Five 11-year-old girls, students at Eisenhower elementary school in Tulsa, lined the road outside a Walmart in Chandler. They were holding scores of gold and silver metallic balloons.
The balloons were gifts for the striking teachers who have been marching across Oklahoma, demanding increased funding for schools.
“They’re our heroes,” said Genevieve Burk, as she and her friends cheered on the teachers on a frigid day.
As Hamilton elementary school special education teacher Danielle Terrio walked by with her three-year-old dog, the girls rushed over to pet the blue-heeler.
“Oh my gosh,” Terrio said, “it’s such girl power right now, it is.”
Jana Burk had driven her daughter and her friends down to the march, to show them positive examples of women taking action.
“We brought them out for the women’s marches last January for the same reason,” Burk said. “We want to show them that their voice and their support matters and that they can make change.”
For supporters like Burk, the Oklahoma teacher’s strike is more than just a struggle about the power of labor. It is a struggle over the power of gender.
More than 77% of US teachers are women. Many say their salaries are low because they work in an undervalued field that is not dominated by men.
“The state of education right now is something that I don’t think most men would put up with,” said Annie Overosee McGill, a marching kindergarten teacher from Burroughs elementary in Tulsa.
“Women are very nurturing. More women tend to stay in the field because we have that emotional connection to the kids and they used to get us to do more with less as they cut budgets more and more.”
Supporters of the striking teachers say they have picked up support in part because of the sense of political empowerment many women are feeling in the #MeToo era.
“This is so inspiring,” Burk said.
Some lawmakers have said the prominence in the strike and march of women teachers played a large role in forcing them to pass additional funding measures.
“The teachers making it uncomfortable for everybody has been very interesting to watch,” said Jason Smalley, a Republican state senator who chairs the appropriations subcommittee on education, shortly after addressing a roomful of teachers at the Stroud high school on Friday night.
On Saturday afternoon, the 11-year-old girls played with Terrio’s dog and talked about what they would do if they could control education funding in the state: more animals, new textbooks, smaller classrooms. They felt they could achieve such a goal.
“Women are the future,” said one girl, Danielle, as she stood by the side of historic Route 66, handing out gold and silver balloons.
