Schools should be a safe place for kids. Teachers should support their students and want to help and see their students succeed. Why would you become a teacher if you didn’t want to help your students learn? Everyone learns differently but schools aren’t set up to teach students based specifically by how they learn. Teachers lecture a class and hope everyone understands, and they shouldn’t favor the ones that do, “teachers give the students that they expect to succeed more time to answer questions, more specific feedback, and more approval (Spiegel 2012).” Students are often too nervous or embarrassed to raise their hand and admit they don’t understand. I am this student. I get nervous about saying ‘here’ when they call my name for role. I rehearse my ‘here’ in my head until my name is finally called. I am not outgoing. I do not like speaking in front of a class or having all eyes on me. I am afraid of what people are thinking about me. It is difficult for me to find the courage to speak up but especially to admit that I need help. My senior year of high school, I went to the Jordan Applied Technology Center. I was at high school for half of the day, then went to JATC to become a pharmacy technician. When I started my senior year, I was proud of myself for not taking the easy way out. I was going to do something for my future. I was more concerned with doing well in my pharmacy technician courses than I was with high school. Since I left high school half way through the day, I had to leave in the middle of one of my classes. I started to struggle with this class. The teacher was extremely unhelpful. One day he called me up to his desk and all he had to say to me was that I wouldn’t graduate if I didn’t improve. That was it. No help or advice. I was so caught off guard that I couldn’t find any words. I looked at the students sitting closest to his desk and hoped they hadn’t overheard. I didn’t know what to do. I was angry he felt he could say that to me. Self-doubt rushed through me. I turned red in the face, nodded to him, and walked back to my seat. Instead of trying to help me, he made me feel awful about myself. I knew I wasn’t putting in my full effort but I thought I was doing something great for my future. As I said before, teachers should fight to see their students succeed and not be discouraging when they are struggling. Also due to teachers spending more time with students they are expecting to succeed, I believe I was doomed either way with this teacher. Even if I were to speak up and ask for help, he probably wouldn’t be willing due to his expectations for me.
Working Together
Teachers can have a profound effect on their students. Whether good or bad, as students we remember teachers who have impacted our lives. Teachers face a great challenge that many of the general population are able to ignore since they do not have children in the school system. Engaging their students is a difficult challenge that requires a lot of work for the teacher. Teachers work with a wide variety of personalities, learning capabilities, students who are driven to learn and students who are not driven, and the social differences at each school. These social differences can be extreme based on a schools location and the population of the students that attend it. Many people overlook these challenges because they only have one student in mind, their own child, when they are criticizing the teacher’s abilities. The community needs to remember education is a team effort and realize that everyone has a role and a responsibility to make a difference and play a role in improving the system. A huge challenge for teachers is engaging students who have given up on themselves. The reason this occurs can be due to circumstances at home or lack of self-esteem. Many students are afraid to speak up when they don’t understand something for fear of appearing stupid or risking being made fun of from other students. The National Education Association states that nearly “160,000 students skip school each day because of bullying. (NEA 2012).” Bullying happens for many reasons; school should be a safe place for students. Educating the community on the effects of bullying and ways to prevent it is one way that the members of society can have an impact on the education system and making our communities in general a better place. Bullying disrupts the students opportunity to learn, for all students not just the student that is being ridiculed. The President of NEA, Dennis Van Roekel, shares his concerns, stating “this is a social justice issue for us because bullying compromises students’ basic right to learn and grow in a safe environment. (NEA 2012)” Roekel couldn’t be more correct with this comment, bullying takes away a student’s ability to learn. Students who are bullied may feel that they don’t deserve to learn and quit putting forth effort. In this instance teachers have nothing to do with the reason the student is giving up but still have the challenge of keeping them engaged and motivated to learn and improve themselves. Teachers may be inclined to give up on students who give up on themselves. Chase Mielke is a high school teacher who has felt like giving up on students. No matter what methods he tried, they didn’t seem to understand. Although he was told to he shouldn’t waste his energy, he refused to give up and bravely shared on his blog his frustration and discouragement, “I have heard it over and over again from dozens of teachers: Some kids can’t be reached. Such kids have a perfect storm of disadvantaged genetics, dismantled home-lives, and self-destructive mentalities. One teacher cannot reach them. Nor can school, nor one community. Save your energy and dedicate it to the “good ones.” (Mielke 2015).” This is a difficult thing to realize that this mentality is one that many teachers share. Many issues that students face are out of their control such as having a good life at home or other circumstances that they may face. Maybe school is their escape from their life outside of school and a teacher who has given up on them may seem that everyone and everything is against them, taking away all hope. A teacher might be the difference in their lives if the right effort is put forth by the teacher. The effort could be minimal just making them feel like it matters if they are in class or not, an acknowledgement from the teacher might be all that is required. Giving up on a student could have a very negative impact on them. I hope that most teachers do not give up on their students; I think the large majority of teachers strive to see their students succeed. Often times despite the amount of effort a teacher puts in is not enough to compensate for society. The statistics regarding schools in high-poverty areas is staggering. During the 2007-2008 school year “about 68 percent of 12th-graders in high poverty schools and 91 percent of 12th-graders in low-poverty schools graduated with a diploma (NCES).” These numbers remain low for high school students that go onto college, 28 percent of students from high-poverty areas and 52 percent from low-poverty areas go onto a four year institution. Furthermore, there are a larger percentage of teachers in high-poverty schools that have less than 3 years of teaching experience. As a community we need to entice good teachers to remain teaching in the high-poverty areas for the good of the community. This is a difficult task but it needs to happen and will take effort from the entire community. Poverty is a huge issue in education. Teachers and students face this issue together. American Education Research Journal wrote an article in 2013, they studied the effects of teacher turnover on 85,000 students over 8 years. John Papay discussed this research, he states “this turnover results in an organizational instability and a concentration of less experienced, lower performing teachers, both of which hurt student achievement. (Papay 2013).” High-poverty schools struggling to keep teachers long-term directly correlates with all three issues I have discussed. Students at these schools may give up on themselves and feel worthless, teachers are giving up on their students and society is giving up. As a community we must balance our resources in the high-poverty and low poverty schools. “The ratio of books to children in middle-income neighborhoods is approximately thirteen books per child, while the high-poverty neighborhoods it is approximately one book to 300 children (Hannula 2016).” This is a staggering statistic and the disparity between the two classes of schools should not be socially acceptable. The opportunity extended to students in public schools should be vastly similar not vastly different. Education is a combined effort, we cannot forget about the challenges a new teacher faces, the challenges that seasoned teachers face and the challenges that students face. If a student is not motivated hopefully we can inspire them. The community must step up and put time and resources into education for the betterment of society. The community must better understand the struggles facing the education system. A struggling student could be facing some deep issues; this may not be simply an attitude problem. Teachers have the ability to greatly influence a student’s life for the good or bad but also society can be a positive or negative influence on a young person’s life, we all are in this together. As a community, we all have a role and influence in other people’s lives, hopefully we will chose to impact them positively and all of the students and members of society can be one of the “good ones”.
Above and Beyond
Athena Poole is a teacher at Hartvigsen, a special needs school in Utah. I had the opportunity to interview her and discuss her daily tasks. It was amazing to learn about what she does every day and to see how humble she is about her job.
Athena, I appreciate you taking the time to answer a few questions. I am working on a profile and wanted to share your story. I know you work at Hartvigsen, how long have you been there? “I have been at Hartvigsen for three years now but I have been teaching for a total of ten years.” Could you tell me a little bit about the kids that you teach? Their ages and what kinds of challenges they work through each day? “My case load consists of ten students, two girls and eight boys. The students are age 13 to 18, eighth through twelfth grade. Diagnoses is my classroom range from Down syndrome to Autism. I work in a behavior classroom and I work with four additional staff members to help with education and behavior.” What do you mean by a behavior classroom? “A behavior classroom is one where the students have aggressive behaviors towards others. I have many behaviors in my room, from mild noncompliance to major physical aggressions towards others. These behaviors can range from running away, crying, screaming, or biting and hitting.” Do you mainly work with behaviors or do you teach a specific subject as well? “Since I work in the secondary setting, we have our students rotate classes like typical high school students, so my classroom is the science rotation. Each teacher is also responsible for teaching math to their homeroom classes.” What does a typical rotation look like? “We start by getting the students off the bus, then we have breakfast together. After breakfast, we do an opening group that includes math related activities. Then we start rotations. Each class is forty minutes long with a five minute passing time. Staff is physically and verbally assisting students get between classes, some are independent and some require physical guidance. After three classes they have an hour long lunch. Lunch is this long because some students need assistance with feeding and we are working on independence. We may have to change diapers or assist with toileting throughout the day. After lunch, there is one more rotation before students return to their homeroom to work on IEP goals. Students are then walked to the buses.” What are IEP goals? “IEP stands for Individual Education Programming/Plan. IEP goals are specific skills that the special education team determines will help the student be successful in their schooling and life. They have academic goals, as well as, motor goals or goals for transition skills if they are over 14 years old.” When working towards these goals, is there a way you adjust your teaching to certain students without making them feel different? “These goals are based off the Essential Elements. These are broken down to basic skills for each grade level. Most students are on the same level - at an Initial Precursor level. I may adjust my instruction in many ways, not limited to: limiting the information presented, what each student is expected to recall, how each student is expressing their knowledge, etc. I teach each student what they need to be taught and in a way that they need to be taught. I feel that this is my job as a teacher.” Do you have a specific story that comes to mind of a time that you had a powerful and positive influence on one of your students? “I really cannot think of one situation where I have had a positive impact. I look at each student as a success in their own way. I have students who have gone through my classroom who are able to hold down jobs, some are able to communicate their needs to their care givers, and all are able to be accepted by their peers. I am just one piece of the puzzle in my students lives. I have been thanked by many parents for a variety of reasons. Some of these thanks have been after their student has passed away. I have mostly been thanked for loving their student like my own child.”