Teacher responds to getting laid off by CPS

The former Chicago Public Schools teacher who learned from his mother that he was one of 2,000 CPS employees laid off last week, responded to the news and the flood of public support in a recent blog post.

Xian Barrett called the layoffs cruel, and sadistic.

“I would ask each of you to pause to capture in your mind that one teacher or several that altered the course of your life. Now tear them from the fabric of your experience. What would it look like? How would you be changed?” he wrote.

For many, Barrett has become the face of recent Chicago Public Schools’ layoffs, mostly because his principal called his mother to deliver the news. When Barrett got in touch with the school, the principal read from a script.

The 35 year-old tenured law and history teacher was the recipient of the U.S. Department of Education Teaching Fellowship. He began teaching at Gage Park High School after CPS laid him and his mother off the first time in 2010.

But Barrett tells supporters not to feel sorry for him–focus on the CPS system, he said.

“If I had taught what I taught in Mayor Emanuel’s hometown, I would still be employed. If the children I taught had been rich enough and white enough, I would have continued to collect my paycheck and accolades and they would have been affirmed in all of their accomplishments,” Barrett wrote.  “I am unemployed and my students are without their teacher today because I chose to teach students of highest need. I chose to actually address the opportunity gaps in our society, and not in theory but in reality supporting impoverished young people of color to fight to improve their own lives and demand to be treated as equals. ”

Read Xian Barrett’s full post.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments or on Twitter @ChiTownReview #CPSLayoffs!