There was an uproar - a tempest in a teapot, really - the other week over new State Superintendent Ryan Walters removing portraits in a hallway at the State Department of Education building placed in recognition of a non-governmental organization's "hall of fame". Instead of using government space to laud this one group's favorite people, he wanted to use the space to honor and recognize the parents and children that the Oklahoma State Department of Education is supposed to be working for.
Read below for some excellent context to the kerfluffle:
When reviewing the more than 100 individuals inducted into the Oklahoma Educators Hall of Fame since 1985, Ruth Genevieve Hudson stands out—because Hudson, inducted in 1994, is one of the very few career classroom teachers to make the cut.
While Hudson spent 45 years primarily teaching music at Sand Springs, Tulsa, and Blackwell Public Schools, as well as in the state of Kansas, her lengthy classroom service is in stark contrast to many of the other people honored in the educators’ hall.
Instead, the Oklahoma Educators Hall of Fame is filled with the names of politicians, union leaders, lobbyists, consultants, and individuals who worked in college settings rather than in the K-12 school system.
The hall is also filled largely with men, even though the overwhelming majority of classroom teachers are women.
“To me, it wasn’t showing respect for the classroom teachers,” said Teresa Turner, who taught school for 26 years in rural Oklahoma before retiring. “It was just showing more respect for administrators and others instead of the ones that are in the daily grind doing the work with the children.”
