Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for June 1, 2002 LETTER TO THE EDITOR

CAIRO CITIZEN - MAY 30, 2002

Dear Editor:

I am a teacher at Emerson School, a native of Cairo, and a resident of the town for 38 years. I did move to Paducah but have plenty of childless senior citizen relatives still living here and paying property taxes to cover me. I could have chosen to start working in Paducah but felt a strong loyalty to my community and my school district to stick with them. I have received some wonderful training through the Cairo school district which has made me a better teacher plus I have 22 years of experience and piles of materials to enhance my teaching. I will also remind you that teachers do not pay social security and the way the retirement system is set up teachers cannot just move around all their lives or they will end up old and destitute. In other fields, an employee can negotiate a salary based on experience, it does not work that way in education.

I literally gave up four years of my life doing Montessori training. We teachers in the program were sent off for weekends (during the school year) and even months at a time (during summers, of course) to train. Despite what some think about Montessori, the training was excellent and so is the program. It has made me a much better teacher. I have also attended National Faculty training for three summers and have trained for the Four Blocks Method of teaching. I would hate to take all of this expertise to another school so the school district can hire a first year teacher, with no experience, for a cheaper salary. This district has a lot invested in me. By the way, I also have a Master's degree in Elementary Education which I paid for myself. Right now, one graduate hour at Murray State University costs $156. A Master's degree requires 30 hours of coursework, which totals a $4680 cost to the teacher. That's not including money spent for gas, and hours and hours spent doing coursework and papers on top of teaching all day long. (Just think of the salary a lawyer could command if he had all of this education under his belt!)

I have taught at Emerson School through several superintendents and several principals. I have watched each of these people attempt to "fix" the problems of the Cairo district. But the reason none of these initiatives have worked is that Cairo never looks at the big picture. We never work together as a team. We are now involved in Comprehensive School Reform ($270,000 tax dollars INCLUDING MINE) and it is going to be a huge waste of money. It requires the board, teachers, parents, and community to work together. It also requires an extreme amount of extra work on the part of teachers. Everything we teach is supposed to be planned from presentation to assessment and matched to the Illinois state standards for every subject. Frankly, this school district is wearing me out. I go to work at 7:45 and have no breaks except a 30 minute lunch until 2:25. The next 45 minutes is my planning period. That's includes RUNNING to the bathroom, talking to parents in the hall, answering phone calls from parents, checking the mail, hunting for lost backpacks, etc., etc. By the time I get upstairs, I might have 30 minutes left to actually straighten the room, sharpen pencils and go through work that we've done. When do I plan for the next day, grade the papers, look for web sites that are good for children, or make all the materials necessary to teach every single subject of the curriculum with NO help from anyone else? When do I go through the cabinet looking for books to accompany each lesson since we have no library and no librarian as a resource? When do I plan each Four Block Unit to coordinate with the Reading unit of the week? When do I plan the writing activities and fill the book baskets? I guarantee you, all of these planning activities cannot be done with twenty children in the room because they take my full attention. Oh, by the way, most of us at Emerson also tutor on Tuesdays and Thursdays so we aren't finished with our school day until 4:30. No break all day. When do we plan the projects that use higher level thinking skills and when should we teach PE, art and music which, tragically, our students need and get very little of. There is only one of me.

I asked a teacher from one of the Anna elementary schools to write down her schedule for me last October and I almost cried. Their schools still have art, music, PE, a library, and computer teachers. They have breaks and planning time, real planning time. The local library comes in once a week and presents books, the guidance counselor comes once a week and works on their version of Peacebuilders, a program which teaches students to control anger and get along with one another. This gives the teacher TIME to plan lessons and projects and to truly educate their students. Anna schools also have an aide who copies papers for the teachers. I can't even get homework out to my kids some days because we all have our planning periods at the same time; just try getting to the copy machine.

Cairo is on a budget. We basically live on state and federal grants. Every single penny that comes into our district is meant to be carefully spent to get the most "bang for the buck." Teachers are the biggest expenditure. Go back and reread the last few paragraphs. It makes me absolutely ill to think of the money that has been lost and wasted in this fight that could have been settled by simply negotiating and talking. A law firm is going to be paid enough money to pay two teachers. A minimum of $50,000 dollars is going to be thrown away by not finishing out the school year. But we can't afford a librarian? We can't provide the services students in other schools take for granted? I think if that money was spent as wisely as possible, with no waste and some really good planning we could!! That $130,000 we're spending for lawyers and loss could have paid activity teachers for Emerson and Bennett, couldn't it?? In a town such as Cairo, we have many students who need services which only a school can provide. We all know the problems, yet the teachers (Emerson and Bennett especially) are literally being stretched to the breaking point trying to wear all the hats for those people who have been eliminated due to past budget cuts and never replaced. I challenge any person in our community to follow a teacher around all day and then say they don't earn their money!

That brings up another issue. All of the "special people" in our school who were eliminated due to budget cuts. Though personnel were cut, those subject areas in the curriculum were not. The State of Illinois didn't drop those subjects. But guess what, no extra money is even given to teachers to buy supplies to teach those subjects. So guess who is in Wal-Mart all year buying this and that just because I don't have it? Yes, the district does reimburse $100 for miscellaneous supplies. That isn't even the tip of the iceberg! I would hate to add up the amount to money my colleagues and I spend for classroom supplies. Yes, even food items.

We make muffins when reading "If You Give a Moose A Muffin," we eat peanut butter and jelly when we learn about "Peanut Butter and Jelly It's My Favorite Thing to Eat," we even make guacamole and quesidillas for "Mama's Birthday Present." These activities require planning, time, and yes, money. I could go on all day... I think I will. My neighbors think I'm crazy because I let weeds grow up in my front yard. But those are milkweeds and they attract monarch butterflies. Every fall my students and I watch the life cycle of the butterfly, from caterpillar, to cocoon, to butterfly. Of course, I have to watch day after day until I find the caterpillar babies have arrived and then traipse through the wet grass before I leave for work every morning for two weeks because they will only eat fresh milkweed leaves.

Many teachers grow parsley all summer for the same reason, it attracts Black Swallowtails. These are just a few of the many, many different things we do ALL yearlong so that our students will get an education not just from books but from real life as well.

I can truly say a good teacher is worth her weight in gold. I watch my colleagues work like Trojans day after day, year after year. We laugh together and cry together. We root for each other. We have to because, for some reason, the Cairo School District does not want to recognize its teachers for the tremendous service they are providing. I am not just talking money here either. It truly is not just about money. Cairo teachers want our students to have the same benefits that students in other schools have and to do that we, the teachers, administrators, school board, and parents MUST start working together as a unit.

Sincerely,

Marty Ryan