Strike Day...

I wasn't able to strike yesterday, as I'm not a teacher and thus not a member of the NUT. Reasons for the strike, following the Education Secretary's pre-strike response letter, can be found here. Colleagues of mine are under increasing amount of pressure and unprecedented levels of teachers leaving the job shouldn't be ignored!

I started to write a poem to save my embarrassment crossing the picket line. If there's need for another strike, I'll edit it properly or write something better:

 Different approaches to striking

Strike a chord, strike a note, strike the Empire before it strikes back then strike the black notes on the piano, till pentatonic scales fall back from your eyes. Compose a song that strikes you at the back of your throat. Continue to strike a pose, any pose.

Strike the iron while it’s hot but not when the clock strikes for the morning bell. Do not clock in.

Strike not because you are picketing for fights but because you are fighting for basic rights: pensions that don’t shrink with the click of a pen; pay that doesn't play on fickle performance targets, a working day that works in the interests of hard-working professionals who are already stretched to strikingly high levels of bureaucratic stress.

Never strike a child. But try to strike a balance between protocol and a brief interruption of education. Strike a balance between fairness and fury. Strike especially when targets are moving constantly, when goalposts bend around blind corners and the government plays blind and deaf to the voices of thousands upon thousands, throats stuck on the simple word: Stop!

Strike because you have to. Strike because it is enough. Because the chords around your neck are too much. Because even if you cannot strike you must be heard.