FAMILY ENGAGEMENT
With Dr. Joni Samples
Teacher Preparation
—And More! Dr. Joni Samples is the Chief Academic Officer for Family Friendly Schools (www. familyfriendlyschools.com). Dr. Samples is a former County Superintendent of Schools, Director of Special Education, teacher, mother of four and the author of six books on Family Engagement. Today she provides workshops and materials for schools and parents to support a collaborative effort resulting in better, more supported learning for children.
10
Fall 2016
I’ve been talking for a number of years about the preparation of teachers. Most of us came through a wonderful tradition of programs at an accredited university that technically trained us and prepared us for a credential to teach. Then we all hit the real world of teaching. It’s a bit different out there in the real classroom with children watching and waiting than it is in a classroom taking a test on what those children should be learning. No one tells you there is a child in the classroom whose house burned down the night before and he was at fault, or that sitting next to him is a child that was just diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia. Down the row is a child who’s parent just went to jail for dealing drugs. Next to him is a child who’s getting average grades but looks like he’s underperforming, and you just found out his sister is in a gifted program and his brother who is a few years older than this boy is doing graduate level physics. And you’re the teacher. You don’t even know the stories of the rest of the class yet, but you’re teaching third grade and trying to make sure they expand their reading skills and can do all the multiplication tables by the end of the year. College didn’t quite prepare you for all of this. Would that it could, yet the real world is different than that world of textbooks and tests. So what do you do? And this is a question I had to ask myself because every one of these children I mentioned are children I had in class— and more, lots more, just like your classroom. This is why I’ve been working for a number of years at this world of education in a different manner. I still have a vision of every child learning to his or her capacity, and I still believe that capacity is far beyond what any of us know, yet somewhere between the prep and the actuality something went missing for me. It’s like a couple
SouthEast Education Network
of jigsaw puzzle pieces that I needed to complete the puzzle weren’t available in the classes I took, and I couldn’t quite find in the classroom and curriculum. One of those pieces showed up for me in the parent and family work. Perhaps that work wouldn’t have been quite so involved if I hadn’t taken such an interest in a child’s welfare, but I don’t know many teachers that don’t get involved in a very in-depth way. To do that you have to understand what is going on in the child’s life beyond that six hours a day they are in school. I couldn’t help my little guy with childhood schizophrenia without understanding that his sister had cancer and his brother had a brain tumor, and mom wanted and needed this child to be normal. She desperately needed him to be normal and how much this had affected him. Or I couldn’t help my underperforming kiddo without recognizing how much he wanted to be like the other kids and his brilliant sister and brother. He knew they didn’t fit in with the other kids, and he didn’t want to miss out on fitting in, yet he was also denying his own gifts in the process. How to help him? I have to interact with the family as well as the child. That’s a class we often don’t have in college. We don’t get the class that talks about how to work with the family, the moms and dads or step parents or grandparents. We miss out on the class that talks about how to help mom when dad walks out or is put in prison for drug possession. How does a teacher survive today without knowing how to interact with the most important “other people” in a child’s life, the ones who have such a huge impact on that child? Which brings me to the second piece of the puzzle that was missing for me, and one I’m just opening up and is beginning to surface finally for all
