you won't see those behaviors. But that's a personal thought that I have developed through my seven years as a special education teacher. And that might be I think it's a veteran teacher in today's market of tea Cheers. And I'll make an upcoming episode about how, like the pool of teachers are having less and less experience. So that kind of moves me into the veteran teachers face. And creating this podcast kind of allows me to, it allows me to share what I have learned because there are not too many teachers of color that have experience that I can find online. Maybe there are some, but I don't know them personally, the ones that I do know, do not teach special education. So that's what kind of motivated me to make this podcast because I didn't see anyone in the space that looked like me. That was giving me any advice. I wanted to go over funding and both states, I feel like California has a lot more money put into the educational budget, but from what K through 12 teachers see, it's not a lot. My feeling from working in Arizona to different schools has been that, although there's less money in the budget, the money goes a lot further, like in California, all the schools are very small. And kind of like a school. Like, if you're from LA, you just kind of accept it. And you're like, oh, yeah, this is a school like all the schools have worked with, especially if you're in a charter school. But um, even the charter schools out here in Arizona are like way nicer. They might be in like, weird kind of funky situations, but the buildings are still bigger. And via funky situations. I mean, they do not have like giant football field and a baseball field and a gym, which is even the elementary school that I worked at had a large gym, and like hardwood floors with their like logo on the floor, which was crazy to me coming from California, because this is a title one school and they weren't even known for sports like that. So the high school that I work at now, they have a baseball field, and a football field and two gyms. So I'm like, wow. And they're the funding for the school isn't even that great. It's still like a title one school, which means I've kind of said that a few times in the episode. So if you don't know what a title one school is, it's, I guess it would be like like a low income area, which means that they get less money because this, like the students need us. I think the actual definition is that the students need assistance with their lunch, because their parents are close to the poverty line. I think that's what it means. Which means that overall, that being said, the school gets some extra funding, but you won't get parents donating things to the school, which wealthier schools really take advantage of, to provide more field trips and resources in the classroom. So to wrap that up. school funding, although lower goes a lot further in Arizona, because of like real estate is cheaper. How do I feel in this new environment, that red state versus the blue state?

Unknown Speaker  8:46  
I would say, overall, coming from a blue state coming from Los Angeles, into Phoenix, there are definitely a lot more older teachers, veteran teachers, a lot of teachers came out of retirement, specifically this year in 2022. There's something called pathway teachers that someone going to college can teach in the classroom. And in my experience, it has been a lot of people that are already older and have had different experiences in the classroom, but don't have the certifications have kind of taken advantage of that and gone into the classroom. So they do have experience and education, but it's definitely a lot. I would say like older teachers, I feel like in California, there's a lot of young teachers that kind of go into the profession get burnt out leave and then they get replaced by new graduates. And then there's like, there's some older there are a lot of older teachers but all the schools that I worked that had a lot of young, younger folk, so it has been different. There aren't a lot of I mean, the climate is different with everything that's going on. With like sexuality, and like gender, and race, I think it's a lot more conservative overall here, a lot of people don't even want to get into it because I feel depending on what school you're at here in Arizona, you can get fired. And, you know, written up for, for saying things like that. So you have to be a little bit more careful, I can tell that people aren't used to everything and everything that I was kind of used to. And California, I think, like since they're older, and there's a lot of white teachers, they have a different frame of reference. That is not the norm for me, as a millennial teacher of color. I think a lot of teachers do want to do a good job, but they are also more like traditional and what they expect from their students and more like top down. And from what I hear from students as well is that, you know, they've had some rough years through the pandemic, where they haven't had many teachers that have been actually able to teach them, which is super concerning. And then kind of following that up with asking my co workers around me and just them, like agreeing with the students stories and being like, Yep, it was a vast, we just did what we could, I think that you can get a lot further with less instructional content in Arizona and just let the rules guide you, as long as the kids are kind of present and behaving here. Great. You're you're golden. Unions and red states versus blue states. Surprisingly, there are way more unions. There are more with unions in Phoenix and there are in LA, I think most more teachers are part of unions, because overall there's less charter schools, which are like really good at funneling money into anti union companies that help them get their workers not unionized. So that was my experience in LA. Unions were a big no no, Alliance school district pour billions of dollars into not like into making sure that their employees did not unionize. And they failed that that but they've been laying that process for a long time. Then the other schools, they also, they didn't really have a union, the other charter schools that work that one of them did, but it was very weak in terms of helping the teachers with what they needed. So most charter schools in LA don't have a union. Charter schools aren't as common and Phoenix. There are some but they don't have as many students. There are like several smaller districts that all have unions. There isn't that much like collective action in parts of the unions or political action of like endorsing certain measures, especially with the November ballot coming up, I haven't really heard anything on campus or last year for any of the elections. So that's been different for me.

Unknown Speaker  13:21  
So the political climate in red state versus blue states, specifically with the topics of critical race theory, there's a reason why I put out that episode. If you haven't checked it out, go check it out after you listen to this episode. It is definitely a thing out here that people politicians can gather or like rally their their voter base with like, elect me. And there will be no CRT, or critical race theory in our classrooms. From now on. Like, that's their pitch. And that's not a rare thing. Like I've seen several posters and stuff like that for governor, or for like, city council or school board council here. It seems like a winning strategy. Honestly, with the voter base out here in Phoenix, I think in LA, it wasn't that much of a thing back then critical race theory, but you can't really run on that platform in the blue state, you wouldn't get any votes. See? That's what it is, at least in the schools that I got to work in a la it was people will be like, Oh yeah, you can teach about diversity, inclusion, gender, whatever, like up to a certain extent. As long as you hit the state standards, you kind of were had the freedom to kind of weave whatever else you wanted in there that you thought was valuable for your students like the whole like culturally appropriate teaching or aware teaching. In my experience, it's actually like it's super helpful. To make culturally aware curriculum for your students, because it makes them way more engaged, because it's applicable to their life. And I've seen some like shoehorn lessons before, so I'm not saying that it's super relevant. Like I tried teaching, like geometry, using like NFL routes. I kind of lost my kids. Because I was like, What's the fastest way to get to this point? With like, what angles should the player take? And I don't even really like NFL like that. I just did it because I thought that they would like it. And we've done other lessons, like, I'll keep on go like the weight of the poker line. And like, the variance in that, or, like baseball, batter percentages, and, like, no matter how you sugarcoat certain things, it's always it's still difficult, and it's not gonna really be engaging, even if at the superficial level. They're like, Oh, yeah, it's Roblox or whatever. It's still hard to think about these things. That's good. Like, I guess, like in the red states, we, I think, technically, I'm allowed to do that stuff. But I would just be it's more like a lone wolf kind of thing. There's not too many people doing it. And if they are, it's more like low key. Because you don't really want to rock the boat too much, because you don't want to get in trouble. Because that's definitely not the vibe out here. Thank you so much for listening to this whole episode. Make sure to go back and listen to the CRT episode. If you need it, brush up on that. If you haven't had a chance, give me a five star rating on your app. Go ahead and do that now. And hopefully I'll be releasing another episode next Monday. So tune in for that. And you can find me on Twitter, and Instagram at inclusive education IRL. Let me know what you want to hear about and have a great rest of your day.