"The very best thing you can be in life is a teacher, provided that you are crazy in love with what you teach, and that your classes consist of eighteen students or fewer. Classes of eighteen students or fewer are a family, and feel and act like one." Kurt Vonnegut
My 11 years in public education have been spent in one school — the school I graduated from in 2003 in the rural community I’ve lived in since birth.
I was the student South Carolina wanted to attract to the teaching profession. I am the teacher South Carolina wants to retain. But I am barely hanging on.
Once again, legislators are tackling the matter of teacher attraction and retention. But if they truly want to attract and retain teachers, they should listen to people who are in South Carolina’s classrooms. They would discover a few things that teachers need:
Teachers need to be appreciated. Teaching is an undervalued profession, and the demeaning reaches beyond salary. Society’s misconceptions about education are crafted by stereotypical portrayals of teachers in movies or outdated memories about what it was like to be a student decades ago. Parents regularly question pedagogical decisions, simply because school today does not fit their misguided stereotypes. Education has shifted, and inquiry-based learning takes precedent in most classrooms. It’s time that parents and legislators recognize these shifts and support the instructional decisions teachers make for their classrooms.
Teachers need autonomy. Thankfully, I teach in a school that does not use curriculum alignment documents or strict pacing guides, and my administration values the judgment of teachers within our classrooms. Teachers in districts that are solely focused on numbers are restricted, and students suffer because no allowance is made for differentiation or reteaching for content-mastery. In districts with strict pacing guides, teachers are left with no option but to stay the course — even when they know they are failing their students.
Teachers need appropriate resources. This need actually is monetary. Teachers in rural districts face funding discrepancies that districts with large fiscal contributions do not face. The court’s decision on the “Corridor of Shame” lawsuit (Abbeville County v. South Carolina) found that the state “prevent(s) students within these districts from receiving the constitutionally required opportunity” to receive a “minimally adequate education.”
Students in certain areas of the state have opportunities that students in rural districts only dream of. While my district’s administration attempts at every juncture to provide unique experiences and learning opportunities, it cannot keep up with the financial abilities of other districts in our state. Many rural districts also pay teachers extra to teach a class during their planning period in order to avoid the financial stress of hiring an additional faculty member, leaving students with overwhelmed teachers or virtual instruction for multiple classes.
TEACHERS ARE COACHES AND MENTORS, SIDELINE SUPPORTERS AND AUDIENCE MEMBERS. EVERY MOMENT OF THIS INTERACTION IS VITAL.
Teachers need people to recognize we are more than teachers, especially in rural districts. I have taught all levels of high school English and language arts. I have coached cheerleading, and I have been an assistant band director. I currently teach English 10 honors, International Baccalaureate language and literature and Teacher Cadet. I’m the yearbook advisor, and I serve as the literacy coordinator for my school. I am also the musical third of our theater staff along with a biology teacher with a passion for drama and our school’s dance teacher. Teachers are coaches and mentors, sideline supporters and audience members. Every moment of this interaction is vital.
Teachers need to be for our students. Ensuring that our students feel valued, loved and safe is our single most important goal. No lesson, no standard, no assessment can accomplish what relationships can.
Listen, legislators: I am still here, but I am barely hanging on.
I HAVE TO SECOND-GUESS DECISIONS I MAKE FOR MY STUDENTS, BECAUSE INEVITABLY, THEY WILL BE QUESTIONED BY SOMEONE WITH NO TRAINING IN EDUCATION.
I am barely hanging on because I have to second-guess decisions I make for my students, because inevitably, they will be questioned by someone with no training in education.
I am barely hanging on because parents fail to support the creation of thinkers rather than repositories of endless facts.
I am barely hanging on because every single day I give more of myself mentally and emotionally than I have to give — to people who may or may not show appreciation.
I am barely hanging on because I wholeheartedly love what I do, and I cannot imagine any better life purpose.
I am still here because every decision I make to purposefully choose my students is one that I will never regret.
Ms. Caulder is a teacher in her hometown of Latta, where she and her husband raise their children. Contact her at rachelcaulder@gmail.com.
Rachel Caulder helps her students at Latta High School. Mecadeez Durham
South Carolina's supreme court late last week quietly put an end to a 24-year battle with the state's legislature over how it funds its most rural school districts.
The string of schools along Interstate 95, located in some of the state's most isolated areas, became known as the "Corridor of Shame" after a documentary was aired in 2005 that depicted decrepit conditions with students unable to read and write.
"I had stumbled into another century," the host says at one point in the documentary.
Thirty of those districts argued in a lawsuit in 1993 that the state had neglected to give them with enough money to provide its students with a "minimally adequate education."
The state's high court has gone back and forth with the legislature, the plaintiffs, and the defendants since then.
On Friday, the court voted 3-2 to end oversight of the legislature's spending, arguing that it is not the role of the court to dictate how the legislature spends the state's money.
"The General Assembly can now focus solely on our children's education needs rather than compliance with the arbitrary standard" of the supreme court, said House speaker Jay Lucas, according to the Associated Press.
Chief Justice Don Beatty, who dissented, said the court should wait for the legislature should finish a study to determine how much money it would require for the districts to provide a minimal education.
"Unfortunately, our Court has lost the will to do even the minimal amount necessary to avoid becoming complicit actors in the deprivation of a minimally adequate education to South Carolina's children," Beatty wrote, according to the Associated Press.
Preschool expulsions and the disproportionate expulsion of Black boys have gained attention
in recent years, but little has been done to understand the underlying causes behind this
issue. This study examined the potential role of preschool educators’ implicit biases as a viable
partial explanation behind disparities in preschool expulsions. Participants were recruited at
a large conference of early educators and completed two tasks. In Task 1, participants were
primed to expect challenging behaviors (although none were present) while watching a video
of preschoolers, balanced by sex and race, engaging in typical activities, as the participants’
eye gazes were tracked. In Task 2, participants read a standardized vignette of a preschooler
with challenging behavior and were randomized to receive the vignette with the child’s name
implying either a Black boy, Black girl, White boy, or White girl, as well as randomized to
receive the vignette with or without background information on the child’s family environment.
Findings revealed that when expecting challenging behaviors teachers gazed longer at Black
children, especially Black boys. Findings also suggested that implicit biases may differ depending
on teacher race. Providing family background information resulted in lowered severity ratings
when teacher and child race matched, but resulted in increased severity ratings when their race
did not match. No differences were found based on recommendations regarding suspension or
expulsion, except that Black teachers in general recommended longer periods of disciplinary
exclusion regardless of child gender/race. Recommendations for future research and policy
regarding teacher training are offered.
I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons – a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth – how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds couldn’t read. And certainly couldn’t read for pleasure.
It’s not one to one: you can’t say that a literate society has no criminality. But there are very real correlations.
My immediate point after quoting Gaiman was: “Gaiman even understands the difference between causation and correlation—a dramatic advantage over Secretaries of Education in the past two administrations.”
Boynick sent that same information to Neil Gaiman who responded on Twitter with: “@CBoynick Interesting. The person who told me that was head of education for New York city.”
So let me make a few clarifications addressing all this:
My Gaiman piece is satire (and to be honest, that should put all this to rest). I don’t really endorse or want Gaiman as Secretary of Education, although I think Gaiman is brilliant (as one Gaiman fan noted, we don’t want to detract from his life as a writer!). My real point is the calamity that is those who have served at Secretaries of Education—especially in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.
Nonetheless, Gaiman only relays a fact: He did hear this stated as a truth. So maybe we can level some blame at his believing this, but apparently a person with some authority who should have known the truth did state this in front of Gaiman.
Has Gaiman, then, been a victim (like many of us) of an urban legend? It appears so.
But, does Gaiman then make some outlandish or flawed claim based on misinformation? Not at all. In fact, I highlighted that Gaiman immediately made a nuanced claim: “It’s not one to one: you can’t say that a literate society has no criminality. But there are very real correlations.” And that claim helps him move into a series of powerful and valid points. I should emphasize that most politicians and political appointees start with misinformation and then make ridiculous and flawed proposals. On that comparison, Gaiman wins.
Perhaps it’s best to call this a distortion of the truth. While there isn’t evidence of State Departments of Corrections using third- (or second- or fourth-) grade reading scores to predict the number of prison beds they’ll need in the next decade (one spokesperson called the claim “crap”), there is an undeniable connection between literacy skills and incarceration rates.
You see, a student not reading at his or her grade level by the end of the third grade is four times less likely to graduate high school on time–six times less likely for students from low-income families. Take that and add to it a 2009 study by researchers at Northwestern University that found that high school dropouts were 63 times (!) more likely to be incarcerated than high school grads and you can start to see how many arrive at this conclusion.
But once incarcerated, not all hope is lost. In fact, literacy instruction can help on both ends of the correctional system; studies have shown that inmates enrolled in literacy and other education programs can substantially reduce recidivism rates. One study of 3,000 inmates in Virginia found that 20% of those receiving support in an education program were reincarcerated, while 49% not receiving additional support returned to prison after being released.
So, while prison planners do not use third grade reading scores to determine the number of prison beds they’ll need in the decade to come, there is a connection between literacy rates, high school dropout rates, and crime. While we should file this claim as an urban legend, let’s recognize why it resonates with us: it speaks to the important ways that poor reading skills are connected with unfavorable life outcomes [his emphasis].
With that, I rest my case: Gaiman’s speech is overwhelming on target, moving, and brilliant, and he deserves a bit of space for a small error of fact, and the current Secretary of Education is incompetent.
This leads me to wonder why so much concern about one detail in an author’s speech and my satirical blog, but so little concern for the incompetence of the Secretary of Education and the entire education agenda at the USDOE.
