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.   

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.