TEACHER INTERVIEW
Sunset School
June 21, 1992
A. and, you know, I have some guesses about it and, of course,
have read about it, and that is where I got the question
about private school teachers having greater autonomy, than
public school. But I'm not sure if that is really the case.
R. It's interesting, I imagine it depends on what we're talking
about, as to where the autonomy might be greater.
A. And also, I selected high schools that would have a student
population of, at least a good part of it, that might be
similar to a private school population.
Q. Did you happen to talk with a teacher by the name of XXX
down in St. Johns, or have you not be down there
yet?
A. Not yet. I've just talked to the Headmaster and that
probably be the end of May.
R. O.K. If you get the opportunity, XXX is a wonderful
guy. He teaches, he does the advanced placement workshops
in English for the College Board. Is very knowledgeable;
very articulate person. Very likeable, so if you are
interviewing people, you know.
A. I'll watch for his name.
Q. Can you tell me about an incident that happened to you or
someone you know in which your work life was influenced or
shaped by your principal and by your work life, it may be an
example from a selection of curriculum materials, what you
teach, how you teach, behavioral problems, how your classes
are scheduled.
A. I may want to think about it for a second, if you don't
____.
Q. O.k. This thing goes an hour.
A. O.k. Some thing that comes to mind, simply because we've
been working on master's schedule is that my schedule as a
supervisor in the department is determined, by some extent,
by how many staff I supervise. When I have anywhere from 3
to 14.9 teachers, I have one supervision period; when I have
15 or above, I have two supervision periods. And last year,
I'm sorry, the year before last, when my staffing was being
developed, I was given 14.9 teachers in an effort to avoid
giving me an additional supervision period. It certainly
shapes my life in this respect that I spend a lot of extra
hours here at school and has an impact on it, that is just
one that comes to mind because I've been working with the
master's schedule just this morning.,
Let me think of something that might be a little bit better.
If you can give me a little rephrasing it might help me to -
.
Q. O.k. Can you tell me about an incident in which you felt
the influence of your principal?
A. Oh, let me give a more recent one. Just last weekend I
conducted a camp for my calculus students, we call it
Calculus Camp, and the purpose was to help kids prepare for
the advanced placement exam. I had arranged to go up with
30 students to NNN Mountain and to just go through
advanced placement materials with them for the weekend. My
principal elected to come along with me; spent the weekend,
examined everything, and decided that the camp was
worthwhile enough that he would lend it his financial
support for the coming year and expand it to include other
advance placement programs. So, a very recent situation
because we just did that. O.k.
Q. All right. Now staying along those lines, can you tell me
about an incident in which your work life was influenced by
the superintendent?
A. The superintendent. I would assume you mean in a direct and
personal way.
Q. Maybe a policy that came from the superintendent that
directly affects you and how you work in the classroom.
A. O.k. Let me think, this is rather difficult because, to be
honest, and again, let me clarify again, this could be from
the superintendent's office or from the assistant
superintendents as well, or do you think the
superintendent --
Q. If you could identify, which, where it came from.
A. O.k. Yes, the Assistant Superintendent for Educational
Services, at the beginning of this year, decided on an
allocation plan for Title II, the Eisenhower Grant sponsor
for Math and Science Education, which would equalize the
allocation to each school. Prior to that, the money was on
an application basis, if you had the need and you had a
justifiable program, you could apply it. Severely limited
my access to funds for certain things that I do. For
example, this camp that I told you about, for educational
travel, going to the National Council for Teacher's
Mathematics meetings, and so on. So it did, in a
professional growth sense, influence it. I'll give you
second example again with respect to the same Assistant
Superintendent for Educational Services, we had adopted a
program for general math classes called Math III Math. We
were unhappy with the program. After two years I appealed
to the Asst. Supt. to release us funds to buy supplementary
textbooks. He released them and released us from the
obligation to use the Math III Math program as a primary
instructional program, and it really effected, at least my
staff members, were pretty directly, and pretty
traumatically because they felt a great deal more confidence
with the supplementary materials.
Q. O.k. With the Title II funds, it was equalized across the
board?
A. Across the district. In other words, every school got a
$1000, or something like that. I had been using quite a bit
of money because I had quite a few projects going on. So
his decision effectively cut my access to funds and it had
an effect, it had a negative effect on these things that we
couldn't do.
Q. An then, what's the trade-off? I mean, why does the
District get Title II funds?
A. They are federal funds and they are on a per pupil basis and
they are simply to promote math and science education.
Q. Because I'm interested in private schools, private schools
aren't eligible for that?
A. I think they may very well be. I think the Title II funds
are across the board, but I can't say for absolutely
certain.
Q. Do you have to have low-income students?
A. No, not at all.
Q. Just if you have the science or math?
A. Right. So they're really -- they are really given virtually
indiscriminately to promote performance in math and science.
Q. And how is that evaluated? Somebody come and see how the
funds are used?
A. Actually, the district accounts for its expenditures. I
don't need account other than through the sake of saying "I
want, I'm applying for this much money because I want to do
this with it." And once the district approves of my
expenditure of the money, my accountability to the district,
you know, is virtually complete unless they ask me to file a
report, or a do an in-service after that, which occasionally
occurs. I believe that the district then has to account for
its expenditure of the funds, how it dispersed it and to
whom and for what purpose.
Q. O.k. Can you tell me about an incident in which your work
life was influenced or shaped by the school board?
A. I'm sure I could. Do people have trouble thinking of these
incidents when they're being asked?
Q. Yes.
A. Because I'm having some trouble with that. School Board has
made so many decisions that have influenced me in a direct
way. I suppose the most logical would be each time the
School Board votes on or validates our contracts, and the
terms of our contracts, and it is hard for me to be specific
but there are certainly terms in our bargaining agreement
that affect my work life as far as staffing is concerned.
For example, the School Board has proposed this year to
increase, rather to decrease staffing by 4% in the high
schools. It certainly is bound to effect my professional
life as a teacher because it effects the size of the classes
that I will be teaching. It also effects me as a supervisor
because it effects the way I allocate sections to teachers.
I have to live within a maximum daily contact and balance
that with the size of classes the teachers might have, so I
expect it will have a fairly profound impact, even though 4%
does not sound like a lot, it amounts to probably 1 1/2 more
students per class When you have some really close
restraints such as we do, teachers cannot teach more than
160 students per day and cannot teach more than 38 in any
given class. Those constraints start to get pressed a little
bit further by the staff.
Q. Whose constraints are those?
A. The School Board.
Q. Not a teacher's association?
A. No, well it's in agreement with the teacher's association.
So, in other words, part of our contractual agreement.
Q. So that constraint is developed by both.
A. Right, right. So it's an agreement of employment. But when
our staffing changes, of course, the ability to meet that
condition of employment is stretched.
Q. So what happens?
A. Well, we have enough staff to meet the 160 maximum, the 38
per class maximum, if everything works really well. That
is, if everybody's classes tend to average about 32
throughout the day, but you know how it goes, you have a
class that is subscribed to by 22 kids. Well you, there is
a lot that you want to offer that section, somehow you are
going to have to pay for that by offering a section that is
considerably larger. So, we're crossing our fingers hoping
that the schedule will allow us to comply with the
bargaining agreement and then offer the classes we feel we
need to --.
Q. Has there ever been a time where you have come up against
the wall?
A. No.
Q. You've always made it?
A. We've always made it and when, I could say that on a few
cases maybe somewhere in the school we've had an unsolvable
problem, if the Personnel Department decides that the
problem is unsolvable, or agrees that it is unsolvable,
they'll allocate an additional section. So they're fairly
flexible in this respect.
Q. The next one deals with department chair. Maybe you could
tell me what your influence is on the people with whom you
work, because you are not influenced by a department chair.
A. Right, right. I talk to myself sometimes, but I rarely
listen. I suppose my influence has been, are we talking
about an incident or general --.
Q. As far as your job and what you do. Your role and
responsibilities.
A. My perceived role as the department chair is to be a
curriculum leader. Also, to be an ombudsman for the
department members with the administration. So, in one
respect I'm acting on my staff itself in terms of trying to
change or to broaden what they do in curriculum. In another
I'm trying to work on the administration to provide me more
funds, to give me more staff, to allow me to do more things.
Q. And do you assign the sections to the teachers?
A. I assign the sections to the teachers, right. And so, I
think probably my primary impact would be in the curriculum
area in terms of, I'm also the evaluator for the teachers in
my department, so I do have some impact on the way they
teach, what they teach in respect of selection of textbooks.
They are all equal partners in it, but I do try to exert
some leadership, some direction as to how they work.
Q. They would feel your influence.
A. They would feel it, yeah.
Q. Can you tell me about a time in which that influence comes
to mind in any of those areas that you described to me?
A. Yah. I'm sure I could. There are a lot of practices in
just structural practices, that are things that have
developed from my sharing with teachers and idea to, an idea
for checking homework, an idea for keeping grades, an idea
for bringing -- using student volunteers at the board, etc.
etc. And, you know, I mean each of those I'd go into a
specific, I guess, if you'd like. But, one of the
interesting things I've noticed, not with any intent, I have
16 teachers in my department. Of those, I believe that
probably at least 12 that I could verify use a grading
system that is almost identical to mine. They have assigned
5 points everyday for homework assignments, their
inquisitive (?) tests run from 30 to 100 points and these
are designs that I used initially when I came to the school,
and they use student volunteers for board work in exactly
the same way. They give them a point every time they go to
the board. And their records look exactly like mine. It's
funny sometimes looking at what they do. So that is
certainly a practice that has sort of exerted itself, not
through design which is --.
Q. O.k. Can you think of an incident in which you felt your
work life was influenced or shaped by state or federal
programs? Regulations, mandates?
A. Yes, very definitely. Most recently probably the Arizona
Student Assessment Program and although it hasn't influenced
my classroom in a very direct way. It hasn't determined how
I'm going to teach or what I'm going to teach. It has
certainly influenced me in a professional way because
frankly, I worry about the ASAP guidelines. I think it's a
poorly constructed assessment program and I'm concerned
about the potential impact. So members of my staff have
expressed it, but it has influenced me, not in terms of my
teaching, I guess, but in terms of my position on policies
regarding assessments. And I expressed this at the district
level and the school level, that I believe we are over
assessing the children. And I guess the real impact is yet
to come when the report cards, when the State report cards
come out, but --.
Q. What are you concerned about?
A. I'm actually concerned about whether the assessments are
valid. One area I can point to is, I had a sample package
of assessments which are based on the state curriculum in
mathematics. Forty percent of the assessments had to do
with statistics and data analysis, which reflects probably
less than 2% of the state curriculum guidelines. So I
thought that it was really heavily out-of-whack in terms of
how reflective it is of how much time we spend in one area.
Q. Well, do you see making changes to meet the need for that
assessment?
A. You know, that's the stress. I really don't know if I would
make those changes unless somebody made it so uncomfortable
for me not to that I virtually had to. If funding was tied
to making such changes, then I probably would.
Q. What about if they are publishing report cards --
A. You know it going to influence what we do. I really believe
it will. It's going to change how -- now we may do it
cynically, but we'll probably satisfy the letter of the
assessment program, if not in spirit. You know. Yes, the
report card is a scary thing. Whether it's valid or not,
you know, we have a lot of indices for assessment of how our
kids are doing and a lot of them are very, very positive.
But, as you know, it takes one negative assessment to get
you to respect it. So yeah, it certainly does concern us.
Q. And you don't have a choice about participating in it.
A. You do not. You do not, and so it certainly is a
frightening specter. I'm really afraid of what the
assessments are because I don't think, as I said, I don't
think they're valid.
Q. Do they also need to take the, do the National Standardized
Testing?
A. They still do that, yes. We'll be doing that in the Fall of
the year and using it a diagnostic, prescriptive devise,
theoretically. Even though we register our students six
months before that and place them in classes in August,
we'll be using an October test and six weeks after that, I
guess we get the, they may test in September, sometime in
October we get the results, and we are being asked to use
the ITBS basically is what it is, as a --.
Q. Do you think the September of school will be spent preparing
for October's ITBS at all?
A. No. I expect that we will pretty much, as high schools have
always done, is pretty much let our kids take the ITBS cold.
Its not been a concern in a school like this, our freshmen
typically score about 12th grade, 5th month. So even the
9th graders are close to the ceiling of the test. The 10th
through 12th graders are all at the ceiling. So it's not
something we've concerned ourselves with being prepared for.
We do concern, we are concerned with being prepared for ASAP
not because we value them but because we fear the state's
influence on us.
Q. Are there any other questions? Are they distant?
Assessment ________?
A. No.
Q. Can you tell me about an incident in which your work place
was influenced or shaped by any legal or judicial judgement?
A. No, thank heavens. I, yeah I can, as a matter of fact and it
will go back a little ways, but approximately ten years ago
we had a superintendent in Paradise Valley by the name Jack
Harmon and his, he had an evaluation proposal at the time
that the bottom line of which was that 6% of staff members
in a school would be given early tenure for exceptional
performance and 16% would be released. The lowest 16% would
be released for low performance. It was called ranking and
we basically take every staff member, if you had 100 staff
members in a school, the top 6 got early tenure and even if
they weren't three year teachers or in their fourth
contract, and the bottom 16% would either be placed on
probation or dismissed. It was a really draconian kind of
evaluation system, it made no sense. At the time I was a
building representative in my school and so, we actually had
15 people who were on this list. We had a staff of about 95
and I needed to represent each and every one of them with
the principal to discuss the content of evaluation
___________________(?) and disputed a week afterward the
teacher's association went to court to ask for an injunction
against the evaluation system as being against state law.
State law requires that all evaluation systems and their
components (amicably/immediately?) involve staff members in
its development ______________? so the judges decision on
that radically changed the employment picture for a lot of
people in the school, and by connection my situation to
represent the teachers, is about as close as I get to
judicial ______________________? that I can, you know, other
than things we read about in the newspaper.
Q. Anything that constrains how you deal with children?
A. Nothing specific, no. Certainly legal opinions and, include
the federal law? Yeh. Federal law such as interpretation
of the viable/liable/Bible(?) or, have had a real impact on
how we deal with kids. Fible/viable for the special
education law, (?) generally and specifically impacts us
when we are dealing with kids who are either previously
diagnosed as special ed, previously diagnosed as handicapped
or the latest previously diagnosed or currently diagnosed,
as attention deficit disorder students, and it effects us in
a very serious, I think in a very negative way. If we have
a student who is diagnosed as ADD, there are certain very
strict requirements on modification of instruction to meet
the handicapping condition. In the context of a teacher,
especially other teachers in my department, I teach calculus
three periods a day. I don't see a lot of ADD students, but
I deal with a lot of those cases. If a teacher has 35 pre-
Algebra students, as many as 2 or 3 of them are ADD students
who require serious modifications in their program. For
example, we have to change the way we give information to
them, change the way we assess them and so on. The
constraints become pretty, its federal law, yeah.
It's just hitting now. It is one of those things that
starting to show up in the weekly magazine. "Does your
child have ADD?" Maybe so, and these are your rights.
Q. Tell me about an incident in which your work place was
influenced or shaped by parents or the community.
A. I'm sure I can. I've been dwelling on negative, let me
dwell on one that is positive. Yes, I can. Five years ago
in 1987, I applied for and won the Presidential Award for
Excellence in Mathematics Teaching. There is one wherein
each state each year and part of my application process was
to solicit letters of support from parents, community
members, and the letters that I received I felt were so
gratifying and so sincerely done, I think they had a strong
impact on the judgement of the committee in making its
decision. I feel like, you know, that parents have been
tremendous support in terms of professional things that I've
done, and that is but one example.
Q. In this particular school, how much influence do parents
have and how do they exert this influence, or how is it
felt?
A. I think they have a great deal of influence and most of it
is exerted through picking up the telephone and calling
teachers.
Q. Do they tend to call teachers directly or do they tend to go
to administration?
A. I would say the majority of the time they begin with
teachers. There are times when they begin with
administration if they feel they have a serious complaint
about a general condition. If they have a serious complaint
about a teacher, or if they have a complaint about a
teacher, let's say, they may call me. They may call the
teacher first or they may call the Assistant Principal. I
would say that probably in the course of a year, I would
field a half dozen telephone calls that have been referred,
that started with the Assistant Principal and they've been
referred to me. So, more often than I would like they want
to start at the top, but myself ______? fear, they do tend
to talk to the teacher first. And they do ________? they,
we respond to a complaint by trying to do something. Not
necessarily by doing the thing that they are asking, but by
recognizing the existence of the complaint _____________?
and needs to be addressed.
Q. When you make decisions about curriculum,
__________________? how you work with behavior problems, is
there in the back of your mind when you make these
decisions, do you, I mean it doesn't necessarily have to be
personally but faculty, how much attention is given to what
you know the parents are about?
A. I think so. I think that generally policy making decisions,
things having to do with behavior particularly, I think we
all think of, you know, the case of Mr. or Mrs. so-an-so and
how that person would deal with this policy if it were in
effect. Or, if we felt that a policy would result in a
rather large number of offenders. For example, every time
you would contemplate a tardy policy you're influencing a
fairly large number of kids, you know relative to drinking
on campus which happens once in a blue moon, I hope. You
know that you are going to get a lot of parental input on
it, and some of them positive but in some cases where the
consequences are severe, you are going to get a lot of
negative. I think we think of that when we are drafting
policies. Still and all, I have to say that we have a
fairly stringent policy on lateness and we have stood the
test on it. So, yeah I think it is at the back of our minds.
I think it is really a balance of the needs of the needs of
the classroom against what we anticipate the fall-out to be
to a strong policy. So, we don't back peddle, but I think
we're conscious of it.
Q. Can you tell me about an incident in which your work life
was influenced or shaped by a professional organization with
which you identify, or a teacher's association?
A. Yah, I'm sure I can. Personal/professional life. There are
two major organizations that I've worked with in my career.
One is the local teacher's association. The other is the
National Council of Teachers in Mathematics. I have begun
very interested in curriculum and instruction since I
attended my first NCTM convention, which was I guess back in
1986. Prior to that time, I was a teacher's association
person. As I said, I was a building representative, a
grievance rep and I tended to focus a lot on professional
rights and responsibilities. Much more so than on
curriculum, teaching, etc. and TGM(?) through its regional
meetings, through my membership on various committees and
state level, say Vice President of the state math
organization, has really changed my focus professionally
from being a rights and responsibilities person to being a
curriculum person.
Q. Can you tell me about an incident that happened to you in
which your work life was shaped or influenced by in-service
training or your own continued education?
A. Yes, about four years ago, I underwent a Tuesday training in
the essential elements of instruction, a Madelyn Hunter
program and although I'm not Hunterite to the fingertips, I
think it tremendously influenced the way I thought about my
own teaching and they way I observed other teachers when I
was in their classrooms. It gave me some guiding principles
that, although I guess I knew them in some form or another,
I hadn't crystallized into a system so certainly that
training was fairly significant for me in terms of assessing
what I do and assessing what others do.
Q. Can you tell me about an incident in which your work life
was influenced or shaped by the students?
A. Everyday. How do you nail that down?
Q. Perhaps how they, an incident to which they influenced the
way you taught or what you taught?
A. Yes, yes. I give my students an annual year assessment
every year. To give them an opportunity to feedback to me
what they like and what they didn't like, and somewhere
earlier in my career I had a lot of trust in students. I
would actually leave the room while they were taking a test,
go an take care of something and come back ten minutes
later, and one of my most memorable piece of feedback I ever
got from a student influenced the way I deal with kids in
testing assessment situations for the rest of my career was
that, I can almost remember the remark. "You have to
realize that when you leave the room you are asking students
to be dishonest." I don't leave the room ever anymore.
That was about ten years ago and it really changed my
perception of them. Not that I look at them as being
dishonest after that, but I looked at myself as being a
person who could shape their behaviors in positive ways if I
would take less for granted.
Q. Can you tell me about an incident in which your work life
was influenced or shaped by colleagues?
A. Again, I'd have to say a great deal. I'm drawing a blank on
that. If I can think about it for a while I'm sure I'll
come up with something, but I think there are a lot of
instances. I'm finding it very hard to dig in and find some
of these. You said that has been a common thing. My
colleagues. I have teacher in my department right now who
is probably one of the best teachers I have ever observed.
One of things I've noticed about her work and its something
that I've copied or try to copy, is that she is an extremely
warm person toward her students and at the same time, very
demanding. I think by watching her classes I've actually
been influenced and she has been in my department for twelve
years. I've been tremendously influenced by what I've seen
her do in terms of what I'd like to be able to do as
classroom teacher and that is to promote positive feeling
tones and still to have high standards, high expectations to
occasionally create some higher level of anxiety about
performance. It is unusual, but I note that her students
would, and I don't even know if this is constructive but it
was certainly fascinating to me, they were more concerned
about disappointing her with their work than they were about
being unsuccessful in their work. So I thought that was
rather interesting.
Q. Can you describe out of your own experience or that of
someone you know directly, a creative attempt made to
improve the classroom, teaching methods, the curriculum, or
student achievement that was thwarted or substantially
altered by any of these sources of influence?
A. I'm afraid I can't think of any attempt as being thwarted.
I've seen people attempt things and they were utter
failures, in their own right but I honestly can't think of
somebody trying to do something constructive, very positive,
and somebody came in and said no, you cannot do it.
Q. Can you describe for me a failed attempt by any of these
sources of influence to influence you that you resisted?
And what is the way you've been able to work around those
influences?
A. Yes. Again, this is slightly historical. I need to deal
with some things in recent years, but it is within the last
4 or 5 years. We had a director of curriculum in the
district who wanted very badly to change the way we dealt
with mathematic students and specifically his concern was
the failure rate in certain courses, especially in algebra
was unacceptably high and his proposal was to decrease
failure rates by changing the syllabus; by changing what we
do, and of course this is one we would love to mount the
barricades for, and I sidestepped it at this school in
particular, and it happened that the other schools in the
district did as well. By finding a creative way to enhance
student performance in a real sense, did something we called
the Algebra Homework Initiative. Every night, every day the
student did not perform or didn't finish their homework
assignment, they were given a ticket and required to stay
after school for a minimum of thirty minutes or until they
finished the homework assignment. It reduced our failure
rate in algebra by about 50% during the year that we did it.
It really sidestepped the issue of failure rate without
diluting the curriculum to accomplish it.
Q. What does it mean to you when people talk about bureaucratic
constraints on teachers?
A. Well, to me the most important constraints and the things
that I would be most concerned about would be constraints on
the content of what we teach, the style that we teach.
Bureaucracies within our district are, I think as far as
influencing what happens to me as a teacher, is almost non-
existent. My greatest concern is the bureaucracy of the
state education department, the state legislature, whatever
other arms are allied to them, as I said before, with the
assessment programs and with curriculum mandates, I am
really, really concerned with that. That's my. And I would
think that that's what people worry about more than anything
else. I suppose other districts have different structures
within their district, but for us we concern ourselves with
the legislature and the state department of education.
Q. This last question is the ranking and I'll also use the
question. I need to have you rank the four activities,
according to the degree of control and discretion you feel
you are able to exercise. It's kind of like a forced
choice. There has to be a 1, 2, 3, 4.
A. O.k. B is 1; A is 2; C is 3 and D is 4.
Q. And then, as a quick two question teacher survey.
A. O.k. Here.