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Some thoughts from a teacher's son

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By Seth Boyes - News Editor

 

The Janitor Problem — the false perception that, because a school building is clean and litter-free each morning, it collects neither dirt nor trash during any given day.

Don't bother typing the phrase into Google or dusting off that old copy of Webster's. You won't find it.

No, the Janitor Problem was an analogy my dear old dad once came up with during his days as a high school chemistry teacher. As with many of his distinctly colloquial comparisons, I find it applies more broadly than just the circumstance for which he intended it. And with the ongoing hubbub surrounding education bills in the Iowa Legislature, it's one I find myself thinking about more and more these days.

It really shouldn't surprise anyone that students still stick gum under tables, dispose of wrappers by way of the hallway floor and occasionally scroll their best attempt at poetry on a bathroom stall or two. What dad pondered was why the 400-some students in my old high school continued to do these things day after day, year after year.

And his conclusion had to do with what they didn't see.

Teams of janitorial and maintenance staff would go about their work after the students left or before they arrived. The gum was removed — eventually — when no chatter echoed through the lunchroom. The wrappers were picked up when almost no footsteps fell in the halls. The toilets, sinks, mirrors and floors were scrubbed while no student was there to see what happened in that building almost each and every day. But the teachers — and sometimes their young red-headed sons with remarkably clear memories — were there to see it.

An awful lot goes into the operation of a school — more than most folks ever see and even more than many would ever realize needs doing in the first place. And it's easy to apply the same flawed logic to classroom instruction. There's no point and click, instant-results in education.

There are hours upon hours of work behind each school day. And, with ever-increasing educational standards, it's not unheard of for what little prep-time educators are afforded during the school day to fade away bit by bit — forcing many to stay late, arrive early or simply take that work home with them (let's be honest, they're often doing all three in a single day).

So, along came some proposed bills aimed at improving parents' rights to know what's being taught in their child's school — not a bad idea in and of itself — because some folks have heard some teacher somewhere (certainly not any of our schools, of course, but evidently somewhere out there) are using racially divisive or obscene materials in the classroom. So the solution proposed by some is for teachers to disclose all their educational materials for parents who would choose to inspect it.

And that's the part that makes me somehow manage to both chuckle and cringe. Not only are we giving teachers one more thing to do in their after-hours (and, trust me, I could say a lot more on that subject), but I'd be willing to bet a lot, if not most, parents won't even check in on what our teachers would be required to post.

Seems calloused, I'm sure, but let me once again share what I know.

Back in my day, parents had to schedule a time to meet with the child's teacher(s) — for those who don't know, these meetings were called parent-teacher conferences. Our family saw even less of my dad on conference nights because, after meeting with parents for several hours in the afternoon and evening, he'd still have to set up lab materials and equipment for his classes on top of the usual paper-grading.

All through my student career, that's how it worked, but eventually our district switched to an open house model — the teachers were spaced out in the cafeteria, and parents could talk to whichever teachers they wanted to, no appointment necessary. Within a few years, dad was bringing his lesson plans to the cafeteria on conference night and grading papers there too. But it wasn't because anyone wanted to see what he was doing. No, quite the opposite.

It was because almost all the parents chose to stop coming.

Parents in my day had regular, one-on-one access to their child's teacher and they could ask any questions they had, and they let it go — seemingly out of apathy. So, it's stunning to me that parents' lack of collective interest in their children's education is now being seen as a lack of transparency on the part of the school, and the burden is being placed on the shoulders of the teachers.

I mean, teachers sometimes have to beg parents to get involved. I don't even know how many times I heard stories growing up about teachers who tried everything they could think of to bring a parent up to speed on the student's grades or attendance, only to get an angry earful from said parent as soon as the kid was flunking. I never met a teacher in any of the six buildings that made up my K-12 education who wouldn't give a parent exactly the information they were looking for, even if the conversation was going to be a difficult one.

To me, this school transparency issue is the Janitor Problem all over again.

In this case, rather than being unaware of how the halls are cleaned each night, we're unaware of the multitude of ways to communicate with their teachers, administrators and school board members. And the proposed solution at the state level would be to require school districts to open yet another passive (and just as easily ignored) line of communication — requiring teachers to maintain their own tether in order to continually prove they haven't crossed lines which they've likely never even approached.

Like I said, transparency is all well and good. However, it would be naive to accuse teachers of hiding some sinister agenda without bothering to first ask — and more importantly, understand — what they are teaching our children.

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