TEACHER INTERVIEW Portales High School April 21, 1992 Q. And you teach math? A. Yes. Q. And how long? A. 20 years. Q. And how long here? A. This is my fourth year here. Q. I was meeting with HHH. She started talking and we didn't get to any of my questions. But we may talk again. Incident -- principal? For example, selecting curriculum materials, what you teach or how you teach, how you group students, how you deal with discipline or parents -- One incident in which you felt the principal influenced you. A. I went to a middle school when it was first opening, in the same community, same kind of background, and worked with a principal who kind of set the stage for that middle school with a real camaraderie among the teachers, a real sense of his personal security within the community, that he was not intimidated or going to be led along little paths by individuals outside the school, that we as a team were going to determine what was best for the students, and I found that a real supportive, a real positive atmosphere, and I think the whole tone of that school continues even to be one of a real sense among the faculty that they have a good command of what they're trying to do and they keep this clearly in mind, while they listen to parents and input from students, it doesn't seem like there's a sense of panic being swayed or pushed around, there always seems to be a good sense of conveying "This is what we're all about and we'll take your input, but we will have a real strong purpose here," and I think the principal himself really set that tone and was very influential. It really freed you up in the classroom to have a sense of being empowered but also a lot of responsibility because he was saying, "If we're going to say we know what we're doing, we want to know what we're doing," so you had to know what you were doing and why you were doing it. And I think that really influenced the way I planned, in a sense, thinking there's a lot of responsibility of here, I had better know the rationale of what I'm doing and why I'm approaching it this way or why I'm using this technique, and I think that has carried with me ever since then. Q. So understanding that philosophy or mission as articulated by the principal is what guided your lesson planning? A. Not only guided but really empowered, I think, my lesson planning, to be able to say "I have the expertise, I know what I'm doing, I just need to think clearly about it, and write my lesson plans with a real sense of a strong rationale." Q. Incident -- department chair? A. Yes, I worked for a department chair in a high school for a number of years who had a great sense of confidentiality, very open to hearing whatever you had, whether it was a complaint or a compliment or whatever it might be, but very confidential, if she had to deal in any kind of negative way with anyone it was always done in great confidentiality. She was a little more open about her positive praise and positive comments, but that I think gave me a sense of that power of confidentiality, knowing when to keep things to yourself and respect a person's privacy and maybe preserve their dignity to whatever extent you can. Q. Can you give me an example? A. Yes. I know that she had to deal with a teacher who was handling student funds in an inappropriate way, and it was all handled very quietly and very discreetly but it was taken care of and straightened out, and I don't feel that the person lost face in any way, shape or form. We had another teacher who was not doing a very good job in the classroom, and again she worked with that person, she came to myself and one other teacher and asked what kind of materials we could put together that she could give to this person, she asked this person if she would like to come and observe us, but again it was just a very comfortable --- it wasn't like the whole school had to know and nothing went into anyone's file. Everyone was always given a fair chance to address any issues. Since then I have become a department chair myself and that's a real important issue to me now is that having kept things confidential and not discussing every person's ups and downs with everyone else in the department seems to keep everyone's respect for each other at a higher level. Q. Incident -- superintendent? A. Probably currently -- the superintendent is very interested in a move toward an integrated approach in the classroom and I am, too, and the superintendent and his assistant superintendents have been very supportive of the training that I sought and some opportunities that I'm trying to put together for next year to teach in an integrated manner in the high school. So I think that just their positive support system has been very good. Q. The influence has been in support by providing training or -- A. They supported training, he has just given lots of verbal support, go for it, don't be afraid, don't be afraid to risk something, this is what we want, if it's not perfect the first time, that's okay, so that kind of support. Every effort they can make for some financial support, to get one extra planning period for someone on the team to do this, so in a lot of ways. Q. Incident -- the school board? A. Well, they do lots of things that shapes everyone's work life, I guess. I have a lot of personal friendships among the school board members so there are lots of instances in which I have been able to sit down and pick their brains about something that was rolling around in my head and see if they thought it lined up with what the school board was heading towards or supportive of. I think just a real freedom to call them, even the ones I don't have a personal relationship with, if I have a question, I don't hesitate to call them and say, you know, this is what I see going on; is this in line with where we're headed or that kind of thing. So probably to a lesser degree but really some more personal interaction than just going to the whole board. I have gone to the whole board and made some presentations, again about the integrated curriculum, and they, too, are 100 percent supportive; they're also saying, you know, this is exactly what we want to try to do; go for it. So I guess both ways -- from the board as a whole but from most of them personally, too, I've had support. Q. The integrated curriculum began where? A. What do you mean "began where?" For us? Q. Did it come from the teachers, the superintendent, the board? A. It actually came from the strategic plan that our district puts together and that's put together by a combination of teachers, parents, board members, administrators, and they all sat and wrote a strategic plan, and one of the items in there was to move towards more connections for students -- helping students make the connections, and so out of that has come a movement toward integrated curriculum at all levels, from kindergarten through high school. Q. Incident -- state or federal programs or regulations? A. Well, I know, in a positive way, I benefitted from a program that the state had in which we team taught an applied mathematics. I taught with a former industrial arts teacher, took his expertise from the technology areas and my expertise from mathematics and team taught a program that our state had become a member of a consortium that more or less bought into it, and at the state level they supported us, bought us thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and sent us to Dallas for four days of training, and supported with all the materials, the curriculum, everything, to do that. So that was, I think, very influential kind of support. That was just a single program but it was very helpful. Q. That was in exchange for you to bring back what you learned -- A. Right, and I taught other people. I went to the national math conferences in the state and regional and did presentations on this material, and did a presentation at the other high schools in our district and some to parents, and just kind of showed them the kinds of -- that was probably my first brush with really starting to integrate the curriculum -- that was about five years ago, and it kind of spun off from that -- once the state funding was gone, we no longer could have two teachers for one class, but the first year they actually funded that for us to have a team teaching situation. Q. Do state or federal mandates ever affect your classrooms? A. Certainly, they all do. I think the number of mainstream students that we have are coming out of mandates, which I don't object to, I think probably some of them are right on. I think the biggest part of how our budget gets spent is impacted by state and federal mandates, things that we have to do, or have to teach, or have to provide for. We know right now we're probably going to have to tear the ramps out into our circle and put ones that are more easily accessible for the handicapped, and, you know, there are always those kinds of dollar issues that are mandates. But the state, I think, has been pretty lenient on curriculum. They have pretty much given us some basic outcomes that they're looking for, so in that way I think the mandates have freed us up a little bit curriculum-wise to try like some integrated kinds of things. Q. Do any legal or judicial judgments affect your classrooms? A. Yeah, I -- I spent some time this year involved in some hearings over a lawsuit against our -- well, the potential for a lawsuit against our district over an alleged cultural racial bias kind of an issue. I've been involved in others of those where the school was accused of things of that type. So I guess, yes, to that extent, that people bring lawsuits. Q. Has that influenced how you teach in your classroom or what you teach? A. I think maybe made me a little more conscious to really try to think about not always just gearing toward my ethnic leanings or my racial or my religious leanings but to be broader in the scope of how I present things and to be more sensitive to the variety of people I have, yeah, I think it has probably been a positive -- I'm sure it has also taken thousands and thousands of dollars out of our budget which impacts the classroom, you know, we have less space, older buildings, and fewer teachers because of it, so there's always that impact -- because of the cost, and I think a lot of times even the amount of support that you get on things is influenced depending on how paranoid people are over those kinds of things, you know, that they may support you or rather than to avoid some kind of confrontation, they might not support you, so I think that I sometimes see administrative support wavering based on that, based on how strong the administrator, whether they feel confident or if they feel threatened by that. So that impacts what you do in the classroom to a large extent. Q. How about parents? Incident -- A. A lot. I try to stay in touch with lots of parents, T track students, A track students, I think that by doing that and talking with parents about what they see as their role and what they see as my role -- I have a feeling that I have a real strong base of support with parents, that most parents really do want to help their students at home, I think I'm more inclined to have students take things home -- like I'll have consumer math students make a budget, what they think their budget will be for next year when they're out of high school, and I usually then make them take home and ask their parents to not only sign it but to comment on it. And I get a lot of good feedback from parents, you know. I don't know where my child thinks they're going to get this kind of money, or I notice that mom and dad are down here to foot the bill -- you know, so I think that having an ongoing dialogue with lots of parents really does impact. I have a strong sense that parents want to know what their kids are thinking and doing, and that they're hesitant to come up and hang out at the high school and humiliate their kids, so they need to know. I would say in that way, the way that I teach is strongly rooted -- and knowing how I felt as a parent, too -- but in the sense that parents want to know what's going on, and I try to convey that either through phone calls or messages or homework that goes home and gets signed, that kind of thing. Q. Have they had any influence on curriculum -- on what you teach or how you teach? A. A little bit. I think in this community we have lots of parents who are well educated and knowledgeable and they tend to critique teachers and they tend to critique textbooks that you use and methods that you use and the amount of homework, they give us a lot of input on those things. I don't think I'm over-reactive to that. I think that goes back to my original comment about having a sense of "I'm the one with the training, I'm the one responsible for all students, not just their child kind of thing," and feeling somewhat empowered that if I have the rationale in place for what I'm doing, I can usually talk to a parent and say, you know, I understand that you like some other textbook better than this one, but let me tell you why we made the switch and we still incorporate the good things from the old one, that kind of thing. So I don't feel really dictated to or swayed in that way that much by parents. I see them more as a support base for us and I can usually sway them with the rationale. That's all they're looking for -- they just want to be sure that what you're doing has a reason, and when you can give a good reason, they usually are satisfied. Q. You said that parents have some input -- how can they input -- A. In our school? Q. Is it directly or -- A. A lot of them. Probably three nights a week I might have a phone call at home from a parent, lots of different ones, they just want to talk about the politics of what's going on at school, not necessarily that I even have their children; in fact, most of the ones I talk to I don't have their children. They have a real active booster club who gives input to things. They have -- there are parents who are members on our sit-based management team; Together the parents and the staff are putting on a tea in recognition of all the volunteer work, and so we'll have a lot of interaction between us at that time. They comes to ballgames, you know, I think there's a comfort level between the parents. They just had a nice tea for the staff, just a get-together one afternoon at one of the parent's home and visit. So through that, through some real casual dialogue, as well as the structure of having them on the management team, I think we get both, we get specific input where they're in a voting capacity and we get casual input. Q. Incident -- professional organization or teacher's association? A. I've been pretty active in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. I have done presentations at a number of their conferences and I have gone to the national conference. One of the past presidents is SSSwho worked for our district for a number of years and I worked under her directly for two years. She's just a dynamic little gal, and so I think that organization has influenced me a lot, but they have written a set of standards for mathematics education all across this country, it's the only field in which we have national standards for how we think it should be taught and the direction in which we should move, and the methods for delivering information, and I think it's influential on all the math teachers -- I shouldn't say all, some people haven't even read them, I guess -- but those people who have been involved, I think have a sense of where we're going and that we're doing somewhat the same things across the country. I can get together with people from anywhere in the country and discuss the standards, and what am I doing in an algebra I class to impact them, and what are they doing in a geometry class to impact them, and there's a real sense that we are all on some kind of common wave length. So I think the NCTM standards has had a big impact on mathematics. Q. But you choose to allow those standards to influence you? A. Yes, and we talked about the state standards as being very broad. Yes, and the NCTM standards are very broad. They are just saying things like -- we probably should move towards technology, be a little more free about the use of calculators, get a little more involved with the use of computers, move in that direction, get more critical thinking, get the students into more thought processes, and less drill and kill kinds of stuff, so the how to do it is not specific, but just that we have a sense now that we are all going to move that way, instead of having all these people who say absolutely no calculators until they're 19, you know, we're saying no, even at third grade, you know, let's put a calculator in their hands once or twice a week, get them good at that. So they are just broad standards; they don't direct the day-to-day but they direction the long range, the rationale for what I'm doing overall. Q. Teachers union influence what you do in your classroom? A. Not a great deal. I'm not a member of any one of those organizations. I mean, they set the calendar and that influences how many days you have to teach what you're going to teach, and that sort of thing, but I don't think they either inhibit or enhance greatly what I do. There are some seminars that they offer even that non-members could go to. I've maybe been to one; I didn't think it was great a quality. Q. So setting calendars is the only thing that really affects you? A. Yes -- well, teacher personnel policy and how many days you can be gone and all the normal things that those groups have input into, which to a large degree, I think, are inhibiting to me. I mean, I would like the freedom to say, you know, if you want to have 90 minutes of this subject today and 20 minutes of it tomorrow, but a calendar gets set up so it's real difficult to get away from some of that. We're finding ways to do it but -- Q. How do you do it? A. Well, we try different schedules. We have a schedule in which on Wednesdays and Thursdays we had only half of the classes and they met for double class periods, so you met second, fourth and sixth hour for 90 minutes, and the next day you met first, third and fifth hour for 90 minutes, which gave you a long block of time for an activity or a lab. So we have tried some things and I think we're still looking at some ways to do -- that's what I hope the integrated curriculum will do next year. We're going to have a house of about three teachers with 90 students and have some freedom among ourselves to just ignore the bell. So we're finding techniques to do that. Q. Have you felt influenced in your work life by in-service training or your own continued education? Can you give me an example of how it influenced your work life? A. Yeah. Well, I've done a lot of the in-service training here in the district, but to get trained to do that I have benefitted a great deal. Two years I served as a teaching coach in which I taught the essential elements of instruction to teachers and then I went and sat in their classrooms and helped them implement them and refine them. That had a tremendous influence on me because I sat in every kind of classroom from kindergarten to welding and everything in between and picked up lots of good ideas and techniques and got a real sense of where does the student come from, especially in mathematics, you know, what does fifth grade math look like, what does second grade math look like, so I think that had a broad influence. And I have taken lots of additional coursework myself just to try to learn how to run the computers and a lot of stuff that we didn't even think about when I was in college, so you have -- Q. Incident -- students? A. Every day; every day. Probably more than anything, just specifically through some surveys. Every once in a while, if I give a test and I'm not real pleased with the results, I usually give back the test with a little survey of about three questions, you know, what on this test did you think you had never seen in your homework? What part of it did you not recognize the directions to? Try to get that kind of feedback, so that I'm influenced as to how to reach them the next time, or how do I go back -- you know, what did I really skip over and need to take a day on? A lot of times it's just to revise my notes for next year to say I wasn't real clear with this, or if I had rephrased the wording on the test, they would have known exactly what I wanted, so I do a lot of actual written material that I think influences me. But every day, the verbal and the non-verbal both are clues as to when to move on and -- Q. Can you tell me about a time when you've noticed that? A. Well, I'll just take today. I put two problems on the board that I thought were sort of a summative look at yesterday's assignment, just while I was taking attendance, and they had to -- and as I walked around, there were pictures that they had to draw and label and then find the surface area, and one of the students didn't even have the picture down. So I thought they were just wasting their time and I said draw the picture, and a number of students said "I can hardly draw these things," and I realized that I hadn't taken any time, and for students to draw three dimensional pictures for some of them is very difficult. Now the math, they could probably get the formula. But they can't even sketch the pictures so they can't get a feel for it, so I sort of revised. Instead of worrying about the formula, I first took a couple of minutes and said here's some easy way to draw there. I think on a daily basis that kind of thing happens that you explore a little bit and you realize something that I thought they had isn't in place for about half of the kids. Q. Incident -- colleagues? A. Yeah, I think I have a couple of colleagues right now who are probably technologically really ahead of where I am, they are much more comfortable on the computers, much more comfortable not only doing their grades on them but having the students use software, so I've been trying to pick their brain and stay on Friday afternoons and get more familiar with the graphing calculators and some of the technological material that I just feel like a younger teacher coming out, are just like little kids, you know, who can just go to the Nintendo with no effort, and those of us who didn't grow up like that are intimidated, so I think that my colleagues' competent level has been real helpful to me in motivating me to say I can learn to do this, I can get my kids in the lab, if it weren't for that, if it weren't for someone else doing it, I would be sitting on the outside. Q. Describe -- a creative attempt that was thwarted -- A. Actually, last year when I first went to this unusual schedule, it allowed us an hour on those days on which we had originally planned to have kind of like a homeroom period in which you would do some counseling with the kids, help them set their long-range goals and their schedules, and maybe occasionally have assemblies or speakers or career-type things, and I thought it had a great deal of potential. I think a lot of our students are starved for some of that interaction with adults and counseling-type of things. A lot of the teachers felt it was just another planning period for them and it required more work of them and they weren't about to do that and the kids could sit there and have a study hall if they wanted, but they weren't going to plan something or teach goals, so those teachers who really wanted it to be something were real thwarted because pretty soon their students were saying, can't we just have a study hall? Why are we working on goals? Why are we doing this? My friend's in so and so's room and they just has a study hall and they get their homework done. And we tried to work through this as a staff but it was kind of self-defeating. We just could not get those people to come around -- probably some of them haven't written a lesson plan in ten years anyway, and they weren't about to write one now for how to set goals or how to discuss teen suicide or whatever the case may be, they weren't about to do that. And as a result, then the students also became a part of the problem because they wanted to do what their peers were doing which was get their homework done. Q. Failed attempt -- that you resisted and what are the ways that you have been able to work around those influences? A. Well, I think I have had a number of parents who wanted immediate action, wanted their child moved from one teacher to another, and because I'm the department chair, I kind of felt I needed to deal with them. And sometimes we do that. But in a lot of cases we have resisted and mostly I have resisted it by getting together with the parents and discussing our rationale for what we think is important, the need for children to learn to work with all kinds of people, the need for parents to kind of back off sometimes and let their students handle some difficulties and get the benefit of the maturing that can come from that. So mostly just through dialogue. I think a lot of -- it looked on the surface like they were going to be parent demands, really softened to appreciation of the whole system and in a lot of cases just a thank you from the parents that we care and have a real reason for what we're doing and they just backed away and we went on with what we thought was right. Q. What does it mean to you when people talk about bureaucratic constraints on teachers? A. Well, it depends on who the people are doing the talking. When teachers talk about bureaucratic constraints, I think sometimes they're just frustrated with the amount of students they have to deal with, the amount of paper work, and it just becomes sort of a frustration outlet blame them -- they did it to us kind of thing. I think at other levels, not the classroom level, I think a lot of people feel that bureaucratic or outside agencies have a lot more influence than they do. The classroom teacher has all the influence in the world and I don't see the bureaucratic -- I mean, I just pick and choose of what they do that can help me, that's what I like to go with, and if there are things that happen that are a hindrance to me, I try to find a way to work with that or within that system and still do what I think needs to be done, and I think we just give too much credit to the bureaucratic agencies when we say they impact us, they don't. I go in my classroom, shut the door, and do my thing with my kids and it's really on my shoulders whether or not they learn anything, so I don't feel real threatened by bureaucratic anything. Q. Can you tell me about a time that you did find a way around it and got away from the influence that you maybe felt they were trying to put on you? A. Well, I think -- right now we are probably getting an attempt at a lot of pressure over cultural awareness kind of thing, and our district had a suit over another school and we have to have one day a year in which we have a cultural awareness, all the teachers have to get together and have a speaker or something, and do something about cultural awareness, which annoys some people that we do that. I don't really worry about it because that sort of seems to me like that is something that we all need to be aware of and I have just tried to say, rather than fight that or be aggravated that we have to go sit through this or be paranoid that everything I do has to be multicultural, just try to heighten my awareness of students as real people and not think of it as well, we have a Jewish community or a Hispanic community, I need to say, this is probably good for me, I need to think of every child as being whoever they are, whatever their background is. So, a lot of people, I think, think that's just bureaucratic interference; we have to take a whole day, spend all that money, have all these teachers sit in an auditorium for half a day, hear all this stuff -- it all depends on how you look at that. You can go to that with an open mind and come back and say, okay, maybe it wasn't the most beneficial day but it will make me aware for the rest of the year that I have all kinds of students out there. So I think it's attitude, looking at things in a positive way and saying we wouldn't be doing this if there weren't some good reasons so figure out what it is. Q. You talked about the teachers sometimes feel bureaucratic constraints with paper work, and where does that paper work come from? A. It all depends. Special ed teachers have just all kinds of required paper work that has to be done. Regular classroom teachers, I think, we have the whole business of grades and attendance, in a really high tech system where that should all be -- it should be able to handle of that. I think a lot of other work forces would handle that mechanically some way. You end up at grade time doing all these computations and checking all these attendance figures, and I think people just feel frustrated that that isn't interaction with the children. Every hour that you spend on that kind of thing has no impact on learning, it's just time that it takes, on the weekends and your evenings. So, I don't know where all the paper work comes from but there's constantly somebody in the office, if it's not the principal that needs the information, it's the district or it's the union that wants, you know, do you like these ideas that they're going to propose? So mandated testing creates a lot of paper work and a lot of shuffling around of your schedule, do all the state tests on a certain day and everybody has to alter their schedule and do that. I guess it's a real variety of places that that comes from. Q. The last question I have duplicated on a card for you to look at. I would like to have you rank the following four activities according to the degree of control and discretion that you feel you're able to exercise. One would be the one you feel you have the most control, and four the least control. A. You can probably tell from talking to me that I feel I can pretty much do them all. I guess I would selection of teaching techniques as one, that's where I have the most control; probably discipline of students is the second most, D; A is probably the third; and C is probably the fourth. Q. Okay. And I have a short two question survey to close.