The following is a quote from The Grapes of Math, a new novel dealing with a young math teacher's trip from North Carolina to the promised land of California. Once, there he soon hears of the Vergara decision.
Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could fire ya without the due-process rights of tenure and I'd never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?
Tom Joad: Well, maybe it's like Casy says. A fellow ain't got a classroom of his own, just little piece of a big classroom, the one classroom that belongs to everybody, then...
Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?
Tom Joad: Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a test with cut scores set just so kids can fail, I'll be there. Wherever there's Campbell Brown beatin' up a teacher who may very well be innocent, I'll be there. I'll be in the way parents tell Commissioner King what they think about his Common-Core tests. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they come to school with minds like sponges and there's good stuff to soak up that doesn't go by the name of test prep, and when the students are seen as whole persons rather than test scores and strivin' in schools that are better funded, rather than closed - I'll be there, too.
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