Día de los maestros muertos

Death, Teaching, and a Little Bit of Unionism

At my last school, L. Elementary, Mr. J was slowly dying in front of our eyes.

He was an out-of-classroom teacher battling pancreatic cancer.

All of us teachers could see him wasting away in real time. Many of us did not speak openly of his disease, of course. Even the loudmouths were subdued. We all just pretended he looked a little tired and a bit cold. He’d often come to work bundled up in a puffy winter jacket complemented by a hat and scarf even on sunny, temperate days. He had once been a bigger guy, but since his diagnosis and treatment he had shrunk, lost weight. He was missing a lot of work days and the work he was doing was often riddled with mistakes. His colleagues and the school’s administrators had to cover for his many clerical errors.

Why the hell was he even working instead of convalescing at home?

He was forced to.

I suppose we could pretend that he was working because he loved his job. Because he was that dedicated of a professional. Because he love L. elementary so very much.

But I don’t imagine someone battling cancer, with a compromised immune system, really enjoys being present at a loud, busy, grimy, germ-ridden elementary school every day. I didn’t know the exact financial circumstances of his life, but I did know he had a pregnant wife to support and medical insurance to maintain. Full health benefits are available only by working a specific number of days in our district.

Too many teachers I have known over the course of my career have been in very similar circumstances— severely ill but nevertheless working in order to sustain their full medical benefits. 

We live in a society that forces sick and dying people to work for their own health insurance.

The day Mr. J died the staff convened in the library prior to the beginning of the school day. The vice-principal announced his death through tears and a quivering voice.

This exact scene had played out multiple times in my career, a teacher dies and no matter if they have worked at the school 30 years or a couple of weeks, the whole elementary school machine pauses for a brief polite minute in memoriam then everyone gets back to work.

Work is always the priority.

The Singkil: traditional Filipino Folk Dance

My first full year of my teaching career at the turn of the millennium, a 6^th grade teacher, Ms. Capadocia, was off-track, on vacation, when she suffered a sudden massive heart attack.

She was known as an extremely strict but also very talented educator who coaxed impressive dance performances out of her children. Her class’ performance of the Singkil at our Spring Festival blew my mind. She was famed in the local Filipino community as a talented choreographer and founder of the Silayan Dance Company.

Poetically, the educator-dancer had been dancing on a dancefloor when the coronary struck. She didn’t die immediately but was incapacitated and thus hospitalized. However, as an educational professional in an occupation with a large, active union, she possessed labor protections and a trove of sick days she could depend on even while in a coma.

She could not be fired immediately nor replaced until certain employment protections and labor benefits played themselves out. In the meantime, the District had to provide substitutes for her class until her fate changed in one way or another.

I remember substituting for her class as the school waited for her prognosis to unfold. When I entered her neat and ordered classroom, I noticed her teacher plan book lay displayed on her desk, open-faced, already filled out for the entire year. She had been teaching for so long that the 180-day school year ahead of her was presented, written down, like some detailed, predictive horoscope. As the sub, all I had to do was follow the instructions.

The other poetry in this situation was that Ms. Capadocia had a reputation for being severely anti-union, stemming from her refusal to participate in the Los Angeles teachers’ strike of 1989. Despite being a well-known, respected educator and an extraordinary dancer who put on much-appreciated shows at our school, some staff members still did not speak with her a decade later because she was the lone holdout at A. Elementary during that 80’s labor action. She had crossed the picket lines and went to work while her colleagues chanted and forfeited paychecks outside the school for nine days. Some colleagues never forgave her for crossing the picket lines.

However, her daughter Dulce provided me some context. She told me that, first of all, her mother didn’t give a damn what people thought of her. She was a badass who had a clear sense of personal duty and intention that guided her in life. I’m sure this was true because just looking at Ms. Capadocia off in the distance of the faculty lounge, I was intimidated by her imperious attitude and heavy blue eyeshadow. The woman definitely had both purpose and presence.

Secondly, Ms. Sonia Capadocia was the sole breadwinner for her family, caring for a young daughter and a disabled husband dependent on the medical benefits and income she earned every day as a teacher. She wasn’t about to potentially jeopardize the life of her husband or his medical care over a passing labor dispute. She was a tough woman who felt no need to explain herself or her circumstances to co-workers. Dulce added that her mother had witnessed Japanese soldiers killing babies in war-torn, occupied Philippines when she was growing up during World War II. Any recriminations from her co-workers or pariah-status due to not participating in the strike was small beans in the larger context of her remarkable life. She was one tough lady.

There is incredible irony in her death, however.

Although the veteran educator personally didn’t get to ultimately enjoy her hard-earned pension in retirement, she nevertheless benefited from the job protections, pay raises, and medical benefits directly earned by the teacher union’s tireless organizing…and by a multitude of collective bargaining actions over the years which she refused to participate in. Those labor protections and wage benefits didn’t come from the goodness of the District’s heart. They came from the struggle and sacrifice of many teachers over many years.

Union battles don’t always take the stereotypical form of coal miners being beat up by hired corporate thugs for walking off the job. More and more, mild-mannered educators, and other public employees across the United States, have come to represent a large part of the country’s labor struggles (the apex of public educator strikes being in 2018-2019). These fights often come down to the personal choices of professionals weighing the immediate well-being of their family with the long-term health of their profession.

Sadly, Ms. Capadocia succumbed. And when she did, the machine that is A. Elementary hummed on, finding a new teacher as her replacement, pressing on with the school year, a new person occupying her desk disregarding that meticulously drawn up plan book she left behind.

Barely a blip of disruption was evident at our school from her passing. There were protocols in place for the education of the students to continue on with as little disruption as possible. The kids were fine.

That experience was very instructive to me as a schoolteacher. Every death of every school teacher since that time has reminded me not to believe in my own irreplaceability.

Teachers, take those sick days when you want to (even when you’re not really sick). Don’t feel guilty about prioritizing your life or needs over those of your school. And don’t focus too overzealously on accumulating your retirement hoard because there is no guarantee you’ll even be around to even spend it.

And lastly, support your union.

Happy Día de Los Muertos!