Former Teacher Reflections

After having nearly a year to reflect on my experience in the 2008-2009 school year, I'm struck by several policies or actions that truly need to be altered.

The use of recess deprivation as punishment seems entirely counterproductive. I know we have discussed this in the past and that many teachers see few other ways to punish the kids, but come on, we are clearly punishing ourselves when we do this. People, at least from the ages of about 1 to 70, need a certain amount of physical activity each day in order to become focused enough to think and absorb new information. I'm sure you can find plenty of statistics that support this. When kids miss P.E. or recess or don't even get to have either (I seem to recall that HRA did not have recess for middle school kids), just like adults, they will be infinitely less productive and capable of learning. This is not just with the ability to learn new academic material, but with how they will learn to cope with emotional stress for the rest of their lives. Teachers should not allow students to participate in other fun, creative classroom activities if they fail to comply with the rules i.e. science projects/experiments rather than deprive them of a necessary physical and mental out that is recess.

This might be an easy one, as I am now working to supply healthy foods to private schools, but our public school meal plans often seem atrocious. The outdated dietary guidelines that most plans follow hardly force the schools or companies to provide natural or truly nutritious items. A great deal of the food that I saw served last year did not even resemble actual food and I can't tell you how many times the kids just dumped it in the trash, but I'm sure you have all seen it. This issue aligns with my first problem, as it is a physical, nutritional deficiency that people often do not realize to be so powerful in the ability to help children learn and retain new information. I recently read an article in TIME about a post Teach for America program direction who is helping to form a catering company that provides healthy, fresh food to lower income areas. Seems like a fantastic idea, though I don't know how exactly she turns a profit or how the schools pay for it.

Well trained, more available counselors for the students is a must. Dealing with one of my students, who shall go unnamed here, had difficulty with the help of a consistent, reliable counselor. Initially, we had a counselor who seemed not only unable to connect with the children, but was also out of the building so often that she had little effect on my student. He never felt able to trust her and thus, whenever I was completely unable to take time to talk to him (i.e. my aide was absent and I needed to move the other children forward in a lesson), he would have a tantrum and have to be sent to the office because the counselor was out. People in the office are tending to other things and rarely have the time or ability to handle temper tantrums. Thus, issues were never fully resolved.

We know that data implementation and use is essential to a successful classroom. Frequently, testing and maintaining awareness of your students' learning levels is necessary to moving forward. More methods of doing this should be rigorously taught to teachers.

-Former DC Public Schools Teacher