less travelled
Teachers on the Path Less Travelled
teachers on the path
Cameron Semple
Cameron Semple
teachers on the Path less traVelleD
Cameron Semple
Dedication
To Sarah Gerlinger, for helping me get through middle school and continuing to be a huge inspiration in my life. To all the people whose education has left them feeling unworthy or dumb because the system didn’t work for them. I hope this shows that high school doesn’t define you and that things can get better.
Previous Page Statue of grizzly bear at Gardner Bullis Elementary School iii
iv
Acknowledgements
To Sarah Gerlinger for allowing me to share her story. To Katie Hurst for meeting with me on a Saturday when she doesn’t live in the area. To Natalie Axley for letting me stay in her classroom for much longer than intended. To Ms. P for not giving up on design in the last week of this book. To Mr. Greco for being patient with me throughout the writing process
Previous Page Calendar for induction program at LASD office v
Table of
Preface
Introduction
Don’t be embarrassed of your past
Stay persistent
Follow your own pace
Conclusion
Works Cited vi
Contents
. . . . 9
. . . . 11
. . . . 15
. . . . 21
. . . . 27
. . . . 30
. . . . 33 vii
Preface
E
ducation, especially Special Education (SPED), has always been a prominent theme throughout my life. My mother has worked in the Los Altos School District for the last decade as both a teacher’s aide and a SPED teacher for multiple schools within the district. I have been in several different SPED classes throughout my education and I am lucky enough to have multiple people in my life that reinforced the idea that high school isn’t the be-all, end-all path to adulthood; I can struggle throughout school and it won’t dictate my future. However, for many kids, they are completely immersed in the idea that if you don’t graduate from high school having taken all AP classes and passed with straight A’s, you can forget about college or having a decent future. In this vain, kids with a disability, physical or mental, can seem condemned to life of failure. I chose to write about teachers who struggled throughout their educational histories for several different reasons: to show that you can struggle in school and still be successful; to challenge the idea that all teachers have had the same straight A path through school; and that there are people out there fighting to improve our flawed educational system without discounting it.
Previous Page; Playground at Covington Elementary School 9
introDuction
I
magine that you are 16 years old. You are completely overwhelmed to the point where you can’t even start an assignment without feeling like you are about to break down. Your teachers give you advice which they believe to be helpful, but in reality sends you down a spiral of further confusion; their good intentions cause you to feel like you just want to give up. This isn’t worth sacrificing your mental health. You are completely lost and no one seems to know what to do, but they make sure to tell you that you just need to do it. They tell you that you will be able to complete everything on time, even though you know that, maybe, actually, you won’t. Because you are tired. Because you have been working on this assignment at every possible moment for the last two weeks and you are burnt out. Because you get no break between this and the next assignment. Because you have five other classes that all require your full attention towards whatever those teachers think are most important. This is what it feels like to be a student with anxiety. In this documentary, there are profiles of three teachers who struggled to complete their education for a variety of reasons. Each of their stories are different, but their personal journeys to become teachers have one thing in common: their experiences have made them more empathetic educators. Sarah Gerlinger is a New Teacher Mentor for the Los Altos School District. She has worked in schools around the Bay Area for thirteen years, ten of which she taught in the classroom. Katie Hurst is the second New Teacher Mentor for the Los Altos School District. She has taught in the classroom for ten years. Natalie Axley is a fourth grade teacher at Gardner Bullis Elementary in Los Altos, CA. She has worked in the district for three years and taught outdoor education for two years. These teachers’ educational paths affect how they support their students today. But how?
Previous Page; Flags on fence at Covington Elementary School 11
14
Don’t be embarrasseD of your Past
I
t was February break of my junior year. I remember I had a school event; I had something that in that week, some kind of performance, and something just clicked or was a trigger for me and I told my mom I cannot go back to school on Monday (Gerlinger). Today, Sarah Gerlinger is a successful teacher who shares a positive energy toward every person she meets. She inspires in her students, who are facing adversity, a sense of confidence and resolve that they can get through this difficult time. She is also a new teacher mentor; working with the induction program at LASD. Her colleague Katie Hurst says, “She always has a way of putting a positive spin on things and yet still she always supporting me and my growth” (2019). While anxiety disorders are fairly common in the United States, people frequently do not get a diagnosis until it can get to be unbearable. “Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year. Anxiety disorders are highly treatable, yet only 36.9% of those suffering receive treatment” (ADAA). Symptoms of anxiety disorders are brushed off and assumed to be an overreaction to discomforts and stressors that people experience. Gerlinger explains, “In elementary school, I think I maybe thought some of the things related to anxiety were more because of my personality and because I was shy
or introverted. It wasn’t until I got older that I understood that there’s a name for that. [My anxiety] increased for me as I became a teen so that was very hard to go to school everyday and even though I, technically speaking, loved school, I loved to learn, I liked to do well and I on paper did well, but just the going to school every day was very hard and that wasn’t something I could talk about with friends.”
There really w asn't a partic ular moment [...] it was just, may be a feeling of exha ustion or just being unable to do it anymore" - Sarah G erlinger "
Previous Pages; Portables at Gardner Bullis Elementary, Sarah Gerlinger
15
Anxiety looks different for everyone, which also means that everyone has different coping strategies, both healthy and detrimental. For Gerlinger, her anxiety looked like missing a lot of high school and creating a cycle of avoiding stress, getting behind with homework and being stressed by the amount of work to catch up on. During February break of 1998, life got to be too overwhelming to go back to school for Gerlinger, who explained that, “Panic disorder in particular was very real and so there wasn’t a whole lot of forcing [my mom] could do there, it was not going to happen…” The options for alternative education high school in the late ‘90s were limited to Middle College and programs done by mail. The concept of Middle College seemed scarier than regular high school and so Gerlinger enrolled in a program that she described as being the equivalent of online courses today. “[…] It was not the rigorous experience I was used to at Mountain View High, it was just too easy and a waste of time so I ultimately… didn’t do it and just stopped” (Gerlinger). Despite the struggles around finding a schooling program that fit, Gerlinger refused to give up on her education. She continued to do lots of reading and keep up with math to a certain degree. “I wasn’t interested in doing nothing. [There was] no real plan, but just at that time I’m going to keep learning and working on myself and getting better and seeing doctors” (Gerlinger). “One of the things that I had to concentrate on doing was continuing to socialize to a certain degree, like that was an instruction from the psychiatrist I was working with at the time, that it’s important that you not shut the world out; you can still do something. All of those interactions were very hard, especially ‘cuz they typically involve seeing my friends from high school where I had just left, and that was very hard, so that was part of my getting better plan” (Gerlinger). 16
Eventually the plan became to enroll in classes at Foothill College in 1999 as the rest of her classmates were graduating. After 2 years at Foothill, she transferred to UC Santa Cruz. “It got harder before it got easier, and I think that taking mental illness and mental health seriously for me, and treating it like an illness, and understanding what that meant, I needed was very important, and so for me that meant growing up a little bit, and accepting some things and falling into healthy routines.” Gerlinger’s experiences are supported by current research. The National Institute of Health concluded in a 2013 study that, “Anxiety disorders are treatable. Effective treatments have been developed, and algorithms have been refined [...] We need to learn how to better
"I think we as a society still often think 'pull yourself up by the bootstraps' you know 'this too shall pass' 'you can overcome this' and mental health is a lot more complicated than that" - Sarah Gerlinger
administer existing efficacious treatments in real-world health care environments, such as in primary care, and to inform the public via media outlets. We should continue to test alternative therapies for treating and preventing anxiety disorders and to help patients whose anxiety is resistant to conventional treatments. Finally, we need to consider the patient’s feelings about mental illness and address their responses early in treatment. All of these measures will enhance the care of patients with anxiety” (NIH). Since Gerlinger has been through treatment, she feels, “I am a much healthier, and I’m healthy now, and more aware of different signs and triggers and whatnot, so my life now looks very different than it did in my teens and twenties.” I think, we as a society, still often think ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps just try a little harder,’ you know, ‘this too shall pass’, ‘you can overcome this,’ and mental health is a lot more complicated than that. As a New Teacher Mentor, Gerlinger works with teachers for the first 2 years they work within the school district, through a required induction program. This program was created as a support system for new teachers, and it helps them clear their teaching credentials in California. Gerlinger elaborates that the support offered can look like weekly meetings with the teachers, observing the teacher’s practice, planning, and analyzing student data. She describes “… the gist of the responsibilities is essentially coaching these teachers and meeting with them, observing their practice, giving feedback; non-evaluative feedback that’s an important part” (Gerlinger). There are 30 teachers, spanning kindergarten through 8th grade, in the current induction program this year. These teachers are split between Gerlinger and the other new teacher mentor, Katie Hurst. Sarah explains,
“So once a week, I see every teacher and in addition to that, I go into classrooms and observe when they’re teaching. It’s a very informal process. It’s just y’know, being present in the classroom, seeing what’s going on, and then there are more targeted cycles of observation, where we are really zooming in on a goal area. So, I will plan with them to go observe something they’re working on and trying, and then give feedback in that area. That’s the gist of the job. There are other things, but that’s the bulk of it. It’s a lot of driving” (Gerlinger). Natalie Axley, one of Gerlinger’s mentees, provided insight into her experience with Gerlinger as her mentor excitedly, “Oh it’s been awesome!” (Axley). During her first year teaching, Natalie worked as a long term sub within the Los Altos School District. Substitutes don’t get the same services that new teachers get. Natalie felt a bit lost during her first year. “Sarah is super understanding and super flexible, and she always kinda knows the right thing to say to me. Like, I’m a very anxious person and she can tell when I’m kinda getting up in my head, and she’ll just say one thing, and I’ll be snapped out of it. So that’s awesome. [...] she challenges me where I need to be challenged, and she’s like ‘oh you got that’ in places where she knows that I don’t need it” (Axley). Gerlinger said that she would like to work as a new teacher mentor for a few more years, given the experience she has from teaching at several different schools for 10 years. The idea of getting into school leadership has also appealed to her as something she could do in the future, such as working in a curriculum office or maybe, given the right environment, becoming an elementary school principal.
17
mrs. hurst 20
stay Persistent
K
atie Hurst has been a Special Education teacher for nine years and began working as a New Teacher Mentor this year. Her choice to be a teacher came out of an after school job in high school tutoring other students. But her educational experience was wrought with challenges that make her a great person to help new teachers. Katie recalled her early years as: “I went to private school K through High School, 6 until I was 18. And I would say the amount of pressure that we had to succeed and be the best and get straight A’s was, it was overwhelming. And it made it, almost in me, made me go backwards, and go, ‘Well, I’m not I’m not ever going to be that so, why do I even care? Why do I even try?’So I can see in some of our students that we put a lot of pressure on them like you’re in Los Altos, you have to be, you know, you have to do really well ,and succeed, and Stanford your next step. That’s not the passage for everybody” (Hurst). This has led Katie Hurst to have a very hands on approach with her mentees. She makes sure that they
know not only what they are doing but why they are doing it. She puts a lot of time into researching topics that she thinks will help each of her mentees improve in an area that they want to work on. Hurst struggled with a number of different skills in high school: “memorizing was really hard for me, staying organized was impossible. I lacked focus. I lacked motivation. I failed classes in 8th grade. I failed classes my freshman year of high school. I just I couldn’t see the light of like why am I doing this. Why am I learning about Biology? I don’t care. This has nothing to do with what I want to do in life.” While Hurst did not disclose a diagnosis, this description reflects what many students with Attention Deficit Disorder struggle with. “Attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a chronic condition that affects millions of children and often continues into adulthood. ADHD includes a combination of persistent problems, such as difficulty sustaining attention, hyperactivity and impulsive behavior” (Mayo).
Previous Pages; iLearn room at Los Altos District Office, Katie Hurst
21
It wasn’t until sophomore that Hurst said she felt like she had a teacher that really cared about her and wanted her to succeed. This is part of what inspired her to become a teacher. Hurst mentioned that while she has improved in some of the areas that she struggled with during high school, she finds that some of these techniques she can only use in one area at a time. “What I’ve noticed is that when I exert a lot of energy I can focus. I can be organized, but it takes an extreme amount of focus for me. And I can’t do it both at home and at work. So I have to kind of choose in a way, where I am going to put all my focus. And sometimes if I’m focusing on something at home, it’s hard for me to focus on things at work.” Katie Hurst is the second new teacher mentor in the Los Altos School District, alongside Sarah Gerlinger. She describes her job as a mentor as providing support for teachers in the induction program in any way that she can. This includes helping them work with their students, parents, and colleagues. Being a first year mentor, Hurst mentions how Sarah Gerlinger has helped her grow as a mentor, “As a first-year mentor, versus a third year mentor, she knows so much more, and I see her make these moves with teachers, and I’m like, ‘Man I want to get there and be just as good as you” (Hurst). Both Sarah and Katie have similar day to day schedules where they go to several school sites everyday in order to meet with all of their mentees. Even with their hectic 22
schedules, Katie and Sarah try to make time to meet up with each other during the day in order to touch base and keep supporting each other. Several years ago, when Hurst was teaching in a moderate to severe special day classroom, there was a kid with Autism Spectrum Disorder going into her class with severe behavior problems. Previous teachers had issues with him hitting, kicking, biting, spitting and other things of that nature. He was the type of kid that teachers dreaded getting and would warn others about him. This created a negative mindset that caused teachers to give up before the year even began because if others could not handle him before, then of course there would be no way for them to handle him in their classroom. When Hurst found out he was going to be in her case load, she was told that she had the hardest kid. She was going to have a bad year. “I started trusting myself more than what people were saying, and I was like, no actually, I think I know what he needs. He needs structure. He needs boundaries. He needs love. And, if I can show him that this is a safe place, I think I can help him grow. I took this kid who [displayed this] kind of behavior every single day … fast forward to February where he never hit again, he never spit on me again, [and] he never kicked again. He taught me I need to have that mindset like okay, this is where you are; great. I accept that, but how can I push you? How can I teach you, make you a better student,
and show you your own worth? And, show you that you can do it? So, this kiddo is now in high school. He is a junior and he’s going to be set to graduate. He’s thriving. He’s in dance classes. He’s singing and all because I changed my own mindset about him, but then again he [also] changed my mindset and taught me so much” (Hurst). Sometimes, bending the rules on what is socially acceptable can show how the only thing problematic about the “problem” kid is the system they are forced into. Hurst then described how she went back to school to get her masters degree in autism after working with this student. There was a lot of trial and error with the strategies she used with him and she wanted to know why the things that she did worked or not. In recent years, autism training has been added to the list of requirements needed to complete a special education credential in California. In the future, Hurst says that she wants to get a few more years of teaching under her belt before moving up in the special education world as a program specialist. She would also like to be able to get to a recognizable name in the district where people just know you by name because of how many years you have been working there.
23
26
follow your own Pace
N
atalie Axley is the picture of a new fourth grade teacher. She holds a strong, animated presence, and talks about her job with such wholehearted joy, that it’s hard to not feel jealous of her students who get to spend the whole day with her. She makes an obvious effort to support her students in the way that she has set up her classroom. Low tables with pillows for seating, name tags that have a pronunciation of each students name, a couch facing away from the class on the far side of the room, and a small library that feels like you’re in a different room. Axley lets her students sit anywhere in the classroom as long as they are able to pay attention and will allow times when everyone can go outside run across the blacktop when there is restless energy in the room. “So, when I was in elementary school, I was one of those kids who reading didn’t come quickly to. And I wasn’t flexible with numbers and wasn’t able to do arithmetic really quickly, and because of that I became very, I don’t know if I want to put a label on it, but I didn’t believe in myself, and I had this knowledge, that I thought was true, [that] I’m bad at math and I can’t read” (Axley).
I want to be tha t person for ever y student and find that boo k where they sud denly turn it on and they'r e like 'YEAH RE ADING' so that's like one o f my goals. The other one is to never make any child feel lik e they're bad at math, lik e I felt. -Natalie Ax ley Throughout high school, Axley says that she struggled with getting herself to do the homework assigned because she could not see the point of it. Attending Los Altos High School, Axley faced some of the pressures put on students to excel in their classes. She recalls, “I was on this track where I had geometry or something [freshman year], so I was a year lower than most of my friends and peers, they were
Previous Pages; Cubbies in Axley’s Classroom, Natalie Axley 27
in honors and AP math and stuff and I was in the lower math. So that just kinda reinforced my idea of ‘kids should never feel bad about math’ also ‘math doesn’t matter’, you know, I was like ‘Why does this matter I’m never going to have to use this ever’” (Axley). Axley also mentions how she felt this need to please everybody in her life which created what she terms a “weird anxiety-producing disparity… I also did this thing where I wouldn’t really read the books that were assigned. [During] The Scarlet Letter, I was like ‘This is drivel – don’t want to read this,’ or, this thing written by this white man, I don’t care about this thing or whatever it happens to be. Like, Romeo and Juliet, I’m over it, I don’t want to read it. I would read lots of Cliff Notes the night before or talk to my friends or listen in conversations in class and then piece together people’s response and tell them.” Axley said that she poured all her energy into extracurriculars like sports, Main Street Singers, and newspaper because she wasn’t a fan of the academic side of school. After graduating, Axley went to Foothill College for 2 years. At Los Altos High School, she felt like it was assumed that most people go to an ivy league straight out of high school. Even today, there is a stigma against Foothill and other community colleges because students are not getting a big name 4 year college experience. Axley says that she was super proud about going to Foothill because it meant that she could pay for her classes and, with the system set up at Foothill, she had a little in to the UC system which helped her apply 28
and transfer to UCSD for junior and senior year. She recalls, “It was totally the right choice so I treated it like a job and I was working at Le Boulanger in Downtown Los Altos. I was just working my butt off and did the equivalent of one or two years my first two years in one and a half and then took some time off to do some traveling with money I’d saved up. [...] I had learned all these skills, like school is a job so then none of my
I feel like math and English and all those things are a fourth of my job and the rest of it is teaching them how be kind to each other and teaching th em how to deal with issues that come up, emotional and social. -Natalie Axley
problems from high school where I wasn’t doing work applied. I was just like ‘this is just what I have to do so I’m gonna do it’ and it was great and then I had this useless poli sci major degree” (Axley).
When asked about her current job, Axley did not hide her appreciation for her class: “I love my job so much! I get to hang out with 23 nine to ten year olds every day and stretch their minds and challenge them and coach them and it’s really challenging in a lot of ways and it’s so rewarding and I’m just lucky that I get 23 hugs everyday and I usually hear many, many times ‘OH YEAH’ and that’s my favorite sound in the world” (Axley). Aside from working directly with students, a big part of her job includes communicating with parents and working closely with other teachers to plan things. Axley finds teaching to be difficult because she is very empathetic and struggles to keep her emotions under control when her students are dealing with something in their lives, “I want to help them, and if I can’t then it’s really intense for me, but it also helps me in teaching because I feel those emotions so deeply when they’re feeling it. So I know kind of what to do to help or what I would need and its helps me be flexible with them other problems” (Axley). Axley is in her second year of the induction program with LASD. She spent her first year teaching as a long term sub, which gives her a unique perspective on the program because she technically had a year’s worth of experience in teaching before starting induction. She is glad that she is in the program because she gets to work with Sarah Gerlinger as her mentor, but voices some frustration with the program. Axley explains, “I think it’s a lot of hoops to jump through and I know why it’s necessary and I’m glad we have to go through it because I know that there are teachers
out there who are really benefiting from like they have looked at individual students before or they haven’t done some of these things. Because I got Sarah, and she’s challenging me in those ways. I guess I was worried going into it, that it was just going to be a bunch of paperwork and just like, ‘okay I’m doing this already, I’m doing this already’, but because of her, and the fact that she’s like ‘Well you’re thinking about writing groups lets crank this up a little bit and see what we can do’, and she gives me permission to be creative so I’m grateful for it for that.” Natalie loves working with 9 and 10 year olds and wants to continue working in fourth grade for a while, but says that she would also enjoy working with other grades as well. She is planning to take some time off from teaching to start a family at some point, says that she’ll always come back to the classroom.
29
conclusion Remember That You Are Not Alone
“There are a lot of resources and people available to talk to and who can help and to seek out those resources. Having a dialogue with someone about what exactly the issue is and identifying that issue is key to getting the right kind of help with the right kind of support. I kept a lot of that closely guarded at that time so it felt like to me the only option was just to leave and maybe that could have been true I’m not sure but maybe there could have been another way. So my advice would be here to seek help to say ‘Something is not working for me I’d like someone to help talk me through what might not be working’; It doesn’t need to be an embarrassing secret that you keep to yourself, people who work in education are interested in helping others, even challenge cases” (Gerlinger).
30
“I would say the biggest piece of advice is don’t let the struggle define you. I would just have this negative rhetoric that I would repeat in my own head by myself and I believed it because I said it to myself so much, but that’s not who I was and I had to learn tools to overcome my struggle and it’s still a daily struggle, but I don’t let that struggle define me. I don’t let my hardships define me. I recognize that it’s a part of my life, I recognize that it’s something I deal with and I forgive myself when I’m not where I want to be. There’s so many people in this world who do struggle all the way through school. [When you’re studying an area] that you love and you’re passionate about feels so different” (Hurst).
mrs. hurst
“I wish someone had told me that [high school] doesn’t matter as much as you think. Like, your decisions have consequences, but be realistic about the consequences. Just because reading is taking longer than everybody else or just because you have your brain works in a different way, it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be successful I really needed to hear that and nobody ever said it to me. Another thing is that adults aren’t always right is a huge thing, even parents, they’re not always right and also that even if you think something, you’re not always right either, but it’s okay to fail. I think you don’t need to study every night and you don’t need to read every single page, you need to learn some skills and strategies for summarizing things or taking a glance at things. When [professors say], like, ‘Read pages 100 to 400’ and you’re like no and then you just like skim through them and get the big idea then that’s gonna be enough” (Axley).
31
32
works citeD “Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Children.” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 16 Aug. 2017, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/adhd/symptoms-causes/ syc-20350889. Axley, Natalie. Personal Interview. 11 April 2019. Bystritsky, Alexander, et al. “Current Diagnosis and Treatment of Anxiety Disorders.” P & T : a Peer-Reviewed Journal for Formulary Management, MediMedia USA, Inc., Jan. 2013, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC3628173/. “Facts & Statistics.” Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA. 2018. Anxiety and Depression Association of America. 01 May 2019 <https://adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics>. Gerlinger, Sarah. Personal Interview. 13 March 2019. Hurst, Katie. Personal Interview. 13 April 2019. Olivardia, Roberto. “Anxiety? Depression? Or ADHD? It Could Be All Three.” ADDitude, ADDitude, 28 Feb. 2019, www.additudemag.com/adhd-anxiety-depression-the-diagnosis-puzzle-of-related-conditions/.
33
About the Author Born and raised in the Bay Area, Cameron Semple is a junior at Los Altos High School. She studies Design, English, and Digital Media at Freestyle Academy of Communication Arts and Technology. She enjoys listening to music, drawing, petting her two cats, and playing the electric guitar in a band she formed with her friends. In the future, Cameron hopes to study environmental science or graphic design.
34
Author photo
35
to each other and teaching them to deal with issues that come up, emotional and social. -Natalie Axley
as a society still often think elf up by the bootstraps' this too shall pass' 'you can this' and mental health is a e complicated than that" - Sarah Gerlinger
really wasn't a particular [...] it was just, maybe a of exhaustion or just being able to do it anymore"
I changed my own mindset about him, but then again he also changed my mindset and taught me so much." -Katie Hurst
t le me I don't let tmythhaatrdstshruipsggtole I recognize that it's a part of I recognize that it's something with and I'm I forgive myself w not where I want to be." -Katie Hurst
Leadership isn't just leading from the top, it's leading from the middle. -Sarah Gerlinger
I want to be that person for ev and find that book where they su it on and they're like 'YEAH R that's like one of my goals. Th is to never make any child feel bad at math, like I fe -Natalie Axley
It got harder before it got easier, and I think that taking mental illness and mental health seriously for me, ss, and
So that just kinda reinforced 'kids should never feel bad abm also 'math doesn't matter', yoou was like 'Why does this matte u going to have to use this revI -Natalie Axley
Teachers on the Path Less Travelled
Cameron Semple