Why are you picketing today?

I'm trying to get our students back into school. We have made reasonable demands. The teachers know what's best for students, but it seems that the district does not. And they're limited by their financial obligations.

For you, what's the biggest issue?

The one that seems most obviously absurd to me is, I live three blocks from here. My property taxes have gone up 20 percent in the past two years. The taxes I pay have got up around 11 percent. I just got a notice that my property value has gone up another 17 percent, so that's going to go up. And the whole city of Seattle is booming and lot of education money comes from property taxes. So where is this money going?

The teachers are just asking for our fair share so that we can stay living in the area. A lot of teachers are being priced out—they can't live in the areas that they teach in.

Were there any developments today that encouraged you or discouraged you?

I haven't heard anything from the negotiation team, unfortunately. But I was downtown speaking [about the strike].

What happened down there?

Council Member Kshama Sawant had put forth that we should declare this week citywide 'teacher support week.' So we went down and basically explained why teachers should be supported. The two things I spoke to were the passion of the teachers and the fact that I formerly worked at Amazon.com for 11 years. As a teacher, I've never worked with so many passionate people that put in the same kind of hours that I did back at Amazon. The difference is that at the end of the week, instead of stockholders who get the profits, our students get the benefits. So I end the week with a smile, though I may have put in 60 or 70 hours. I think the district is taking advantage of that passion and commitment that we have for our students. And I think it's time they gave us the money we need to keep up with the cost of living.

What did you do at Amazon?

I was a manager of the quality assurance team for software, so we tested the software before it rolled out.

So you were down in South Lake Union?

I left just before they went to South Lake Union. I was down at Union Station.

And you're saying the workload is comparable?

It's the same. Sometimes it's intense because you've got weekend commitments like robotics contests and those kind of things—the one nice thing about being a teacher is that you get thank yous. Whereas at Amazon, it was always, there's more you can do. Well there's always more you can do as a teacher, but parents, when they see their students getting passionate... that's what keeps me here after four years. It's seeing that. I want to continue to be able to afford to continue to do this.

I talked to another teacher a few days ago who said it's typical for teachers to spend two hours before and after class.

At least. For grading. And then if you sponsor a club, you can do as many clubs as you want, but you don't get any pay for it. Those extracurricular activities are incredibly important for students getting into colleges and that kind of thing. But we're not being compensated for that.

What issue, out of all the things that you're striking for, speaks to you the most?

Why I voted to strike in the first place is the idea of extending the workday but not adding pay. I think I can make enough money. The salary is not my core issue. It's the respect issue of saying you'll work longer, but we're not going to pay for it. I'm going to be at school until 5 p.m. anyway. It's not the amount of time I'm going to be spending at school—that's going to happen regardless. It's the statement that you can tell people to work more, but we're not going to increase your salary.

What kind of feedback have you received so far?

It's something I was worried about, especially along here, with the construction. But the honking, the cheering, the community has been awesome. It's something I was worried about going in. What will the community think? Just going on strike is a little daunting. My wife is also a teacher at SPS and we are both potentially going to miss a paycheck in October. So that's a little scary. But people have been bringing us so much food and water to help support this. And that has been uplifting and super encouraging.

How many supporters were out here today?

With just the Garfield crew, there were about a 100. And then when the other schools came over, there were 250 or 300 people. For a while, we went all the way up to Alder. And then we lined all the way down to Cherry. We had Washington, Leschi, Lowell, Nova... We all came together for the second half of the day, and I think we're going to do it tomorrow as well.

You'll be out here the rest of the week if you need to, then?

Oh, yes. We'll be out here as long as the strike is happening, rain or shine. I had this image that it would be difficult. But so far with the support that we've seen, the solidarity has been great.

You teach journalism. Do you have any comments on the coverage you've seen?

I'm disappointed in the coverage where numbers are thrown out without any context. It's really easy to skew percentage points to paint a particular portrait... With the Seattle Times, you can see that in their editorial coverage, they're obviously against the strike. And then the news reporting they're doing kind of supports their position. For example, and I might be mixing up the reporting with the editorial here... [In Ballard,] there was a woman who was really pissed about this whole strike. And one of her points was that the union waited until the last minute to bring this up. And that's just not true. I was at an August 11 rally, and the John Stanford Center was packed with red shirts to show support for the bargaining team on this. This has been going on throughout the summer... We got this sheet at that August 11 thing. And the sheet was a rundown of all of the district's proposals and all of the union's proposals... The right hand column would say, "The district has not responded." And the district didn't respond until the very last minute. It was already too late because the union was already getting ready for the September 3 general assembly. So the district could then paint the picture of, "The union is unwilling to address our proposals." But really, the union was having its general assembly the next day. So, the district was not responding to what the union was asking for over the course of the summer.

These interviews have been condensed for clarity and length.