Profile by paige newman

A New Allocation An Educator’s Struggle // A Profile on Leslie McClellan

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I walked into the frosty classroom, 16 ounces of caffeination in hand. I dropped the slumping backpack on the chair next to mine, too tired from the hours I’d spent studying for the test I still wasn’t prepared for. It was 8 am and my beanie was low, my eyes bloodshot, my brain still in bed, waiting for the sunrise.

I stared at the board, covered with bright writing reminding me of college visits and donation fees. My teacher looked almost as glum as me, no doubt she’d been grading art pieces longer than I’d been vainly trying to create them.

We made eye contact, sharing a moment of exasperation

at the day to come. Overfilled classes awaiting us both, we donned the expressions of war as more and more students piled themselves into the classroom.The entirety of the art department was starving, unable to provide paper or paint on it’s own. I looked at the solid green pencils on my desk. These were the basic necessities of art, one HB, for outlining, and one 6B, for shading. Though there were much more possible pencil grades, these two were the most reliable. Every student received them, that being all the school could afford now.

It was going to be a long day.

Thousands of teachers must

deal with the consequences of defunding in the education system.The government funding allocated to public education has trickled down to a measly 6.3% of total federal spending as of 2015. That’s a little less than $70 billion dollars, in comparison to the near $600 billion dollars allocated to military and defense.

Teachers are being forced to spend their already low paychecks to purchase supplies for their students and desks to account for extra students being crammed into the classroom. Schools now have to put kids into combo classes because they cannot afford to pay extra teachers, forc-

ing some teachers to prep multiple lesson plans and effectively halving the time kids get to spend learning with their teacher. The defunding of schools is incredibly detrimental to our communities, affecting everyone for years to come. When a child cannot receive the same level of education he might have been given if not for a lack of funding, he misses out on some of the most important parts of education, including the development of an interest in learning and a basic understanding of his peers or the world around him. Mrs. Leslie McClellan is one of these thousands of teachers, struggling to provide the best education she can with a severe lack of materials and government assistance.

Growing up, Mrs. McClellan cultivated a connection to the natural world and the people around her. She has fostered a love of people, traveling and expanding her experiences to better her understanding and compassion towards others.

In high school, she had a particularly spectacular history teacher who inspired her desire to become a teacher.

She had originally planned to be a businesswoman so, upon graduating high school she went into business school.

Throughout business school, she felt inadequate and wanted to take her career a different direction. Unfortunately, because of the logistics of switching majors and class availability, she was unable to become a teacher at first.

She graduated college, doing business, which she was not particularly adept at. After 15 years of being a businesswoman, she made the difficult decision to pursue her dream and go back to school to study education and teaching at the elementary level. This time, she was able to complete college and earned a degree in education, eventually landing a job at Theuerkauf Elementary School, where she has spent the last 15 years teaching kids from Kindergarten to 4th grade. She is currently teaching 3rd grade, helping out on the leadership team, and standing as a union representative for her school site.

As a union representative, Mrs. McClellan helps to represent her school site in union meetings. She attends the representative council meetings with the president of the union and the representatives for other school sites across California.They discuss what’s happening in the country as a whole, talking about trends, lawsuits, policy changes, and

how issues like ten year affect education on a national scale.

After learning about and discussing these things, all the representatives go back to their school sites and reiterate that information to their schools. The teachers at their schools also share issues with them, from administration level issues to national issues, and the representative offers them support and helps them to deal with those issues. If a teacher is being punished for any reason whatsoever, the union member will often accompany them and ensure they are being treated fairly by administrators. Mrs. McClellan is dedicating herself to her fellow staff members and acting as support for her entire school site. Her integration into the education system has helped her and her administrators to foster an inclusive and well-rounded school site.

Ms. McClellan is an advocate of peer-based learning and a good teacher-student relationship to help foster learning. She believes it is important for a teacher to help kids grow and reach their highest possible potential. This becomes exponentially more difficult with every student that is added to that teacher’s class. With every student 3

comes hours of extra grading and one on one support time. With funding decreasing, more and more kids and being squished into classes because schools cannot afford to hire the extra staff members. One of the most detrimental results of defunding has been combo classes. These classes integrate 2 grades into the same class because of odd student numbers, muddying the curriculums for both. These classes take away from individual student learning, force a teacher to prep 2 separate lessons, and discourage social learning because of the way the classes must be instructed in order to teach 2 separate lessons in the same school day. This year alone, Mrs. McClellan has experienced a dramatic class size increase, stating that “my class size went from 20 to 25 that was a 25% increase in workload.There was 25 conferences to schedule, 25 parent meetings, 25 report cards, not 20, it was a big difference and it created a lot of weekend work.”

Her entire family now involves themselves in the paper-grading process. To account for the more recent class-size increases, she must devote tons of extra hours to grading and packaging student work.When asked about the effects of this increase, she stated that “It 4

created a lot of homework coming home, my whole family takes part in grading papers, and just in filing and organizing things and putting things together and putting student work in packets and portfolios, so when there’s more kids there’s more work. Bottom line, there’s more work, and that was a huge change.” These class-size increases are not specific to Mrs. McClellan, they are a widespread national phenomena, resulting in hundreds of thousands of hours being put in by already under-paid teachers. Mrs. McClellan, much like those sturdy green pencils, puts in countless, unbreakable hours. She never gives up on her students, no matter how many thousands of hours she spends grading, organizing, and packing. She remains reliable and strong for both her family and her school, becoming a tool of power to both help and inspire others.

If more funding were to be allocated to Theuerkauf, Mrs. McClellan would like to involve the kids in more group projects and social skill building activities. She would use those funds to improve resource teaching for struggling kids and afterschool programs.

Programs like Destination Imagination, which helps to build social and creative skills

by having kids work together to develop solutions and work towards a common goal, would be improved upon and used more extensively in daily education. Mrs. McClellan has acted as a second parent to me for the last 12 years, helping to encourage and push me alongside her daughter. She has been a nonstop source of inspiration and growth for me, helping to show me hard work and resourcefulness throughout my childhood. For Mrs. McClellan, her growth both professionally and personally are important future goals. She hopes to continue to grow and improve her parenting and teaching skills, guiding and nourishing both her children and her students, continuing to be a role model for others.

“We’re trying to get back though, we’re trying to put it back the other way, which is kind of a nice shift. The only good thing about the fund is that people are now starting to realize that it has had a really negative effect, and we’re trying to figure out ways to put the funds back where they need to be. And that’s where partial taxes and everything comes in. We’re trying to get it back”

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Works Cited Jackson, Jesse. “Increased Funding Would Improve Public Education.” Education.

Ed. Mary E. Williams. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Opposing Viewpoints.

Rpt. from “New Schools Now.” Liberal Opinion Week. 1998. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 10 Oct. 2015.

“Funding for Education.” American Decades. Ed. Judith S. Baughman, et al.Vol. 3: 1920-1929. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Student Resources in Context. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

“Federal Funding for Education.” American Decades. Ed. Judith S. Baughman, et al.

Vol. 6: 1950-1959. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 128. Student Resources in Context. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

“Decline of Residential Schools and Funding for Canadian Native Education.”

DISCovering Multicultural America: African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resources in Context. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

Hoffman, Christine E. “Education, Department of.” Dictionary of American History. Ed. Stanley I. Kutler. 3rd ed.Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003.

123-124. Student Resources in Context. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

Robinson, Ken. 1st ed. New York: Penguin Group, 2015. Kindle.

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