Fines for Detentions?

Student behaviour can be the most challenging and stressful aspect of our job. A New Jersey school district has proposed fining parents for their kid's detentions.

http://wcbstv.com/watercooler/paying.for.detention.2.1323136.html

I chuckled at this at first, maybe because it's a Friday in dreary November and thought - great what if we could outsource our marking too!

Then I thought... how many times have you given detention to the same student over and over even after phone calls home and trying to work out a behaviour plan? Causes of consistently inappropriate behaviour usually run deep and are complex and I'm not sure if a fine would be a solution. On the other hand, sadly, an impact on a person's wallet might have more weight than a face-to-face meeting with a teacher.

Teachers often say that they need to spend more of their time disciplining than teaching. That reality should concern everyone, regardless of how you feel about the suggestion in the article.

Teaching is becoming expensive for teachers when there’s no budget

“Teaching is becoming expensive for teachers when there’s no budget” read my Facebook friend’s wall post. He was buying an adaptor cable to show YouTube clips from his I-pod on a TV. I thought that’s great – it’s cheaper than DVDs and you have it for your own use too. But then someone posted that they were contemplating buying a video projector because the school couldn’t afford one.

Since I like to have money to do things like... pay my bills – I flung myself into this debate. I posted: “I'd never spend so much for school unless I was being directly compensated. It's time districts/ministries started valuing the work we do rather than assume we are going to sacrificingly make up for the inadequacies of a system that undervalues its teachers not to mention students”

People on-line did not like that.

To paraphrase the next 5 posts: “We shouldn’t need to pay out of pocket but we do it because it’s good for the kids. If you don’t get what you think is needed students suffer because you can’t do the best possible job. Unfortunately it’s part of the job, but teachers who spend on their classroom take pride in having quality materials for students and parents appreciate it.”

I doubt you’d find a doctor bringing in her own personal supply of gauze, disinfectant and syringes for her shift in the emergency ward - in addition to the defibrillator she bought yesterday since the hospital didn’t have enough. How is it any less ridiculous when teachers do it?

It’s for the kids. I’ve said it before. I’m sure you have too. We’re not heartless – we’re teachers! But before we wax sentimental about why we went into teaching let’s ask a critical question. When we say “it’s for the kids” – which kids are we talking about?

Is it the kids of the teacher who has the economic and social positioning to be able to essentially donate her money (and often time) for her students? What about the kids of the teacher who can’t? Are we saying that such a teacher doesn’t take pride in having quality materials for her students? That her students should settle for an inadequately funded classroom? Even if she can afford it – should she?

While we are fortunate to have autonomy in our classrooms they are not “our” classrooms. The classroom and teacher are embedded within a larger system tied to social, political and economic realities. That system has a mandate – to educate the future of the province. It is not like donating your time or money to a non-profit which does good works with kids. The ministry is not a charity. When we take it upon ourselves to make up for the inadequacies of the system, we enable it to get away with not fulfilling its mandate.

This article originally appeared in the BCTF 'Teacher Magazine': http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Publications/TeacherNewsmag/archive/2009-2010/2009-11/index.pdf

Sweating the “Small Stuff”, the large stuff and everything in between

Who hasn’t been agitated that they’ve dropped the ball on something? Who hasn't been too hard on themselves? I think this is a common trait of conscientious people. And conscientiousness is a trait of teachers in general.

Let’s face it - it’s rare that we make the kinds of errors that have profound adverse effects. Why are we so hard on ourselves? The world likely won’t come to an end because some error you’ve made. Why hold ourselves to a standard of perfection that doesn’t leave room for our human failings?

Someone no doubt will accuse me of spiraling down the slippery slope of laziness. Tell people to be easy on themselves for forgetting to return a phone call and before long they’ll be amputating the wrong limb in surgery!

That’s not dropping the ball.
That’s negligence, incompetence, systemic organizational dysfunction.
There’s a difference.

I bet that if you look back at ‘dropping the ball’ episodes in your life they were rarely of an earth shattering magnitude. When it comes to things of importance, most of us are on the ball! What many of us stress over are the inconvenient events that can be made-up for with a simple plan of action and an apology, forgiven with a bit of understanding, or taken as a lesson and moving on.

I’m not sure if it’s that we “sweat the small stuff” or that we don’t clearly differentiate between what small stuff is and what important stuff is. Failing to read a memo clearly is dropping the ball and nothing to beat yourself up about. Never reading a memo because you just can’t be bothered is a problem.

If we never dropped the ball we’d never get a chance to kick it…and honestly a good swift kick at an inanimate object can be a good de-stressor!

People just don't think we're stressed!

I recently took part in a business networking forum that involved entrepreneurs from various fields. I mentioned the work I do in teacher development around stress managment and wellness. The event coordinator gave me this look - which basically said - get serious. "In a group like this," she gestured to the business people and continued in a snooty tone, "you'd have a hard time selling that to anyone".

Luckily 10 years of teaching middle school have trained me well in quick, snappy responses to obnoxious comments. I took on my best don't-mess-with-the-teacher voice. "There is no one in the education industry who is unaware of the major problem of teacher stress". Then I rattled off statistics - 43% of teacher rehabiliation cases are psychological in nature mostly due to stress, one third of teachers quit the profession within 5 years in Canada, and just to throw higher education into my barrage of we-are-stressed defense, I sited OISE-UT's and the Ontario government's recent work in teacher induction, mentoring and renewal as a way to combat career burnout.

My selling style must be good, because in the ensuing discussion I won alot of support - including from the coordinator, who was looking sheepish - but it got me thinking: what are we not communicating as teachers?

The details of what we do for a living, the realities of what we face need to be known out there in the world beyond the school walls. Is it acceptable to you that your work is seen as inferior? Easy? Without substantial value?

Most teachers develop stress from being put in the unenviable position of having a personal commitment to providing top quality compassionate and educational service to a vulnerable popuation without quality funding to be able to implement it adequately. The result is taking it upon ourselves to make up for the inadequecies of the system.

Who is responsible for this communication? Teachers, administrators, parent advisory councils, unions, school districts? It should be all of us. We need to sell people who are not in education on the value of what we do and be clear on what it is exactly that we do! Only then will our needs be understood and met. It's time to get out there and get networking.