By Larry Grau, DFER Indiana State Director
My sister Jan, who was a teacher for over 30 years, died suddenly two years ago. There isn’t a day that goes by I don’t think about her and she has been on my mind even more lately, especially with yesterday being World Teachers’ Day. With the emphasis we are finally giving to teaching and how important it is for all students to have effective teachers, I cannot help but turn my thoughts to Jan. She spent most of her career teaching special education in traditional public middle schools. We occasionally discussed education policy when we got together and it would be interesting to hear what she thought of the changes being considered and enacted across the country this year. From our conversations, I am confident Jan would be thrilled to know the profession to which she dedicated so much time and energy has begun – at last – to recognize, value, and reward truly effective teachers like her.
Jan would have never been concerned about being evaluated, nor would she have argued that using students’ test scores to at least partly determine how well she was doing was unfair. And, she would have thought it ridiculous to believe we cannot educate poor children until we end poverty. She taught in schools where a majority of her students were not only in the free lunch program, they also were trying to overcome years of educational neglect, dealing with a variety of family crises, and having been labeled with any number of learning disabilities. She didn’t worry or concern herself with any of the complaints we so often hear today from the people defending the status quo in education because she was focused on doing what she had to in order for her students to grow academically and as people. Jan was fair, compassionate, and yet demanded a lot from her students; and she did not lower her expectations for poor and minority kids.
Ironically, even though Jan gladly paid her dues to be a member of the teachers’ unions where she taught, she wound up teaching in a private school after the laws those unions fought to put in place caused her to be shutout of the traditional public schools. After taking a few years off when my two nephews were born, no traditional public school near where Jan lived would hire her because her salary would have been set “too high” on the mandatory pay schedule for teachers. So, a nearby private school was the beneficiary of the inflexibility and backward policies dictating hiring, retention, and compensation decisions in the public school system. While she enjoyed working in a private school, she often told me, she would have preferred to be in a public school classroom where she felt her talents were more needed.