The Daily Signal - A California Teacher's Advice to Parents Who Want to Protect Their Kids

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

Schools are increasingly moving in a radical direction on sex-ed, LGBT activism, and more, "When we're talking ... about the transgender issues and education, you have to realize that you can bring those subjects up in any area. It can be taught in history, it can be taught during reading time," says Lydia Gutierrez, a second grade teacher, and chair of the National Education Association Conservative Educators Caucus. She wants to help parents understand how to both help their own children and how to work within the system for change. We also cover the following stories: We cover the highlights of Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing. The Trump administration takes action on food stamps. The incoming Georgia senator says the "abortion on demand agenda is immoral." The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, December 5th. I'm Rachel Dahl Judas. And I'm Kate Drinko. Today, we feature an interview Virginia Allen did with a teacher on sex ed, LGBT history, and more of the radicalism that all too often is entering the classroom. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please do be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on iTunes and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. The House Judiciary Committee held its first impeachment hearing on Wednesday.

Chairman Derry Nadler, Democrat of New York, made the case for why an impeachment inquiry was happening with the next election occurring so soon. We are all aware that the next election is looming, but we cannot wait for the election to address the present crisis. The integrity of that election is one of the very things at stake. the president has shown us his pattern of conduct. If we do not act to hold him in check now, President Trump will almost certainly try again to solicit interference in the election for his personal political gain.

Here's what Michael Gerhardt, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, had to say via MSNBC. And I just want to stress that if this, if what we're talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable. This is precisely the

misconduct that the framers created a constitution, including impeachment, to protect against. And if there's no action, if Congress concludes they're going to give a pass to the president here, as Professor Carlin suggested earlier, every

other president will say, okay, then I can do the same thing, and the boundaries will just evaporate. And those boundaries are set up by the Constitution, and we may be witnessing, unfortunately, their erosion. Harvard University professor Noah Feldman said this during the hearing via MSNBC. The abuse of power occurs when the president uses his office for personal advantage or gain. That matters fundamentally to the American people, because if we cannot impeach a president

who abuses his office for personal advantage, we no longer. live in a democracy. We live in a monarchy or we live under a dictatorship. That's why the framers created the possibility of impeachment. And via the Washington Post, here's another point that Feldman made. President Trump's conduct, as described in the testimony and evidence, clearly constitutes impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors under the Constitution. In particular, the memorandum, and other testimony relating to the July 25th, 2019 phone call. between the two presidents, President Trump and President Zelensky, more than sufficiently indicates that President Trump abused his office

by soliciting the president of Ukraine to investigate his political rivals in order to gain personal political advantage, including in relation to the 2020 election. Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and the only witness Republicans brought in for the House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing on Wednesday, says the claims and the impeachment proceedings of Trump obstructing justice are baseless. The record does not establish obstruction in this case. That is, what my esteemed colleague said was certainly true.

If you accept all of their presumptions, it would be obstruction. But impeachments have to be based on proof, not presumptions. The Trump administration is acting to make food stamps less accessible to adults of working age who don't have. have dependents. The Daily Signals Fred Lucas reports, the rule aims to close loopholes used by states that frequently grant broad exemptions for recipients to remain on food stamps longer without actively seeking a job or work training. It's estimated that slightly under 700,000 people could be affected by the new rule. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue wrote in an op-ed for the

Arizona Daily Star. At the USDA, we are working to restore the original intent of SNAP, one that provides a safety net for those in need, but encourages accountability and self-sufficiency. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday that he was speaking about Trump while conversing with several world leaders during NATO events after Trump called him two-faced.

Trudeau was caught on camera with several other world leaders, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutt speaking apparently about Trump and why he was late to an event because he chose to take a press conference. Trudeau later addressed the conversation, saying, Last night I made reference to the fact that there was an unscheduled press conference before my meeting with President Trump. I was happy to be part of it, but it was certainly notable. The new Republican senator from Georgia is businesswoman Kelly Leffler,

the CEO of a cryptocurrency business. Here's what she had to say about her appointment via Georgia TV station 11 Alive. I'm not a career politician or even someone who's run for office. I've spent the last 25 years building businesses, taking risks, and creating jobs. I haven't spent my life trying to get to Washington. So here's what folks are going to find out about me. I'm a lifelong conservative, pro-second amendment, pro-Trump, pro-military, and pro-Wall. I make no apologies for my conservative values, and I look forward to supporting President Trump's conservative judges.

I am strongly pro-life. The abortion-on-demand agenda is immoral. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that President Trump, hoped Representative Doug Collins, Republican of Georgia, would be the pick to succeed Senator Johnny Isaacson, who is stepping down. California Republican Devin Nunes has announced that he filed a $435 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, saying that it ran a demonstrably false hit piece about him. The piece claims that Love Parnas, an indicted associate of President Donald Trump's lawyer,

Rudy Giuliani, said his client was willing to testify that Nunes met with last year with a former Ukrainian prosecutor in Vienna in an effort to get dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden, according to USA Today. Nunes says that he was never in Austria in 2018 and that he never spoke with or met with Victor Shokin, the former prosecutor in question, and that he was traveling in Libya and Malta when CNN claims he was in Austria. Next up, we'll feature Virginia's interview with a teacher about liberalism in the classroom. Do you have an opinion that you'd like to share?

Leave us a voicemail at 202-608-6205 or email us at letters at dailysignal.com. Yours can be featured on the Daily Signal podcast. I am joined by Lydia Gutierrez, second grade teacher and chair of the National Education Association Conservative Educators Caucus. Lydia, thank you so much for joining me. Such a joy to be here with you. Now, you have taught for many years. Yes. What led you to the teaching profession?

When I was 12, I started teaching Sunday school, and from there, I had a love of children. And I loved learning how they develop and understand knowledge. And it was so exciting for me. I just wanted to be a part of their lives. So I trained to be a teacher at Pepperdine University, and the first year I was teaching. My father passed away, and it was a financial hardship on us. So I went and left education, went into aerospace. I was in aerospace, became an administrator, and then a supervisor for the Bradley Tink.

So I was moving up the ladder, but I wasn't happy. I wasn't satisfied. And the love of teaching just came back in my heart. So I went back into education. And from there, I also served as a missionary. And seven years, I flew back to Colombia helping orphan children on my summer breaks. So children have been a part of my life, and I've been very happy to be a part of theirs. Oh, that's wonderful. Well, I'm sure that you have witnessed so many changes in the education system over the years.

And the issue that I know now is on the hearts and minds of many conservative teachers and administrators is what do we do in light of the transgender movement? You know, if teachers are thinking, if my student comes to me that is a boy and wants to be called by a girl's name or by female pronouns or vice versa, what do I do? And what advice would you give to those? those teachers and administrators? Well, first of all, make sure if they're in the union, they're actively involved in the union, because they want to make sure they have a voice to be heard.

Any policy that we have in education actually will probably be founded in the NEA's policy. So first of all, if you're in the union, please be active and let your voice be heard. Second, is making sure that you understand that in the NIA policy and in their state policy, that still will probably be there, they have religious rights and to stand on those. So go ahead and look in your policy at the state and national level and find that and put that in front of the union if they are not going to represent you. I personally am part of another union besides my local union that does represent my religious beliefs. So I've taken the extra steps of that question ever comes up. I'm going to say this because of my religious beliefs, I believe the children are,

born with biological sexes, male and female, and I'll stand on those. So your caucus really acts to support those teachers that are put in those difficult situations, correct? Right, right. That's wonderful. And besides supporting them, but also to have a reasonable voice, at the national level, many policies come through that are being pushed by people that really don't have children in interest, but ideology. and they want to really just brainwash the children with those thoughts.

So many times when the policy comes up to be voted on, our group or our people will stand up and say, be reasonable. Let's talk about this and bring a proposal. Sometimes we're able to say no, I mean, vote it down. Do you have any personal experiences in the classroom of having to choose between the values and convictions that you know in your heart and those that you know that the school district would be asking of you.

Well, to be honest with you, I've taught every kind of child you can think of. I've had every kind of parent. I've had every kind of administrator. And long as I've been respectful and caring and respect to those parents' values and those children's values, I've not had any issue. I've had transgender. I've had different types of parents and things like that. And all they care about is to know that their children's.

children are being respected and cared for, and that's it. It hasn't been a very strong issue. Let's shift gears for a moment and talk about sex education in the schools. Sex education has been debated for a long time, and what we're seeing now is it's increasingly just becoming more and more progressive. What do parents really need to know about what their students are being taught in sex ed classes? Well, the thing is, is that it's not really sex education. as you're thinking of it as we would think of when we have our health class when sex education used to be taught or in for me when I was in elementary school or fifth and six we learned about the biological makeup of our periods you know how a child is born I mean how a child you know

a person can become impregnated it was basically biological but now when you introduce the gay lifestyle and things like that to children that they can choose their children that they can choose their sex, or they can choose their partner. It doesn't matter, you know, boy or girl to relate. It can be a boy, boy, or girl, girl. Then you open up the door for children to be introduced, how to protect themselves if they go in that kind of relationship. So that's what opened the wide door of thinking in a different direction.

Instead of biological information, now we're doing sexual information. Then you go into, when we're talking about the transgender issues, and education, you have to realize that you can bring those subjects up in any area. It can be taught in history. It can be taught during reading time. So when you isolate it in the health section, the parent is not really being informed, that they can actually teach it in any subject area. And along those lines, like you said, there are now LGBTQ history.

courses that are being taught or history is being framed and let's study it from an LGBT perspective. So how can parents be ensuring that the values that they're trying to teach their kids at home are not being undermined in the classroom? Well, as you know, there are some religious faiths that have taught their children since the day they started walking what those values are. Jehovah Witnesses are wonderful people in my classroom. I love them because I they stand for their values. You know, that they, yes, they don't participate with the flag salute, but they know that for us doing a holiday activity or whatever it is,

they'll say, no, we're not supposed to be doing that. They stand for their faith. The problem is the Christian community has not followed that wonderful example of saying, this is what I will not do. And by instructing their children to identify and recognize that go against their biblical values, is the step forward. And by that child saying no,

and that parent confirming that no, then they're headed in the right direction. And do parents really have a voice to push back against their school district and push back against some of this really progressive policy? And if they want to, if they're saying, I have time, I have the resources to be a voice, where do they even begin to do that?

Well, the thing is, there are many organizations, that are starting up, parental organizations, to say no to the health ed sex education sections being taught in the schools from preschool on up, as you heard. Well, the thing is, is that the parent has to realize where does it really come from. The National Education Association is actually the root of many of the policies throughout the nation.

When we vote on policy, NIA gets about $300 million a year to push at legislative level at the federal state and local level. And every state union gets money, too, to push at the federal state and school board level. And then you have every school district union gets money to push their board members. So what happens is when the NAA passes policy, they then push it through all those people they have supported. it. And that's why you see it so quickly in a snap affecting every state throughout the nation. So when you have that understanding, you say, okay. So what happens is the parents make the default

but say, I'm going to go to my school board member and explain to him, this isn't reasonable, this isn't right. Well, what happens is they don't realize they were voted in by the union, the union that supported that policy that they're fighting against. Now, the school board member that was supported by the union, is they going to go against the union unless they actually have a conscience? So what happens is that for the parent to really make a difference is a force always praying over their own child, always instructing their own child what is right and wrong, praying for their teacher, finding out where their teacher is coming from, know that person personally, get to know what they're standing for, praying for that teacher,

and then also joining up with groups that have a life-mindedness and think about besides going to the school board member, but actually going to the union office and presenting their case to them because if you present to the union office and you say, if you continue to promote these types of policies in our schools, we will make sure that none of your school board members will ever get elected. That means we're going to affect your benefits, your salary, your livelihood, because that's what you're doing to my children.

You're affecting my children. It's your policies. That's interesting. Yeah, that's where we really need to go is right to the teacher, right to the teacher's union, because that's one that are actually creating all of this. Wow, that's so interesting to hear that really the source is the union. Well, actually, and to go even deeper than the union, a beautiful book that has been published by the Family Research Council called the SPLC.

The Southern Poverty Law Center. If you remember, it's called Teaching Tolerance. What happens is many of the people in leadership at the N.A. level are going to them, and they're giving them the information of what policies we should have in the N.A. So that's why you see a strong connection. Last year, N.A. voted to support the Southern Poverty Law Center and any of their policies. So their hate list, you know, their blacklist, the Family Research Council, the Heritage Council, was blacklisted. And when I found that out, I immediately went to our lawyers of NIA and I said,

so that means am I on the hate list because I support them financially. I am a Christian. I have the beliefs that marriage is between a man and a woman. They go, no, no, no, no, no. So I've discovered that the Southern Providence Law. Center is an arm of the NDA. Very interesting. So for young people who want to be involved in education, they are thinking about being a teacher one day, but they're concerned about being put in situations where they do have to go against their beliefs in order to keep their jobs. What would you say

to those young people? Well, first of all, we have to fight very desperately that we keep The requirement, you know, when we become a government teacher, we're basically a government teacher, that we abide by the Constitution. That Constitution gives us freedom of speech, and that means also our religious rights. So that is in there. Now, if the current law, if the Supreme Court changes that, everything changes completely for education. That means they can stample, they can force us, and we can lose our jobs. So we're in a very traumatic time right now. But not to lose heart, because when the Lord has given you the commission

to teach those that do not know, then you have to. And you have to sacrifice. I know the situation right now of a teacher in California that on her Facebook, on her own private account, she spoke up against the LGBTQ as overriding her being able to teach. And she was put on sabbatical temporarily until they go through that. And she shouldn't have. We have another student within California that was suspended because he spoke, believe, marriages between a man and a woman. And that child was Muslim. So in California, they're

challenging those First Amendment rights. So we have to stand firm. Not to give heart, not to get, you know, this is, Christ asked us not to stand on the sidelines, but to go forward. And what beauty is it that these young people want to go out there and are determined to give a witness for Christ by being in the classroom and actually teaching, reading, writing, and mathematics? Because I don't teach my faith at all in the classroom. I teach the foundation of what makes a child successful for their future. I mean, that's the whole purpose of education is for their purpose to become, you know, members of society, you know, functional members of society, not to teach my religious beliefs.

And it's interesting that I am being bombarded to change that of teaching, but to become an ideologist of socializing my children. And that's what's wrong. So not to give up hope or I hope that they will go without eagerness like I did when I first went into the classroom. Yeah, well, like you said, it's such a profound and beautiful calling to have on your life to be educating the next generation. And, you know, in the current climate, I think it's really easy to focus on all of the negative, because, of course, there are many issues within education that sometimes feel overwhelming. But could you speak to maybe some of the positive changes that you have seen in education over the past decade or so?

Well, as you know, when we had Common Core, state standards, that was a horrific change, and people are not aware of it that when that stepped in, it changed every state to reconsider their standards, and many states did, and it left an open door for any kind of philosophy to come in. When they did curriculum, they actually got rid of the psychologists that would actually do the testing to make it age-appropriate.

So the curriculum that we received in the last three or four years, years because of Common Core was age inappropriate. It was in depth of, when you're dealing with second graders, you're still working at the concrete level, but they started bringing all these abstract ways of teaching that many of the children got lost. It was just this year and last year that our district says, you know what, let's reconsider this curriculum and let's let's let you go back and teach the way you used to teach. reading, writing, and mathematics, where we do small group instruction, guided reading time.

And it's been really fun. I mean, I actually get to do hands-on materials with the children getting to build things to understand numeric numbers and things like that. So it's been really exciting the last couple of years for me where the teacher says, where the principal, I mean, says, don't necessarily go by the curriculum guide. And I go, great. Because in our district, fortunately, we have many seasoned teachers that have taught for many years that have all these great ideas of how to reach their children, and we are allowed now to do that.

That's exciting. It is exciting. It should be allowed to use that creativity. Exactly. Now, the only problem we have now, too, being pushed in is this love for technology. And there's a place for it, of course, you know, teaching the children how to use it appropriately and improperly, but not to take our teaching time away. And hopefully, you know, some, you know, administrators believe that everything comes from the web,

but not in actual, it's just a tool. That's all it is. And trying to make people understand, all they're doing is responding, click, click, click, and that's it. I have children that can barely write, and I force the children to learn out of print, because neurologically it helps their left and right brain. And our younger generation of young people don't have that understanding. When I have a young teacher that's taught kindergarten,

they're teaching kindergarten, and they come by second grade can barely print. I go, oh boy, here we go. Wow. So I have to teach them how to print. And then they start realizing that they start seeing the patterns and things like that that helps them start relating to the world around them. So interesting. So how can parents and teachers get involved with the work of the National Education Association Conservative Educators Caucus?

Well, I'm going to give you my personal email address, and I will be happy to give you our bylaws and give you information on how to become a member, because the more members we have, the more we get bragging rights. So my name is Lydia, L-Y-D-I-A, like the Bible, the word for F-O-R, education, fill out the whole word. at gmail.com. Now, be happy to send you an application and becoming a member. We're asking if you're in the union still to stay actively involved and become a voice.

And if you decide to not be in the union, please do get yourself representation. If you're not aware of it, the union still has the responsibility of representing you. If you're questioned in the classroom, that they can't, if you're not in the union, you can still ask somebody

to go into the administrative office with you. They have the responsibility of taking notes and giving them to you. But if you're not in the union to, like I said, find representation so that you always have that legal background for yourself. As for the parents, like I said, it's very important that you are continually praying for your child in the classroom, that you are finding out what is the teacher instructing and also praying for that teacher. But also remember giving them a strong foundation

to be like that Jehovah Witness, to recognize right from wrong, and to speak up, and make sure they immediately go home and tell you about it. But also find organizations, like I says, in California we have informed parents that is uniting. They have about 30,000 members of California

saying we want a voice to speak up. But I also realize, that it's not necessarily the school board member you should be talking to, but actually the union members, the teachers themselves, and their direction that they decided to go in creating this policy that they're fighting against. Lydia, thank you so much for your time today, and thank you for everything that you're doing to stand up for students and teachers and parents. We really appreciate all your hard work.

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