Interview Transcript
Janille: Have you ever felt that you have been viewed a certain way because you are an elementary teacher?
Ms. Talley: Yes….do you want me to elaborate? I think sometimes especially because I’m an early childhood teacher, so I was in kindergarten, I was viewed as somebody who played with the kids, or who did lots of painting and lots of art, or who did lots of things like that, even by other teachers sometimes. I had a teacher one time comment in the teacher’s lounge that she wished she could teach kindergarten because there were no standards and no testing. And obviously there’s no TAKS test, but she was misinformed about standards and I was about to jump in and defend myself and actually my principal jumped in and defended me and said something to the effect of ‘you must of lost your mind, they don’t know how to sit still, they don’t know how to raise their hand, all those behaviors you take for granted.” But yeah, I have definitely felt that and especially when you tack on the kindergarten part. And in fact the last teaching placement I had I moved to teach fifth grade solely, not solely I wanted to do it, I wanted a new challenge but a big determining factor for me was that I thought at that time I might be an elementary school principal. I didn’t think the faculty would by in to a teacher who had only taught kindergarten and first grade, and I thought especially in this time of accountability they would look at me and say ‘well that’s all well and good but you don’t know because you haven’t taught a TAKS tested subject.’ So that was a high motivator for me when I taught fifth grade science not only to do it really, really well but to…this is horrible to say maybe, I wanted the highest scores in the district, and I set out to get the highest scores in the district to prove that a kindergarten teacher…and comments like that did kind of trickle back to me like ‘I knew you were a good kindergarten teacher but I didn’t know you would be able to do fifth grade science’ so it’s just really interesting to me.
Janille: So do you have any idea why people, kind of value the upper grades more than the lower grades?
Ms. Talley: I don’t. I don’t know if it’s maybe because kindergarten does look different—the room looks different, the kids are small, sometimes we do crazy things like hundreds day, or sometimes we dress up like our favorite book character. But in my mind the teachers that I know who have had the most success at any level have been early childhood teachers, because early childhood teachers are really flexible and adaptable because five-year-olds don’t fit in rigid little molds, and that adaptability and flexibility is what serves me well as I continue to change grade levels even at the collegiate level. But I don’t know, I don’t know if they think it is just fun and cute, I don’t know….
Janille: Do you think it has more to do with what goes on in early childhood, or do you think it has to do with how people view children at that stage?
Ms. Talley: Oh that is a really good question. Umm…I think that’s a ‘both and.’ I think that we do view those children as young, and they’re the smallest ones on campus, and we do value, we do look at them and…but it may have a little more to do with what we do. The fact that it looks different than..(interruption where another teacher comes in)…because we have centers and we have literacy stations and we have tables instead of desks in rows, because we have math manipulatives instead of getting out a worksheet, or because we have an art easel in the back of the room, because maybe we have tables instead of desks. Interestingly though, that is part of my teaching philosophy, so I had tables in fifth grade. But maybe because it does look different, so the things we do look different, maybe that’s a little bit of the reason why.
Janille: Okay, how did, when you were teaching or now, how do you think your students and your parents viewed you, and was it ever difficult to win their respect?
Ms. Talley: I, it was difficult to win their respect when I was a beginning teacher, because I was younger than they were, even the kindergarten parents. So I do think those first two or three years when I literally probably still looked like a college student I did have to kind of prove myself and feel that a little more. I do feel like though, because parents seem to be more invested in school and in volunteering and things like that the younger their child is, that once we got over the fact that I looked very young, I felt like I was really successful with parents. If you love their children and you love what you do with the children that speaks volumes, so parents, I thought I had a really good relationship with parents I thought it was highly successful. In fact I think I got more respect from the parents of my kindergartners than probably anyone else, because if you even just walked into the classroom for a few minutes and saw all we were doing and all the kindergartners were achieving and all, I felt like they were more respectful than the norm. So, I really just think it was that ‘young thing’ at the beginning, I never really thought that parents were just real disrespectful to me in any way. But you could kind of see that questioning like ‘are you old enough to be left alone with these 22 children? ‘. But once I got in the classroom and start doing it, I think my passion for the kids and for the job and for the teaching really shined through. I would say that I’m fairly—not fairly—I’m very successful with parents, because if you love their kids they’re going to love you.
Janille: So when you were talking about, they have more respect for you than ‘the norm’, you kind of mentioned how other teachers maybe didn’t take you seriously because you taught kindergarten, but what about people outside the education community, when they heard you were a teacher of young children?
Ms. Talley: It’s mixed. Some people –and I wonder if it has to do with their experience with school—if I’m on vacation somewhere or I’m in the airport and someone asks me what I do I seem to get “Oh wow, that’s a great job and I could never do it, those kids would drive me crazy.” Or “Oh must be nice to get the three months off.” But I tend to get more of the really positive so that causes me to really question sometimes these negative portrayals, I wonder how much of that the media drives. Because really, probably 95% of the people I meet, I get a really positive reaction about how important that job is or “oh I could never do that” or “Oh my child’s kindergarten teacher was so instrumental.” The people I meet in life are really pretty respectful, and think positively. That’s not what we get in the media always so I wonder about that.
Janille: Shows geared for children, often shows on the Disney channel, portray adults, including teachers as being crazy people, do you have any idea why that might be?
Ms. Talley: Is it crazy like eccentric, like Mrs. Frizzle crazy?
Janille: Like dumb.
Ms. Talley: Like dingy, like dumb, like the whole Saved By the Bell, which I know that dates me. I don’t know if it’s part of that whole…like if we look at children’s literature a lot of times, like even the Harry Potter books adults sometimes are duped or tricked by the child character, so I don’t know if that’s latching in to the childhood fantasy that ‘I want to be smarter than the adults, or in my own pretend world we could exist without them’. But I do think it hurts the stereotype or the perception of teachers, so I would hope that that is just their way of suspending reality for children , I would hope that the programmers don’t actually think that’s the way teachers are. But I don’t know if that’s the way it really is, I do think it hurts though, and I do think children mimic what they see. So if they’re seeing that on TV…And I’ve been thinking a lot, because I knew what we were going to be talking about, and it’s interesting that you said all the movies that are inspirational are all about High School, the only the books I can think of that are inspirational about teachers are about elementary school. So I think it’s interesting how one medium kind of treats----because most picture books, if they have to do with teachers, most picture books have a really positive spin on teachers. I don’t know if that’s because the author loved school or what. But it’s hard for me to think of a negative example of a teacher in a picture book. Except for maybe The Art Lesson by Tomie DePaola.
Janille: Do you think that people view childhood as a less important stage of life than maybe adulthood or adolescence?
Ms. Talley: I do. Unfortunately. I think we pay lip service to the value of childhood in our country, but I don’t think we pay any real attention to it. I think we spend all of children’s childhood preparing them to be an adult instead of reveling and enjoying the fact that they are a child. Everything I think is geared that way, schools, sports, anything that they could become involved in. Unfortunately, I think we have period times where we say you don’t have to show these adult behaviors until middle school, or until fifth grade and I think the times are getting compressed. So I’ve got five-year-olds in kindergarten who are expected to do adult things, whether it’s take care of siblings or manage a busy schedule. I think we really don’t value childhood.
Janille: Do you have any ideas of why it’s not valued as much?
Ms. Talley: Oh this is a horrible thing to say, but I almost wonder sometimes if it’s because it is seen as an inconvenience. And I don’t know that people would say that, but we are living in a society now where time feels like it is of the essence. We feel like we have to do everything fast, we want instant gratification. I want instant information, I want to buy my movie tickets instantly off of my phone, I want to be able to communicate constantly—and childhood takes time. And to allow children to grow and develop takes time and there’s really no replacement for that. So I think in all our flurry we have—it’s inconvenient. I don’t like that answer, but unfortunately I think it might be true. I also think we have mistakenly placed more value on things opposed to time. So we think giving our children all the neatest, latest greatest is more important than giving them time with family or time spent to play. So the parent who puts their child in soccer one day, and piano the other day and something else the other days thinks that their child will have all these great experiences, but is that a little bit misguided because what the child really needs is just time to discover what thier interests are. That’s a tough question.
Janille: What value do you think our society places on education and teachers?
Ms. Talley: I think it depends on what part of society you look at. I think they would say they value both of those, that’s the rhetoric that is out there, but I don’t think in reality that’s accurate. Especially their perceptions toward educators. When you have presidential candidates saying things like John McCain when he was doing the presidential debate he said that we should just bring back the veterans from Iraq and put them in the classroom because they would be good teachers. That sends the signal that there is no skill to this or no strategy to this. A lot of corporations are going in and taking over schools and doing reform, that sends the signal that the business model that works so well in business is going to work well with children. So I think they would say they value that, but I don’t think their actions follow through, it’s just like any other lesson and what we know because we are educators, the words that are coming out of your mouth aren’t near as important as the actions that are following that. So they can say that, but I don’t think as a whole our country’s actions say that. You can get alternatively certified now, online. And again that just plays into this perception that anybody with a good head on their shoulders can go into the classroom and teach. And I’m just not real sure about that.
Janille: When I was looking at movies where teachers are portrayed in a really good light and that are inspirational, they were kind of inspirational more because of the relationship they had with the students than the academics. I know the relationship is important, but do you think that maybe people are not so concerned with sometimes the academic part of school? Are they less concerned with whether or not students are actually learning or are they concerned with just getting the grades to make sure their child can succeed later in life?
Ms. Talley: I think that probably is true. And we’ve even experienced some of that here in Program as we’ve tried to raise the standards in Program. Parents become very concerned that—I think there are a lot of parents at every level that would rather their child get an A even if that A doesn’t represent a lot of hard work, than to have a C that represents a lot of hard work. And so, I also wonder if those movies and shows have inadvertently sent the signal that pedagogy, academics isn’t important. And that perpetuates that myth that as long as you love kids, as long as you can really build a relationship with kids, you can be a good teacher. Well, that’s not necessarily true. It’s both. I do think the relationship is the gateway into the teaching that needs to happen, but if I stop there I’m not being a good steward of my talent and I’m not doing the kids any favors. I do think parents and everyone suffers in education because everyone feels like they’re an expert in education because everyone went to school. So people expect school to look the same as it did when they were in school. School doesn’t look the same and should not look the same as it did fifty years ago, but we’re still being compared to that model. I think it’s part of our American culture, you know second place is first loser and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. We have this culture where winning is the key, and that educationally doesn’t set us up for a good paradigm or a good equation. I also think, again everyone is and education expert. It’s interesting to me we have all this policy coming out on education right now and none of it comes from educators. We say we have all these problems in schools and all this school reform, the literature is pretty clear and has been pretty consistent for the last 30-40 years. Researchers do know what works in schools, but nobody is listening to them. I don’t know if that’s because they’re not perceived as having the power. But people say “we have problems with kids reading,” well we can tell you exactly what to do with that. But none of the people with the real power are talking to the people with the information. I think again, it may come back to that time thing. To do what needs to be done in schools is going to take time and it would be expensive. There is no doubt, absolutely no doubt, that we could do it. But I don’t think it’s a priority.
Janille: How do you think the way people view elementary teachers affects the big picture?
Ms. Talley: Well I think, because we are getting children from everyone’s homes, and that is the wonderful thing about American education we educate everyone, our doors are open. That means that everyone comes in with this perception that is either reinforced at home or that they have seen in pop culture. That perception, good or bad, is either reinforced or negated at home. Everyone comes in with an idea of what ‘teacher’ means. Every family, every child has this perception of what teacher is, and that plays into how they come to school and how they interact with that teacher. Some teachers reinforce instantly any negative stereotype you have. I think one of the keys is for teachers to really start viewing themselves as professionals and start acting like professionals. And to view themselves as advocates and act like advocates. Teaching the children is my primary job, but the longer I’m in education I realize my voice has to be used to educate everyone about teaching parents, administrators, other professionals, policy makers and I have to take that job seriously because if I want to redefine that definition of ‘teacher’ I want to redefine it. I don’t want the media to redefine it, I don’t want the policy makers to redefine it, I want to redefine it. The only way to do that is to go to work every day, be extremely professional about what I do and be professional in all my interactions, and then advocate for that same professionalism across the board.
