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Our Teacher
Research: Past & Present
Helping
all students achieve higher standards
Who Knows Our Children?
by Mark
Grashow, Abraham
Lincoln High School, New York, NY. E-mail
Mark.
It will come as a surprise to no
one that attending high school can be a pretty
devastating experience. Instead of being a place that promotes self-discovery
and personal growth, high school may promote loneliness, humiliation and
failure. It is a place that, in spite of a well-intentioned staff, may fail
to deal with many of its students' personal issues. With today's increasing
focus on academic achievement and high testing results, the problem is compounded.
Last year, I taught my final
year in a well-respected, academic public high
school in Brooklyn that
I had been at since 1967. Throughout my career,
I had always been concerned about the health
and welfare of my students. While teaching, I
was constantly surveying my kids informally,
asking them questions like "Did you have dinner
with your parents last night?" and having only
a small number of kids tell me that they actually
ate a meal with at least one parent.
After years of this questioning, I decided to
do a more formal survey at the end of the year.
I gave out 250 copies of a comprehensive survey
to a sampling of the study body. The survey was
made up of questions divided into six sections:
background, self-image, family relationships,
teachers and school, social framework and time.
At the time of this survey, thirty-five percent
of our 2,500-student population was foreign born
and spoke over 40 different languages. More than
500 of our students were born in the former Soviet
Union. I distributed them to students in my math
classes, my community service club and my Rainbow
Alliance Club, and I also handed out surveys
to students during their lunch period and in
classrooms covered by substitutes. All the surveys
were done anonymously. To emphasize the anonymity,
I collected the surveys randomly and shuffling
the stack of completed surveys in front of the
students to underscore the seriousness of the
survey and encourage students to be as honest
as possible. All the students returned the surveys
I distributed, and I only discarded fifteen because
they were either incomplete or not done seriously.
Background and Family
To begin, I asked a series of background questions that dealt with their ethnicity,
home life, family income and daily routine. I asked about meals to see how
nutritiously the students were eating. In particular, I included questions
about dinner since it is an example of a time that families may traditionally
spend together in the home.
A majority of the students
skip at least one meal; 55% do not eating breakfast
and 25% do
not eat lunch. Students also wrote about not
eating nutritious foods during various meals.
Dinner is rarely a family affair, with 64% eating dinner with their family
less than three times per week and 16% never eating dinner with their family.
Forty-one percent do not eat dinner with a parent present. A quarter of the
students eat dinner in their own room. Ten percent make their own dinner.
Other students expressed
a heightened sense of responsibility and trauma
inside the home.
One student said, "My mother is an alcoholic.
My father is verbally abusive. I put everyone
before myself."
Self-Image
In another section, students had to rate their self-image in categories such
as happiness, popularity, attractiveness, friendships, social skills and school
performance. A number of students appear to have a positive self-image. Seventy-one
percent believe they are talented. Ninety-four percent think they are a good
friend, and 85% think they are reliable.
However, there are many students who also have a negative self-image. Eleven
percent of the students classify themselves as unhappy, 12% classify themselves
as unpopular and 10% think they are unattractive.
Time
When I asked students how they spent their time outside of school, the majority
of the students spent their time working, watching television, talking on the
phone, hanging out with friends or using the computer. Forty-two percent of
the students have part-time jobs. Some hold these jobs because their families
need the income, while others work so they can buy extras like CDs and clothes.
Nearly half of the students watch two to three hours of television per night,
and 43% spend one to two hours on a computer per night.
A majority of students said they spent time interacting with friends outside
of school. Fifty-eight percent spend at least three hours per day with their
friends, and 48% spend more than two hours on the phone per night.
Teachers and School
When questioned about teachers and school, there were many areas where students
expressed unhappiness or dissatisfaction, although most students believed
that school was an important part of life. Students frequently expressed
feelings of loneliness, animosity, and a lack of connection with the faculty
in their responses. Three-quarters of the students surveyed believe school
is important. However, 40% of the students - nearly half! - dislike or hate
going to school.
There seems to be a feeling
among students that teachers do not or cannot
take the time to really
know the students. Forty-two percent feel that
no teacher knows them well, and 41% feel that
teachers do not have the opportunity to know
them well. Forty-five percent feel that they
do not have the opportunity to know teachers
well. An even larger number, 69%, feel their
guidance counselor does not know them well. In
our school, the student to guidance counselor
ratio is 400 to one.
Social Framework
Beyond school, friends make up large portion of a high school student's life.
I asked about each student's social framework in the survey, including how
they met their friends. In a crisis, only 29% would seek out their closest
teacher, instead most students would seek out a friend. However, some students
wrote about not having close friends or even anyone to turn to inside of outside
school during hard times.
One student said, "I have a bad family life,
no close friends and in case of something serious,
I have almost no one to turn to." Another student
said, "I'm a lonely secretive person that shows
another face in school." One particularly upsetting
comment was, "You should know that kids like
me that keep to themselves should be the people
you are concerned with."
While some students may participate
in extra curricular activities, 44% have made
no friends
through these activities. Not one student said
they met their best friend through extra curricular
activities.
My Reaction
To say the least, I found the results of my survey quite disturbing. I am haunted
by a concern for the students who refused to take the survey. I wonder if
their lives are even more problematic than those answering the questions.
The results of this survey should raise issues for every high school teacher
and administrator across this country, because the survival issues faced
by my students on a daily basis are the very same issues faced by all students.
My research shows schools and its staff all too often fail to create a forum
that enables a student to properly deal with the myriad of personal problems
that they cannot escape from at school. I believe faculty may position themselves
so that they are never really able to develop the full potential of their
student body because they simply do not know them well enough. To do more
may be beyond their existing capabilities. There seems to be a huge disconnection
between student and staff, and the consequences of this are enormous and
the implications far-reaching.
Therefore, with this in mind, I formulated a
series of questions that educators, parents and
the public must begin to come to terms with so
we can find the answers:
Who is taking the responsibility for the
social development of our children?
Whose job is it to teach having respect for oneself? Who teaches pride? Leadership? Self-empowerment?
Community activism? Is it the teacher who carries a register of 150 students
and struggles to complete an already over packed syllabus? Or is it the guidance
counselor who must see and program 400 students a term? Is it the parent who
often spends less than an hour a day with their children? If the answer is
none of the above, then where does the responsibility fall? Someone needs to
take responsibility for the development of our children.
If a student's strongest bond is with his
or her friends, then what is the school's responsibility
in building positive peer support groups?
Whether the support group takes the form of
a team, a special class, a club or an after
school activity, schools should encourage or
even require all students
to join at least one group. A school's educational policy could include even
character-building activities within a designated support group. The driving
policy of a school should be that every child is known and supported by some
structured group.
Do students have someone to turn to in a time of crisis?
Are we providing adequate safety nets for troubled students? Schools may compound
a student's problems by not learning about and dealing with the student's environment
outside school. Sometimes we give children zeros for not doing their homework
without finding out what happened at home the night before. If students do
not really feel connected to a teacher or guidance counselor, where do they
turn? They need somewhere to turn, and teachers and schools can be the place
if they felt a connection.
If students are not eating properly, what do we do about it?
Adult problems of diabetes and osteoporosis begin in childhood. Is a can of
soda and a bag of chips really an acceptable breakfast? We saw that many children
do not even eat breakfast or sometimes lunch. Although it may seem difficult
to monitor a teenager's eating habits, it may be the school's job to say that
such a diet is not acceptable.
If a student does not have any real relationship with a parent, then what
is the school's role in helping to build or rebuild that relationship?
Does a school have responsibility in clarifying the role and responsibilities
that a parent of a school-aged child has? Is it a school's responsibility to
find a way to get a parent to read to a young child? To help them study? Schools
could be organizing support groups for parent. As educators, we cannot assume
that all parents intuitively know how to monitor homework. It may be necessary
for schools to create a forum where parents and students can hold a meaningful
discussion.
Should making better use of a student's time after school be a part of a
school's educational plan?
Our students spend too much time watching TV, telephoning and being on-line.
This is not okay; there better choices to be made. However, whose job is it
to open our students up to other options and expand their range of activities?
Schools can provide other options, but can they force students to participate?
Students spend too much time doing activities like working outside of school
that drain them and affect their education.
Why do so many of our students work?
In many European and Asian societies it is unusual for a child to work. There
seems to be a great need among American students to work. However, what are
the true consequences on their academic and social development? Many times
it may best interest of an over-extended student to quit a job but no one ever
intervenes, and then the child and his or her education suffer.
Conclusion
Teachers and other school staff often view their students through a very small
window. A teacher can like a particular class or student and feel good about
their relationship, but the relationships may be an illusion. A good teacher,
at best, may know a few students well, but the rest remain unknown beyond their
academic performance. To think that it is enough that math teachers teach math
and history teachers teach history is an incredible disservice to our children.
Students need a lot more - they deserve a lot more.
Seventy-six percent of the surveyed students think school is important. Yet
40% dislike or hate going to school. Can we turn our back to these statistics?
Can we take the risk and not ask the question, "Why students do not like being
in school?" Ask the teachers of Columbine High School.
It should be the right of every student to be
known. It should be the right of every student
to be part of a group that builds their self-esteem
and makes them feel important. It should be the
right of every student to go to a school that
nurtures them and makes them feel whole. It is
my belief that the delivery of these rights is
the most important responsibility that a school
has today, and yet these rights do not exist
in many schools. America is obsessed with raising
standards. Maybe it should be obsessed with raising
people.
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