Double check the details

This is a story of something that happened to me when I first started teaching in Wyoming. The year was 2009. And I was teaching middle school ELA. Before I get into the store I need to give a little bit of background information. Teaching writing, especially to middle schoolers is not really an easy job. The students really don’t have any writing skill and they don’t really want to work for any writing skill, and so everything is a big chore. Too kind of help mitigate this I allow students to choose any topic they want as long as it’s appropriate for school. If they don’t know if it’s appropriate for school or not they are supposed to contact me. I have found that allowing students to pick their own topics means that they spend a little more time writing about it because they’re interested in it. However, this does come with some pitfalls

On with my story. . . Wyoming has a lot of ranchers. It’s no secret. And a lot of these students are in my program because it’s a virtual program so ranching kids aren’t spending hours on school busses each day. They grew up on the ranch. They were expected to help with the ranch and having an online school instead of brick and mortar seem to help a lot of families out. I, however, was new to Wyoming. I had only lived in Wyoming for about a year and was still getting used to this more rural type of community. One of my students, who really struggled with writing, asked if he could write about ranching. I said “Of course you can, but you really need to narrow down this topic because ranching is quite broad.” He came back and said well can I write about cattle? I said of course you can but again that’s a very broad topic. What are you going to write about about the cattle? Then he asked if it would be appropriate for school to write about AI. Even though this was only 2009, and AI was not as ubiquitous as it is now, I said, of course you can write about AI that would be super interesting. I personally did not know what artificial  intelligence and cattle had in common, but I figured well why not let him go with this. I did not ask him to define what AI was. I made the assumption that AI would be artificial intelligence. This was an up-and-coming technology in which we were seeing AI being used with predicting text spellcheck getting a lot better that type of stuff. Imagine my surprise when I read his essay on AI artificial insemination. This was a good lesson on the importance of defining technical language. I learned more about cattle AI, artificial insemination, and that one paper that I have ever needed to know in my entire life. 

Couple of lessons from this particular incident. First of all this student wrote an in-depth paper on AI, as in-depth as a middle schooler could do. He was very excited about his topic. He even was able to use part of his research for his 4 H beef project. Because his uncle and father were ranchers, I allowed them to be part of his research, so he had to interview both of them, which went above and beyond the regular requirements of this paper. Second of all, it just reinforced me on how little we teachers know about all aspects of our students. This kiddo was just not some student in my eighth grade English class and that’s it. This kiddo, as all of my students, has more to him than just being a student. And although I was a little grossed out about the topic, I really appreciated how much time and effort went into that particular paper. After that particular assignment, this student wrote more for me then I ever expected him to do so. He had found his voice through this his passion, which was cattle. And finding that passion is more important than any topic that I could’ve assigned to him. The last lesson I learned was to make sure I totally understand what the technical languages prior to giving my OK for a paper, although I still would’ve given the OK, even if I knew he was going to be talking about artificial insemination and cattle instead of artificial intelligence.

Why schools need to be rebanded.

Schools need to be rebranded because they are no longer just places of education. Teachers no longer just teach. Principals no longer exist; they’ve been replaced with the term administration. Administration means to administer, not to guide, support, or create institutions of learning. Parents no longer support traditional education of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Schools get blamed for issues that they have no business even being involved with, including, but not limited to, cyberbullying that occurs off-campus and not on school devices, physical altercations that occur off-campus, gun violence, and mental health issues that occur off-campus. Schools need to be rebranded as social service centers where families receive social services, and education is part of that.

Teachers are being asked to be counselors, social workers, and nurses. Wouldn’t it be better if schools were actually funded and staffed with counselors, social workers, and nurses? Then teachers could actually do what they’ve been trained to do and love to do: TEACH!! I’ve been a teacher for almost 30 years. I was trained to teach literature and writing. I was not trained to determine if a student is struggling with depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, gender identity, or eating disorders. I was barely trained on how to recognize physical abuse. I am not trained to identify mental abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, or any other type of abuse that might be occurring. As a teacher that’s been teaching long enough, I have discovered how to do this, but it’s not anything that I got trained in, so it’s usually just going on my gut. And even though I feel that my gut has good instinct, I cannot tell you if the student sitting in my class is going to commit an act of violence against themselves or others, or if they’re just going to be moody and broody. This is not healthy or fair for students, and it doesn’t help them. Students need access to real mental health professionals. Counselors, therapists, psychologists are the people who should be identifying these issues. These people go to school and have hours upon hours of training and research. They are the ones who should be working with the students at the school to help them. Teachers are not equipped to do this! We hear all the time that there is a mental health crisis with our students, yet no one is willing to fund any meaningful programs to help these students. Society just blames teachers, the same people who are not trained in these specific mental health areas. If schools were rebranded as social service centers, then funding could change to allow the centers to have access to mental health professionals to help these students. This would help not only those students who need the help but also teachers because they would have a professional person to go to get help for these students.

Schools have also become pharmacies as well. So many students are on so many different medications that it is impossible for teachers to keep up with all of them. I know teachers who have had to keep student medication in their desk for asthma attacks, allergy attacks, as well as other purposes. I’ve also known school secretaries who’ve had to be the ones to dispense them. These people are not health professionals! All my time in teaching, I’ve only worked at one school that had a nurse on duty for more than three hours a day. When a child gets sick at school, who’s taking the temperature? Who’s deciding whether or not that kid needs to go home? Not a healthcare professional nor a teacher or a secretary. This happened to me personally when my own child was sick at school and the secretary decided that she was not too sick to come home. Luckily, I worked at the school in a different wing, and another teacher told me how sick my daughter was. I went right over, saw that she needed to go to the hospital, and promptly took her. Schools need to have full-time nurses on campus from the time the school opens until the time the students leave. Accidents happen, medication needs to be dispensed, and students get sick. The school nurse does more than just sit around waiting for something to happen. They also have to deal with other health issues. They provide a valuable resource for health issues, including Covid, STDs for high schoolers, students with hygiene issues, keeping up with the latest vaccines, and making sure that students are in compliance with required vaccines. If schools were rebranded as social service centers, then possibly nurses could be funded for schools. The school nurse just isn’t someone who sits around. Nursing is a verb, and nurses work hard at school. A nurse works hard to make sure that the school stays healthy so students can be in class learning.

Schools also need social workers. Not just one that works. Maybe part-time but full-time social workers. Students are coming to school with tons of home issues that teachers just can’t deal with because they are not social workers. In addition to dealing with the obvious issues of abuse and neglect, social workers help in so many ways. For example, I have had students ask me questions like how do I get a driver's license, how do I vote, how do I apply for jobs, or where do I even look for jobs. A social worker would be able to help these students with these types of questions. I know they may seem minute and benign, but these are issues that I know my high schoolers are dealing with. Social workers also can help families that are in crisis from lack of food security homelessness. Issues that schools are already trying to deal with right now without social workers. Teachers are not social workers.

In order for teachers to be successful in classrooms with students, schools really do need to be rebranded as social service centers. They are already expected to provide these types of services, so why not call them what they are: social service centers? If they were called social service centers and perceived to be social service centers, then maybe our students would be getting adequate physical, mental, and emotional support so that they can learn the skills that they need to have because teachers would no longer have their times divided; it would be solely focused on working with students teaching students content that the students need to have to prepare for our students for the 21st century.