Asheville area teachers plan protest walk today at 5 p.m.

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Here’s the FB event details:

Can’t make the walk in Raleigh? We plan to lead a walk through downtown Asheville to parallel the walk in Raleigh. Meet in the Asheville Middle School parking lot @ 5:00. Wear RED, bring signs and friends! Please share this event with ANYONE you know will want to support our schools and teachers.

The walk will end at the Vance monument in downtown.

The Asheville Citizen-Times‘ Casey Blake reports today on how upset teachers are by recent actions by the N.C. General Assembly and its Republican-controlled bodies. Click over to read the compelling story.

Lindsay Kosmala Furst is an English teacher.

It’s what she loves, and it’s what she was meant to do. She gets giddy at the thought of grammatical accuracy, and she talks about literary characters as if they are her friends.

She’s the kind of teacher that makes some kids want to be her when they grow up. But when they’ve told her recently that they want to teach, all she can think is, “Don’t do it. You don’t want this.”

She also has become the face of a growing number of teachers speaking out about pay for educators in North Carolina.

Furst sent a letter last week to legislators explaining that, after seven years of teaching in Buncombe County Schools, her income of $31,000 a year is low enough that her two young daughters qualify for Medicaid.