Shelly Moore is one of the 6 Democratic challengers engaged in senate recall elections around the state.  I was very excited when she consented to an interview.  As the only teacher among the candidates, Moore faces a special kind of obstacle in Senate District 10.  Not only will she face the challenges of a fast paced campaign until the election (or primary) on July 12, but she shares the struggle alongside every public worker inWisconsin.

Here’s her story:

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Where are you from originally?

Woodruff, WI.  I usually say Minocqua because no one has ever heard of Woodruff. That is where my father still lives.  Then my parents divorced when I was about 3 or 4 years old, and I spent part of the year in Beloit.  I got to grow up in this really cool resort community with all of the lakes and the deer and everything, and right next to the Lac du Flambeau reservation…then at the same time Beloit is this very urban, blue collar, you know lots of different minority cultures – the African American culture and the Hispanic population is very big there.  So, I feel like I’ve almost been a journalist traveling through these different cultures and getting to know different types of people and their circumstances.   So, I got this wonderful diversity of life experiences.

Both of my parents were teachers.  I’m a 3^rd generation Wisconsin teacher.  On my mother’s side, I’m a Daughter of the American Revolution and we can see from the paperwork that ancestors arrived in 1624, before it was the United States.  Those documents are in a safe now – they were a birthday present from my grandmother for my 18^th birthday.  Yeah… (smiling) I’m a history buff.  For graduation I had asked for a companion guide to American history with facts about figures inU.S. history and events.  So I don’t know why I don’t teach history to be honest (laughing)!  But I love theater.  I love the ability of kids to express themselves.  People get to see another side of the students, and students see another side of themselves.  And they get a whole new network of friends…in any one of my productions you’ll have, for instance, the ultimate state champion wrestler playing the lead across from the valedictorian of the junior class, who is all into her books.

Just listening to the different groups interacting in the drama class kind of reminds me of the vastly different groups that are excited about your candidacy – who also wouldn’t normally be mingling. 

Well, a lot of people who wouldn’t normally be together and a lot of people who wouldn’t normally be involved.  There are so many issues that are affecting this campaign.  We are all here for different things.

For instance, at any given event there will be the person there that is concerned about the environment and phosphorus in their lakes, someone else about the UW system, someone else about collective bargaining and yet another about the recycling program.  Who gets rid of recycling programs? (laughing) Then someone is concerned about them getting rid of telecommunication programs that will help our rural communities, someone else about high speed rails, high quality schools, or property taxes.  So it brought all of these people together for one common thing because at the end of the day when you talk to most people, most people aren’t asking for much.

As a public worker, how has it made you feel being called things like “union thug” or “parasite?”

 It is very very very hard to do this job.  On any given day it is difficult to know what kids are going to come to you with.  You try your best to be strong for them.  But you can only be so strong with the constancy of the attacks.  And the thing that blows my mind is – if you think teachers make so much money then why didn’t you become a teacher?  I can tell you that I don’t make enough money to afford my townhouse by myself [in River Falls].  I spend just about every extra penny I have in improving my classroom and my books and learning.  But lots of people work extra hours in their jobs – lots of people.  I love my job – but just because I’m doing something I love doesn’t mean that I should have to basically be – I mean – It’s absurd to me that I literally have to rent out a room to afford a house.  I drive a 1999 vehicle with 250,000 miles on it…(laughing)

Now that I’m campaigning and putting in 12-hour days I had a campaign staffer ask me, “Well are you tired yet?”  And I tell them, “This is far easier work and far less hours than I ever put in as a teacher.” I would regularly work 16 hour days – you are grading papers or you are meeting with students or you are doing that thing that teachers can’t stop doing – you go to sleep and you have this kid that you just can’t figure out – and you get up literally in the middle of the night and think “I’ve got it!” And you never turn it off…and I hear people say ‘the whole summers off thing.’  I’m still waiting for that to happen.  I spend my summers choreographing and designing a set for a fall musical and reading over curriculum, meeting with students, trying to improve myself as an educator [taking required classes for certification renewal], and if you don’t get the next year’s lesson plans done in advance, you’ll be playing catch up all year.

I have admittedly voted for Republicans as well as Democrats and every now and then given up on all of them and voted for whatever the 3^rd party was…I just try to stay true to who I am.  And you can say what you want, but I’m a teacher and I’m proud of it.  I’m not going to shy away from that.  I am a member of a union and I have been my whole working life.  I don’t understand what’s wrong with people getting together and having conversations about common interests.  It’s what you do at picnics too.  Maybe Senator Harsdorf is anti-picnic too?  (fake yelling and gesturing) “There will be no more picnics in WI because people might get together and agree on things and we can’t have that!  (laughing) They might decide that they want clean drinking water!  NO!  NO Picnics! (laughing and slapping couch)

Congressman Obey said it best.  He said that the millionaires have convinced the poorest people that the person responsible for them being poor is the person who makes $50,000/year.  And I think it is just one of those things that as (public workers) we just say “oh, it is no big deal” and we’ve just always given and given.

[Looking into these assertions, I found that according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (5/14/11): “The pay of Wisconsin’s top corporate executives rose an average of 27% in 2010…and pay to the average worker in the state fell.”]

 Now just imagine tomorrow – there are no unions.  How would that change the atmosphere at schools?

 The biggest thing to remember is that the purpose of a school is to teach the whole child.  The only way that you can teach the whole child is to make sure that every teacher is working together.  And the best way to do that is to having them organized into some sort of group.  Right now teachers are equals. (For example) you can say at lunch, “I just don’t get this kid.”  And another teacher will say, “You know what I found worked well with that kid?  I did this.”

You are not going to do that if you are competing against each other.

Now if someone were to say to me that unions need to change and they need to continue to grow and change – yes, times have changed.  The purpose of a union is different – and it should be.  Unions could do a better job at setting the standard for high quality educators.  For instance, I’m a Nationally Board Certified teacher.  I also think the teacher’s union needs to be the leader in teacher mentoring programs.  I mean, we look at these poor kids that come into student teaching – there is a reason that 50% of people leave teaching within the first 5 years.

But destroying unions altogether is not the answer.  Just look at other countries.  In March, I had the opportunity to attend the International Summit on Education in New York City.  I got to sit down with the secretaries of education from Finland, Singapore, Japan, Norway and all these places.  Finland is consistently number one in test scores around the world.  And they are 100% unionized.  100%…the administrators, the custodians…all of the workers in the schools and in the country.

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It occurred to me sometime during this interview, that Shelly seems a throw back to the old-time leaders we used to have in this country.  Long before the stigma of “politician” tainted our collective conscience; leaders were regular people who emoted an authentic love of history and a devoted application of it for the benefit of society.  Old-time leaders envisioned the big picture and helped the people navigate challenges.  That’s Shelly.  She lights up with a sense of duty when she talks about her students and her family’s genealogy.  She not only devours American history books, but memorizes and applies the lessons within them.  How would Shelly Moore perform in a senatorial seat?  Probably much the same way she performs as a teacher, “to get people to work together, to look past differences and to find those commonalities.  That’s what I’ve done.”