Please note: Accuracy and availability of IPR transcripts may vary. 00;00;00;05 - 00;00;28;18 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Today, teachers and educators are facing challenges like never before, including battling misinformation, burned out kids, parents, and, of course, Covid. I'm J.R. Jamison today on the facing project. I want to do something we don't hear much about these days. Celebrate teachers and all of the work they do to make us a better educated society. I'll share the story of a man who stays in teaching despite external pressures. 00;00;28;18 - 00;00;42;11 J.R. Jamison Another from a woman who uses empathy to teach multicultural education, and one from a teacher who decided to make her own kind of change at the state house. 00;00;42;14 - 00;01;05;20 J.R. Jamison When I think back on my high school experiences in the sleepy little county school that I attended with 44 in my class divided evenly 22 girls and 22 boys, I have plenty of memories, friendships made, friendships lost, who was dating whom, the fashion, the music, and of course, teachers. Some of those teachers I remember fondly. Others I wish to forget. 00;01;05;20 - 00;01;31;01 J.R. Jamison But that's a whole different story. And let's be honest, it's probably my fault. But outside of developing social skills, the lessons I learned in the classroom that stuck with me the most, the ones I come back to time and again were those lessons that included a mixed methods approach to learning. To get more technical, it's when my teachers used Kobes 1984 model on the cycle of learning that involves four distinct learning types. 00;01;31;01 - 00;01;54;18 J.R. Jamison And when I say types, I'm talking about how people learn. In a little disclaimer, I didn't know my teachers were using Kobes model, but I grew up and became an educator myself, and Kobes theory was the grounding for all of my work to get to the basics. None of us learn exactly the same, and as you can imagine, that makes the job of a teacher, well, complicated. 00;01;54;21 - 00;02;23;11 J.R. Jamison But teachers spend hours outside of the classroom to get it right. Beyond earning their bachelor's and master's degrees in education and some their PhDs, teachers are required to continue their education throughout their careers, so to say they're experts at their material and how best to teach it is an accurate statement. Going back to the four learning styles, Covid 1984 model argues that teaching in a way that gets to all learners is the best. 00;02;23;12 - 00;02;45;27 J.R. Jamison Concrete. Learning ties to reflective observation that connects to abstract conceptualization, and all of it can only make sense if it includes active experimentation. But before I knew about Kolb, I think my eighth grade English teacher set it all into motion for me. Being in that small county school, most of us had never experienced anyone different from our families and peers. 00;02;45;29 - 00;03;14;12 J.R. Jamison We were all white, presenting in a mix of working class and farm kids. Once when we were doing a lesson on writing family stories, our teacher had us write a creative nonfiction piece on a family member. But we also looked at how other cultures, over time, have used storytelling as a way to pass on generational history. The mixed methods approach included textbook lectures, reading classroom discussions, and watching the 1977 miniseries roots. 00;03;14;14 - 00;03;41;24 J.R. Jamison Even though I was only 13 years old, watching roots and connecting it to the overall curriculum helped me to better understand not only storytelling, but how writing and storytelling connect to history. While roots was Alex Haley story about his family. It made me think more deeply about how I tell my own story. And had I not had the experience, I'm not sure if I would have ended up in education or working every day to help people tell their own stories. 00;03;41;26 - 00;04;02;24 J.R. Jamison But my experience is not unique, and a mixed methods approach to teaching predates codes 1984 model. He was just able to finesse it and put it down on paper in a concise way. But look, I'm not saying anything. That's rocket science. Although it would take a teacher to help me understand rocket science. I'm saying something pure and simple. 00;04;02;25 - 00;04;28;05 J.R. Jamison Celebrate and respect teachers, their training, care, and moral sense and the roles they play in our everyday lives. Their job isn't easy. They're doing yeoman's work, but teachers are under attack, and more and more they're choosing to leave the classroom. It's estimated that 1 in 3 will resign in the next five years, and 300,000 teachers did make the decision to leave at the end of the 2021 academic year. 00;04;28;08 - 00;04;42;27 J.R. Jamison When a society undercuts and undermines teachers, it undercuts and undermines its future. So we're going to do what we do best. Listen. And today that's from the experiences of teachers. 00;04;42;29 - 00;05;07;19 Carl Frost Frost: This is why I teach an anonymous story is told to Suzanne Clem, performed by Carl Frost. My dad grew up dirt poor. My grandfather struggled with alcoholism, which made it hard to hold down a job. My grandmother left school in the seventh grade, most likely illiterate. They were always poor. My grandparents never got on a food stamps or welfare because of pride. 00;05;07;24 - 00;05;29;15 Carl Frost But you know, in reality, I'm not sure they could have filled out the paperwork if they'd wanted to. An upbringing of extreme poverty has an effect on kids. My father struggled in school, but something really good happened to him there. He met the girl would become my mother. With her help, he graduated from high school and went on to study at Lincoln Tech. 00;05;29;18 - 00;05;59;14 Carl Frost My grandparents, however, were not on board. To them, it felt pretentious. It felt unfamiliar, but to my father, it felt like the road opportunity. He graduated with honors, slaying the path for the rest of his life and eventually mine. Becoming a teacher felt like an obvious choice to me. Education was so important in my father's life. Hearing the stories of his childhood, I knew education was what brought him out of a cycle of poverty. 00;05;59;17 - 00;06;22;24 Carl Frost I wanted to create that opportunity for kids like my dad. My first year, I actually had an eighth grade boy in a class who looked exactly like my dad when he was a teenager. It was kind of freaky, but it was actually really good for me. When I looked at him, seeing him living a childhood similar to my father's, I can make the connection that this is why I'm here. 00;06;22;26 - 00;06;45;02 Carl Frost For kids like this who might otherwise not make it. This is why I teach. And being reminded of why I teach turned out to be really important that first year. I thought because my first teaching job was in a rural community and I'd grown up in a rural community. I'd fit right in reality, had different plans. I hated it. 00;06;45;04 - 00;07;02;18 Carl Frost They didn't teach you in the classroom or in student teaching. Oh, hey, if a student throws a desk at you, this is what you do. They also didn't quite prepare me for the workload that was going to be coming my way. I was hired to teach high school English, and I had five different classes and six periods a day. 00;07;02;20 - 00;07;21;21 Carl Frost It felt like it didn't matter how hard I worked. I could not get enough done in a day or a night or a weekend, or during my prep period to be ready for the next day. On top of that, we were supposed to have curriculum maps provided for each course, but when I walked in, there are no curriculum maps to be found. 00;07;21;23 - 00;07;44;16 Carl Frost No one really knew what happened to them. So for each of my five classes, I was responsible to create a curriculum map, which includes detailed plans for skills that should be learned, methods, assessments, any specialized accommodations and materials needed. There are a lot of state standards to follow in teaching, and the map shows how the lesson plans fulfill the standards. 00;07;44;19 - 00;08;06;17 Carl Frost The situation would be overwhelming for anyone, but especially for a first year teacher. When a position opened up at a nearby middle school, I jumped at it. I was really optimistic for this new venture, but I was also walking into a school where seventh and eighth graders had just lost their study hall. If you remember back to middle school, that's a big deal. 00;08;06;19 - 00;08;28;01 Carl Frost The time slot was now dedicated to English enrichment. The school's response to new requirements for 90 minutes of English instruction each day for every child. I love teaching that class, but in that first year, on top of being a new teacher in the building and students know when you're a new teacher in the building, I had to tell the kids, welcome to the new school year. 00;08;28;01 - 00;08;52;09 Carl Frost You're going to get a grade now. And this period you used to sleep in. It was a battle. We even had parents who were mad. Parents are great advocates. But when advocacy goes awry and turns into protection of bad behaviors, you have to stand your ground. That's hard to do as a young teacher. I had one student who refused to bring in his school provided iPad, which we were using for assignments. 00;08;52;12 - 00;09;17;28 Carl Frost Why refuse to bring in this piece of technology that has some kids? Best friend because he wasn't able to use it for games. His parents demanded that I start printing all his assignments since he wouldn't use the iPad. The administration sided with the parents because parents have great influence. But I didn't budge. I couldn't. I actually told them they'd have to fire me if they needed to, because I was not going to compromise. 00;09;18;01 - 00;09;42;08 Carl Frost They didn't fire me. I've been in my second school for three years now, still fairly new, but it doesn't take long to discover that administration and parent influence goes far beyond things like printing assignments. This past spring, when school ended, two of my parents were mad and wanted their students grades changed again. The answer was no from a teacher determined to do the right thing. 00;09;42;11 - 00;10;05;04 Carl Frost But soon I received an email from the administration saying I needed to contact the parents and talk to them about their students grades. I did, I told them I did talk to them and they know why this grade is the way it is, and I'm not going to change it. The disappointment from the administration was there. It was unmistakably there, which is not what you want at any point in your teaching career. 00;10;05;08 - 00;10;29;05 Carl Frost If the administration doesn't trust you're on board with them, or if they plain don't like you, you're already tough. Job has just gotten that much tougher. My dad actually encouraged me to take a different job for this new school year. He could tell that even as a relatively new teacher, I was burning out. My school system wasn't stable and the administration continued to be intimidating. 00;10;29;06 - 00;10;47;27 Carl Frost In fact, the teacher friend was told by her doctor that if she stayed at that school, he was going to prescribe her medication because she was crying at her desk. And money isn't why you go into teaching. Of course. But I was almost finished with my PhD and getting paid. What a nearly brand new teacher makes with a bachelor's. 00;10;47;29 - 00;11;11;02 Carl Frost I couldn't afford to stay in that system any longer. I still love the profession, but for so many reasons I didn't know if I could keep doing it. If I stayed there. So I took a job in a new system where I'll be able to pay off my loans. I'll be able to buy a house. I'll hopefully feel more supported by administration and more confident in the stability of my job. 00;11;11;04 - 00;11;42;09 Carl Frost My father's experience speaks into this decision as well, as he's taught me to make sure that my pursuits are sustainable. The teaching scene in our community is not all doom and gloom. For every disheartening story, there's a success. You can't ignore the struggles. Ignoring the struggles keeps us from learning from them. If my father had ignored his struggles and accepted them as normal, he wouldn't be where he is today and I wouldn't be where I am. 00;11;42;12 - 00;11;59;11 Carl Frost No matter where I teach or what I teach, there will always be students like my father. And that's why I chose this profession and why I'm still here. I teach for them and their unfolding stories. 00;11;59;14 - 00;12;23;17 Angie Rogers-Howell Rogers-Howell: Mrs. Miller, you set us up. Barbara's story as told to Clarissa Bowers, performed by Angie Rogers-Howell. Early in my teaching career. I took a course on multicultural education in an effort to bring the outside world a little closer to our small town. Most of my students had never left the borders of our county, let alone the confines of our county. 00;12;23;20 - 00;12;48;14 Angie Rogers-Howell So I felt like I had a responsibility to bring whatever cultural experiences I could into my teaching. Like most teachers, I was dedicated to leaving my students a little better than I had found them. And looking back on it now, that is what kept me going. During that time in my life, I found myself teaching in one of the more rural schools where diversity wasn't something that was regularly experienced. 00;12;48;16 - 00;13;15;16 Angie Rogers-Howell Like many things that are unfamiliar to us, it wasn't regularly embraced either. Having just spent much of my time working to understand the importance of multicultural acceptance, I chose to do a reading to my 10th graders from Hiroshima Diary, the Journal of a Japanese Physician. August 6th through September 30th, 1945, a book written by a doctor that spent his days tending to the victims of the atomic bombing in Japan. 00;13;15;19 - 00;13;37;10 Angie Rogers-Howell As I walked through the classroom, I implored my students to feel what those people were feeling and worked my hardest to paint a picture of what they were experiencing. At one point, I felt my own heart break as I read the excerpt and they had no faces. Their eyes, nose and mouths had been burned away and it looked like their ears had melted off. 00;13;37;12 - 00;14;01;23 Angie Rogers-Howell It was hard to tell from back. I paused, expecting to hear the sharp inhale of my students match my own, but was instead rendered speechless as the quiet country kid slumped over in his chair, blurted out somewhat. They were the enemy. Years have passed, and I still couldn't tell you what words I found to fill the silence in that room, or how I finished my lesson. 00;14;01;25 - 00;14;27;12 Angie Rogers-Howell Where have I gone wrong in this? I was trying to teach about humanity and the struggles of other cultures around the world, and here I was, face to face with a student that felt nothing at the thought of this innocent person being made, admittedly a bit defeated. I spent the next few days trying to find a way to build some sort of cultural connection for my students, but mostly I just needed a connection for one. 00;14;27;14 - 00;14;54;08 Angie Rogers-Howell Simply reading to him hadn't done the trick. These kids didn't need another adult telling them how to think. Telling them how to think was likely how we got here in the first place. Instead, I chose to meet them on their level. If words weren't going to make them feel something perhaps a movie could. Over the course of the next week, my students learn to live and love alongside Guido in the 1997 movie Life Is Beautiful. 00;14;54;11 - 00;15;21;00 Angie Rogers-Howell The movie tells the story of a goofy Jewish shopkeeper that spends the first half hour finding ways to win over Dora by way of comedic yet romantic gestures in endearing moments. Like most romantic comedies, he eventually does just that, and they end up married with a beautiful son. Unfortunately, World War Two breaks out and they are transferred to a concentration camp, where Guido uses his comedic ways as a method of distraction for his son. 00;15;21;02 - 00;15;47;04 Angie Rogers-Howell Throughout the course of the film, you can't help but fall in love with Guido as they turns each horrific aspect of the concentration camp into a fun game for his son, often putting his own safety at risk. By the end of the week, the whole class had fallen in love with Guido and his son. They loved a sense of humor, and they were glad he got the girl, and they couldn't help but adore him for the risks he was willing to take to protect his son from the tragedy that was all around him. 00;15;47;06 - 00;16;13;12 Angie Rogers-Howell Every student was eager to see the story come to its happy end. They were finally connecting to another culture, despite it being unrelated to their own. In the last scene of the film, widow tells the son to hide in a box until everyone is gone, in hopes that the rescue teams will find him. With one last wink, he comically steps around the corner with a guard and we see his son laughing while hiding in the box for this one last game. 00;16;13;15 - 00;16;36;08 Angie Rogers-Howell As Guido slips from you. The only sound that is heard is the whale of a single machine gun. In that moment, you could have heard a pin drop. After a short while, the silence was broken by that same boy who was before, so lacking in compassion. Are you kidding me? They killed Guido. I looked at him and simply said, what do you care? 00;16;36;15 - 00;16;56;11 Angie Rogers-Howell They viewed him as the enemy, right? In that moment, his face just fell. And then he said, Mrs. Miller, you set us up. It was such an incredible moment that even now I get goosebumps. Here is a kid that, through no fault of his own, was taught that the Japanese were our enemy and that was all there was to it. 00;16;56;13 - 00;17;16;03 Angie Rogers-Howell How do you consider anything else, if that's all you've ever been told? Maybe it was by a grandparent or an uncle that fought in World War Two. But how could you ever know to consider an alternative if an alternative was never offered? I think about that experience often, and I realize how much it is sculpted, who I am as an educator. 00;17;16;05 - 00;17;39;07 Angie Rogers-Howell Multicultural education isn't just about teaching a story that comes from another country. The idea is about providing and creating experiences for kids, authentic experience that gives them a chance to relate to people from other backgrounds, not just other countries. Like kids they rival against in sports from across the county, or the kids that just moved in from out of state. 00;17;39;09 - 00;18;01;20 Angie Rogers-Howell Overall, it was really a watershed moment for me to think. Who am I teaching? What am I teaching? I realized that I am not just teaching dangling modifiers and prepositions to these kids. That day. I was teaching kids how to think and how to be compassionate. And those aren't standards anywhere. 00;18;01;23 - 00;18;32;18 Daisha Wilber Wilber: Votes for my students. Legislation for holistic education. Melanie Wright's story as Told to Susan Volbrecht, performed by Daisha Wilber. Iran as a state representative because of the education policy changes that were happening. It's not really something I imagined myself doing until there was no other choice. This was during the General Assembly session of 2011. A bill came up the tide student test scores to teacher evaluations. 00;18;32;23 - 00;18;58;20 Daisha Wilber This pays no mind to students, needs no mind to the devastating impacts of generational poverty and no mind to broken testing policies. At the same time, Senate Bill 575 was introduced, which stripped away collective bargaining except for matters of wages and benefits. This depression is teachers who care about so much more than just their paycheck. I wrote to the governor. 00;18;58;20 - 00;19;23;07 Daisha Wilber I wrote to my state senator who was a freshman at the time, and I wrote to my state representative. The senator actually came and met with me in my classroom on a Saturday morning, along with 14 other teachers. He could see we were concerned about what was happening. It went beyond the assessment. My students anxieties were manifesting themselves as behavioral and social issues as well. 00;19;23;09 - 00;19;50;14 Daisha Wilber He kept me in the dialog but never voted for change. My state representative sent me a form letter in June, though the session had ended back in March. The email I had sent him was not canned, I had sources. There was research and my student's futures were contained in that letter. When I took the form letter out of the mailbox, I made the decision I am running against you. 00;19;50;17 - 00;20;13;15 Daisha Wilber I knew at that point in time there was no other answer. I quickly found myself in a world of politics, which is not like teaching. In teaching, everyone is collaborative and helps one another, but during campaigning it can be very mean and competitive. The first time I ran, I lost by 444 votes, but I could so clearly see myself doing it. 00;20;13;15 - 00;20;41;07 Daisha Wilber I could envision it and I felt like it was meant to be. I wanted to bring the voices of my students into the conversations that govern their education. They needed an advocate on location where the future of their schooling is decided. So I ran again and I won by 206 votes. Part of it was my work ethic. I wasn't used to being able to go out and say, I need you to vote for me, and here's what I'm bringing to the table. 00;20;41;07 - 00;21;01;09 Daisha Wilber But I did it. I knocked on doors and I showed people that I could be a multi-dimensional candidate. And then I believe in public education because I remember how great my experience was. I felt so prepared for college, and I was the first one in my family to even attend. But I had to prepare my high school students for what the campaign might bring. 00;21;01;09 - 00;21;26;06 Daisha Wilber I told them, when we get closer to the election, there is going to be some mail that comes out against me. I told them to ask any questions because I didn't know what that was going to look like. One girl came up and said, my mailbox told me I couldn't trust you. I said, when you believe in something and you stand up for it, sometimes people will say things about you and that's what's happening now. 00;21;26;09 - 00;21;49;23 Daisha Wilber I am still fighting for better assessment legislation. At this moment, we've totally moved away from hands on learning. Some kids do really well at testing and some don't. Some kids can sit down at a computer and show you what they know and some can't. We are also shutting down creativity entirely. We stop creative thought early because of testing. 00;21;49;28 - 00;22;15;03 Daisha Wilber We are training them like puppies. Pick the one right answer. Not multiple correct answers, not many possible solutions. And these are our future doctors and lawyers. We've ended imagination and taken away creative playtime and important developmental stage. I miss the days when we would wrap around a child and support them in their struggles now. They bring that baggage to school with them. 00;22;15;04 - 00;22;38;06 Daisha Wilber Sometimes it comes out as a behavioral issue or shutting down a noncompliance issue. We used to take time to find out the cause of the misbehavior to help them overcome their challenges today. Everything is focused on academics, language arts, and math. As a fine arts teacher, it isn't coming locally. It's a national shift where the arts are less important. 00;22;38;08 - 00;22;59;13 Daisha Wilber If you look back at our great artists, composers and architects, these are the people who had the most ups and downs in their lives, and they harness that and used it to create. Some struggled in school, whereas some had a teacher who helped them to tap into their struggles to develop their talent. How do those students fare during the current standardized assessment? 00;22;59;13 - 00;23;15;12 Daisha Wilber Battery. The state might not look at each of my students as artists, but to me, they are each a unique work of art. To me, they are each a Picasso. 00;23;15;14 - 00;23;32;05 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I want to leave you with the words of our dear friend and fellow facing project writer, Michael Brockley. Mike recently retired after serving more than 30 years in education, and he looked back on his career through his poem Aloha Shirt. Man thinks the students who made his career a gift. 00;23;32;08 - 00;24;08;22 Michael Brockley Brockley: At first. I wore polyester, Mickey Mouse and Garfield neckties, the Disney icon swinging a baseball bat and the cat cheering the weekend's arrival. One principal complained, I was book dumb. A girl who delivered the news banner told her teacher I was old and fat and bald. I was 36, listening to Small Town on my cassette player. How many bell curves did I scrawl on the backs of scrap paper? 00;24;08;24 - 00;24;38;17 Michael Brockley How many tales did I tell about Russian nesting dolls and slow cars? Still, every time I offered the use of my pencil with all the right answers, the children grinned. I ate apple pies with flying jets and Johnny Marchetti with star fires, debated goofy species with a raider who watched pinky and the brain for Talk Like a Pirate Day. 00;24;38;20 - 00;25;19;11 Michael Brockley I nodded a silk jolly Roger necktie, pretended a marvel tie with a school psychologist cape when Superhero Day was declared. I talked baseball cards with a frightened boy and exposed the Shawnee prophet masquerading as Tecumseh while I visited their classes, crazy hair teachers in mismatched socks read their students. I'm in charge of celebrations on 100th day. Teachers in old codger garb unveiled the butterfly cycle to gray haired children clutching canes. 00;25;19;13 - 00;26;01;27 Michael Brockley Van Gogh masterpieces decorated the halls of my schools beside hand printed interviews with giant squids and grasshoppers. When kindergartners posted grass as the superheroes they admired, I always found their teachers at the top. In the beginning, I showed you how to scramble blocks and asked what you like to do for fun. You'd say, search for arrowheads in the fields your father plowed, or play the zookeeper in an X box game when you practiced multiplication facts. 00;26;01;29 - 00;26;35;24 Michael Brockley I told you how I cheated on times tables test at Saint Gabriel's until my mother caught me counting on my fingers. I remember the day your social studies teacher forgot Indonesia was an island. The time you taught a substitute. The difference between lightning and lightning. You wore green t shirts with pink scripted on the front, or sports jerseys with 18 or 23 silk screened on the back. 00;26;35;26 - 00;27;18;00 Michael Brockley I read your recipe for making a peanut butter sandwich, then helped you read The Grapes of Wrath in high school. I saluted your graduation. From Legos to Minecraft to the go karts and guitars you designed during your homecoming year. We amazed ourselves with the shades of red that fall between Burgundy and maroon. As the school year closed. I marveled at your superhero shirts, folded in the Lost and Found table, had your unclaimed colts jackets and silver batons at an unmatched dusty shoe. 00;27;18;03 - 00;27;39;18 Michael Brockley On my last day, I watched you carry Cat in the hat kites to waiting cars. Each of you a knight or a princess who will be the lightning and lightning for all the lives before me. 00;27;39;20 - 00;27;59;20 J.R. Jamison Jamison: We want to thank Dr. Lynn Stallings and The Facing Project steering committee for their work on organizing Facing Teaching in Delaware County, Indiana. This Is Why I Teach was an anonymous story written in collaboration with Suzanne Clem and was performed by Carl Frost. Barbara Miller’s story was written in collaboration with Clarissa Bowers and was performed by Angie Rogers Howell. 00;27;59;22 - 00;28;20;25 J.R. Jamison Melanie Wright’s story was written in collaboration with Susan Volbrecht and was performed by Daisha Wilber. To listen to past episodes of this program, visit Indiana Public Radio Project. From there, you can subscribe to the podcast where you'll get the facing project delivered to your device each month. Or just ask your smart speaker to play the facing project on NPR. 00;28;20;27 - 00;28;47;08 J.R. Jamison Listeners can contribute stories or volunteer to share the stories of others with the facing project that may appear on the show. More information at Facing Project Inspire Action. To continue the conversation about this episode. Find us on Facebook at The Project. The project is recorded at Indiana Public Radio at Ball State University, and Beautiful and Wonderful, Muncie, Indiana, and is produced by the amazing producer extraordinaire Sean Ashcraft. 00;28;47;09 - 00;28;59;05 J.R. Jamison The show is distributed nationally through. We're your host, Kelsey Timmerman and J.R. Jamison. And until next time, we wish you the courage to share your own story and the empathy to listen to others.