Good Teacher
Good teacher, busy teacher, broke teacher
The rewards are there, but pay isn't enough to cover her needs
Monday, April 30, 2001
By REBEKAH
DENN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Ms. Coan is the kindergarten teacher of parents' dreams and memories, and the teacher of the present for children in Room 4 at Van Asselt Elementary.
Ms. Coan is also thinking about leaving the teaching profession.
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| After a full day of classes, a tired Sandy Coan does paperwork in her Van Asselt Elementary School classroom. This is her second year in a profession that she's come to love but believes she can't afford. Dan DeLong / Special to the Post-Intelligencer |
Ms. Coan sings learning songs with her students and makes them laugh with daily "ooh-la-la" reading visits from Frenchy the Finger Puppet. She makes games to help her children learn math. She brought a real 6-day-old lamb right into the South Seattle classroom one day and the kids wrote about how its feet are called hooves and its fur is called fleece.
Ms. Coan says "superstar!" when a kid does work well. She has cool half-moon glasses and wavy black hair and periwinkle eyes. She is gentle but firm to correct anyone who misbehaves. She gently cleans up a sick child who throws up and you'd never guess she has a hard time with vomit. She is the glamour girl of her students' lives, the daily recipient of hugs and cut-out hearts and dubious gifts like broken corn chips.
Ms. Coan gets excited when Top Ramen is on sale -- six packs instead of five for a dollar.
Ms. Coan is also the sort of teacher the Seattle Public Schools says it needs. She is unfazed planning lessons for a classroom in which19 of 25 students started the year speaking a language other than English, requiring her to pantomime directions as simple as "stand up," and where school-wide memos are sent home in 18 different languages. She embraced a class in which a few students began the year with serious behavior problems, one child didn't speak at all, and another was found wandering the halls the first day of kindergarten with no parents to be found.
Ms. Coan brings home $1,700 per month and can itemize where it goes: $600 for rent, $300 for student loans, $60 for car insurance, and so on. She has $230 left each month after fixed expenses, which means she does not think she can afford to get her hair cut and colored for a friend's upcoming wedding; she could not afford to fly to Spokane when her mother had a medical emergency this year, and she had to borrow money from her father when her car's alternator gave out last month.
Ms. Coan majored in history and philosophy. But she feels a calling to teach, and you can tell when she sits down with little Kathy Lam to practice addition problems like 8+9 and 7+7, keeping the other 5, 6, and 7-year-olds under control as she divides her time.
Ms. Coan brings out a bucket of toy plastic bears to help Kathy along. They line up eight little bears next to the number "8," nine bears next to the number "9". She pushes the rows together and has Kathy count up the total: Seventeen bears. Somewhere, a light goes on.
"Ms. Coan!" Kathy said. "I want to do 6+10."
Ms. Coan loves her job so much that she has started thinking of her situation like a stint in the Peace Corps: tough work, for low pay, for a great cause, for a limited time. In the long term she would like a job where she could afford her own house and bear her own children; in the short term she would like to sometimes buy her best friend dinner at a restaurant instead of it always being the other way around: "How great would that be?"
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| Sandy Coan heads home after a day full of the labor, stress, delights and surprises of teaching kindergarten. She loves the work, but has a hard time making ends meet. Dan DeLong / Special to the Post-Intelligencer |
Ms. Coan's friend who teaches first grade down the hall is moving to the Portland area next year for an instant $6,000 raise; Mr. Preston explains that he, too, has student loans to pay. There are some East Coast schools offering as much as $20,000 raises for Washington teachers, and she could even get by on her Washington state salary if she moved to Eastern Washington, but her friends and her life are in Seattle and she wants to stay.
Ms. Coan's favorite part of her typically tiring day last Thursday was also the toughest: Math time, when gaps in abilities create the greatest logistical problems. She must find a challenge for all-around achiever Pulemau Savusa, who finds even basic addition a bit easy, without losing the little boy who struggles to read the number "21" off a flash card, without boring or overextending the ones in between.
The classroom is divided into four groups, each with a game to teach math skills. Ms. Coan leads one group and makes occasional runs to oversee the others. At no time is she permitted to step off stage.
"Ms. Coan! Ms. Coan! Ms. Coan!" shouts Aaron Johnson from the corner; he has finished counting his colored tiles, and she is proud of him, as she is of most of her students at one time or another during the hours she spends in their company. During spare moments she pulls aside a youngster who has scored poorly on standardized tests to give her a quick drill; she asks one child whose stomach hurts if she has eaten breakfast, and sends her to the office to get some when the answer is no; she talks very seriously with a Tootsie Roll thief until he confesses and apologizes; she meets individually with every child to hear them read their vocabulary words in a sort of Bingo game.
Such versatility is one reason Ms. Coan gets high marks from Pulemau's mother, Sili Savusa, who volunteers in the classroom and is one of several parents and specialists who try to help all students meet tough new standards that the schoolshave set. Ms. Coan has an aide about an hour a day who speaks Vietnamese, and other school employees pull students out during the day to work on identified language or behavior or therapy needs, but more adult bodies in the classroom makes a big difference. Even kindergarten can be a difficult class these days, students' first introduction to a system that expects them all to reach pre-set standards at each grade level and to pass a high-stakes graduation test to receive their diplomas 12 years down the line.
"You have to be like a superwoman, really, to be fair in providing a quality education for each child," Savusa said. "Ms. Coan is able to pull the best out of every child."
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| Sandy Coan gets classroom help from Pulemau Savusa during a reading lesson. She is on stage the whole day, with little help, keeping 25 attention-demanding young children of varied capacities occupied and learning. Dan DeLong / Special to the Post-Intelligencer |
It's hard to believe that Ms. Coan's room was so different in September, that these orderly children didn't know it was their turn to move when Ms. Coan said, "Diamond table, you may line up for lunch, oval table, now you may line up," that the girl who writes and draws her own little books used to spend days at a time pretending she was a cat.
But Ms. Pruzan, who teaches kindergarten across the hall from Ms. Coan, says both her class and Ms. Coan's indeed started out that way, that it's amazing how quickly little children can learn when given the chance. That's one reason Ms. Coan likes teaching this age group. The learning curve is so steep and she loves to help children ride its crest.
Ms. Coan probably will not attend the rally for the Seattle teacher walkout tomorrow ; she had already signed up for a class on how to teach music to kindergarten students. She will be there in spirit, though.
Ms. Coan is in her second year of teaching, and she does not consider either her passion for the job or her personal dilemma as anything unusual. In fact, her boyfriend, a middle school teacher who also runs out of money at the end of each month, has coined the term "silent strike" to describe all the teachers who are quitting for financial reasons without bothering to heft a picket sign first.
Ms. Coan will keep teaching next year, but is not sure what will happen after that.
"I really believed that education is a right. I really believed that children deserve good teachers, that knowledge is power and it's your ticket to a decent future. I really wanted to do something I felt good about. And I still believe those things, but ... I'm not going to be a martyr to the system," she said.
Kathy has a crayon picture to show Ms. Coan; a little girl in a house. Who is in this picture? "Me," says Kathy. "I'm calling you on the phone." Ms. Coan is appreciative but wonders if Kathy can write that observation down in a sentence. What sound does the word "me" start with? What letter does that make?
"M," Kathy says with a light in her eyes.
Superstar.
P-I reporter Rebekah Denn can be reached at 206-448-8190 or rebekahdenn@seattle-pi.com
Article taken from http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/20851_teach30.shtml
What makes a good Teacher?
No two teachers are the same, but all teachers need to be -What else you need for teaching-
What makes a good teacher?
By Mark Eley
June 17,1997
I ponder this question as I look back over my twenty-one years as a student, and my five years as a classroom teacher. I also bring with me observations I have done of so-called "master" teachers, colleagues whose classrooms I have had the opportunity to visit. I have read research, journal articles and media articles, attended workshops, and watched videos attempting to gain strategies that would help me become a "good teacher". I think I can answer two different ways, from my head and from my heart.
My head has some very concrete descriptors of what a good teacher is. In fact, I have probably used several parts of this answer in interviews. A good teacher must first and foremost be a child advocate. Inside and outside of the classroom, a good teacher fights for what is right for children. Decisions that a good teacher makes are based primarily on how that decision will effect his or her students. This also demonstrates a certain unselfishness on the teacher’s part. Kids come first!
A second characteristic of a good teacher is their respect for others. They respect their students, and their classroom management and interactions show it. They respect the parents and community members, and are always professional in their interactions. They respect their colleagues and staff members, and do not talk about them behind their backs. A good teacher is a person of integrity.
A third characteristic of a good teacher is that of a life-long learner. They are knowledgeable in their profession and in their subject area(s), and continue to grow in that knowledge. A good teacher is well read, and makes decisions based on current research regarding best practice.
Fourth, a good teacher is a good communicator. He or she is someone who not only delivers a message well, but is also an active listener. Again, an unselfish attitude in listening to students and parents is very important.
Finally, a good teacher emphasizes that students be responsible for the own learning. They set goals together with their students, and then act as facilitators to help those students attain those goals. They celebrate successes, and encourage those still working along.
Well, at least that is what my head says. My heart replies, 'Phooey!" There is a part of me that believes that the question, "What makes a good teacher?" can't be answered.
Can we really define all of those things that make a good teacher? Even if I go down a checklist one hundred pages long and meet all of the criteria, will I really be '"good"? Maybe we should look at what a teacher accomplishes. Would that give us a clear understanding of what a good teacher is? I believe the answer is "No".
To find (or define) a "good" teacher, we must look to individual people at individual moments in time. For example, I believe I was a good teacher for many of my students last year, but not all. Some of those students might label me as a good teacher. Some of their parents might do the same. I, however, would not give myself that label, partly because of those students for whom I was not a good teacher.
As teachers, we must always be examining ourselves, getting feedback from students, parents, colleagues, and administrators, and coating that with an understanding that we are mere mortals, to help us find that "good teacher" in ourselves.
Taken from www.public.asu.edu/~meley/bio/good.htm