From Kindergarten to Kollege in 10 Steps

Preface

4/5/2018

My quest for helping students started when I was laid off from my job in 2000. I worked for the White House and was a program manager. Before then, I worked for a major bank in Philadelphia until 1998 and was laid off again.

Throughout my professional career, I’d been given a pink slip eight times up until now. What could I do to prevent further layoffs? My light bulb idea burned bright with solutions and ways to reinvent myself: I’ll get into education and help students learn how to live in the ‘real world.’ And so the quest began!

But when I woke up to the perils of the broken education system, it dawned on me that I couldn’t fix this. The government continued to put band-aids on No Child Left Behind, and state testing became teaching students how to pass the test and we slowly began to fall behind in the fool-proof designed academic curriculum.

As a first-year paraeducator, this was my first exposure to the education system. I was excited until I found out the pay was barely $14,000 per year! My last job paid $45,000 so I started in a deficit to survive and take care of my own little boy. I took on more part-time jobs so that I could have him with me at all times. Since I was a divorced mom, most jobs available were in education: after-school programs, tutoring help, chaperones on trips, and coaching sports.

As I travelled through the education’s broken system, here’s a reconstruction of what I found out through personal experiences over the last 18 years:

It’s a very Special Education

Instructional specialists will sometimes pull-out the student and work on their education goals during the school day in small increments of time. Each child has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) with academic goals to meet by the end of the school year. Reading, writing, social issues and learning/mental disabilities are revealed and monitored to help the student perform to the best of their ability in that grade level. Most students lag almost 2-3 grade levels behind so this task becomes more and more difficult as each year passes by. The end result: it starts all over again the next school year with a new date and new plan. Teachers are overwhelmed with so many students who need academic support and by state laws, they must be addressed with paper trails to show that they have at least reviewed the IEP with parents and offered resources to help the student improve areas that require the most remedial attention. In my assignment, I encountered many students who had fallen up to five grade levels behind. Most were bullies or students who looked like grown people with baby faces. When one big girl started to harass me, I was scared to go to work. She called me names, bumped into me on purpose and yelled constantly at me during class time. One day I overheard a student rank on another in the hallway and it worked. But how could I possibly stoop to her level to save my life and job? That night, I began 20 reasons to give her compliments. When she came in the next day, I put the class to work and she immediately called me skinny and ugly right off the bat. After that, I softly told her that I liked her dress. She was silent but her eyes quickly darted around the class. I softly told her that she would be pretty if she smiled more and frowned less. Then she nervously laughed. By the third compliment, she collapsed in my arms in tears. After that, we were best friends.

We all learned a lot in special education instruction that day and come to think of it, the dress was the ugliest I had ever seen yet I still had 17 more compliments to spare…….

Substitute Teaching

I was a substitute teacher for four years at various elementary, middle and high schools. The scary schools were quickly ousted from my list as I learned from the sub teachers who knew them best. It was $89 per day and $105 if I took a long-term sub position for a teacher out on leave. Most teachers did not leave plans so we had to improvise the best we could. If a class had disciplinary issues, the Dean of Students was notified only to not show up and we were left on our own perils. Most students saw us as an experiment to see if we would walk out since their regular teacher was absent so much. One student asked if I would stay because I actually gave the class a writing assignment and expected it to be finished by the end of class. Many teachers had not established student expectations or given guidelines to classroom management. That’s when I started taking the long-term assignments. I finally felt like I was a part of something far greater in the education matrix. I established a teacher role and realized I liked it. By the time the original teacher returned, the students had adapted to my expectations and the teacher began to learn a lot from me plus action plans on what to do the following year.

Now, the teacher was in for the long haul and willing to genuinely commit to students, establish better communication with the parents, and give high fives for good behavior and improved academics in the classroom…….

Alternative Schools

A police officer is required to be in the classroom at all times for teacher safety. The mighty stench of homelessness, marijuana, cheap perfume and alcohol infiltrated my classroom like a dark plague. When a male student brushed up against me, called me a bitch and used abusive foul language I almost vomited in front of the whole class. He was only in the 8th grade! It was then that I knew that if it wasn’t for my Bible left open on my desk and the daily scriptures I wrote on my chalkboard, I would have quit that long-term substitute position job months ago. My son was very young and my mortgage loomed every month so I had no choice but to stay. The student harassed me so much that I had to file a police report and he promised to punish me when I got to court for the misdemeanor hearing. My nerves were a wreck and my hair began to fall out due to the stress of the job and my inability to get employment elsewhere.

Most of the staff continued to hang on for retirement, others waited disability discharges and dedicated advisors were just worn out from the failing system.

I finished out my school year and read in the newspaper that the same student who harassed me later awaited a murder trial…...

Christian Private Schools

I earned Outstanding Teacher of the Year at this cute little house on the prairie school. I was excited to get my first English teacher job in an all-white school. Everything was great until Dr. Martin Luther King Day rolled around and none of the students knew who he was so I gave an assignment to upper and lower grades. I thought it went well until Black History month emerged the first few days of February and I arranged for a trip to Baltimore for my classes to see a dramatic musical play in honor of the African-American culture. The students seemed to love it, at least that’s what they told me until the bus discharged everyone at the front school entrance and a long line of parents snaked along the hallway to the principal’s office. When I went to see what the commotion was about, I saw angry faces and fists shaking in the air at the principal over the cultural exposure. Later, the principal somehow changed her mind about the good idea field trip we both agreed to. I was good at teaching and tutoring the students who couldn’t read or write. I loved them like they were my very own children. Our yearbook represented diversity in the school and my teacher presence held true. I was discreetly voted to earn this award and stood firm on my faith that God sent me to teach a needed lesson about equality regardless of skin color. In my heart, they needed to learn and know about a great man such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and that if they expected to graduate high school, they had to know how to read and write—as a result, the school won an essay contest for the first time. I’ll never forget the hugs I received on my last day of school. I’ll never forget the tears on a mother’s face when she rushed back to the cafeteria so that no one would see her hugging and thanking me for discreetly tutoring her son. How could such a cute little school on the prairie filled with loving staff who smiled and welcomed me on the first day of school be stuck in the 1930’s with the same ugly prejudices my parents endured?

I guess that’s just how the wind blows over there on the prairie so the following school year a new black principal just happened to fairy dust his way in .....

Charter Schools

There’s something about having millions of dollars in a school budget that triggers excitement in school administrators. For some, $10,000 per student is the gateway to building a great academic empire to ensure education for all to succeed in the real-world. For others, it lines their purses with revenue that isn’t theirs to keep. Some charters get to pick the student population: all black, all white, mixed and other. It’s hard to believe that there are widely respected administrators who steal, change grades, manipulate others, and dominate the educational matrix. I feel for the parents who are left still trying to figure out the mystery of another charter school that is taken over by the Department of Education to realign and redesign the school’s official mission and reach a lost community yet to start all over again. Some administrators are sent to jail and publicly reprimanded for inappropriate financial spending behaviors. Staff grieve their job loss and comfort parents in disbelief while law suits continue to mound. It eventually begins to fall apart and tumbles down like Jericho’s walls. I often wondered what happened to their passion in the beginning to build a great school and then lose it to educational corruption. It just ends up hurting everyone, especially the sacred family structure and foundation in which it is was first built.

What an oxymoron for the ignorant educator and the corrupted definition of why today’s families truly need strong academic foundations for a good education…..

Schools for Girls

Whether you wear a private school uniform or a frilly pink maternity dress, most girls either go to school giggling or using foul language like sailors together. Since there are no boys around, learning should take place. And it does, when they are ready to learn. As a teacher, I learned that middle school and high school girls are feisty and very street smart for their young age. Some students have to change social behaviors if they desire an education and steady career to take care of an unborn child. Some have two children and some have had abortions. My experience with this population caused me much stress since they also bullied me and other teachers. They used profanity, smoked marijuana, manipulated the school system, banned together in times exams, tests and quizzes, and fought failing grades due to non-participation in the classroom. Even though it was an all-girls school, I often wondered how they found those boys.

Someone’s little girl made it to the university driving a Mercedes Benz carrying a pink designer handbag instead of a baby’s car seat in tow……...

School Districts

In. Out. In. Out. When you travel through revolving doors, it’s just that simple. It continues to revolve and does not resolve anything but a continued vicious cycle of disorganization. I didn’t understand district dynamics until I experienced day-to-day activities of the staff and teachers who were regularly paid. However, after three months of working, I did not get paid one shiny red cent. My mortgage fell behind, my car was almost repossessed and my home phone nearly disconnected. In tears, I bravely walked into my boss’ office, sat down and blew my snotty nose until it turned red. He was just too busy to wrap this up when I first came on board. After several hours of sitting, crying and nervously rocking myself back to sanity, I realized that this was not acceptable. The secretary came in rubbing my back to soothe away all the ugly inconvenience and accepted full responsibility for being irresponsible. I walked away with a freshly cut check and off I went to repair the damage to my stellar credit rating of 802 which plummeted to a mere 658. Just as I was finally put on the district payroll system, I received a pink slip announcing that my services were no longer needed due to cut backs in leadership transitions at the end of the school year.

Not because of my job performance, but financial mistrust of school funds and unmet academic goals were left in a chaotic pile…….

Athletics and Coaching

I played basketball. Even racked up a few kudos: First Team All-Conference, Most Valuable Player, Most in Media, First Team All-State, Blue/Gold Team and helped win a girls basketball division conference title. We managed to make it to the First-Round Quarter Finals but lost from sheer fright. Shortly after, I was invited to practice with a university women’s team and my coach went with me to see how I would fare against collegiate talent. As scared as I was to step in that huge stadium, the university coach greeted me with a big grin. An hour later, I proudly left with 15 points and 10 rebounds all in my beat up old gym bag. True talent doesn’t go away, it just gets better when it becomes unleashed. Years later, I played basketball at a YMCA although men didn’t welcome women on the teams very often. You had to prove yourself first. Shirts or Skins? Of course shirts, I was a lady for goodness sakes! In the corporate world