‘Hell, yeah’: Teachers are loving Tim Walz, a former teacher, as Kamala Harris’ running mate

Fatim Byrd didn’t know much about Tim Walz until Vice President Kamala Harris chose him as her running mate Tuesday.

Once Byrd read up on the two-term Minnesota governor, he quickly got excited: Walz spent two decades as a social studies teacher in public high schools from the 1990s through 2006. He coached football and he was the first faculty adviser to the Mankato West High School Gay Straight Alliance, a position he took after one of the first openly gay students at the school approached Walz and asked for help.

“He wasn’t three years in teaching, then gone; he taught for 20 years,” said Byrd, a Spanish teacher at Strawberry Mansion High School. “He knows how hard the job is, and hopefully, he can get us what we need.”

When someone pointed out on social media that Walz looked much older than Harris — they’re both 60 — the Minnesota governor suggested he looks older because he had lunchroom duty for 20 years.

Teachers unions traditionally support Democratic candidates — although less so when they support vouchers, as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro does — so educators backing the Harris-Walz ticket isn’t a surprise.

But Harris’ selection of someone who went straight from classroom to Capitol Hill, who initially ran for public office because he said he struggled to explain the choices being made in Washington to his students, energized educators in a way that has completely delighted Matthew Kay, who teaches English at Science Leadership Academy, the Center City magnet school.

Matthew Kay identifies with Walz: Kay is all-in on the teacher life, teaching, coaching football and basketball, and running the city’s slam poetry league, just as Walz taught, coached and ran clubs. Kay is also married to a teacher, like Walz, whose wife, Gwen Walz, taught English for 29 years.

“I’m just happy to see that teachers are excited about him, because there’s so much bad news,” said Kay. “When teachers are excited about something, we make a difference. We go out and do stuff.”

That is: Kay was always going to vote, and vote against former President Donald Trump. But the teacher energy that Walz brings means he will definitely be motivated to volunteer to make calls for Harris and Walz in the weeks leading up to the election, he said.

Teachers also say they like that Walz is a real-world guy: He doesn’t own stocks, but he does have a teachers pension. (And, in a 2007 interview with Education Week shortly after he was elected to Congress, Walz said he felt prepared to juggle competing priorities because that’s what he did daily as a teacher, and “the biggest thing here is I actually get some support help. Of course, with budget cuts in education, we do our own copying, our own everything.”)

Inez Campbell likes that Walz is a veteran — she also served in the military. And Campbell, a special education teacher at Willard Elementary in Kensington, was particularly moved by the fact that, as governor, Walz championed and signed into law a bill mandating free breakfast and lunch for all students, something she sees as crucial, particularly for students from economically challenged families, such as the ones she teaches. (Philadelphia schools already have universal free breakfast and lunch, by virtue of the city’s high child poverty rate.)

“Free lunch for kids? Good for the environment? A lot of the things he’s done for his state were really good things; I see nothing wrong with him,” Campbell said of Walz. She had a bad feeling about President Joe Biden’s chances of defeating Donald Trump, “but I have such a good feeling now.”

In New Jersey, Anthony Angelozzi is feeling good, too. Angelozzi, who is a social studies teacher at Hammonton High and president of the Hammonton teachers union, is a teacher running for office himself.

“No knock against them, but politicians are mainly lawyers, entrepreneurs, maybe government bureaucrats,” Angelozzi said. “It’s so rare for regular people, ordinary people, to run for public office. We teachers just want to see ourselves in government.

“We’re public servants and so are politicians.”

Sally O’Brien, a teacher at Kensington Health Sciences, summarized her feelings about Walz in two words:

“Hell, yeah,” she said.

It is a revelation to Molly Maldonado that a teacher might become vice president in January.

“When you see on the ground what kids really need to thrive, you end up making a lot of decisions that you might not have made otherwise,” Maldonado said, citing Walz’s work to bring free lunches and free period products to Minnesotans. “A lot of politicians are very arrogant about thinking they know what’s best for kids, and really don’t understand what it means to be on the ground. But you see a microcosm of the population when you teach, and you say, ‘This is what we need to do for them.’”

Maldonado, a teacher at Philadelphia Virtual Academy, the Philadelphia School District’s online school, said teachers recognized themselves in Walz, especially when he took aim at Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R., Ohio).

“That’s the way a teacher would deal with a bully, someone being mean just to be mean. You call it out, and you say, ‘Stop acting like that,’” Maldonado said.

(Walz, speaking at Temple’s Liacouras Center on Tuesday, told the crowd that Trump and Vance “are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell.”)

Walz may be a bald dad, but Maldonado thinks he will capture her students’ attention, too.

“I’m a teacher of teenagers; I can feel the pulse of where young people are,” Maldonado said. “Young people got really excited about Harris — not everyone, but a lot of young people. But Walz? He’s got this old man, dad vibe, and they like it.”