By By: Nakia Bolden|
Guest Contributor
Raising voices to fix issues such as 1 in 5 educators requiring a second job to make ends meet and protecting public schools is what inspired Chelsea Parratore, social media manager for the IU South Bend School of Education, to action. The statistics brought forward by the National Education Association, are alarming, including 16% less public funding goes to districts with higher poverty rates.
When Michael Harley, director of student teaching and clinical practice in the School of Education, first approached her about the movement Parratore was in support of the movement to raise awareness. Chelsea pitched the idea to wear red every Wednesday as a department, so the movement can spread across the campus and maybe even further into the community.
The hashtag campaign #RedforEd originated in K-12 schools in West Virginia, Arizona, Kentucky, North Carolina and Oklahoma with the goal to have people pay attention to the lack of support for K-12 educators. Now with the backing of the National Education Association, its reach has gone further.
#RedForEdatIUSB was the actual hashtag that was created by Parratore to identify whether the idea of the hashtag was working well. #RedForEdatIUSB is not only supporting K-12 educators, but all educators in general. The idea was to have the School of Education faculty and students to wear red on Wednesdays and post it on social media using the hashtag #RedForEd and #RedForEdatIUSB.
As to what Parratore hopes the IU South Bend campus community and campus supporters gain from the #RedForEdatIUSB, she said “I hope that students all over campus at least use the hashtags once.”
“It shows that IUSB as a community is in support of all educators that want to make a change for the better for the benefit of their students because education is important, and teachers and any educators are not acknowledged enough,” she said.
For more information about #RedForEd and ways to show support visit http://www.neatoday.org/redfored/ or ISTA-in.org.
