Saturday, August 25, 2018

The Power of Teachers


The Power of Teachers
By Jill Jenkins
Recently on Facebook a number of teachers complained that if only the administrators did anything, their school would run more smoothly, but as a retired teachers I have experienced a variety of situations where teachers identified a problem in a school, brainstormed solutions, developed a workable plan and presented it to administrators.  The administrators, in turn, empowered the teachers to enact the idea and the school improved as a result.  Teachers have power if they choose to use it.   Here are six examples that I have personally experienced the power of teachers enacting their own solutions to problems.

1. Hall Patrol
At one inner-city high school where I taught, so many students were in the hall during class time not only cutting class, but smoking cigarettes, and other substances and making drug deals that one science teacher used a fire extinguisher to spray a group of smoking students sitting on the staircase next to his room. Needless to say, he got into a bit of hot water.  The incident led to a group of teachers developing the idea of “Hall Patrol.”  Each teacher gave up one consultation period per week to patrol the hall encouraging students to get to class and writing up any students in violation of the rules.  The administrators were expected to follow through on the referrals.  Teachers worked in pairs because one elderly teacher had been hospitalized after a student assaulted him, beating him with his own cane.  The results were startling.  Most of the students returned to class without incidents and faculty member who rarely interacted had an opportunity to get to know each other making the school have a more cohesive faculty.  Occasionally a student would test the system.  On one occasion, my partner, a tall, well-respected shop teacher and I encountered two brothers selling a bag of marijuana in the hall.  Their buyer sprinted away, but the two defiantly passed the bag over my head to the waiting brother before laughing that we didn’t know their names and since teachers were not allowed to touch students, there was nothing we could do.  We went to the assistant principal’s office identified the two with a yearbook and let the school police officer apprehend the two.  I guess the joke was on them.  Teachers are not powerless.

2. Art and Trash Pickup
At another inner-city high where I taught, the problem were two-fold, each day the school had to be repainted to destroy the gang related graffiti sprawled across the buildings and the administration was so busy with larger behavior problems that taking care of small infractions like disrespecting teachers or childish behavior were impossible to address.  The teachers felt that if they small infractions were addressed, the big problems would be reduced: nip it in the bud.  The solutions developed by the teachers and proposed to the administrators were two-fold.  First, promising art students were selected by the art teacher to design and paint murals on the school walls.  Since some of these artists were the same nocturnal graffiti artists, the staff felt they would want their creations protected and the graffiti would be reduced.  The second part included trash pickup.  Students who acted in some inappropriate manner were assigned one hour of after school clean up.  Wearing a bright orange vest, each student was given a large garbage sack and escorted around the campus to pick up paper for an hour.  When it was raining (which was rare because it was southern California) they cleaned desks or scraped gum.  The most important part of the punishment was the students talked to the teachers and they processed what they had done and why it was wrong.  Incidents of inappropriate behavior were reduced dramatically and the graffiti was almost eliminated.

3. Study Help
Teachers at two very different schools, designed similar solutions to the same problem: one inner-city high school and one affluent suburban junior high school.  The teachers in both schools recognized that many of the families had either single parent households where parents worked long hours to financially support their children or households were both parents worked.  Either way, parents had little time to help their children with homework or help a struggling student.  In both schools, teachers approached the administration to donate time before school or during their lunch hour to tutor students who were struggling without pay.  Naturally the administration acquiesced and some struggling students were given much needed help.


3. No Zeros Allowed
Two math teachers at my former school developed a program called “No Zeros Allowed” after attending a workshop. The problem was that assignments in a math class are designed to support sequential learning.  When students chose to not complete assignments, they impaired their own ability to learn concepts taught later.  Since work completed late was reduced in point value, students did not feel compelled to complete missing work.  The principal loved the idea, (Maybe because he was a former math teacher or because he felt students need to understand that learning to be responsible is also important.)  Teachers would refer students who had missing assignments to the math teacher in charge.  The math teachers would assign these students to “Lunch School."  The students would receive a call ten minutes before their lunch and were escorted to the cafeteria to receive a sack lunch and taken to the math teachers’ rooms.  There they would be given a packet of missing assignments from all of their classes and the guidance of a math teacher to complete the assigned work while eating lunch.  It was a little extra work for the teachers and the essays some of the students created were substandard, but students began to become more responsible about completing assigned work.  They only change I would make is to include teachers from a variety of disciplines to tutor the students. 

5. Teacher Advisory Revisited
The administration at the junior high school where I used to teach instituted Teacher Advisory, twenty minutes three times a week where students participated in activities from the affective domain. The activities were far too juvenile for the ninth grade students who often ridiculed them.  While I was evaluating another junior high for the state, I witnessed a program that I thought would benefit our students so I brought the idea to my principal.   At the other school, students were either compelled to go to a study hall to make up tests or assignments or if they were all caught up, they could attend an enrichment activity.  My principal loved it, so I encouraged him to talk to the other principal.  The next year, he implemented the program.  Just as the other principal told me in the beginning there were problems, but our principal had learned a lot from the other school’s mistakes.  First, teachers had to identify, students who had failed to complete assignments or tests, and request that they go to appropriate location.  These students received a ticket and were escorted to their assigned location before the other students were allowed to choose an activity.  Second, the teachers in each discipline and in each grade level had to decide before hand who would be teaching enrichment activities and who would be helping students who needed help with missing assignments or tests.  Third, a huge mistake the administration made was telling students who were caught up to go wherever they wanted.  Some of them wanted to go to the local service station and buy a treat.   To solve this, teachers handed out tickets and students selected the enrichment activity they would attend.  Unfortunately some activities were more appealing to students than others.  I taught an improvisational theater class that was overwhelmed with students and my neighbor taught a ukulele class that attracted about ten students.  Regardless, the program proved much more fruitful than the previous program.  Students were motivated to get their work in and those who didn’t were held accountable.  

6. Catch Someone Doing Something Right
My former husband went to an administrative workshop and heard an idea where businessmen recognized employees doing their job well: Catch Someone Doing Something Right.  That would work with students I thought so I brought the idea to my principal.  She loved it.  She printed out little cards and teachers were to present a card with a description written on it of the child’s behavior.  The principal herself and her secretary would congratulate the child and present him/her with a piece of candy.  The next principal took it a step further and put the child’s name into a drawing for a fabulous prize at the end of the week.  The program was successful for two reasons: first, it forces teachers to focus on the positive; second, it rewards the students who are doing the right thing, rather than give all of the attention to the students who are behaving badly. Attention is what students want.  As a result, the student who misbehaves learns he/she can get more attention by behaving appropriately.  
Conclusion
The next time you feel powerless as a teacher, just develop an idea to solve a problem and present the plan to the administration.  You might be surprised how receptive your over-worked administrator is.  Don’t expect more pay or recognition; just do it for the children.