Chicago Teachers Union President Advocates For Young People

Satcy Davis Gates is the President of the Chicago Teachers Union. Photo provided by CTU.
Satcy Davis Gates is the President of the Chicago Teachers Union. Photo provided by CTU.

Chicago Teachers Union President Advocates For Young People

By Tia Carol Jones

Stacy Davis Gates was recently elected President of the Illinois Federation of Teachers. Gates is also the President of the Chicago Teachers Union.

Gates is a high school history teacher. She said she wanted to become a teacher because she believes that young people hold a tremendous amount of promise. Her whole professional life has been dedicated to ensuring that young people are given priority, advocacy and that they have resources, nurturing and love that they need.

Gates said she was forced into being the President of the Chicago Teachers Union. She recalled being in the Loraine Hansberry Theater of Englewood Tech High School and Arne Duncan, who was the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools at the time, announced that the school would be closing.

“It didn’t seem fair, it didn’t seem just. So, that actually instigated this process that lands me here as President of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union,” she said. “It was the only vehicle that we had as educators and people who love Black children to push this forward and make it work.”

Gates said that when schools are closed in a segregated city that serves majority Black students, what happens is that Black principals, Black teachers and Black paraprofessionals end up being fired. Gates said that closing schools in majority Black communities was an assault on the Black community.

 Gates said that she felt as an educator who loves young people and as a Black person who loves her community, she needed to be a part of the fight against closing schools in the Black community. She said the Chicago Teachers Union was the vehicle that offered the type of fight and amplification that she was looking for.

Gates said that the landscape of education and teaching have changed significantly since she first stepped into a classroom, because young people are changing. She said young people are much smarter than the groups of young people who have come before them. She said they are also inundated with information that they are learning how to sift through and compartmentalize into its proper place. She said media literacy has become imperative in classrooms, due to the rise of misinformation and its amplification.

At the same time, Gates said, libraries are under attack with book bans and some Chicago Public Schools don’t have libraries. Part of the Chicago Teachers Union contract settlement for this year has been to begin the process of rebuilding libraries in schools in Black communities where there has been significant disinvestment. She said the contract gives teachers an opportunity to reimagine and rebuild media centers in the current age.

Gates said that she wishes that people would celebrate the investments that the Mayor of the City of Chicago has proposed in the city budget. Her example was the $1 billion investment in schools, parks and libraries. She also wants people to fight for the budget to get passed. She said the Chicago Teachers Union is fighting for young people. She said that the young people also need jobs, as it enables them to engage in the real world and it creates an opportunity for teachers to connect real world dots for them.

“What we need to do is create capacity for young people to have more of those experiences, so we can help them envision what they can’t really see right now,” she said. She added that investing in things like youth employment programs can be a conduit for young people to dream a little bigger, to see a little brighter and take ownership in their own maturation.

For more information about the Chicago Teachers Union, visit www.ctu.org. For more information about the Illinois Federation of Teachers, visit www.ift-aft.org.


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