This week we are all talking about why we do what we do. When we first decided on this topic, I thought about what it is that I do. Right now I work the normal 9:00-5:00, I have night classes, I volunteer, I go to networking events, and I raise a six-month-old puppy.  This is just a surface-level look at my life. The fact is, I’m busy, but I’m not alone. At the beginning of my summer class, the professor went around the room and had everyone talk about what keeps them busy. As I listened to student after student talk about working multiple jobs, internships, and taking classes, I realized that we are all overcommitted. Often times my generation gets a bad reputation for being lazy and superficial. But I look around me and I see nothing but people trying their hardest to make it by.

            Last week I talked about how students are expected to go to school and get work experience, but it really is so much more than that. We are also expected to network and volunteer and take care of ourselves, mentally and physically. In general, it seems like people have just accepted that this is what it takes to make it in the current job market. So, in a roundabout way, to answer the, “why we do what we do” question, it’s because we have to. We know that the standards are tough and the expectations are increasingly higher. We do what we do because we have to perform at a certain level to survive. Our counterparts who are taking the easier paths are finding themselves jobless and living at home, and we want better for ourselves. So really, we do what we do because we are driven to pursue our own “American dream.” We are all really busy right now, but we know that we have a bright future ahead of us. We do what we do because we are working towards a better tomorrow.

-        Bria

What could cause a 72-year-old person to “want” to get up and go to a ten-hour workday? Simple… it’s a “calling” to do my best to provide what I consider to be an appropriate education for children.  We read about problems in schools across the country, and we shake our heads.  We’ve come to call our school “the common sense” school.  Many causes can be found for problems in our nation’s schools, but experience also tells me a lot of it can be traced to a lack of common sense.  As Pogo once mused, “We’ve met the enemy…and the enemy is us!”

    My career has been filled with successes and wonderful experiences.  I have served on many Oklahoma State Department of Education committees, a special committee of the Governor, and been elected state president of the Oklahoma Association for Gifted, Creative and Talented. One extremely enjoyable appointment was to a consortium of state leaders for Arts for the Gifted which met in California.

    But none of the above can tell you why I do what I do each and every school day.  To know the answer to that question, one would have to live what I have experienced.  I have held a crying child as I had to break the news to him that his little brother set fire to the family trailer and his sister was burned to death.  Likewise, I also took care of a child whose mother was stabbed to death in a horrible bank robbery.  I tried to console my newly hired teaching assistant as we watched helplessly while people tried to find her husband’s body in the lake where his military company was having a family picnic.  He tried to save the life of a drowning soldier, only to lose his own…while his children watched.

    I taught a slow-growth child who clapped with joy as she learned to read…ever so slowly.  Even though progress was being made, I watched as family members had her placed in an institution because the psychologist said she’d never be able to learn.  Many were the students of abuse who confided in me and trusted that I would help them.  Some have come to me in later years and explained why some days were just so “bad” but they couldn’t put it into words.  Yet, I had given them hope.

    On the positive side, I have been thrilled to hear from previous students who took my challenges and found themselves successfully teaching in inner-city schools.  Others have found careers that are most satisfying, and they write to tell me I had a part in their journey.

    I have attended the funerals of quite a few previous students.  I think I know of at least eleven who have met death.  With each day, I ask myself if I did a good enough job of teaching them the academics while also preparing them to meet their Maker at death’s door.  I hope I did.  And when I recognize students taking a path that has led others to unrewarding lives, I try hard to steer them toward a better path.  

    Today, in Lawton Academy, there is at any one time children studying together in the same classrooms who come from countries all over the world.  Their countries may be at war, or playing politics as usual, but they are joined in the common experience of being educated in our classrooms.  A sign has hung in my office from time to time which says: “Will it matter that I was here?  I will only pass this way once.”  That is why I teach and do what it is that I do.      

-        Kay

Correction

Thank you to Justin, my son, for checking out the Overtime Rule from the Department of Labor and the President.  He went online and found this statement about exemptions:

3. Q. Is there an exemption for schools and institutions of higher education from either the FLSA or the Department's overtime regulations governing white collar workers?

Schools and institutions of higher education are generally covered by the FLSA's minimum wage and overtime provisions. Several provisions apply, however, to many employees at these institutions that exempt them from the Final Rule. Teachers are exempt if their primary duty is teaching, tutoring, instructing or lecturing. "Teachers" include, for example, regular academic teachers, kindergarten or nursery school teachers, teachers of gifted or disabled children, professors, adjunct instructors, teachers of skilled and semi-skilled trades and occupations, home economics teachers, vocal or instrument music teachers, and under certain circumstances, athletic coaches and assistant coaches. Although a preschool may engage in some educational activities, preschool employees whose primary duty is to care for the physical needs of the facility's children would not meet the requirements for the exemption as a bona fide teacher. Generally, the Department views graduate and undergraduate students who are engaged in research under a faculty member's supervision in the course of obtaining a degree to be in an educational relationship and not an employment relationship with the school or with a grantor. As such, the Department will not assert such workers are entitled to overtime. In addition, the administrative personnel that help run higher education institutions and interact with students outside the classroom, such as department heads, academic counselors and advisors, intervention specialists and others with similar responsibilities are subject to a special salary threshold that does not apply to white-collar employees outside of higher education. Instead, they are not eligible for overtime if they are paid at least as much as the entrance salary for teachers at their institution. Finally, public universities or colleges that qualify as a "public agency" under the FLSA may compensate overtime-eligible employees through the use of compensatory time off in lieu of cash overtime premiums.

From this, I would conclude that we teachers needn't worry about restrictions on overtime.  We've informed out accountant, who first made us aware of this law, and we are eagerly awaiting his confirmation that we are reading it correctly.    I'll be very relieved if I was wrong because I was really worried that we would not be able to have any weekend competitions any more!  My apologies to any teachers out there that I might have scared. 

                  -Michelle

The State of Education Today

So much has changed in the twenty-eight years since I began teaching!  In the first five years, I only remember one student diagnosed with ADHD.  I never had any worries about food allergies or spending too much time in the sun.  I’m not sure if the change is due to better diagnoses or just too much information via the Internet, but it is very definitely a different job. 

   What hasn’t changed is my teaching style.  Methods come and go.  In fact, my last professional development workshop in public education was exactly the same as my first fourteen years earlier.  I wanted to say, “This is where I came in.  Can I quit professional development now?”

   All kidding aside, I really have not changed the way in which I teach.  And kids have not changed in the way they respond.  When a teacher challenges students to learn beyond the basics, students respond positively.  They like to know that they are becoming smarter than the average students their age. This has been my experience, whether in public education or private.  Sure, there are those students who will not respond no matter what.  But I have found those students to be far and few between, and the reason for their lack of desire to learn rarely has anything to do with my teaching style.  If I can establish a relationship with those, many make great progress. 

   I wish I could say that I think education itself has changed for the good.  When the worry of a lawsuit trumps sound educational practices, I shake my head in dismay.  I do believe in a list of objectives to be met at each grade level, but I’m not really a fan of Common Core.  I see college entrance exams being aligned to it, and visions of Fahrenheit 451 and Cpt. Beatty’s speech about “chocking kids full of facts” comes to mind. One of my eighth graders last year put it best when she proposed that students will no longer need to distinguish themselves, but rather just prove how many facts they could retain.  She went on to say that teachers would no longer need to learn more than the Common Core either.  Bright student! 

  I most dread the President’s edict that goes into effect in December, though.  It requires that all salaried people making less than $50,000 a year be paid overtime if working past 40 hours a week.  This is going to seriously effect teachers.  If a teacher is good, he/she is teaching during the work day.  All grading and planning cannot be done in an hour planning period, and most private school teachers don’t even get that hour planning period.  And what about tournaments on the weekends?  Are speech and vocal and band and sports teachers going to have to give those things up because already-strapped districts do not have money for overtime?  I know the President’s intentions were good, but this is going to do so much more harm to education than good. 

Luckily, I’m an owner at my school (which is a business, not a non-profit).  We owners can work as much as we want!  But, I have teachers who are really hard-pressed to figure out how to get it all in to a 40-hour work week.

I have tremendous faith in the kids of today.  My students are amazing, and they exceed every expectation I have of them!  I love my work, and I love helping them realize their dreams.  While I have doubts about the state of education today, I have no doubts about the state of the educated!

-        Michelle

Teaching continuously for 50 years has allowed me to observe changes in education. I agree with peers that the students of today are not the same as those we taught 50 years ago. We were able to teach 30 in a classroom, but discipline was much better in the “old” days. Children knew they faced punishment at home if they misbehaved at school. That’s not the case today.

One big change I’ve seen is the learning modality shift. The majority of learners in the past were auditory or visual learners. Only a few needed tactile or kinesthetic learning experiences. We even enrolled in classes and workshops to learn how to teach these “special” children. Now, about 80% of learners fall into this same category.

So I wonder how learning does take place in a room where the teacher uses mostly lecture or visual methods. Did our society as a whole fail to make this a strong “connect”?

Perhaps the absorption of video experiences has added the following negatives to our lives: 1) children are not aware of addresses, phone numbers or directions home; and 2) children insist they should be able to “start over” or push a “reset” button when things go wrong.

While URLs and phones with memories supplant the need for memorization, what are we to expect when a power outage occurs or a battery runs down?  It appears that some are having difficulty separating what is real from what is virtual. And last of all, “I’m bored,” and “I don’t know what to do,” has become the mantra of many students when a peaceful moment does occur.

-        Kay

8/7/16

Hello everyone,

Quick warning: I’m approaching this topic as a student entering graduate school who will one day take on a crippling amount of debt from her student loans. Jumping in… Over the last thirty or so years, this country has experienced a high concentration of wealth. The repercussions of this occurrence are that the rich have become richer while the poor have become poorer, largely eliminating the middle class. This change has seen ramifications in higher education with tuition on the rise, making college education affordable only for the wealthiest.

At the same time, we are seeing a rise in standards of higher education in the workforce. Positions that previously required only good judgment and a strong work ethic are now filled with people who went to graduate school. An employee in my office building who has worked with my company for over 30 years spoke to this idea saying, “It’s become a trend that everyone has at least their Master’s degree now.  It wasn’t always like this.” 

Now let’s step back and think about what this means for students. Before, to set yourself apart amongst a sea of applicants, you needed a college degree. As the job market got tougher, people further distinguished themselves by going back to school for a Master’s degree. Now everyone is on the same playing field and we are being told, “Well, it’s really about your work experience.” That puts someone like myself in a very tough situation because I was in school while I evidently should have been getting work experience!

The overall topic for this post revolved around the question: what is the state of education today? I would say education is no longer a privilege or an asset; it is an expectation. Because colleges have also noticed this trend, I believe tuition rates will continue to skyrocket until we see a collapse of that market.  So, honestly, I think that the state of education is kind of a mess right now. Like many aspects of our society, we are going to need to make serious progress in this area to fix the problems we have made for ourselves. I’m optimistic that change is on the horizon, but until then, Discover Student Loans will be my best frienemy.

- Bria

Introductions

“There is a season for everything under the sun.”  It has been brought to my attention that I am now the matriarch of our family since we have four generations alive now, and the possibility exists for a fifth generation to appear out of my grandson’s marriage in September.  Although my mother is being cared for in a skilled care home at this time, she is in fairly good health for 97 years.

              Even though I am in the autumn years of my life (71), I still am able to put in twelve hour work days as superintendent, teacher, and co-owner of Lawton Academy of Arts and Sciences, a PreK-3 through 12th grade private school for gifted and talented students.

My life experiences have been flavored by a mother-in-law who entered Oklahoma in a horse and wagon, a mother who shared adventures of a Model T Ford in the Ozarks of Missouri, my childhood in the “new” atomic age and space race to the moon, and now the age of virtual realities via the internet.  Throughout the 47 years I have taught children in school and youth in church groups, I have witnessed many changes or swings of the pendulum.  Rather than let these “epiphany” experiences go with me to the grave, I choose to share them with anyone willing to read this blog.

              To make my point, let me share the following example of “change” which occurred last week in my first/second grade classroom.  I used a picture of a mop to elicit the beginning sound of “m”, only to find that no child in my class knew what a mop was.  After I carefully explained how mothers used a mop to clean tile floors, I was brought to 21st century reality!  “We don’t have one of those in our house.  We have a Swifter!”  The vote was unanimous: “mops” are out of today’s lexicon!  Welcome to my world.

Hey there! I’m Bria, a recent college graduate, dog enthusiast, and lover of all things charitable.  When we initially discussed my contributions to this blog, I thought, “What could I possibly write about that people would want to read?” Well, I’m not sure if I have found the answer yet, but that is part of starting this crazy, fun adventure.

I have spent the last three years at DePaul University completing my undergraduate degree in public relations. Next year I will be continuing with DePaul to pursue higher education. I have extensive experience in the nonprofit sector, and I spent 10 months as the Executive Director of a local startup company.

I’ve recently been thrust into adulthood with very little preparation. My life completely changed three months ago when I adopted a German Shepherd/Rottweiler puppy. People laugh when I call her my baby, but she really is a huge responsibility. I now spend my evenings taking her on long walks/runs and sewing and re-sewing holes in my couch cushions. I also recently got my first “big girl job,” working with a prominent Chicago nonprofit. All this, combined with my upcoming graduate classes keeps me very busy.  I live a full, yet fulfilling life and I am happy to begin sharing it with you. Thanks for reading. See you soon!

Okay… here we go!  I am pretty excited about this venture.  That in and of itself is pretty ironic, seeing as I spend a good portion of my week telling students to write, not blog.  Four class periods a day I teach middle and high school students how to write in preparation for college, and for years, I’ve enjoyed ACT 5-Year Trends that show 100% of my seniors are ready for college writing.  

  My name is Michelle Smith, and, if I chose an adjective to describe my life, it would have to be ironic.  My parents and I own a small private school of which I am the Chief Operating Officer (kind of like the principal).  Yet, I teach all day because I feel administrators need to be in the classroom to fully understand the changing needs of students.  We are Christians, yet we have purposefully not made the school faith-based so that gifted students of any belief system will feel welcome.  Even so, we bathe every move in prayer.   I like rules and rule followers, but I love pushing boundaries and even more, facilitating students to “go beyond.”

  So, here I am, preparing to begin a blogging venture with my daughter and mother.  What started as a discussion about a book idea with my daughter quickly became a three-generation blogging idea.  It’s unique… I like it!  I know I’ve stated that I teach English/Lit most of the day, but I’ve also said I’m a “boundary pusher,” so don’t expect my writing to be flavorless.  I’m an Oklahoman, and we love to speak in idioms.  

   Okay, just a little bit more about me so that you will have background from which to draw conclusions about my blogs.  I have been married to the same man, JT, since I was 21… 28 years now.  (Now you know my age!) JT spent 30 years in the Army, completing six deployments and a couple of schools, all of which kept us apart from six months to a year at a time.  Not one of those deployments was as hard, though, as his recent retirement.  I gained fifty pounds, which I have ten months to lose before my son’s wedding!  JT and I have two kids, both of whom ended up in Chicago for college.  Justin is a free-lance web developer and a maker for Capital One.  Bria you will meet through this very blog site!  Can I brag, though?  She’s on track to finish both her Bachelors and her Masters in Public Relations in four years.  We are so proud of both of them.

   I play the piano and am a singer.  I don’t like to play for anybody but my students because I’m self-taught, but I will sing a solo anywhere!  I taught music in Texas, and I teach choir and acting/speech throughout my school (PK3 – 12th grade).  I also teach chess, robotics, PE, and BusComm.  I am the sponsor for student council, honor society, class officers, MathCounts, BEST Robotics, competition choir, and state and national speech competitions, and I drive the bus in which we travel.  

   Needless to say, I am a very busy woman.  I love it, though.  I cannot stand to have “nothing” to do.  Blogging is an extension of my favorite activity – talking.  I was spanked and isolated in school for talking too much, but it didn’t stop me.  I tease that I became a teacher because I can talk all day and when students interrupt me, I can say, “Shhh. I’m talking here.”

   My book idea:  share the experiences we’ve had as we created a private school that is a business rather than a parochial or non-profit.  Essentially, it’s a start-up.  We’ve been educating students for sixteen years now, and we have enjoyed much success.  My daughter suggested that a blogging site would let me share what we’ve learned as well as what we are learning along the way.  So, for my part of the site, I intend to share how we’ve accomplished what we have, as well as give insights into how to get the best education for your gifted child and ways to deal with such an intelligent child!    That’s enough rambling for today. Talk to you soon!