I’m on Team Teacher

(9/2024) My husband spent over twenty years as an on the road service technician for a chemical company that sold cleaning chemicals to industrial laundries. A high percentage of customers were hospital laundries. His job prioritized two things. First, designing, installing and maintaining the pumping systems that automate the washing system, ginormous contraptions sometimes as big as a house. Piles of laundry entered in one end, went through various cycles of wash, rinse and spin. They exited at the other end ready for ironing and folding. Second was getting the cleaning chemistry mixed correctly to take out dirt, stains, and other stuff. He has a saying, "In hospitals, everything comes to the laundry. EVERYTHING."

In our schools, everything comes to the teachers. EVERYTHING.

Our public schools provide education and preparation for entering our greater society. Reading, writing and arithmetic taught alongside working with others, asking questions, listening to answers.

The good, the bad, and the ugly. A teacher sees relationships grow between students, or sometimes students who turn on each other. Whatever happens on the bus, in the lunchroom, or hallway, teachers hear about it. Other parts of a student’s life may result in disruptive behavior in the classroom. What we call bad behavior can get a child sent to the principal, or to a counselor. Teachers often see it first, and later have a hand in directing that child toward a solution.

Special Education and IEPs. Daily class routines create structure most of us can conform to. This can benefit all students, and build their understanding of our society. IEP details, such as special education staff working one-on-one with a student, are additional layers added to the routine. As we learn more about neurodivergence, we narrow the gap between what we call "normal" vs "special" or "developmental". While we as a society try to keep up with it, teachers see social norms changing at the speed of children growing into young adults.

Parents and public school administrators have perspectives that range from the super organic (at home) to the super defined (administration). In the middle, teachers (with their own advanced degrees) are living the experiences of real people that produce the statistics and anecdotes that fuel post graduate degrees of public school administrators. While we parents and admins identify pressing issues and logical solutions, teachers are asked to implement any and all of our requests, and then produce results that can be measured.

I have recently been on an FCPS Task Force as a parent member, helping to gather pros and cons of a potential school safety policy. For the purpose of this column what matters is that I learned that gathering a group of parents, teachers and administrators for conversation on a specific school safety question is a great way to learn other perspectives. The people on the Task Force, along with many parents, teachers and staff I have met in my life—as a child, parent and now grandparent—have one thing in common.

Trauma.

Many school policies that address safety are the result of trauma. Like the truism that we finally get a traffic light after too many fatal car accidents, parents who demand solutions for their kids, are trying to heal from trauma. Teachers advocating for workplace conditions are addressing trauma. Teachers can absorb as much of their students’ trauma as their own. As a task force member, I was privileged to hear stories from parents, teachers and FCPS staff. While their private stories can’t be shared here, it is safe to say that each of us were present because we knew first hand about traumas experienced by one or more children.

I have a lot of experience with the Special Education and IEP system, in Anne Arundel and Frederick Counties. Several years ago, we were made aware of our child’s danger when a student mediation group told their staff sponsor that our child was a target. A group of students had found our child’s weakness and pounced. All of us grown-ups got involved by paying attention, asking questions. The situation was resolved by identifying the ring leader, and one school staff member laying down the law.

This presented multiple perspectives that were addressed by acting as a community. A neurodivergent child needs support, but in what form? Another child is growing up with bullying behaviors, but why? Can either benefit from counseling? Can their parents? Teachers see all of the surface behaviors and interactions, and they can guide students in various directions to find solutions. They can’t make decisions for students or parents, and they can’t change external factors. But they can and do show up every day to be the conductor of their classroom orchestra.

What’s often missing in finding solutions? Community. Our public school system has a complicated array of policies and requirements that add up to alot of time spent on details rather than interactions as a community. Working on school committees is a start for getting to know the other adults in our children’s lives. Participating in the public school community through events or parent volunteer opportunities work too.

Bring your voice to the table, and your vote to our elections. Voting directly impacts our school community. Proposed restrictions, such as book bans, hit home for teachers. As kids get their first taste of our greater society, teachers are the first line of defense, of books, of ideas, of individuality. The infamous Project 2025, written and supported by the GOP and Trump, includes the elimination of the Department of Education as a featured part of the plan.

We have a teacher on the ballot this November. Tim Walz, who says "Never underestimate a public school teacher." Tim Walz was in the Army National Guard and a teacher for many years. That was before he was elected to the US Congress, and Governor of Minnesota.

I’m on Team Teacher.

2024 is the year of the vote. Please make yours count.