Protecting Our Most Important Asset: Teachers

Protecting Our Most Important Asset: Teachers

By Jill Jenkins

    A few years ago as the department chairman of the Language Arts Department, it was my enviable job to inform my English teachers that even though our school had nearly the highest test scores in the state that all of their hard work developing curriculum maps, lesson plans and teaching assignment all had to be scrapped because the district was adopting a version of the Gates Language Arts Units.  The teachers were enraged, but eventually acquiesced to the district demands despite the fact that the district offered no money to purchase material or any compensation for the teachers’ time to develop new lesson plans and new teaching materials.  The price of this change was the loss of several great teachers who chose to move to new careers.

    In my 39 year career as a teacher, I saw this kind of change occur countless times.  Instead of analyzing what is working in schools and having educators share their successes, political powers outside the world of education decide the best reforms and teachers either acquiesce or leave the profession.  Still, the public who demonize educators are surprised at teacher shortages.  Those who enter the ranks of education are optimists who want to change through education.  Education is not a lucrative career. No one enters the profession expecting to get rich.  No one stays in the profession without knowing the sacrifices including personal time, lack of respect and even the right to visit the restroom when nature calls.  No one stays in education without expecting to be vilified by some parents or the media without loving students and believing teaching can make a difference. How can we ensure the quality of our schools when we are losing our greatest asset: our teachers?  Three methods of improving teacher retention are: first, increase financial compensation including salary, benefits and retirement pensions without increasing undue burdens; second, allow teachers academic freedom to collaboratively create meaningful projects that include oral communication, reading, writing, technology, team work and mathematics; third, fairly evaluate teachers and schools and provide access to resources to improve.

     According to the book, Addicted to Reform: A 12 Step Program to Rescue Public Education by John Merrow, the average cost of testing is 69 million dollars per state and according to Education Weeks’ article from March 2018 article entitled “Standardized Tests Costs 1.7 Billion Dollars A Year Study Shows” a 2012 study shows a much higher expenditure of 1.7 billion dollars.  If the cost of test preparation materials is added, one can see how frustrated teachers are on the low pay allocated to them.  Benefits and salaries have been stagnant for decades and retirement plans and benefits have been eroding.  According to ABC News, a teacher was removed from school board meetings for pointing out the injustice of increasing the salary of the superintendent while teachers’ salaries remain unchanged for more than a decade in Louisiana.    Furthermore, salary increases always come connected to added expectations.  For example in Utah when “career ladder” was eliminated the pay connected to the program disappeared, but the added responsibilities did not.  Many districts add pay to teachers by having teachers work nine hours a day giving up their consultation period by teaching seven periods a day.  This saves the district money for benefits and FICA.  It, also, increases teacher burn-out because these teachers now correct papers for over 200 students lugging home piles of papers to correct every night.  Teaching requires 100% of the teacher’s focus all of the time.  Without time to plan and reflect on teaching, the job can become stressful and overwhelming. At the end of my career, a former student stopped by to tell me that I had inspired her to become a teacher, but after one year she felt so overwhelmed by the additional requirements, that she quit teaching, went to law school.  She is now an attorney earning substantially more income and according to her with less stress and work.  This is not a new problem, when I began my career in the 1970’s I was teaching in an urban high school.  I taught English classes and run both the debate and drama programs.  I was often rehearsing plays until nine or ten at night and spent the weekend with the debate team at tournaments.  My frustration levels sometimes became so extreme that when I was driving to my apartment with piles of uncorrected essays, I would imagine driving off the road.  When the vice principal asked me to sponsor the yearbook as well, I began looking for a new teaching job. Furthermore, teachers are often lured by promises of new programs. For example, in Utah the legislature decided to invest in training two teachers in each schools to become reading specialists who would in turn train their respective faculties to teach reading across the curricular.  For three years, one of my colleagues and I drove forty miles every Wednesday to spend three hours on Wednesday evening after teaching all day for training.  We were compensated with a small grant months after we finished each year's training.  As we finished our final year, the legislature dropped the program. Reading specialists were no longer needed.  The state had wasted our time and energy and all of the funds used for all of the teachers training and the students never received any benefit.  Not only underpaying teachers is destructive, but so is over working them.  Fair compensation for reasonable expectation added to good benefit and a substantial retirement plan would help retain more quality teachers.   

    Teaching used to be a creative, collaborative activity where teachers worked together to design interesting lessons and tests encouraging learning while engaging students in fascinating activities.  It isn’t anymore.  District no longer trust educators as professionals, so they purchase on-line repetitive drills and require frequent district and state tests.  Before I retired, I spent one week giving state “SAGE” tests and three weeks of test preparation.  That is an entire month that could have been used to teach an additional novel, more essay writing and an entire unit on poetry, web design or anything else.  A month of learning is lost because of testing.  The math department lost even more time because they had more required district tests.  Teachers are frustrated with the lack of academic freedom.  Teachers need to be able to collaborate to create cross curriculum projects that engage students in creative expression and critical thinking involving oral communication, reading, writing, technology and math skills.  Students would learn more and they would be more engaged reducing behavioral problems.  Teachers would find their jobs more stimulating and rewarding, reducing burn-out and increasing teacher retention.

    Finally using student test scores to evaluate and compensate teachers is unfair.  Teachers have no control over who is in their classes.  ESL students, students with behavioral or learning disabilities and special needs students are more difficult to teach and earn lower test scores.  Working in an urban school with many social economic and criminal problems is a more difficult than teaching in affluent, suburban school.  Teachers who accept more difficult teaching positions should not be penalized for their students’ test scores. Improvements of test scores should be part of the schools evaluations, not the teacher’s.  Methods of teaching and students’ engagement should be evaluated by frequent unannounced observation by administrators.  Teacher leaders should help struggling teachers improve by allowing them to observe their classes, sharing techniques and lessons. 

     Our current education system is bleeding talented teachers and talented students are choosing more lucrative careers.  By returning to Lyndon Johnson’s Student Defense Loans that didn’t need to be repaid if the student chose a career in education and worked in a low income community for five years could attract new teachers.  Retaining those teachers means that teachers need to be compensated fairly with money, insurance and good retirement pensions without over-burdening them with excessive hours and responsibilities.  Second, teachers need the academic freedom to create engaging learning opportunities by collaborating with teachers from other departments and time to share projects that work.  Third, teachers need to be evaluated fairly and provided with resources and experienced educators to guide them. Attracting and maintaining a quality teaching force is essential to creating quality schools. 

The Scam: Lower Expectations to Increase Graduation Rates and Lower Costs

Recently I have been reading John Merrow's book Addicted to Reform: A 12-Step Program to Rescue Public Education, a book with which I don't completely agree, but a book that makes some compelling points.  (I do, however, strongly recommend it to my friends in education.)  One of the points that I found myself in agreement was how schools have lowered graduation requirements to improve graduation rates; thus these schools appear to be improving, but it is only an illusion.  During my career I saw students receiving high school credit for on-line classes (home-school) offered by an "for-profit" college and packets of meaningless grammar, punctuation and usage drills provided by the same educational institution.  Today, the news announced that students will receive credit in middle schools for activities in which they participated outside of the school: private music lessons, community team sports, and private art classes.  The effects of such decisions may save the state or district money, and reduce the time more affluent students spend in the class, but it reduces the quality of all students' education.

Students who are not intellectually engaged do not retain learning for long.  Meaningless activities like completing worksheets or digital worksheets (which the on-line classes are) is a futile act that students recognize as meaningless and quickly disregard this learning because it is not applicable to their reality. Often the instructions given in these packets lack clarity.  As a middle school teacher, past students frequently appeared at my door after school to ask for help. As a result, I met with these students for an hour or two after school to tutor them, but unlike the "for profit" college that provided these worksheets, I was not compensated financially for my time.  I was appreciative that the student recognized that human interaction is key to learning.  When my daughter was a child, her father and I took her to Florida to visit her grandfather and his wife.  She was excited to find seashells on the beach, but when we arrived her grandfather's wife was appalled at the idea of collecting sea shells because they might be dirty and insisted we buy shells in the tourist shops.  What she didn't understand that finding the shells herself made the shells meaningful to my daughter.  These students do not need knowledge shoveled into them; they need to find the shells themselves.

Second, as a educators, we should be asking what is important for students to know? Since the world is rapidly changing most educators agree that helping students become "life-long learners" is key to their future success.  After all computers were in their infancy when I was a middle school teacher.  With the exception of my math teacher Miss Penniger who told me in 1965 that learning the binary code was an important part of learning to become a programmer, computers were not part of anyones life.  As teachers, we do not know what careers will disappear and what new careers will be created.  We do know that these students will have to learn new skills to stay current.  Worksheets do not teach critical thinking, research skills and have little relevance to the the reality today or in the future.  Repetitive drills do not engage students and stifle any intellectual curiosity the child has.  As a result, the child perceives rote learning as dull and meaningless, and it is. Instead of spending tax payers' money to the "for profit" colleges to create meaningless mush, districts should spend that money on real teacher who could create summer school or after school classes for students earning high school credits. Socializing and group problem solving gives students human interaction skills that will help them in the real world.  At home on-line classes may be an appropriate option for seriously ill students, but it is a poor choice for most students and should be eliminated.

What about giving students credit for out of school activities?  Granted some of the music lessons and sports program may be quality, but as a school there is no way of knowing because they are not controlled or evaluated by the district.  I have seen some truly substandard programs when my daughter was young and I has searching for a community theater program or a sports program for her to participate.  Greed driven individuals with no credentials will be developing meaningless art or sports programs to grab some of the tax-payers money.  This is not good for the children or the tax-payers.  Quality art and sports programs enhance a school and create a sense of community.  It is through working in such programs that students develop life-time friends and an appreciation for both arts and sports.   Like any learning, students become healthier adults if their love for physical activity and creative expression become a life-long pursuit.

Education is an investment in the future of our democracy. When we short change our students by providing substandard education, we create a generation that cannot compete in the global market with highly skilled jobs in technology, medicine, science, business, finance, journalism and every other profession requiring a vast understanding of good communication skills, mathematics, technology, a sense of history and thirst to keep learning more.  We need thinkers, creators, and leaders to solve the problems of tomorrow.  Our schools need to provide meaningful challenges to every student.  Don't "dumb-down" our schools to make data on graduation rates look impressive.  THAT IS A SCAM. A scam that will cost all Americans dearly.

How To Avoid Humiliation In Your Classroom

     In a very successful writing prompt, students described the most embarrassing moment they or a peer had suffered during their years in school. One of my students shared an event in his grammar school where he had pleaded with his teacher to use the restroom. Thinking he was avoiding a test and trying to disrupt class, the novice teacher moved the student to her seat, but children have less control of their bladders than adults.  Despite his pleads, the boy accidently relieved himself on her chair.  This is just one example of an over-zealous teacher trying to maintain control humiliated a student.

     School districts often provide too few bathrooms for overcrowded schools making access to facilities difficult for shy or less aggressive students to complete during class change or recess.  Restrooms are often places for bullying and criminal activities (like smoking cigarettes and pot or exchanging alcohol or drugs) making timid students often afraid to use the facilities during class change.  Teachers are often insensitive or unaware of the time restraints, the limited facilities and the bathroom activities.  As a result, teachers perceive a child's pleading to use the facility as a ruse, an act of defiance or an opportunity to roam the halls.  Sometimes, perhaps, it is.  However, when a shy student observes the teacher rebuking a request by another student, he or she may feel intimidated to ask; thus, the student suffers both physical and emotional trauma.

     Many teachers are unaware of the trauma many middle school girls face with the onset of their first menstrual period. Since the first few yeas of puberty is often characterized with irregular menstrual periods and the first period is always a surprise, girls often do not come equipped.  Putting sanitary supplies in the main office may reduce vandalism and thefts, but imagine how intimidating a shy twelve year old feels asking a strange adult in a busy office for a sanitary napkin or a tampon. More than once in my career, have I had a quiet girl sitting in her desk after all of her classmates have left because she is drenched in blood and embarrassed to walk through the crowded halls to the restroom or office.  I always kept an old sweater at my desk to tie around a girl's waist and escort her to the office where the secretaries allowed her to sit in the sick room while they called her mother and provided her with the sanitary supplies without destroying her delicate dignity.  A bit of advice to teachers in middle schools and high school, make sure you are prepared with a sweater and a bit of assurance for some frightened girl.  This needs to be part of teacher preparation because it is part of the reality of schools.  Also be aware that boys going through puberty often get unexpected erections whenever they feel stressed.  Asking a boy to stand to answer questions could be completely humiliating to him, because even if you don't notice, his classmates will and they will not let him live it down.

    Small acts can have big consequences. When I was in junior high, I asked my math teacher for an eraser.  He tossed it to me and it landed down my neck and into my bra.  Some students (not me) would have been devastated by the accidental basket.  If you do make a major faux-pax, apologize. Students know that teachers are human.  An unintended action can be easily corrected.  If a teacher knowingly humiliates a student, he is not only hurting his intended target, but all of the students in that classroom.  Teachers who belittle and demean students should be weeded out by administrators.  There is no place in education for anything other than respectful words and actions. Never call students names, degrade them personally or in anyway humiliate them.  Students who feel confident and cared for can achieve amazing feats.  Furthermore, teachers should be models of how to treat others.  Examine your school and your teaching and try to eliminate all of the subtle ways schools and teacher humiliate the most timid among us.