Teacher strikes erupting in five states have got me all verklempt (Yiddish for too emotional to speak). I’m a career educator and married to an Oakland high school teacher. While I’m not currently in the classroom, teaching and learning remain my core passion and my professional “why”. And this I know for certain: high-quality instruction requires high-quality conditions for teachers.

Yes, these strikes are about bread-and-butter issues like pay, facilities, and health care, but they’re also about the dismal professional conditions that teachers confront all over the country. Since the test-and-punish era dawned with No Child Left Behind, schools have increasingly tried to teacher-proof the sophisticated art of instruction—offering pacing guides, standardized tests, and scripted curricula as empty substitutes for intellectualism, professionalism, and meaningful collaboration. Well, it appears that teachers have had enough, and I am rooting them on!

In the past year, I’ve had the privilege of supporting teacher collaboration at a large public high school in San Jose. I trained 25 teacher leaders to facilitate an inquiry process focused on students furthest from opportunity and with colleagues who teach the same course. This trajectory culminated in presentations of learning a few weeks ago where I got to be a fly on the wall and capture the Biology PLC’s (professional learning community) presentation on video. This process reminded me of how much magic happens when you provide hard-working educators with a little bit of support and a lot of respect and autonomy.

I invite you to watch the power of collective teacher efficacy! As teacher conditions change, student outcomes and classroom experiences are transformed.