I Can't Remain Silent

I Can’t Remain Silent

By Jill Jenkins

As an educator the fate of children is a responsibility I have always taken seriously.  During the past week the images of children snatched from their parents arms and incarcerated in cages and finally internment camps across the nation without the parents sickens and angers me.  Even though Donald Trump has provided some reprieve by signing his order, a grandmother who crossed legally with her granddaughter she is raising was separated because she was not the girl’s mother.  The cruelty to parents and more importantly children has left me speechless, but no more.  I cannot sit immobilized in disbelief. I cannot remain silent and neither should other teachers across the nation.

Since historically, the holocaust offers us an opportunity to see how separating children from their parents impacts them. I think many of us know people who were in hiding or in concentration camps during World War II.  Some of us know people who were interned in camps like Topaz also.  Internment of any kind causes Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in children, but especially those separated from their parents.   For example, my first husband’s family migrated to the United States from Holland where both of his parents had been hidden during World War II.  His mother, Elly, was hidden separate from her parents.  After her father was sent to a concentration camp and the family had been picked up by the Gestapo a couple of times, questioned and released, her mother gave both of her daughters: Elly, ten years old, and Rachel, four years old to the resistance. Elly and her sister, Rachel were hidden separately; as a result, for five years Elly never saw her mother or sister. One dark night a stranger escorted ten-year old Elly to train.  At the train station she met another stranger who escorted her to house.  It wasn’t until Elly was in her mid-sixties that she was able to remember that at the first house, she was hidden with a four-year old girl, the same age of her sister.  Both girls cowered in fear as they heard the Nazi going house to house rounding up Jews and shooting.  In terror, the four-year old dashed from the house.  When Elly heard the Germans shouting, the child’s screams and the blast of rifle fire, she knew the girl’s fate.  The psychological pain caused from being separated from her family and terror of the events she suffered affected her forever.  Elly had difficulty flying because the sound of engine before take-off reminded her of her time in hiding traveling from one safe-house to another.  As a nurse, she was often picked up by the Maryland National Guard and driven to work during ice storms; the uniforms and trucks brought back memories of the Gestapo picking up her family and led to panic attacks. After five years of hiding, Elly then 15 didn’t recognize her mother.  In a great sense, the period of separation resulted in a loss of bonding that was difficult to recreate. Her cousin, Jeannette, who had been in hiding on a farm during the war told me even the sight of the uniforms and high boots of Utah Highway Patrol Motorcycle Police gave her heart palpitations and difficulty breathing. 

My former husband’s father, Louis, was in hiding with his parents in the beginning.  The family hid behind a fake wall whenever visitors came.  During the high holidays, Louis father was allowed to listen to services on the radio.  On Yon Kippur, there was a loud banging on the door and loud voices yelling in German, Louis and his mother hurried to the hidden wall, but his father was too far away to reach the wall and jumped through a window and ran.  Louis and his mother listened in horror as a German Shepherd Dog attacked his father who had jumped a fence into a neighbor’s yard.  When I was helping Louis compile his memoirs, his wife told me that each time he recalled his childhood; he had terrible nightmares and would awaken sweating and screaming. The horror of being forcibly separated from a parent or the result of ruse is heard in the recorded sounds of the children weeping and calling for their parents in the detention camps.   The United States, a nation built on the idea of the value of each individual is inflicting the same long-term pain on innocent children crossing the border.  

The psychological effects can negatively affect the choices and behavior of these children.  In Jerzy Kosinski’s semi-autobiographical book, The Painted Bird, the children who are recovering from both their time in hiding and the horrors of the concentration camps, turn to violence and derail a train because they are filled with such wrath. Although the current administration wrongly believes that all illegally migrating people are members of dangerous gangs, he maybe leading these children into the hands of modern-day Fagins.  Children join gangs because they feel unsafe and the gangs offer them protection.  Children join gangs to fulfill a need to belong.  Children join gangs to replace a family they have lost.   Children who have been separated from families feel vulnerable and they will not lose the lost security.  Children who have been separated from families feel alienated and alone and that loneliness will not be dissipated over time.  Children who have been separated from families will forever feel their families can be snatched away.  That insecurity can lead children to the violence of gangs.  They will be angry and the younger they are during that separation the less ability they will have to express that anger. 

Experts have innumerate the many physical illness these children will be susceptible to, but as educators we have seen what psychological abuse does to children. We are a country of due process.  These children are not being given due process. People will say that these children are dangerous and the government is looking after our safety, but I know that is not true.  The number of students who I have taught coming from these country have been amazing students.  Victor whose arms were burned off as his family threw him from a window of an apartment building while escaping a coupe in Columbia.  Abel who was the brightest member of my debate team was seeking political asylum from a country in Central America.  All of my refugee students have struggled through horrible ordeals to come to America, but when they arrived they were bright, students who were polite with a strong work ethic.  Just the kind of people America was built by.  Stop the madness.  Children are not political pawns. They should never be treated cruelly and suffer such irreparable damage. We should no longer be silent.  We must speak for the children.

Cultivating Healthy Faculties and Staff

Cultivating Healthy Faculties and Staff

by Jill Jenkins

As a gardener, I understand the importance of balancing fertilizer, water and sunlight to create a beautiful rose garden.  As a gardener, I understand the vigilance that is required to keep the plants protected from insects, blight and fungus, but as a former educator I cannot understand how state and district administrators are blameless when fewer college students are choosing to become teachers, more teachers are leaving the profession and those who are staying are demonstrating in the streets. As in other industries, cultivating the talent of employees takes not only resources like money and benefits, but also a fair amount of fertilizer, water and sunlight.  By that I mean, treating employees honestly and fairly, keeping commitments and supporting them emotionally through stressful situations.  A blog that I recently read by Seth Nichols “Why Teachers Are Walking Out,” seems to support my observation.  In his blog, he compares teachers to abused housewife who abandons a relationship only after a cumulative effect of years of abuse.  He exemplifies this position with the many hours of unpaid work teachers willingly provide before and after contract hours, the countless resources and supplies they purchase with their own funds and the barrage of abuse they endure from parents, students and the media.  Finally, after years of endurance, educators like the abused housewife, walk out. 

For the most part, I agree with Mr. Nichols article.  An abusive spouse will often “string” a spouse along with half-truths and empty promises offering hope for improvement where none exists.  Similarly, teachers are often duped by promises made by district or state administrators.  For example, when I was teaching, the district technology administrator offered teachers “a free I-Pad and a $200 stipend after completing a six week training in the summer.”  Teachers flocked to the workshop only to discover what they meant to say was  “the use of an I-Pad provided the teacher remained at the same school in the district and a $200 stipend after the teacher completed the six week summer workshop, twenty hours of workshops during the school year and created a teacher web-site to the administrator’s satisfaction.  Many teachers completed the summer workshop and stopped.  They felt they had been hoodwinked.  I persevered.  Even though I already had a web-site, even after the district administrator rejected my new web-site creation three times and  even after I called a specialist to show me what I was doing wrong, I persevered.  Despite that, the damage was done.  I was angry and felt the district had misrepresented the class.  Like many incidents, this was not enough to make teachers quit, but the lowering of morale from a serious of insensitive, miscommunications adds to the likelihood that those who can retire early will and those who can transfer to another field will also.  Morale is important, not only for maintaing a teaching staff, but also for attracting them.

Abusive relationships are often characterized by a lack of commitment on one person’s part.  Healthy relationships require the commitment of both involved.  Nevertheless, educators are dependent on the whims of state legislatures for financing. This often creates problems.  For example, some years ago the state legislature decided that having two reading specialists in each school would be advantageous. These specialists could continue teaching and train their faculty in incorporate reading across the curriculum.   When my principal approached me and asked me if I would be willing to commit to three years of training, once a week from 4-7 P.M. at a school 30 minutes south of my school, I agreed.  In exchange for my time, I could look forward to small increase in salary when the training was complete and $200 stipends each six months during the training.  After persuading my aging parents, to pick my then ten year old daughter up from her school every Wednesday, feed and care for her,  I car pooled weekly with a collogue for the training.  The classes were valuable, but after two years, the state legislature eliminated the funding.  The state was not committed.  Only the teachers were committed, so the program ended   Even getting paid our last stipend took over a year.  The teachers were disappointed and morale was again low. During the course of my career, many programs and curriculum were discarded after teachers spent hours of their own time developing lessons, and materials.  The teachers were rarely consulted or the effects of the decision considered.  The actions and lack of commitment on the districts or state’s part affects the morale of teachers and thus their attrition.

Teaching is an emotionally draining career.  Not only do teachers spend their own time planning lessons, grading papers and communicating with angry frustrated parents, but also the emotional trauma of students’ lives affects the educators who listen to them and help them sort it out.  As a teacher, I heard about physical and sexual abuse, murder, parents who were arrested or deported, parents who were killed, and had students who committed suicide, murdered or assaulted others. Some of my students suffered other disasters. One entire families burned to death. Some were killed in car accidents.  Police officers who are not as emotionally close to the public they serve are offered counseling and time off when they witness some emotionally draining event, but teachers are not.  Teachers need to be given skills to deal with the emotional stress of teaching.  As a teacher I joined a gym, went bike riding with my daughter and walked my dog.  Many teachers are given so many extra-curriculum responsibilities, that they do not have time to de-stress.  Some districts tell teachers to put the district web-mail on their personal cell phones, so parents can contact them 24/7.  First, the district is not offering to pay the cell-phone bill and it is unwise and unhealthy for teachers to be at the beck and call parents 24/7.  This is causing teacher burnout.  Healthy, happy teachers are more effective.   School district need to recognize how overloading teachers emotionally is counter-productive.

According to ”Study Utah Has High Potential for Teacher Turnover and Shortage” by Kern C. Gardner Institute, “40% of Utah educators who started in 2011 were no longer teaching in Utah classroom at the end of their fifth year.”  If school districts and the states are serious about keeping teachers, improving benefits and pay is a start, but consider communicating with teachers honestly, keeping promised commitments and providing resources and sensitive decisions to the emotional stress teachers face. Preserving a health teaching staff is like sustaining a health garden.  Plants require sunlight, water and fertilizers; teachers require good pay, and benefits.  Plants require protection from strangling weeds and insidious insects; teachers require protection from insensitive district communications that misrepresents facts or requirements; the assurance that legislators and school districts will keep their commitments; and the resources and support to cope with the stress related to teaching.