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.

Defeating the Enabler

Defeating the Enabler

By Jill Jenkins

Most parents want their children to become well-educated, kind, responsible adults; as a result, most parents insist their children do their homework diligently, treat others with respect and dignity and behave in an ethical manner. These parents monitor their children’s study practices, correct their children when they mistreat others and insist their children accept the consequences if they are caught cheating and fabricating stories.  For example, I have had parents who both appeared in my classroom after school with their child in tow to force their child to confess to cheating, to demand that the child lose all credit for the fraudulent assignment and to demand that the child re-create the assignment and receive no credit.  These parents were convinced that it was more important for their child to learn to behave ethically while he was a child, than to face the consequences of dishonest behavior as an adult.  This is example of not only good parenting, but also good teaching.  I applaud these parents, as do most.  However, they are most parents, not all parents.  What should teachers do to help the children of parents who lie, plagiarized and support their children when they lie, plagiarize and cheat?  How do schools combat the enablers?

Why do parents enable their children?  What effect does it have on the children?

The problem begins in grade school, when a father, an engineer or architect, builds his third grade child’s model of Little House In The Big Woods because he doesn’t want to be embarrassed by the shoddy craftsmanship of an eight year old. This makes the child feel incompetent.  By seventh grade, he is asking teachers for copies of all upcoming assignments so he can complete them or his wife is writing all of the child’s essays.  The parents are focused on the grade and not the learning.  The parents are focused on how the student’s achievement reflects on them.  All of this diminishes the child’s sense of worth. He or she doesn’t believe he or she is capable of achieving without the parent’s help.

Not only does it affect the child’s self esteem, it makes him believe that rules are for other children which can only lead to morally and socially destructive behavior as an adult.  For instance, one student chose to leave campus to visit a nearby mini-mart to purchase a treat where he is apprehended by the school’s resource officer for being truant.  The mother feels he is wrongfully being charged with a truancy because “if the resource officer had minded his own business, he would have returned to class and only been a little tardy.” These kinds of justifications not only erodes the child’s ability to develop a sense of responsibility, they are not uncommon.

There are countless other examples of parent behavior that erodes a child’s ability to take responsibility.  One parent wrote all of her children’s essays.  One parent plagiarized a research paper for her son from the internet because he was too busy with extra-curricular activities to write or perhaps plagiarize it himself. One mother complained that her daughter should be able to write a book report for a book she received credit for two years prior because this time she really read it. One parent couldn’t understand why her child wasn’t receiving credit for a practice chart that the child had forged on in front of the teacher. One parent didn’t understand why her son could not get credit for a test after he was caught copying answers from the student sitting next to him.  The list is endless.

What should educators do?

Some teachers say, "do nothing." Choose your battles.  If these parents lack any hope for their children, they will become their parents' problem when they are adults.  They will become a problem for everyone.  Is it fair to the student?  Is it fair to the student who earns a grade through personal and honest hard work?  Is it fair to society?  Every child deserves to learn the skills to become a self-reliant, responsible adult even when their parents don’t help them. 

Schools and teachers need to create rules and consequences that are consistently and fairly enforced.  If a child cheats in one class in a school, he should know that he will receive the same consequence if he cheats in another class in the school.  Parents and students should be given copies of the rules and the consequences.  All of the teachers and all of the administrators need to enforce the rules in the same way and explain both the broken rule and the consequence to the parent and the child.  All of the teachers and the administrators should be held accountable for consistently and fairly enforcing the rules.  At first the students and their parents will balk, but if the rules are consistently enforced, the child will develop a sense of responsibility and a sense of self-worth.  Everyone wins.  The parents might improve with parenting classes on enabling. 
 

The Effects of Hiding With Black Cats

The Effects of Hiding With Black Cats

By Jill Jenkins

            Over 60 years ago at the height of the Cold War, I was born in a town nestled in the Rocky Mountains to over protective parents and nervous aunts and uncles.  Attempting to protect my siblings and me from a dangerous world, they taught us many useful lessons and some not so useful lessons based on superstitious beliefs and fear. Since the fear of the Cold War was ever present, they told us to escape into the mountains and hide if the Soviet Union ever invaded.  They taught us to follow the rivers downstream if we were ever lost.  They taught us to snare rabbits, birds and catch a fish using our shoelaces and readily available to willows.  They taught us to carve whistles or create bows and arrows from those same willows.  They taught us which berries and insects were safe to eat and which water was safe to drink.  They taught us how to construct a bed and a lean-to from branches and logs.  They taught us to create fires and knives from bits of flint.  They also taught us a ritual chant with appropriate hand gestures if a black cat ever crossed our path: “Ring around the cats ass, dot, dot, dot.”

    Likewise the knowledge we obtained in schools was both useful and nonsense.  We learned to read, write and decipher math, but, also, to duck and cover under our desks to protect us from nuclear proliferation.  Surprisingly, our generation to the shock and dismay of our parents’ generation eventually rejected the ideas they had tried to instill in us about women’s rights, racial prejudice and economic equality. We had learned the power of nuclear warfield and the lack of power of the black cat.  (That is lucky for me and my black cat, Lenny, who has lived with me for 15 years.)

            The lunacy of teaching children lies and half-truths to keep them safe only leads to resentment and anger.  The world is a safer place when everyone is presented with facts to make rational decisions.  Still I hear my more conservative friends complain that the public schools are teaching their grandchildren about global warming, encouraging recycling and promoting the Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, all of which they believed are liberal ideas created to brainwash their children and to make the population feel good about their attempts to solve problems.  To them I say, "Poppycock."  Factual based education will help students develop rational thinking skills to solve problems that are yet unknown.  Teaching students religious based and politically motivated hogwash will dilute their ability to think just like my dear aunt’s ritual of protecting us from evil black cats.  

           While I was teaching, there was a push from some parent groups to prevent teachers from assigning research papers and projects.  Parents felt that all knowledge should be memorized and regurgitated on tests, but learning involves examining facts and differing arguments and drawing conclusions from them.  The world needs a generation of rational problem solvers, not robots.  There is no hiding in the mountains or using black cat rituals to protect the world from global warming or the annihilation of endangered plants and animals.  Hiding under our desks never protected us from a nuclear holocaust and neither will it protect our children and grandchildren from lead polluted drinking water or air filled with polluted plumes pumped from oil refineries and factories. Finding solutions can only happen if the next generation is armed with the ability to make rational decisions.

The Importance of Affirmative Action and Access to Financial Aid

The Importance of Affirmative Action and Access to Financial Aid

By Jill Jenkins

     When I was a child, my mother told me that women had three choices in life: to find a husband, get married and raise his children, to learn to type and take shorthand and become a secretary, or to become a factory worker. My mother’s limited view of the world made it difficult for her to imagine a life beyond her neighborhood. I chose to go to college and become a teacher, an opportunity that was only afforded me because of Lyndon Johnson’s dream of “A Great Society,” a system of low interest loans, the National Defense Loan and later the National Direct Loan available to low income students. Today’s students are often buried in loans because student loans have become privatized. During my college years, students who taught in Title One schools had their loans forgiven.  Since my loan had only a three percent interest rate, I paid it off as scheduled.  Racial discrimination limit many minority students. To alleviate this John F. Kennedy signed an executive order in 1961 creating Affirmative Action forcing universities and colleges to integrate.  Today, some Ivy League Schools often select wealthy African American students to make their quota instead of selecting students who lack the resources to attend college.   What is fair?  Even if the country added a financial component to Affirmative Action, more impoverished White students live in areas with better schools than those of impoverished African American students.  Better schools means better prepared students.  To level the playing field, a combination of Affirmative Action and more grants and affordable loans should be instituted. American poor need more grants, low interest loans and Affirmative Action to widen the view of all of our youth.  Unfortunately, like my mother, many children’s view of the world are limited.  What happens to these students is best described in Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem:”

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like

A raisin in the sun

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it sags

Like a heavy load?

Or does it explode? 

What I discovered by teaching in a variety of different socio-economic levels is our schools are not a level playing field.  Students from economically deprived groups, students from different ethnic or racial groups and from different cultures cannot compete fairly for enrollment in any college or university (let alone an Ivy League School); as a result, both adequate financial aide and Affirmative Action needs to be available.  What I have learned is students who have no hope of financially supporting their families through legitimate means turn to crime.  What I have learned is both males and females need a strong education to have access to more fulfilling careers and the greater opportunities for financial stability.  (Let’s face it, marriage is never guaranteed to last forever, nor does it always provide economic stability.)  What I have learned is people who are well educated are happier and live more economically secure lives. As a result, they are more likely to become a more involved citizen. 

            President Trump’s talk of dismantling Affirmative Action could have catastrophic effects.  First, intelligence isn’t limited to one socio-economic group or one racial group.  By limiting opportunities, America would be wasting some of the most creative and innovative minds.  Second, providing real hope and opportunity, reduces an individual’s likelihood of becoming involved in crime; thus, reducing the strongholds gangs have on some neighborhoods. Third, education increases the potential that an individual will achieve economic stability, a happy, healthy view of government and a higher likelihood he will become an active voting citizen.  This means less likely to become “a raisin in the sun”, a rotting sore or “ exploding” with violence. 

            If all students were competing on a level playing field, perhaps there would be no need for Affirmative Action or Financial Aid, but the truth is they aren’t.  I have taught in affluent schools where students live in houses filled with books and computers, their families travel the world, and their lives are enriched with private coaches, voice lessons, music lessons and they participate in an assortment of academic, artistic and athletic enrichment activities.  Some attend private schools whose classmates come from the wealthiest families and the academic demands far exceed public schools.  I’ve taught in inner city public schools where a student often works eight to ten hours a night after school in a minimum wage job to help support his/her family.  One student whose parents were both incarcerated went to school full-time, and worked full-time to support himself and four younger siblings.  These students are not lazy.  They are over-coming huge hurdles. Money can buy almost anything in America.  One year I was charged with selecting and preparing the graduation speakers. An assistant principal presented me with the name of one student and told me to make certain she was selected as a speaker because her parents had offered to donate money for the sports team. This was a public high school.  I could have followed the order, but instead created an evaluation rubric and selected three faculty members and three students to judge those seeking speaking positions.  Then, to insure a fair contest, I had the class officers tabulate the scores.  The corruption of money is everywhere.  The racial prejudice in this country makes their difficulty even more arduous.  Racial discrimination is even more prevalent. As a drama teacher, I took heat from my principal for casting Alice in Alice in Wonderland with an African American student, because some parents complained that she did not "fit" the part.   As a debate coach in Southern California, my debate team was comprised of many African-American and Hispanic students.  I would remind them that it was not enough to be as good as their adversary, they had to be undeniably better.  Unfortunately, in American, people see color before they hear what the students are saying. 

            When thinking about the effects of lack of hope, I am reminded of Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist.  In the book, Fagin has collects a group of homeless children and trains them as pickpockets in order to exploit them for his own financial gain.  To persuade young Oliver to join their illegal trade, Fagin employs Charlie Bates and the Artful Dodger to testify to the advantages. Like the Artful Dodger, peer pressure and the lack of hope encourage some students to become involved in crime to better themselves.  These students believe that their only future is a part time minimum wage job with no benefits or welfare may like Charlie Bates and the Artful Dodger believe that crime is a better alternative and holds more self-respect than allowing his family to become homeless and hungry.  As a result, they steal, sell drugs and participate in gang activities. Prejudice and economic insecurity land more people in prison than college. The United States has the highest number of incarcerations in the world for a reason.  That same child would become a productive member of society if he/she were give the opportunity to get a good education, and a well paying job. More of those incarcerated are members of minority groups.   Affirmative action could lower the crime rate and the incarcerations, saving everyone money.

            Finally our founding fathers believed that access to a free public education could create a more enlightened voter.  In today’s world to be successful, a K-12 education is not enough.  If we want an enlightened citizen who feels compelled to participate as a thoughtful voter, we need to provide affordable, opportunities for students of every racial and economic group.  People, who feel powerless in a society, do not participate in it.

            Affirmative action and financial assistance is important.  I feel that President Trump’s view of the world is as narrow as my mother’s.  He believes everyone should accept his/her birthplace in society.  Some may say that only the most qualified should be accepted to our colleges and universities; however, those with the money to afford a private education for their children or donate a million dollars would have a disproportionate advantage.  Intelligence and the advantages of wealth is not the same thing.  Creating a wealthy elite with exclusive access to higher education is not the America our fore fathers imagined. Educational opportunities provide those downtrodden with hope and a pathway to economic securities, a more meaningful and happy life while reducing crime.  Education prepares people to be responsible citizens.  Affirmative actions and financial assistance provide opportunities for a brighter future.

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.

School Stinks

School Stinks

by Jill Jenkins

I recently visited my former school to celebrate the retirement of two of my favorite people.  When I opened the door, not only did I note that my former classroom was gone to facilitate moving the school office to the front of the school, but also that the building reeked with the pungent, sour odor of 1500 sweating adolescents.  In the wake of the recent school shooting, the school had been transformed with one main door that opens into an office, so visitors are forced to check in before having access to classrooms.  Logically this seems like a wise choice since anyone carrying an AK-47 would have to confront the school secretaries and administrators before blasting any innocent students or teachers.  The secretaries and administrators are some tough cookies for any would-be assassin, but it was the smell that would have sent any miscreant running.  The brick building was built without windows like a giant warehouse.  When I taught there, the classroom doors used to have a small rectangular window filled with wire that ran vertically above the door knob, but these have been replaced with windowless doors.  For further protection, the teachers are required to keep their doors shut and locked to keep any rifle-toting criminals from having access to the forty or so students in each classroom. Unfortunately, this significantly reduced the air-flow in the building.  The walls of each classroom are covered with carpet to absorb sound, but they have absorbed far more than that over the 30 years of the school's existence.  Every year 1500 boys and girls entering puberty run through the halls rubbing their sweat covered skin over the carpet leaving behind their rank essence.  The school's air conditioner and heater have feebly attempted to filter the stale air, but quite inadequately.  Like any pig or turkey farmer, I became nose blind to the smell when I taught there.  (There were advantages: I was thinner then because I never had an appetite and I couldn't wait to shower when I got home. Maybe subconsciously I was more aware than I thought.  Even then, many teachers, I included, tried a variety of solutions including plug-in air fresheners in our classrooms, but the fire department banned them.)  I started to wonder that if in our attempt to keep students safe from intruders are we exposing them to the health risks connected to the bacteria growing in that carpeting or extreme depression from "loathsome smells and shrieks like mandrakes torn from the earth" (Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet).  Maybe school just stinks. 

I proceeded down the hall to the library (excuse me, Media Center) to join what was left of the faculty where I spent over 20 years of my career.  The halls were darker than I remembered perhaps because the area that used to be office had windows on two sides that were always brightly lit.  Those windows had been bricked in and contained three classrooms whose dark doors were closed.  Although there were photos on the top of the walls of former 9th grade classes (too high for my eyes because I am only five feet tall about the height of the average 7th grade student), the halls looked bleak and depressing.  I wondered if these dark, colorless halls might be contributing to the unusual number of suicides that have occurred recently among teenagers.  The place was depressing me. According to research "The Impact of Light and Colour on Psychological Mood: a Cross-cultural Study of Indoor Work Environments" by Kuller R, Ballal, S, Laike T, Mikellides, B and Tonello G ,  

       "The results also indicate that the use of good colour design might contribute to a more positive mood.

       It is suggested that in future research light and colour should be studied as parts of the more complex              system making up a healthy building." 

The foul, rancid odor flowed after me down the hall and I began to wonder if I needed another shower before I congratulated my old colleagues.  The prison-like atmosphere and the over-crowded classrooms made me wonder if the psychological effects could contribute to a desperate teenager.  Maybe school just stinks. 

Working with this faculty was a real treat.  Faculty members took a team approach on everything.  If a student had a problem, his teachers shared ideas to help him overcome.  Departments worked together on curriculum as well and technology, reading and writing skills were developed in a cross-curricular method.  For example the librarian and the Language Arts Department (that's the English Department) tested and checked with each child to guarantee that each read books on his/her individual reading level. Each classroom provided the student with ten minutes of reading at school and communicated with parents on reading charts that each student read two hours each week at home.  Computerized tests determined if the student had comprehended his/her book.  As each book was successfully completed, we teachers rewarded the student with both verbal recognition and small piece of candy, continually encouraging him/her to achieve his/her individualized reading goal based on his/ her reading level. At the end of each grading period, each student who achieved his/her reading goal was recognized in his classroom and sent to the media center where the librarian personally rewarded each student with a certificate and rubber ducky.  She snapped a picture of the student wearing a crown or holding a ducky and posted it in the library for all to see. The halls were filled with pictures of the students reading. "Reading is Duckie," or at least it was.  According to the librarian, those programs have ended.  Cross curriculum projects between Language Arts Department and the Geography or the Science Department were common and the projects were displayed in the halls. Students used computerized writing programs, computerized testing programs and created movies and presentations in the computer labs for cross-curricular projects.  These projects have also given way to test preparation.  Although I was happy to see old friends and everyone hugged and talked about the old days, I was sad to see what has become to my old school.

For all those designing schools to maximize student safety, while placing a safety portal with school offices and resource police at the front of the building is a great start, there is more to think about.  Preventing a child from becoming a maniac murdering his peers should be goal number one.  Schools need to be pleasant places, not prisons.  Providing students with a clean, well ventilated, well lit and brightly colored space will help create a lively, healthy environment.  For all students school is a home away from home and each student needs to feel like an appreciated member of the community. Remember students are malodorous, messy creatures, so use building materials that are easy to clean.  Don't put carpet on the walls. Use insulation in the walls to dampen sound from room to room.  Provide colorful display areas to show students work and display happy pictures of the students in the school.   Designing safe school building is only part of the answer.

The school atmosphere is important.  Keeping the school clean and well lit will improve health and moral for the teachers and the students, but encouraging teachers to work together and find ways to recognize students' achievement will make students feel more loved and appreciated.  Even as another school shooting occurred today in Texas, think about ways of preventing others by using training teachers to identify behavior or signs that a student is troubled.  Observing changes in student behavior and referring student to social workers, counseling staff or school psychologists can prevent depression from escalating into disasters.  Changing our focus on making all students feel safe, appreciated and loved is a good start.  Schools do not have to stink.  Instead make them smell like school spirit and make every student's education a positive one.