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Note: The content of this article includes a compilation of the views and opinions of various education professionals and the author's interpretation of the same. Please read this article keeping in mind that all of the thoughts and opinions expressed do not apply to all public schools or to all teachers, administrator, students and parents.
We have heard that our public school teachers are over worked and under paid. Most of us agree that it is a terrible discrepancy when professional athletes and entertainers make millions to help us escape from reality for a temporary period of time and teachers get paid crumbs by comparison as they mold, shape and attempt to positively impact the young minds that will ultimately transition into leadership roles in all fields of discipline represented in our society.
I often have the pleasure of speaking with school teachers from various metropolitan Atlanta public schools. Most of them love their chosen profession and really enjoy playing an important role in shaping the minds of our children as they progress towards becoming well rounded and educated adults equipped to make their dreams and visions become a reality.
Many of these teachers speak of how smart and respectful some of their children are and how engaged their parents are in the matriculation process of these students. The teacher's eyes light up when they speak of these students as if each of them will become the next W.E.B. DuBois, Shirley Chisholm or A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. – real trailblazers. Then the conversations seem to take an all too familiar change in course and the grave reality of what is actually taking place in some of our public classrooms becomes clear. This reality is what I see as creating a perfect storm. Recognizing that there are always exceptions to what I am writing about, I am including the worst of what I have heard from the educators and administrators in an effort to prick our collective consciousness. We cannot afford to leave not even one student behind to be a victim of this perfect storm.
Current 1 – Our Teachers
Teachers are beginning to feel “trapped and imprisoned" in the classroom and are looking for ways to escape the day to day grind that has become something less than the noble profession they once thought educating their communities’ children would be. Some teachers find themselves riddled with debt from college loans from when they sought their degrees and certifications in education. These once optimistic professionals are now slipping in and out of depression partially because they do not see the overall positive impact of their work nor do they see any financial reward. Through the eyes of several teachers, it is safe to say that they view their jobs as little more than taking big stones and breaking them down to little rocks day in and day out.
As the teachers with degrees and certificates in educations begin to find their way out of the classroom, more and more state governments are searching high and low for qualified replacement teachers. In some instances, the state and local school boards have lowered the qualifying standards for new teachers in order to meet the need for adult supervision in the classroom. The next logical question to me is if our highly trained educators cannot take being in the classroom, what makes us so certain that under trained teachers will do any better? This is a cracked damn or levee trying to hold back the weigh of the ocean. If some real solutions are not thought of and implemented quickly, disaster will be the likely outcome for our public school systems and more importantly for our children and their future opportunities.
Current 2 – Our Children
"The children of today are not the same children we were when we were growingew up", is often a repeated mantra. Many teachers expect the children and teenagers of today to be similar in composure and make up as children were in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. However, many things have changed since then including the proliferation of drugs (crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, heroin, etc.) in our communities tearing at the very nucleus and fibers of our family structure. Single parent households and latch key children are at an all time high. Children and parents alike are finding that they do not have recognizable and legitimate support systems in or outside of the home.
In addition, parents are being force spending more and more time at work and away from their children. Some parents find themselves working harder and longer hours to secure housing and the other basic necessities of life, while their children are left to be raised and molded by their grandparents and extended family (if available), teachers and/or in some instances on their own.
Many of these children, especially those living in poverty stricken rural and inner city settings, often times find themselves raising their younger siblings and playing the role of an adult when they themselves are in the midst of their own growth and maturity process and in need of consistent guidance and nurturing. As a result of having to deal with the stresses of being a child, being forced to act as an adult and lacking maturity, these students sometimes act out when they are placed in a setting like a classroom and forced to conduct themselves under the authority of a teacher (Note: Often times this is a frustrated, stressed out, detached and possibly depressed teacher). It is no wonder that when these negative energies meet in the same space and intersect with each other, they create an unstable and hostile environment for both the teacher and the student. The optimal learning environment is compromised.
Current 3 – Our Parents & Guardians
The family structure in the United States is under attack. Whether the blame for the high rate of single parent households is divorce or other spiritual and social factors, the result is normally the same. Single parents are required to do more today and work longer and harder than any time in recent history to sustain the home. Many of these single parents are very young and received at most a high school diploma/GED or did not complete high school at all. Combined with the all too numerous to name other situations and circumstances that create and attribute to the soaring numbers of single parent households, these are the parents that I choose to focus on in this piece.
Why you may ask? In my discussions with teachers and administrators alike, they describe these parents as angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, depressed and dealing with misguided aggression. The real issues from what I could gather is that due to their limited educational backgrounds and achievements, these parents normally have to work two menial full time jobs just to make ends meet. Unless drug abuse is present, these parents are nevertheless just as dedicated to their children and preserving their homes as better situated parents. However, when up to eighteen hours out of the day is spent at work and rest is needed so the parent can return to work the next day, there is little time remaining for the children and absolutely no time for consistent involvement in their child’s educational experience (at home or at school).
Contrast this scenario with that of single parents who are highly educated and have a high earning capacity. These parents may earn between $15 and $20 per hour as entry level salaries and as they progress into management and/or provide professional services they have the potential to earn well over $100K per year. What is really important to capture in this comparison is the amount of time required to earn enough money to keep an average household stable and healthy for the raising of children. In the first scenario, it would take a poorly educated parent making minimum wage almost three hours to make what the entry level highly educated persons earns in an hour. Although the goals are the same, to provide at a minimum the basic necessities (i.e., housing, clothing, food and medicine) for their children, the time required to do the same is drastically increased in some instances due to the lack of education and the lack of meaningful employment opportunities.
As a result, these parents are tired and under a tremendous amount of physical fatigue and mental stress. Not to mention that they themselves may feel at certain times just as the teachers that I spoke with do, trapped and/or imprisoned. The only difference is that many of the teachers have the aptitude, motivation and opportunity to change their circumstances. Many of these parents see no way out other than to work even harder and longer hours, turn to illegal activities, engage in drug abuse and/or simply pass the responsibility of raising their children on to relatives (willing or not).
The children suffer when their parents have little time for them and even less time to dialog with teachers about their child’s progress or behavior. As a result, the teachers become frustrated and in some instances give up on these children as they act out and become a major distraction to the ongoing learning process of the other children. After all, teachers are not babysitters, they are educators.
Teachers provide the foundation and guidelines for learning. Parents are responsible for ensuring that the students put these practices and guidelines to work. As one educator put it, homework is not just the practical application of what is learned in the classroom, but it is quality time when a parent and child can interact and grow together. Unfortunately, homework time in many households no longer exists. On the other hand there seems to be plenty of television and video game time by comparison. If the students are not taught discipline and accountability, and are not required to do their homework assignments on a daily basis, many of the tools necessary for their future success will not be mastered and failure maybe imminent.
And the vicious cycle continues . . .
Current 4 – The Administration
The administrators in public schools play a very important management and oversight role. They are responsible for the overall educational process taking place in their respective schools. They are also responsible for safety, test scores, budgets, equipment and the list goes on. Most administrators have spent time in the classroom and are all too familiar with the challenges that teachers face on a day to day basis.
However, according to the teachers that I spoke with, many of the administrators are more concerned about reaching test score goals than anything else that occurs in our public schools. High test scores result in positive recognition and such positive recognition results in additional dollars for the successful schools. The managing of these high dollar budgets into positive educational results lead to promotions and salaries increases for public school administrators. We should encourage all of our administrators to keep working for overall positive educational results, not just those measured by standardized test scores.
To keep it real, what we are deal with in this piece is only partially the fault of administrators. They have a tremendous amount of pressure placed on them from local boards of education and state departments of education to produce high standardized test scores in order to tap into certain Federal government dollars earmarked for education. In some ways, I can empathize with the plight of the administrator who works day in and day out focused on nothing but test scores – that is if it means bringing more badly needed funds into poor inner city and rural public schools.
Nevertheless, when this pressure is combined with that of the students, teachers and parents described herein, you have the makings of the perfect storm that leaves in its aftermath with few exceptions the following results and symptoms by category:
Teachers: dysfunction, anxiety and depression, anger, disconnection, increased drug use, flight from the classroom, low self-esteem, increased stress levels and etc.;
Students: dysfunction, anxiety and depression, high dropout rates, the proliferation of teenage sexual activity and pregnancy, the increased spread of sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers, violence in the classrooms, other criminal activity, increased drug use by the students, illiteracy, low self-esteem, embarrassment and negative social stigmas, increased stress levels and etc.;
Parents: dysfunction, anxiety and depression, increased drug use, low self-esteem, sense of failure as a parent, embarrassment and negative social stigmas, increased stress levels and etc.; and
Administrators: dysfunction, anxiety and depression, increased drug use, low self-esteem, sense of failure, increased stress levels and etc.
In the midst of all of the To reiterate, although positive outcomes and stories related to education, these are the negative results that often go without the least bit of recognition as the star students, parents, teachers and administrators are recognized as being exemplary. Could we be suffering from willful blindness and . . .
Are There Any Real Solutions?
Although most of what I have written in this piece is not new and was geared towards shining a spotlight on a lot of the negative results of our public school systems as they are currently are operated, there are many students who make it through this grind and go on to be successful whether they graduate from college or not. Taking all of these things into account, we must use our best efforts to ensure that our public school systems are operating proficiently and in an economically sound and productive manner.
We can start by getting active in our local Parent Teacher Associations (PTA) and volunteering at our local public schools whether we have children attending or not. The efforts of volunteers can help alleviate some of the stress and load that is currently placed solely on our teachers. Further, volunteers can provide students with increased levels of supervision and some of the emotional support that they so desperately need. This type of effort reinforces the old saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.”
Next, we can become active members of and volunteers for our local boards of education and/or the equivalent. An active community or collective group focused on education often times results in positive policy making and progress when dealing with political and quasi-political institutions like local school boards. Subtle influence by the community can result in additional teachers being hired, schools being build and the student to teacher ratio in the classroom being reduced to increase the chances of success in the educational process. Please pay close attention to the political “process” in your community and make sure that the violation of rules and procedures do not cause you to loose your opportunity to make a meaningful and substantive change in your public schools.
Each of us is also represented by both a state representative and state senator and a United States Representative and United States Senator. Each of these elected officials have local offices that you can visit in order to educate yourself on how to meet the necessary requirement to bring additional resources to your local public school district. Further, you have an opportunity to bring issues that may not otherwise be addressed to the attention of influential staff members and in some instances to the representative and senators themselves.
However, that is not the end of our jobs. If we really want to help our teachers, students, parents and administrators, as well as, our communities, and our nation, we must hold our elected officials responsible for their actions and omissions. The best way to do this is to work with the elected officials and staff to come up with the very best solutions to earmarked isolated and systematic problems. Then work with the elected officials as they navigate the arduous labyrinth of bi-partisan policy making.
In our communities, I believe we must support our teachers and administrators alike. In their hands, they hold the keys to our future success as a nation as they mold and educate our children. Further, in my humble opinion, we cannot ignore the plethora of current social issues that plague our communities and our families. For example, we must continue our efforts to increase the minimum wage, eliminate poverty and drug abuse (legal and illegal) and refocus our efforts to make illiteracy a thing of the past. In addition, with all of us working together we have to find alternative ways to help young students/parents who made mistakes and bad decisions in the past find their way to education, success and fulfilling careers. Last, and in my opinion and most important, we must embrace our children and teach them that they are beautifully unique. We as adults are tasked with protecting their innocence to the maximum extent practicable and allowing them to experience a meaningful and nurturing childhood. Now, this does not mean that they will not buck up as they begin to smell themselves, just as we did! J It only means that the community will consciously support, protect and embrace all of our children even when their parents may not be available and active in their day to day lives.
This writing is how I begin to get involved - again. I am very interested in your comments, questions and ideas. Please click on the word “comments” below and let your voice be heard. Peace and Blessings.
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