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Home / Washington Business - July/August 2003 / Teachers need to care about their students and parents need to care about their kids |
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Teachers need to care about their students and parents need to care about their kids |
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Written On: July/August 2003 |
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Written By: By Jennifer Delgadillo |
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"No man can be a good teacher unless he has feelings of warm affection toward his pupils and a genuine desire to impart to them what he believes to be of value.”
Bertrand Russell’s words inspire me to teach. The love of a subject matter—in my case
English—cannot alone sustain a teacher. Rather, it is the students: sometimes our pride and joy, sometimes our greatest source of anguish and frustration.
How can we change the system to make it better for both students and teachers?
First, we need to increase the time teachers and students have together. Most teachers want to spend more time with students; however, today’s prescribed school schedule of seven and a half hours a day, 180 days a year is inadequate. Therefore, there are two
alternatives:
1. Create smaller classes so teachers could interact with individual students on a
daily basis; or
2. Keep the class sizes as they are but increase the time teachers have with each class, i.e. create fewer but longer class periods.
Both ideas cost money, but “time is money.”
Reward teachers who do a good job
Second, we need to find ways to reward teachers who work hard, have paper-intensive classes and help students achieve and progress. I don’t know how this could be done, but teachers who teach high-stakes classes (classes required for graduation or for the WASL) get frustrated and demoralized when they constantly work late grading papers, only to see colleagues, unburdened by paperwork, leave work at 3:30 in the afternoon.
Our administrators are paid well to exercise their authority, so give them the opportunity to reward good teachers. They know who is doing a great, good, average or bad job. Even the smallest, seemingly insignificant reward could be incentive enough for teachers. Right now, what is the incentive to excel when teachers with same level of experience and education get paid the same, regardless of how well their students do? I realize my union may have several arguments against “merit pay” but I bet even
the union recognizes that there are equity issues among teachers.
Finally, the most important factor that would improve student learning is parental involvement. I don’t mean volunteering in classrooms daily or baking cookies or calling every time their student has a problem. Those are all valuable contributions, but I’m talking about simply checking to see if their student has homework and if they need help with it.
My observations are neither unique nor new. In the March 2, 2003 edition of the Washington Post, columnist George Will quoted an Educational Testing Service (ETS) official as saying in 1991, “...about 90 percent of the performance differences among schools can be explained by five variables: number of days pupils are absent, number of hours pupils spend watching television, number of pages pupils read for homework, quantity and quality of reading matter in the pupils’ homes and—the most important variable—the number of parents in the home.”
Parents need to be involved
It is hard to expect students to excel in the face of the realities of public education. Some schools have virtually no attendance policy and there are instances where parents lie about a student’s absences so the student “doesn’t get in trouble.”
Some students get kicked out of their house because they got in a fight with their mom or their dad’s girlfriend while still other students have virtually raised themselves since the time they could reach the kitchen counter. After school, students watch TV or play video games instead of doing their homework.
Some teachers never give homework in a core subject area and don’t challenge students. I have had high school students tell me that my class was the first time that they have read a novel from beginning to end.
It is no wonder our schools and society have problems.
The Legislature can spend lots of money on
programs, tests, studies and administrators. They can give the WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) from now until the end of the world, but they cannot change the system.
The system will be improved only by teachers who have the desire to teach, students who want to learn, and involved parents who provide their children with love, direction and guidance.
Jennifer Delgadillo teaches advanced placement language arts at Ft. Vancouver High School in Vancouver.
She graduated from the University of Portland (UP), magna cum lauda, in 1994 with degrees in education and English and is working to complete her master’s degree at UP. Her husband teaches advanced math at Hudson Bay High School also in Vancouver and previously taught five years at Roosevelt High School in Portland. He also graduated with honors from UP with degrees in math and education. The couple have two young children.
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