Becoming a Teacher IX

Teachers usually don’t think much about leaving the profession until about February each year. That is when the school year seems like it will never end and they are stressed and tired. After about eight years at teaching I began to think about my options.

I was really comfortable with what I was doing although never quite satisfied with my lessons and student performance. I felt I understood the curriculum and could modify instruction to meet the needs of my students. I had grown tired of trying to buck a system that seemed to stifle innovation and stopped change dead in its tracks.

I thought about graduate school but doubted I could get in. I looked at my friends and saw that they were making a lot more money than I was and their families were a lot better off. I didn’t feel like their jobs were all that appealing and could see that most worked solely for the money. That is something educators obviously don’t do. I wasn’t sure what else I could do and make a living.

In late winter of 1979 I read in the Area Education Agency newsletter about an interesting opportunity. It changed my life! The article encouraged teachers to apply for admittance to something called the Southeast Iowa Writing Project (SWIP). Enrollment was limited and interested teachers needed to fill out an application and write an essay to get in. There were great incentives! Those accepted would get four hours of University of Iowa graduate credit free and a stipend of $500. I didn’t think I would get in but thought it was too good to pass up trying.

I filled out the form and wrote the essay. It was about how I used writing in science to help my students learn. I sent it all off to the AEA and waited. I still have the letter I got back saying I had been accepted! I was giddy with excitement! I didn’t know where it would lead me but I was ready for the adventure.

In March I was invited to an orientation meeting at the Ft. Madison office of the AEA. There I met Chris Rauscher and Jim Davis. They were the two people who would be teaching the class. The other participants intimidated me. Most were high school English teachers. I pinched myself and wondered how I got accepted with this group.

Chris and Jim gave an overview of what to expect and gave us some articles to read before the class that was scheduled for three weeks that summer. I was pleased to learn that it would be offered in the library at Iowa Wesleyan College. They told us we would be reading and journaling a lot. They said we would all need a journal and showed us a couple examples.

At one point during the orientation Chris and Jim came around and talked to us individually. I was surprised at how much they knew about me! Jim talked about the piece I had written and my background as a science teacher. I was impressed!

And, so, began the adventure that would change my life in ways I could never have imagined.

Becoming a Teacher VIII

70s39 Becoming a Teacher

In the seventies and eighties teacher’s were required to write lesson plans and turn a copy in each week. The idea was that if something happened to you, whoever took your place would be able to start where you left off. It was useful for substitutes if you didn’t get a chance to write up specific plans. Many teachers resented having to turn a copy in because they felt the administration didn’t trust them.

I really didn’t have a problem with making a copy and turning it in. In those days we used a piece of carbon paper so it was just remembering to use it and put it in the right way when you did it. A few times I put the carbon in backwards and the copy ended up on the back of the page. I found my own lesson plans very useful and didn’t feel I could teach well without them.

I still have every one I wrote, even the ones I did when I was a student teacher. They are full of all kinds of interesting things. I wrote detailed plans about what I would do each day of the week in each subject. There are also notes and comments about specific students or events. I usually crossed out things when I completed them and drew arrows to the next day if I didn’t get to it.

I also had a full school year plan for each subject I taught. It laid out what I would do each month for the year. I never got everything I thought I would do done because I tended to over plan. I didn’t want to not have enough to do when I wrote the daily and yearly plans so I always put in more than I knew I could get done.

Writing the lesson plan required me to look very carefully at the material I was using to determine how best to present it to the students. Most of the reader and math series were scripted and told you exactly what to do and say. You really only needed to know how to read to teach that way. Many times the scripts were way off and written by someone who didn’t know kids, learning, or hadn’t been in a classroom for a long time.

I have heard of principals that expected teachers to follow those scripts and to be exactly where they said they would be each day in their lesson plans. I never had an administrator like that and I don’t think too many of that type exist anymore, at least in Iowa. That practice is still prevalent, unfortunately, in some states. Generally, they are places where teachers typically are not highly trained.

Most training now focuses on teaching teachers to be instructional decision makers and how to tailor instruction to meet the needs of all of their students. Sometimes teachers can do that as they plan the lesson and sometimes they do it on the fly if they feel the need to make adjustments to help the students learn.

Becoming a Teacher VII

I had some great success with difficult students early on in my career and as I have said, that meant that I got almost every difficult one that came along. Most of those kids would be in a behavior disorder classroom now but there wasn’t such a place back then. Several times the district transferred a difficult kid in town to be in my room. On one occasion a student from the Salem Elementary school was bused to my building to be in my room. Twice students from the Trenton area who would have gone to Pleasant Lawn were bused to my classroom.

These were kids who generally brought terror to the eyes of teachers in the building and students on the playground. Somehow, with patience, I was able to calm everyone including the kid. Sometimes the kid would come and there wouldn’t be any problems at all. The change and having a male teacher had been enough to influence the behavior. Other times it wasn’t so easy! Then it was a journey.

Negative behavior usually just doesn’t go away overnight. It takes time and persistence. Even the smallest gain must be celebrated and rewarded. The goal is to constantly reframe every situation so the student is ready to learn. Some of my colleagues wanted the kid to be contrite while I wanted the kid to be back in the room with a positive attitude. That meant that he/she didn’t carry the punishment, whatever it was, on his shoulders for long. There is a strong psychological foundation for that approach but some of my colleagues were more into punishment until it hurts.

Many parents believed in the latter philosophy. If their child was involved in some kind of a problem they always wanted to make sure everyone got the same punishment. If it was clearly the other kids fault they wanted to make sure his punishment was severe. They always pressed me for details but the consequences for someone else’s child is really done of their business. I usually assured them the child was punished and left it at that.

I had a particularly challenging kid who was very violent during my time at Harlan. His family background was horrible. He had witnessed a great deal of violence and inappropriate behavior in his ten years of life. Some of the stories related to him made me physically ill.

I tried every trick in the book to manage him with little success. His father told me to “just whup his butt!” and the principal actually did that once. I was a witness to it and found it very sobering. It worked for a while.

What really finally worked was developing a relationship with the kid…eventually playing with him and others on the playground. The better I knew him and he knew me the more I could reason with him. That was an important point in my emerging belief that relationships are everything. I have held fast to that since.

Once, I had to ask this student to leave the room. In the hall I chastised him severely and shaking my finger backed him into the wall. Suddenly, I saw a tear run down his cheek. I couldn’t believe my words had that kind of effect and, bewildered, I said, “Why are you crying?” He meekly responded, “I backed in to the wall heater!”

Becoming a Teacher VI

Teaching is a sacred trust! Families place their most prized things in your trust…their children. They trust that you will nurture them and keep them safe. It is something not to be taken lightly by educators. Because they do that, they are sometimes cautious. Probably more so today than in the 1970s when I first started teaching.

When I started some parents were a little leery of me. One, because I was a male in a field dominated by females and two, because I was a local boy with a not so great academic reputation. I got lots of questions and I am sure the school administration did to.

I was asked similar questions so many times that they began to annoy me! “Why would a male want to go into elementary education?” Do you plan to continue your education so you can be a high school teacher? And “Are you going to become an administrator?” There was/is the perception by some of the clueless that “People who can, do. People who can’t, teach”

Nothing has been heavier on my mind than safety in my entire career as an educator. I have had this terrible fear that someone would be seriously hurt or die on my watch. I took what some thought were extreme measures to see that didn’t happen.

In the first few years of my career and occasionally after that I had parents volunteer in my classroom. Actually, that first year a couple insisted on it. One wanted to organize the books in the classroom library. Given the small size of the library that took about 15 minutes. They were all obviously concerned about what I might do to their children. By Thanksgiving I had won them over and they disappeared. I guess they decided I could be trusted after all.

Because I was the first male the kids had encountered as a teacher there were other problems, too. My voice was too loud for some and others thought I was mean. I worked hard to win the kids over by over compensating. I learned to speak softly and to joke around with the kids. When we all began to have fun it made it easier for us all.

Overtime it became clear to me that being positive created an environment where kids were ready to learn. That stayed with me during my entire career whether I was teaching kindergarteners or senior citizens. A positive supportive environment is ten times more effective that a stern critical one… something some of my colleagues never learned. I have seen many coaches fall into the negative pattern of only criticizing and belittling their players and then wondering why they have such a poor record. They usually end up blaming the players. I have seen others that build on the strengths of their players and have great success. It seems so simple yet so hard for some.

Becoming a Teacher V

During my childhood and the early years of my teacher career I think education was a more powerful source and influence in the lives of kids than it is now. I have seen a dramatic change that seemed to begin in the 1970s. It could have been earlier and I just wasn’t aware of it. I don’t mean to say that education isn’t a powerful influence now but that there are other equally, or more powerful, forces now.

In my early years parents rarely questioned educators. They almost always supported the teacher in issues of discipline and curriculum. Teachers were highly revered people, although underpaid. Teachers begged for more parent and state involvement in education issues and funding. They raised concerns about the inadequate curriculum and support.

At Saunders we struggled to keep a viable district parent teacher organization. I served as vice president for a time. Only teachers showed up at the meetings. Parents didn’t see the urgency we felt and they were content to let things go along as they always had.

In the mid seventies Iowa passed collective bargaining for public school teachers. That meant we could negotiate with the school board about salaries. I got involved in that for a while as chair of the teacher negotiation team and then chief negotiator. It is a thankless job with lots of hours outside the school day. At least we were able to negotiate a good contract that served as a model for many other districts.

The bad part is that it set up an adversarial relationship between the teachers and the board and administration. The board and administration then slowly begin to convince the community that the teachers were bad because they were taking their tax dollars. Public sentiment began to shift.

Another problem was on the horizon. Fundamentalism was on the rise across the world. Americans were held hostage in Iran. Locally, religious fundamentals jumped on the bandwagon and condemned public education for the evils of the world. They were against values education, evolution, and generally anything else that might teach their children to think. It was scary! These critics really had no idea what went on in a typical classroom.

A small group from a local church refused to send their kids to public school. The kids were truant, parents were charged, and eventually the group opened their own school. A public forum was held in the community room of a local bank and leaders of the group chastised us for being evil. Our own pastor, Ron McMenimen, rose and spoke passionately in rebuttal and our defense. He made me proud to be a Presbyterian that day! The critics were speechless when he was he finished. He knew their brand of Christianity better than they did, but the damage was done.

The irony is that most of the Sunday school teachers in all of the churches in town were “evil” public school teachers during the week.
I read this week of the teacher in the Middle East that was to be flogged for letting students name a teddy bear Mohammad and I was immediately reminded of the intolerance of our own far right. Scary!