Jenni’s teacher-assistant placement was in Ottawa Hills High School in the Grand Rapids School District.  I clearly remember one of my visits to her classroom.  Jenni’s lesson for the day was a panel discussion/debate on gun control and I either volunteered or was volunteered to be a member of the panel.  In the process of joining the class as a participating member Jenni explained that I was one of her professors.  I remarked to the class that I was also a former sheriff’s deputy.  Later, Jenni told me that her class was very well-behaved that day and she invited me back to her classroom any time.  I got the feeling that the students’ behavior was a little challenging at times and perhaps my former work in law enforcement might have had a calming effect on her students.

After graduation Jenni was hired by the Allendale School District and her teaching position was in the alternative high school, New Options.  Her principal was another GVSU graduate, Tamika Henry.  The educational environment provided both structure and hope to the students attending there.  The regular school atmosphere did not work for these students, for whatever reason, and the hope was a different setting might help them succeed at school and life. Both Jenni and Tamika told me that the way they taught the content and the content itself was transferable to a regular classroom. Both teachers thought that good lesson plans equated good classroom management.  If students were engaged, interested and active, classroom management problems would be limited. Given the at-risk nature of her students Jenni admitted that the connection to the content material had to be tighter than what a normal classroom teacher might consider with her students.  The connections needed to be plainly stated so that the students might relate the material to their lives.

Jenni’s teachable minor at GVSU was English Language Arts and thus she drew the assignment as yearbook advisor for New Options.  During this visit in 2008 it was her third year producing the yearbook and she explained that the job was made more difficult for two reasons: in her second year she missed 12 weeks of school due to pregnancy leave and, coupled with students’ spotty attendance, she had to throw together the yearbook that year in a short amount of time.  The advisory part of this job included much individual instruction with this group of students, which is not unlike many regular school yearbook groups.  There was little passive instruction and much more individual advising.

A large part of Jenni’s work was credit recovery.  Some school districts have gone away from alternative classrooms with regular teaching staff and have incorporated computer-based learning with aides providing technical, but little content assistance.  At this time in 2008 Jenni’s students were using an antiquated DOS-based software program and physical printed booklets which the students completed as they learned the content.  There was no comprehensive final.

Jenni’s teaching schedule was Yearbook, Independent Study, which was basically credit recovery, ELA with students in 9th and 10th grade and Economics with juniors and seniors. A life skill which Jenni reinforced was responsibility tied to organization.  One example of how she imbued this skill was by having students organize their work in pocket organizers on a wall of her classroom. Each student was responsible for completing work when they did not finish it in school or when they were absent.  Jenni incorporated social studies with her students’ reading assignments in her ELA classes.  She focused mainly on reading comprehension. Most of the reading material she judged to be on a 5th grade reading level.  She based these assignments on a model provided by the Michigan standards at that time for ELA, but she integrated economics, political science and geography into the reading selections. Her Economics class focused on consumer education versus a classical Macro/Micro Economics model which some school districts use, especially in regular classrooms.

Similar to more than a few of the teachers in this study Jenni experienced a constant change in the subject matter she taught.  During teacher-assisting and student teaching she had taught only one course at a time.  That all changed when Jenni was hired at New Options. She had 7 different preparations over her first three years and 10 different preps over 4 years.  Granted she had small classes and her focus was on credit recovery and life skills, but a constant change in teaching assignments, no matter what the grade level or content involved. It is a poor scenario for maintaining excellent teaching and especially problematic for teacher retention and survival.  Added to that challenge Jenni felt separated from the other ELA teachers in Allendale High School, not just in location, but collegially as well.  She attempted to follow the curriculum guidelines for the district and she used a few reading selections that the other ELA teachers used. With the students’ life challenges and the fact that almost of them read more than a few grade levels below their normal grade level, made it difficult for Jenni having any kind of commonality with her high school colleagues.  She did use a shortened, edited form of Hamlet with a Mel Gibson movie as a complement.  She also taught a chapter or so of Fahrenheit 451 and used a movie as complement for that reading as well.^[1]

In order to build students’ vocabulary foundation Jenni used vocabulary cards, a method she picked up from a middle school teacher.  Each student made up 12 cards, which were 3×5 cards cut in half.  The words were gleaned from 504 Absolutely Essential Words, 5th Ed. (2005) by Bromberg, et al.  Her students had to show multiple definitions, how the word was used in context, find the word in a matching selection and the derivation of the word or language foundation.

Jenni’s grading system included 30 to 50 separate assignments during the grading period and a cumulative project.  At this time in 2008 she considered using a pass/fail/no credit arrangement instead of grades, but I did not find out if she made that change later on.

In her Third Period ELA class Jenni handed out a list of 50 to 75 books and she instructed her students to circle the ones they had read.  I was not sure what she planned to do with the list. I assumed that she was surveying the class in order to get an idea of what they read so that she might match future reading assignments to her students’ tastes and perhaps fill-in some gaps in their reading backgrounds which may serve in providing some content for their lives.

The amount of technology Jenni had to work with was limited. She had the only document reader in the building because she was the only one who used it. She had her own ‘teacher computer’ and there was a computer lab in the building.  The district did pass a mill levy after I visited her and that extra money allowed the students to have access to their own personal laptop during the day at school.  Jenni also had an older version of an interactive whiteboard, but the software that accompanied the board did not work with her current classroom computer. She also wrote a grant for $5,000 and she was considering how to spend it. She was waiting to see how the district was going to spend the mill levy money.

The reason for the student book survey became clear when Jenni provided her students with a list of banned books.  The books included Harry Potter, Tom Sawyer and Goosebumps, all books her students might have read. One of books on the list was Fahrenheit 451.  A student knew the background of that book and movie and related to the class that the story was futuristic and concerned with challenging authority.  Jenni went on to explain that many schools ban certain books in order to avoid threatened litigation. She apologized in advance for showing a Harry Potter movie in the next day or so because she was attending a MACUL^[2] conference.  She instructed her students to take notes from the movie on anything they thought would offend anyone and when she returned from the conference the class would discuss their lists.

Next Jenni led a discussion on what constituted persuasive writing.  One of her students correctly defined the word “persuasive” so the class had a working definition of the word as well as what the assignment was all about.  She went through the process of providing details or evidence as well the various parts of a standard essay.  At this point Jenni introduced a new mnemonic to her students: TRRCAC or The Reading Railroad Came Across Canada or Thesis, Reason 1, Reason 2 and 3, Counter Argument and Conclusion.  The students immediately began to devise their own memory tool using the same letters so that they had an experiential reference point in helping remember the words and ideas for constructing their essays.

Next Jenni asked the class what a thesis was.  Based on previous examples in her class in dealing with new words and ideas a student provided a synonym and a definition for the word.  Each time a student provided an appropriate response in the discussion Jenni handed out “Smarties”™, plus a verbal compliment.  Jenni constantly searched for a ways of providing relevancy to her students’ lives and what she was attempting to teach them.  She finished up this segment of the lesson by asking what the students were to do in the conclusion of their essays and in unison they said, “Re-state the thesis”.

At this point Jenni followed the process in many lesson plans by providing the students with practice for the assignment. She advanced the thesis Driving Age Raised to 18 years old. Since many of the students were under 18 years of age in the class, this prompt definitely engaged the students’ interest.  The students provided the ideas of driving experience, high school age, what it meant to have adult responsibility, and the necessity for many of them to be able to drive to school and work.

Jenni returned to the mnemonic, TRRCAC.  She had the students write down what the letters meant.  She chided the students who said they could not remember. “You took notes.  You were supposed to pay attention.”  Consistently throughout the day Jenni held her students responsible for their learning.  It was obvious that they wanted to be treated like adults so Jenni wanted to reinforce the idea that adults are held responsible for their actions.

Jenni’s classroom featured posters all over the walls, both related to the content of her ELA classes, the processes the students were to follow in their assignments, a calendar poster that contained the students’ upcoming assignments and motivational posters.  Jenni explained to me later in the day that she had spent thousands of her own dollars building up a resource library for her students in her first year of teaching.

Jenni’s next class started with her using vocabulary flash cards as a way of reviewing new words with her students.  This was a quick and easy way to reinforce the words, as well as, providing an informal assessment on the students’ progress in developing their vocabulary.

Next Jenni referred to an idea she picked up at an Intermediate School District professional development day: “Letters from a trunk”.  The idea for this PD came from the Collins Education Associates, “Collins Writing Program” that promotes writing across the curriculum.^[3] Jenni bought a small trunk in which she placed letters from “Great Aunt Rachel”, supposedly written over four or five decades.  The students’ job was to provide historical context for the letters.  Accompanying the “letters” was more background for the students in the form of a fairly detailed obituary for the aunt.  Jenni had the students circle the words and places they were not familiar with in the article. She then handed out large sticky note paper and questions that had to be answered for each decade assigned to each group of students. What were the major historical events for the decades?  What famous people lived at the time?  What was the status of women?  What was the aunt’s marital status? To what organizations did she belong and what did those organizations do?  Jenni told the students that they would be able to use some of the prior knowledge from previous class lessons in helping them answer the questions. There was some initial confusion about the timeline, which extended from 1905 to 1995 but the students soon started to brainstorm their answers to the questions.  After a few minutes the students placed their sticky notes on the appropriate decades on large poster paper which Jenni provided so that the entire class might share the information.  Jenni asked good follow up questions, based on the obituary article. A student assumed that Rachel came from a “white collar” family since she attended college.  Jenni had that student define the term “white collar” so that she and the rest of the class were familiar with the terminology.  At this point the students were definitely engaged in the lesson.  Jenni read a description of Aunt Rachel’s house (a tour was given by a school age teen in the story, thereby further connecting Jenni’s class to the assignment). The tour extended to the attic where the trunk was found containing the letters.  Jenni now turned to her students and directed them to fill her empty trunk with letters.  Each person had to answer 10 bulleted points with at least 5 facts per bulleted answer for a total of 50 facts.  The students were also responsible for a bibliography.  At the end of the lesson the class would share their research.

Jenni was careful to remind her class that no copying and pasting from websites was allowed and the students were to put all the information into their own words and they had to use complete sentences.  They were allowed to use bulleted points, as long as the sentences were correct, as well as the punctuation.  As both Jenni and Tamika told me at the beginning of the day, even though this was an alternative school setting and despite these students having multiple life challenges, they were still being held to the same standards as the regular high school students.  The teachers followed the same state standards and curriculum guidelines.

Jenni’s last class of the day was Economics. She was very cognizant of the grade level reading abilities of her students so she ordered comic books from the Federal Reserve in order to make the subject matter more approachable.  The Federal Reserve branches provided free materials on different economic subjects involving consumer education.  Jenni also had a main text for the class, an up-to-date edition of Economics for Today and Tomorrow by Glencoe.  There was a minor problem in the text selection.  Jenni reviewed four different textbooks and chose the one best suited for her students, but she forgot that she was supposed to clear that purchase with the district curriculum council and the Social Studies Department. Apparently, there was no blowback from that decision.

Today’s lesson was on personal finance, a topic that challenges most all high school students.  Jenni asked the class what personal finance included, thus investigating the students’ prior knowledge. The students responded with, “savings accounts, checking accounts, house mortgages, car loans, credit cards and interest on loans”.  Jenni then did the math on simple interest for her students and warned them of the danger in credit card usage.  She reminded them that interest was dependent on making basic card payments every month. After that warning Jenni asked follow up questions to get the students to provide more specific information in regards to their general statements.

The day provided discipline challenges for Jenni.  In the case of this class two of the young men decided it would be fun to stick pencils through their already pierced ear lobes.  Jenni quickly stopped her lesson and brought a halt to the behavior. It was obvious that she expected good behavior and when called on it, her two students immediately stopped the spectacle.

To make the lesson more personal Jenni talked about her life and her neighborhood in explaining personal debt, inherited debt and mortgage foreclosures.  The students shared examples from their lives and people they knew or had heard about.  There was further discussion on estate auctions, life insurance and a question on who raises your child if you die? The students asked Jenni about college costs, i.e. tuition and books, but did not raise the topic of living expenses while attending college.  Jenni was careful and complete in filling in the details of all the expenses related in attending college.

While Jenni was to be absent attending her conference, this class was going to watch Willy Wonka.  She wanted the students to analyze the lifestyles of the contestants and discuss their economic choices.  She introduced a tri-Venn diagram and entitled the three interlocking circles, Willy, Charlie and Violet.

The next segment of the lesson for this day involved the students reading a comic book story on consumer credit. After the reading they were to make up a quiz about what they read.  In preparing the quiz Jenni would get a sense of the students’ comprehension of the facts presented in a fairly informal way. The students did not have to take the quiz they created.

Next on the agenda was a discussion over Chapter 3 from the textbook.  Jenni summarized the chapter in 10 minutes. During her discussion of disposable and discretionary income she displayed a good connection and sense of humor with her students.  She personalized the topics with a story concerning a bike and a baby seat.  A student raised the issue of comparison shopping in line with the story and Jenni reinforced the idea of opportunity cost.  She pointed out a chart in the text that analyzed earning power and provided details in fleshing out the meaning of money.  The pie chart used the symbol of a quarter, split into the various ways in which consumers spent their income.

Jenni then moved on to a discussion concerning competitive and informative advertising and featured a segment on the practice of “bait and switch”, offering one item while attempting to get the consumer to buy a more expensive item.  Jenni referred to a recent recall on beef, but this reference drew no response so she went immediately to another recent news story concerning lead paint in toys produced overseas.  This example did resonate with her class.  Jenni strove throughout the day in finding stories and examples that were relevant to her students’ lives.

Jenni finished the segment on the chapter by reviewing a visual summary. This summary included the terms: income” taxes, disposable income, necessities, and discretionary income. At the very end of the class, she reviewed the agenda for tomorrow so that the students could prepare their minds for what was coming next, as well as provide a link between today’s lesson and future lessons.

In order to organize her students and her grading, Jenni created grading binders. She put blank pieces of paper in three ring binders and had her students staple their work onto the blank pages.  Jenni said the binders made it easier for her grade and transport student work.  She related that she spent two to three hours a week grading work at home, as well as coming into school each day about 45 minutes before the students arrived and at least an hour after school each day.  She estimated that she had spent roughly $5,000 to $7,000 from her own funds in outfitting her resource library in her classroom.  On top of those expenditures, she received a $5,000 grant from Dollar General for teaching supplies. She used that money to find resources for careers, reading and writing skills, a group of Sparknotes entitled, “No Fear Shakespeare”^[4] and many other resources.

Interview, 2008

Defining Success, 2008

Jenni defined success in teaching, particularly in an alternative high school, as more than just the content.  With so many challenges in their lives, her students needed someone they could trust if they were to learn the information necessary for success in their lives.  She said her students were very open with her when she was not getting the content across to them.  She admitted that her students’ success and hers was also measured by the state standardized tests and Jenni was, at the very least, uneasy about having those tests being a measure of anyone’s success. Bluntly,  Jenni “hated” having those tests as a measure of her students’ success, and therefore, hers (Jenni, v.t., 2008, p.1).  On the other hand, she did like the fact that the students were being held accountable for their learning. She still objected to her teaching being measured by the tests.  Jenni’s success at building relationships with her students can best be stated in her own words. “In the past three years if you ask any of my students…I mean there are students I get along wonderfully with, there are students I butt heads with, but I think they will all tell you that genuinely I care, and I’m doing what’s best for them, and that my goal is their best interest, as far as their futures, be it college, work, whatever they do” (Jenni, v.t., 2008, p.1).  Jenni also told me that her success as a teacher was based on her students’ success in life after high school, a comment that can be attributed to most teachers.

As far as Grand Valley’s impact on Jenni’s ability to build relationships with her students she related that building respect was an important part of what she learned in college.  She noted that there was a fine line, at times, between being a “friend” of the students and being their respected teacher.  In the case of the small population at this school, Jenni said it was more like a family atmosphere, with the administrators, Tamika and Chuck, being more like the mom and dad, versus assistant principal and principal.  Being about the same age as many of her students’ older siblings complicated relationships with students for Jenni.  She did say that most students knew the line not to cross, but they forgot at times and that made her job all the more difficult.  Jenni knew that for many of her students she was the most stable adult in their lives.  Many of them had poor relationships with adults in their lives and had a hard time with a different dynamic that existed with Jenni. She related an instance where one day she had to correct a student’s behavior and the student had a hard time understanding Jenni the next day when she had “wiped the slate clean” on a new day. So much so, that when she leaned in to correct that student’s behavior again, he flinched, as if Jenni was preparing to strike him.  She said that student’s reaction was shared by many of her students who came from home situations that involved “physical complications” (Jenni’s euphemism for abusive situations).  Jenni learned with some students not to make sudden movements around them for fear of a panic response. She said she also worked on improving her patience with the students she identified as coming from more troubling home lives.  I asked Jenni if her university training helped prepare her for teaching at an alternative school and she said that she was trained like any teacher candidate.  She implied that extra course work on counseling would be helpful, especially if a teacher was headed for a position at an urban school. She also thought that teachers should not simply tell a troubled student to, “go see the counselor”.  If a teacher works hard in developing strong relationships with students, then the students need to feel that their regular classroom teacher is the first person they approach with a problem.

That situation does bring up situations in my own teaching career.  I have witnessed, sometimes with negative results, teachers going beyond their training and abilities in an attempt to help students with a problem. It would have been more effective if those teachers relied on counselors who had the training for difficult circumstances.  The results of these well-meaning teachers were, at times, negative for both the teacher and the student.  I think Jenni had a good idea of what she was capable of handling at this time in her career. Jenni posed the theoretical situation where a student might approach her about being pregnant and would not know what to do.  Jenni said she would counsel the student to tell her parents, even though it would be difficult at first.

Content, 2008

Jenni was a Social Studies major, with a History emphasis and an English minor. For teaching certification purposes, even though it was not required of her, Jenni took all the independent certification tests.  In other words, instead of just the general Social Studies certification test, she took all the subject tests, History, Geography, Economics and Political Science, plus her minor test.  She did have some trouble with the Political Science test so she decided not to get the independent certification, but that did not prevent her, based on her Social Studies certification (RX in Michigan) from teaching Civics or Government.  She made the decision, based on her clientele, to focus mainly on microeconomics in her Econ class. Topics such as small business, entrepreneurship and budgeting tied into economic independence, consumerism and spending were stressed because, “someday you are going to have to move out of your parents’ house” (Jenni, v.t. 2008, p.4).  She felt that she was still lacking some content background in her minor courses. She felt secure in what she did know that she could safely integrate social studies and history into her English classes. She declared that History and Social Studies were her “passions”.  She did go on to say that she felt there was a disconnect between what she learned in her Political Science classes at GVSU and what she was tested on in the state certification test. There was also a disconnect during her student-assisting placement, where she taught a Government class and the content she received at the University.  I did use the information gleaned from all of the subjects in this study in communicating with the various departments potential areas of disconnect. Both the separate units and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences took note of that information to reassess curricula and course offerings.

My next question involved Jenni’s ability to assign and grade writing assignments. Did she feel confident when it came to making writing assignments and did she have the ability for carefully grading and providing feedback for her students?  Jenni answered in the positive.  The SWS (Supplemental Writing Skills) coursework both helped with the technical aspects of assigning and grading written work, as well as promoting the use of multiple sources of information.  She did not feel that her college experience, either in her SWS classes or her regular History classes had much impact on assigning or grading student work. She was an English minor and those classes probably provided more experience for her teaching. She did relate an experience with one History prof’s assignment where the professor simply wrote “Great Job!”, while other students in the class received paragraphs of written feedback. She never found out if that lone comment implied that there was no feedback necessary because of a job well done or that the professor simply did not read or take the time to fully comment.  Apparently, Jenni did not ask.

Strategies and Methods, 2008

Beyond the content I asked if there were strategies and methods that she employed that grew out of her college coursework. She cited several: “Up and moving”, “big sticky notes” on poster board on the wall, cooperative reading to help students get past sticking points when they start to give up. She did say that she gave up on using comic books for her Econ class because that form of learning just didn’t work with her students.  She said she used group work many times because her students were prone to giving up or quitting easily and working with peers helped them to persevere.  Jenni said that her college experience convinced her that she always had to be creative, vary her lesson plans and always be willing to try new things in an attempt to engage her students’ learning.  Her classes were divided into three or four, 10 to 15-minute segments.

Due to the nature of these students’ inability to find success in a traditional school setting I asked if the age of her students presented a challenge.  Jenni disagreed with the idea of social promotion.  She said that some of her students were moved on or promoted from middle school without the necessary skills for success in high school.  Her students ranged in age from 14 to almost 20. She was aware of potential problems with an age range like that.  In her words, “You don’t need a 20-year-old sitting next to a 14-year-old at lunch for a variety of reasons” (Jenni, v.t., 2008, p.5).  Jenni said that most of her students read at a low middle school level and some read at a 3rd or 4th grade level.  Her textbooks averaged out at a 10th grade reading level so finding readings that engaged her students and were at their reading level was difficult.  A Special Education teacher/consultant was available some of the time but Jenni had no Special Education resources provided for her room so anything she did have she bought from outside sources or from her own pocket.  Several of her students did have I.E.P.s but in order for them to attend New Options they had to sign off on the Special Education services.  I was not sure why that was. Was it because the district knew that none would be provided or did they consider an alternative setting a form of special education?  Jenni thought she was providing some of the help these students needed, but she admitted that she received very little information or ideas of practices in her college training that would prepare her to be the sole provider for special education needs.  The university might have changed the course requirements after Jenni graduated and students after her graduation date may have received more special education training in their regular education preparation.

Next, I asked Jenni if having two separate placements for teacher-assisting and student teaching helped prepare her for her career.  She did her teacher-assisting at Ottawa Hills High School in Grand Rapids Public School District and her student teaching at Grand Haven.  She related that her time at Ottawa Hills was “miserable, terrible”, but that experience “toughened her skin” and prepared her for teaching at an alternative high school.  It definitely helped with her classroom management skills. Grand Haven was a different story altogether.  Jenni said if she looked at the students there “funny” they freaked out (I imagined a glare coming from Jenni’s face and that would definitely get my attention!).  She said she learned quickly to “lighten up”.  She thought that if she had started at Grand Haven her experience at Ottawa Hills would have been much more challenging.  I found that interesting because another person in this study, Carlos, said that coming from the urban environment at Muskegon High School where he went to high school to the “perfect world” at Grand Haven helped him set goals for the students he was teaching at Muskegon High School in his first teaching position.  He challenged himself and his students to achieve the same results as the Grand Haven students, even with the difference in settings.

Jenni thought the Grand Haven students would have succeeded without her, but the students she now had might not.  They faced so many challenges in their lives and they crumbled so much easier.  “These kids need me” (Jenni, v.t., 2008, p.7).  She joked some days with her current students that she was going to give up teaching and “go down to the river and live in a box”, a reference to one of the homeless locations in Grand Rapids.  She used the phrase as a way to challenge her students who threatened to give up and leave school.  While it was meant as a joke, that scenario was not far from the truth for a young adult with no diploma, few work skills and a sense that there was no way out of their current circumstances.  Jenni said that several girls asked her if she would come down to the river and teach them in their boxes. That is why, when Jenni had a rough day, she realized that leaving these kids might mean future homelessness and that thought kept her coming to school each day.

Jenni did say that she had some advantages in the atmosphere at New Options.  Her classes were small, there were just a few staff members and only a few teachers. Everyone got along very well and she had a good administrator.  She said that an administrator has to back a teacher up when a student was sent out of class.  On a daily basis some students try to pit teachers against teachers, something that probably happened in the home life with these students’ parents.  Jenni said the whole situation would fail unless the teachers supported each other.  There had only been one fight in three years at New Options but Jenni said there was one male student that she asked the administration to remove from her class because she saw ‘rage’ inside him waiting to boil out. The administration backed her on that request.  Tough, challenging days and situations were made better with a supportive, family atmosphere amongst the staff, teachers and administrators.

Strategies and Methods, 2008

Jenni said she still struggled with the difference between offering students “choices” in how they learned versus “differentiation”. “How do I teach all of these kids, all at the same time, at all these different levels” (Jenni, v.t., 2008, p.7)?  She admitted that it was difficult to pre-test her students in her English classes when she knew that they were all over the map in terms of their reading abilities.  She felt far more comfortable pre-testing her Social Studies classes based on the content they supposedly learned in previous years.  She knew that she needed help with creating tiered assignments in her ELA classes, which was a good thing, as far as I was concerned.  Better that a teacher admits that she/he needs help, then to not ask and fail to help the students under their care.

Pearls of Wisdom, 2008

Jenni’s first pearl for future teachers was when students go off, it probably isn’t you.  Quite probably there was a string of events or circumstances outside of school that created the problem for those troubled kids so her answer was to be as nice as possible to her students and they would be nice to her.  She did not buy the old saying for teachers, “don’t smile until Christmas”.  While being tough or presenting a tough persona might help teachers initially, breaking down that toughness so a teacher actually relates to the students and the students relate to the teacher is much more difficult.  She said her job was made easier by looping the students, having them more than one semester or year. “They know me, they know what to expect from me” (Jenni, v.t., 2008, p.8).  Careful preparation and planning was her next pearl”  Jenni made the argument for over-planning. She shared a story she heard from her administrator. He had created a unit for three weeks and he went through it with his students in two days. Always have a plan for what to do next and then back that up with even more.  For first year teachers, finding the time for that much planning is difficult.  I was fortunate that I had my curriculum and textbooks the spring before I started teaching and I had the whole summer, plus two weeks of down time from my summer job to go into my new classroom, run off copies, thoroughly prepare materials and get my room in order. I thought I had planned for the first month I taught.  That situation just does not happen for many teachers.  The bottom line is the better organized you are, the better off you are.

2015

Life had changed for Jenni since 2008.  She now had two children. The youngest was in kindergarten, and that child was sick the day I visited Jenni’s classroom. Jenni had to coordinate with her husband since her child had to leave school. She did not receive a follow-up call from the school or her husband so she figured he must have taken their daughter home or she made it through the day.  Like her mom, the kindergartener did not want to miss school, even though she was ill.  It is my belief that many teachers would rather go to school a little ill rather than turn their classroom over to a substitute teacher.  For me, no matter how good the sub, I always felt I lost two days of instruction for every day I was out of school.

The administration at New Options was another change in Jenni’s life. Tamika was now the principal for the last few years.  It was not a brand-new role for Tamika nor did Jenni have an adjustment in her relationship with Tamika since she was assistant principal in 2008. Tamika was still Tamika. Changes in administration and leadership in a school building is another challenge teachers face from year-to-year, especially if the new person is unexperienced and learning on the job.

The newest change was instituted just this day.  Students who did not finish their homework now had lunch detention. Those students, instead of sitting with their friends during lunch would now have to sit with Tamika.  Although Tamika had a great relationship with the students and they respected her, eating lunch with the principal was definitely not as fun as eating lunch with your friends.

Something that did not change was that Jenni was in the same classroom that she was in in 2008. This was not the case with very many of the other teachers in this study. Some had seen multiple changes in classrooms and some had multiple changes in what they were teaching.  Jenni was still teaching English. Her classes had swelled somewhat since 2008.  Earlier her students came from the Allendale and Coopersville districts. Now Hudsonville and Jenison alternative education students attended New Options as well.  Jenni’s First Period class had only five students but the rest of the day her classroom was full.

I asked Jenni if she had continued to spend as much out of personal finances on her classroom as she did when she started teaching. She told me that she no longer kept track. Whenever there was a sale on a particular item or items, she just bought them. On the other hand, she had acquired two easy chairs for her students to sit in and she picked those chairs up off the curb.  She offered to pay her neighbor who was discarding the chairs but her neighbor declined the offer.  Jenni’s classrooms walls had motivational and behavioral posters on the walls. There was a Shakespeare statue sitting on a table, as well as a model of the Eiffel Tower. There were also two globes and several book shelves.  Jenni still had her interactive white board, a document camera, a dvd player and a vhs player, about the same equipment with which college classrooms are equipped.  Jenni displayed several photos of her family in and around her desk.  With all of the decoration and furniture, Jenni’s room was still well organized. There were separate trays for completed assignments and notebooks for each period’s assignments that a student might have missed.  The students knew that if they were absent, they were to go to the notebook the day they returned and get the assignments they missed.

Due to the district’s bond issue and the support of the taxpayers, each student now had a Chromebook.  These computers were now two years old and definitely integrated into Jenni’s assignments.

As the day started, the students entered the classroom from their cars or the bus and ate breakfast. I did not know if they did not have time to eat at home, whether anyone at home fixed breakfast for them or there was not any food for them to eat at home; probably a combination of all the preceding.

As the class started the first thing the students did was journal.  I am sure Jenni learned about some of the challenges her students faced in their lives from these journals.  Jenni had been teaching in her minor since graduation, but her job went way beyond the content in this alternative school. Were there success stories? Were these kids able to return to traditional school? Jenni related that some of her students went on to community college, some to traditional four-year colleges and some went into the workforce.  She bumped into some of her former students at restaurants and stores.

Jenni was using Google Classroom as a way to organize her assignments and lecture presentations.  Allendale High School was still using Moodle^[5] at this point.  There were a few Allendale High School teachers who were also using Google Classroom. Jenni also was using an upgraded version of Quizlet^[6].  Jenni paid out of her pocket for the upgraded version and that version was tied to Google Classroom, making it easier for her to track student progress and tie all her records together.

As the students were finishing up their journaling, Jenni showed me a poster which one of her students created.  Jenni had discovered a free QR generating website to make a postcard for the student to take home.  The parents could scan the QR code and see a photo of their child’s poster art that Jenni had taken with her phone.  The poster described school, what a school should look like physically, what an ideal teacher was, the good things about school, the bad things, the solution for those bad things and what should be taught and learned.  It was excellent work by any standard for any student.

After journaling Jenni spent ten minutes on vocabulary building. There were six options in Quizlet for the students to use in facilitating the learning of new words.  The district employed Infinite Campus^[7] for student information and grades.

Jenni proceeded to follow the agenda posted on one of her whiteboards.  She introduced the term “unreliable narrator” to her students as she began an explanation and introduction to “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Jenni explained to her class that many of the students had not read the book even though it was assigned.  Some of the students started, but did not finish it.  Some students who read it did not like it so she said the class would read it together. She then explained that the new Common Core standards the state of Michigan adopted had “mushed” together the standards for 9th and 10th grades.  After the standards’ explanation she asked a question about the narrator’s function was in this story and what the narrator’s perspective might be versus the author’s perspective.  Jenni then displayed a Prezi^[8] which she told she had stolen from another teacher because “all good teachers ‘steal’ good ideas from other teachers”.  This Prezi explained what the purpose of a narrator is in a story.

Next Jenni read to the class “The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by A.Wolf” as an example of an unreliable narrator. She did a great job adding inflection in her reading and the students were engaged in listening to this interesting twist on a story they had probably heard many times from a different perspective.  The Prezi she used made several references to the movie, “Rashomon”^[9] and the four different perspectives of its story.  The Prezi presented good skills for figuring out the “truth”.  Jenni also referenced a Disney movie entitled, “Descendants”, in an attempt to find a relevant connection to her students’ own life experiences. At this point in the class Jenni had her students start a diary entry from the perspective of any villain.  She told the students that if they could not finish the diary entry today, she would give them time in class tomorrow to finish it up.  The granting of extra time probably removed some of the students’ stress in trying to think of something creative to write and at the same time recognized that at least some of the students would not finish the entry at home since they did not finish the assigned reading for the day.

As Jenni’s Second Period class started, she did a planner check.  Six of her seven students had their planners with them.  She explained in an aside to me that some of these students faced enormous problems in their lives.  There were two true freshmen in this class, which was unusual for Jenni’s classes.  Usually freshmen would have to show that they could not adjust to a traditional high school setting first, before being sent to the alternative school.  In this case the high schools refused to take these students from middle school.

As in the First Period class, Jenni started the class with a journaling assignment. As they were journaling Jenni did a grade check. She explained to students that missed assignments resulted in lunch detention if their work was not completed.  Again, Jenni referenced the class folders and explained to a student that she/he could find their missed assignment in the folder.  Jenni explained to me that she had stolen the folder idea from one of her student teachers. She said she always tried to learn something new from the college students placed in her classroom.

Jenni returned to the practice of using computers in the classroom and how to best use them.  She said that the Chromebooks were much easier to use with Google Classroom. She had paid her own fees to become a Google Educator and attended a 3-day workshop in Brighton, Michigan to become certified.  Later she presented at a Google conference.  Since then she had sent in suggestions for improvement to Google Classroom, such as the ability to re-use or modify old classes instead of starting fresh every year.  She also had a suggestion with Google Classroom handling late assignments. The application could send out notifications for unfinished assignments. At this point Jenni was still challenged when it came to the students handing in some late on Google Classroom.

By this time in her career Jenni had earned two Master’s degrees. She completed the Educational Leadership program that several of my former students had followed. It seemed that the teachers chose this program because of the ease of completion.  Later in the interview Jenni explained that while the Master’s was good for providing an opportunity to move across the salary schedule, she had no intention of becoming a principal.  Her second Master’s was in Educational Technology and she said she used the information and skills she gained from that coursework all the time in her classes.

The next activity in her Second Period class had her students make wishes.  She told them that they could not wish “for three more wishes” with one of the wishes.  One of her students kept fighting back on that rule.  Later in the day I learned that that student had witnessed a horrifying accident and suffered from PTSD.  Jenni added a prompt to the instructions and asked her students what the word “fate” meant to them.  At this point in the class Jenni had to stop the lesson in order to get her students to stop using their phones and ear buds. She told them she had just ordered a “phone jail” with clear plastic pockets and she would take a phone away if it was not being used for an appropriate purpose. Apparently, the students were texting when all they were allowed to do was listen to music when they had a seat assignment.

Jenni returned to the assignment and asked the class to think about movies, stories or books where wishes were granted. A student immediately answered “Alladin”.  Next Jenni asked what happened to the characters who made those wishes.  She also asked the class if they had superstitions or if they were influenced by superstitions. She went further and asked the students if it was all right to put themselves or someone they love at risk because of something the students wanted.  After those questions, Jenni handed out a worksheet that was a pre-reading activity for “Monkey’s Paw”^[10].  The questions on the sheet asked the students if they agreed or disagreed with certain statements.  Jenni used her document camera to display the worksheet as she discussed the questions with the class. Throughout Jenni’s day she repeated instructions to her students multiple times.

At this point, Tamika, the current building principal, walked into the class and had a conversation with the student who had been arguing with Jenni earlier in the lesson, the same student who Jenni described as probably having PTSD.  It was obvious that Tamika was sensitive to the student’s problems, but also made the case in reinforcing the proper respect for Jenni in her role as teacher.

Jenni next handed out the Monkey’s Paw story and began reading it with the same inflection and tone she had used in engaging the students with the previous reading. The reading took about ten to fifteen minutes.  When she finished the story there was about a minute left in the class so Jenni thanked the students for listening and told them that they would process the story in class tomorrow. After the class left the room Jenni told me that this class was calmer than it usually was due to the absence of one student.  Later, during lunch with the other teachers in the building, they also commented on the relative quiet in their classes due this student’s absence.

As the next period’s class began it was obvious that Jenni’s students knew the protocol for when they were absent.  One of her students immediately upon entry into the room walked over to the folder containing the assignments from previous classes and got the assignment that he missed from the previous day.

Although many of the students were journaling at the beginning of class on their Chromebooks, some students were writing their journals with pens on paper.  Jenni explained that she tried to use other methods than technology at times, just so the students are not tied to the tech.  That said, Jenni also informed me that teachers could use a school-wide paging program for immediately contacting their students, similar to many universities’ alert programs for incidents. As the students finished their journaling for the day, they quietly placed their journals in the appropriate box. Everyone in this class seemed focused on their work.  No drama and no arguments with Jenni. There was a structure to Jenni’s classes and there were standards and expectations for work, but Jenni said she was much more patient with the students in this alternative environment due to the multitude of challenges these students face.

As Jenni started the next activity there was a problem with the school network and Jenni seamlessly shifted to another means of presenting the information to her students.  She did not use much passive information presentation and the entire school was focused on more student-centered work. While Jenni had the students busy on seat work, she shared two more stories about students in her classes: one about parents divorcing; a problem and challenge faced by many students whether they are in an alternative setting or not; and another story about a student’s family being evicted from their current living arrangement.  Jenni said school is “sanctuary” for many of her students and her biggest challenge was getting the students to trust her when many of them have been hurt by adults, both physically and mentally.

At this point in the middle of the period the school practiced a “lockdown” drill, a very real consequence due to the number of school shootings around the United States.  Calmly Jenni explained to the students where they were huddle, away from the classroom door and a corner of her L-shaped room.  The students reflected Jenni’s calm as she explained what would happen if this was not a drill.

This class was an Economics remediation class. The school was no longer using a computer-based credit recapture program. I was not informed why the school had abandoned the computerized credit recovery software, but I imagine that it was another attempt in personalizing learning versus using impersonal technology.

A new issue and challenge had arisen for Jenni since I last visited her in 2008. She had several transgender students in her classes. She was still learning how to cope with the feelings of these students.  How should she address them? What name was she to use?  Jenni did not mention whether the district had provided any professional development with this challenge and I am fairly sure that during Jenni’s time at GVSU there was little or no preparation in any of her Education classes for helping teachers feel more comfortable and assured when they had transgender students in their classes.

Jenni’s Fourth Period and last class of the day was Daily Core ELA.  This class started like all of her classes with a journaling assignment. Next they moved onto vocabulary work in preparation for a lesson on the Globe Theater. With 20 students this was Jenni’s largest class of the day and the most animated, however Jenni quieted and the whole class quieted with her. There were two students sitting in the “street find” easy chairs in the front of the room.  Jenni said she previously had bean bag chairs but the students would fall asleep in them so she had to remove the bean bags. As Jenni made the assignment announcement for the first time all day a student asked how many points the assignment was worth.  This was the only indication I had all day that any students cared about their grades.

Jenni started this assignment by reminding the students of information from a class a few days ago.  She talked about the word “manifesto” as she explained the writing assignment for a personal narrative essay. The students were to present a consistent point of view from either the first person or third person, but they could not use both. She wanted enough detail in order to provide character development, a vivid setting and the use of descriptive language in order to put all the senses of the potential reader into play.  Jenni displayed a plot diagram and then she set the students to work.  Immediately the class got a little noisy and Jenni warned them, saying she would use her “angry cat” face. They quieted almost immediately. A few minutes later as the murmur rose a few decibels, Jenni threatened to throw koosh balls at the class and then she gave the class the silent treatment.  No balls thrown.  The class quieted and re-focused on their work. The threatened pummeling by the balls was taken in good humor and, backed by the silent treatment, the students knew that they had stepped out of the bounds of acceptable behavior.  Jenni then added further instructions to prompt the students’ writing. There were 4 options for the story: a goal, a hardship, a best childhood memory or a character-shaping event.  Jenni explained the grading rubric based on the establishment of a tone for the story, an outline format and a story board, beyond the writing itself.  Her instructions were clear and she asked if there were any questions about the assignment and there were none. Several times after the students got to work on the assignment, Jenni walked through the tables and got down to her students’ eye levels to answer questions and discuss their writing.

There were several students in this class that had difficulty staying on task, but for the most part the students appeared to be engaged on the assignment and focused on their writing.

Interview 2015

At the very beginning of the interview Jenni told me that the name “Alternative” had been dropped from the name of the high school.  Now it was just New Options.  She did not explain the reason for the name change, but perhaps it was to remove some of the onus for the students attending a different kind of school.

Defining Success

Jenni described success as success in the classroom for her students, but more importantly, success for her students in life.  While many of her students go right into the workforce, there were some who went on to community college or four-year institutions. A few went into the military. When I started my teaching career often the only option for male students who struggled in school was to go into military service, but as military roles started becoming more technically advanced and the training changed those same students were no longer wanted by the Armed Forces.  Jenni still thought content was important, but more important were life skills, like knowing where to find answers to questions for everyday situations that the average person might face. One of the places Jenni tells her students they can go for answers after they leave New Options is her.  Many of them do not have parental support to turn to so Jenni, and the other members of the staff make the offer of that support, at least to answer questions.

Jenni admitted that GVSU did not prepare her for a school like New Options.  She recounted walking out of her student assisting placement in tears with me by her side.  She said she did not think she could teach in a situation like Ottawa Hills High School for the rest of her life. My response was that teaching was what she wanted to do, but perhaps an urban environment like Grand Rapids, was not the place suited for her.  At the same time, the poverty and lack of parental support she experienced at Ottawa Hills helped to prepare her for New Options. She did not fear the challenge nor the students after her experience in the city. Her student teaching placement was in Grand Haven, much more like her K-12 experience as a student in Grand Ledge. Grand Haven was nothing like New Options.  She admitted that even with the urban experience it took her a few years to adjust to the atmosphere and students in her current school.  She said that it might be intimidating to have a college professor come and visit for a day, but since I understood the circumstances at her school she was more at ease. She knew that at times she had to give her students more latitude in terms of their behavior and work habits because what works in a normal classroom just would not work there.  On the other hand, there were situations here that if she did not act immediately, the situation might spin out of control, whereas a teacher in a more traditional school might let minor things slide a little because they knew their students had a different background and upbringing.  Jenni said that her Ottawa Hills’ experience, though challenging and, at times, frightening, was made easier due to support given to her by her cooperating teacher.  Jenni tried to keep track of her after teacher-assisting but she thinks that teacher became ‘burnt out’ due to the high stress at that school.  Another possibility for the difficulty in finding that teacher was at that time Grand Rapids Public was shifting teachers between subjects and schools and perhaps that teacher was teaching at a different location.

Jenni went on to say that her best day of student teaching was at Ottawa Hills.  She was working one-on-one with an 11th grade male student and her cooperating teacher had a requirement that the students could locate all 50 states on a map.  Jenni volunteered to tutor a group of students who were having difficulty locating the states so she pulled them out of class and worked with the students 1 on 1.  She offered candy as a reward if they passed the test on the states.  Immediately these students were distrustful when Jenni said she would bring the candy on Monday if they passed the test on Friday.  After having adults not follow-through multiple times in their lives, they wanted the candy right after passing the test so Jenni agreed.  When this one particular young man passed the test, Jenni gave him the candy bar he had requested, and he jumped out of his chair and hugged her.  In Jenni’s words, “It was like I had given him a hundred dollars.  ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mrs. Kushion. Thank you, thank you, thank you.’  It was only a fifty-cent candy bar. It was not a big deal…and to me that was so much more meaningful than anything else. That day has stuck with me through everything” (Jenni, v.t., 2015, p.3-4).

Jenni’s main take-away from what she learned about theory at the university was that theory did not totally prepare a teacher for the actual practice.  She suggested even more classroom experience than the two semesters Grand Valley’s program offered. Since 2015 GVSU has investigated ways to increase teacher candidates’ time in actual classroom settings, but the challenge of actual number of credit hours and time to graduate presents problems.  Jenni’s other suggestion for better teacher preparation was making sure that cooperating teachers had the skill necessary to prepare future teachers.  That was also a struggle during my time at GVSU. Many times, principals controlled where and with whom college students were placed. In many cases our students were placed with teachers in urban schools who were themselves challenged.  Our students were stop-gap measures in a failing situation. Jenni said that without my support and that of her teacher at Ottawa Hills she is not sure she would have succeeded in her career.

Challenges, 2015

Jenni admitted she had multiple challenges when it came to teaching in an alternative setting. The first challenge she mentioned was classroom behavior.  Sending a student out of the room because of their behavior sometimes ran against the student’s I.E.P. or other circumstances. She cited circumstances like court orders where a student might be suspended or expelled based on the school’s rules, only to have a court send the student right back to the school. In other instances, normal procedure would be to have a parent come and take the student home, but would there be in parent at home to follow through, or did that parent have the means to get to the school because they did not have a car or a car was out of gas and they did not have money for gas?  In some instances, there was no phone at home so it was impossible for the school to get in touch with the parent.

Another challenge was funding.  Jenni wished she had a bigger budget for her classroom. When it was obvious the school did not have the funds, Jenni purchased what she needed anyway.  The Allendale District’s voters did pass a bond issue that paid for a 1-to-1 computer program.  Her classroom did have a Smartboard and her students did have Chromebooks, but there were other items beside technology that Jenni wished she had for her students.  She told me her professional development money was non-existent at the time of this interview.  She was unable to go to a state-wide technology conference last year and the prior year she paid to go out of her own pocket. She constantly looked for sales for such items as crayons and markers during the summer so by the time school started in the fall, she had a large bag of items to re-stock her supplies. As much as she would like to have a larger budget, she said a student told her that the school he came from ran out of staples for the stapler and the teacher and the students had to go without staples for part of the school year.  Jenni said if that had happened to her, she would have stopped and bought some for the next day.

Dealing with Stress, 2015

Based on the small size of the school and the lack of a large staff Jenni’s planning period was at the end of the day.  She said that by that time she did not have the mental energy to do much planning. The plus side was that the whole staff came together at that time and that worked as a ‘decompression’ time. They compared notes on the students’ behavior that day and found out what they might do as a staff to alleviate problems.  Jenni felt that few teachers had that kind of time together on a daily basis and, indeed, at least one teacher in this study admitted that she felt “siloed” when it came to planning. There was little or no opportunity to sit down with other teachers involved with the same content or teaching the same students and compare lesson or behavioral plans.

I asked Jenni if there were opportunities for the staff to get together socially outside of the school day as a way of building teamwork and sharing mutual problems and solutions for the at-risk population in the school. Jenni said social meetings happened infrequently, but she did take advantage of those opportunities when they arose. I told Jenni that a few years into my teaching career I decided that I needed social contact with non-teachers, just for an opportunity not to talk shop and try to find different perspectives on life in general outside of education.  Those gatherings did work as a stress reliever for me, in part, because I found out that everyone was dealing with stress in their line work as well.  Jenni did not have any teacher friends in the area but she did go on a “girls’ weekend” and those ‘getaways’ helped her deal with stress.

She did say that she was now successful at leaving school at school.  She admitted that when she first started at New Options, she took her day home with her, to the point that her husband was very familiar with all her stress and struggles.  She decided that she and her family needed a break from the day when she got home and that practice helped her with stress.

Motivation, 2015

After recounting the many stresses, she faced on a daily basis I asked her, like I asked all of the teachers, what kept her going?  She said she joked with her students that she was going to quit and she did apply for a position at the high school last year. When she was passed over for that position, she was disappointed.  Jenni said her husband really wanted her to find another teaching position because he knew she was stressed, but Jenni knew that these high-risk students needed her and that kept her coming back every day. “…I feel like they don’t have anything else…they really do need me” (Jenni, v.t., 2015, p.7).  Jenni told me that she was walking through the school with one of her student’s aunts. (The student lives with her aunt.) The aunt said she had heard all about Jenni.  Jenni was not sure what that comment meant, but the aunt said that her niece trusted Jenni to help with her problems.  Another student approached Jenni at graduation the previous year and told her that her divorced parents might not come to graduation because of the divorce and that the student might not attend graduation.  Jenni persuaded the student to attend and she did. At the graduation the student said to Jenni, “I am here because of you”, and Jenni said, “No, you are here because of you.”  The student said that she would not have graduated without Jenni’s help.  Knowing that Jenni’s commitment to her students made a difference in their lives kept Jenni coming back each year. “I feel like they really need me.  Not everybody can teach.  Not everybody can teach alternative high school.  That’s how I have survived 11 years of it.  I remind them the first day of school (this year), …’you were in kindergarten, most of you when I started here.  You were still wearing diapers to bed. Remember that” (Jenni, v.t., 2015, p.7).

Strategies and Methods, 2015

Jenni’s first comment was “a lot more technology”.  Her second Master’s degree was in Educational Technology.  She took all of her coursework online from Central Michigan University, taking 6 credit hours a semester, while caring for her newborn baby, a three-year-old and teaching full-time.  She has thought about a Ph.D. in Educational Technology but at the time of this interview in 2015 she did not have the time or the money to pursue that degree program.  Part of the money issue was with her two Master’s degrees, the school district would not help pay for the credit hours since she is already at the top of the pay scale.  Having 5 and 8-year old children did not make pursuit of her next degree any easier.

Jenni prided herself on trying to constantly come up with new ideas in her classroom.  Part of that challenge is that she had students multiple times at New Options, either because they are repeating a grade level or due to the fact that she was the only English teacher.  She did not want to do the same lesson two years in a row and risk losing her students’ engagement.  She admitted that sometimes she had to throw a new strategy or method out because it did not work. Jenni preferred constant change rather than repeating something that would turn off her students.  She said she tried to go all “paperless” a few years ago, but she began to see the computer as a distraction, in part because she could not be sure her students were always working on their assignments and oversight was difficult. She said she would rather have her students use technology to do something that they could not do on paper. Something creative and different. She said her assignments are about half tech and half traditional now.

Evaluation, 2015

Jenni related that for most of her time at Allendale she was evaluated using four or five different teacher evaluation models. The Charlotte Danielson evaluation model was the latest before a recent switch.^[11]  For the last two years her teaching was evaluated using the 5D model.^[12] Using the Danielson model an administrator would visit her classroom for 40 minutes at a time. Using the new model, she would be visited four to six times, about 15 minutes per visit. Each school in the district chose two of the five dimensions for evaluation and the main focus for New Options was “student engagement”.  The other goal was “curriculum and pedagogy”. Her end-of-year evaluation would be based on those two goals and then she needed to write three goals to attain for next year.  As of the interview she was not sure she would receive feedback prior to the end of the year. She was not sure if the feedback would come after the 15-minute sessions or after all the sessions were completed.

I asked Jenni if all the evaluations she has made her a better teacher.  Just the idea of having 4 or 5 different models over an eleven-year period seemed to be a data nightmare to me.  How would the data from different models be compiled in a meaningful way over a teacher’s career? How would teacher growth be assured or even judged? Jenni said the software used for evaluations has changed several times as well.  As soon as she adjusted to a new model and a new software for registering data, a process that would take over a year, a new model and software program was brought in. She said she did appreciate the new rubric system under 5D, especially the “guiding questions” that model provided, but admitted that constant change in how a teacher is evaluated was frustrating. Change based on data and a recognition for the need for change is a good thing, but change for the sake of change is not. Sitting behind the change in teacher evaluation in Michigan has been a change in the tenure law.  It has become easier for districts to remove senior teachers. Some administrators see the change as a way to “get rid of dead wood” and some teachers see the change as a way to get rid of highly paid and experienced teachers.

Complicating the situation in Allendale and other districts was a program of merit pay.  At first if a teacher was evaluated to be effective or highly effective the teacher would receive a $200 or a $400 bonus. Then due to budget cuts or some other change in policy, the extra pay was reduced to $50 or $100.  Then it was reduced to nothing beyond the rating system and if the individual school administrator gave a teacher a highly effective rating, the superintendent would come in for an evaluation, basically to justify the rating.  All of that process put stress on the teachers, no matter in what building they taught.

Jenni used this opportunity provided by my research visit to comment on Grand Valley’s system of evaluation for student-teachers at New Options. She thought that some of the professors from the College of Education did not, at first, understand the different dynamics at an alternative school and made critical negative comments to the teacher candidates there.  Jenni arrived at the point, due to the college students’ distress at their professors’ evaluations, where she was not going to accept any more teacher candidates into her classroom. Then, for some reason, the professors apparently changed their view of what worked and what did not work in an alternative situation and the evaluations became more constructive.

Mentoring, 2015

Jenni’s first mentor was a teacher with some teaching experience at the high school level, but not in her building.  Immediate mentoring or constructive feedback was difficult due to the distance and time to make connections.  Within a year or two that teacher retired and Jenni received informal mentoring help from Tamika.  The person in charge of attendance gave some of the best support.  Jenni thought the best mentoring system she encountered was when a new science teacher came to New Options.  Jenni served as a non-content mentor, helping the new teacher with student issues, while a science teacher at the high school served as a content mentor.  Both mentors split the mentor compensation.  Jenni said that both mentors had to log the dates and the time involved in those meetings and what was discussed. She admitted the logs could be abused, but it was better than not having to log the meetings at all.  Jenni thought that the administrator in charge should have a good idea of what person would serve a new teacher the best as a mentor.

Continuing Education, 2015

Jenni had already answered this question in discussing her career earlier in her interview. She had finished two master’s programs and was considering a doctoral degree.  I asked her if all that study, time and expense was worth it and did it help in her teaching?  She said that the information and skills she learned about technology was definitely useful.  She used some of her training to start a new tech elective class at New Options.  She taught her students computer applications which would help them after they left high school. With a nod to the cost of applications Jenni used mostly Google applications since they were free, but she also recognized that Google was pervasive in the ‘work world’. On the other hand, she did not see her first Master’s in Educational Leadership as leading anywhere since she did not think she would ever be an administrator.  Apparently she did not think the information and skills learned in that coursework as being applicable to her classroom teaching. If anything, she saw herself teaching at the collegiate level in the future.

Another type of continuing education that was useful for Jenni was her attendance at MACUL conferences.  She had a good friend that worked at November Learning^[13], who traveled all over the world presenting. That idea seemed attractive to Jenni.  I asked her how much she learned and applied from local professional development.  She said that there was not much offered locally that she saw as being helpful in her classroom.  On top of that the district, like many districts, due to state budget cutbacks, did not have the funds for substitutes and going to evening PD meant childcare costs and time away from her family.

Pearls of Wisdom, 2015

Jenni’s first response to this question was trust.  Students have to trust you, especially in the environment in which she taught. They have to trust that you are there for them and you keep their best interests in mind.  If a teacher establishes that bond then students will do anything for you. Jenni thought that the students with the strongest bonds to her might be the scariest people you might meet on the street due to their behavior and the challenges they have seen in their lives.  She admitted that there is a risk of oversharing and getting too close. Teachers have to keep boundaries. Jenni likened the situation to being a parent versus being a friend to the students. She related the following story to me. It was about the girl who said that she would not have gone to graduation if it wasn’t for Jenni.

Right before Spring Break she got very mouthy with our PE teacher and I knew she had that side, but I had never seen it.  …I started to step in and interrupt and (then) I didn’t, and then we went on Spring Break and we were driving to Florida and I started to email her to tell her how disappointed I was and I said, “no, this is a conversation that we need to have face-to-face. And we came back the next Monday and she pulled up a chair right next to me and I said, “We need to talk.” She said, “I know” and I said, “I am extremely disappointed in you” and she dropped her head down and she said, “I know…I spent all Spring Break thinking about it.  …I said, “I’ve told you when I’m proud of you and I’m telling you I’m disappointed in you.” She said, “I need to go apologize.”  I said, “You’re right.  You do need to go apologize.” …She said, “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”  …I said, “It really bothered me that I had to see that side of you.”  (Jenni, v.t., 2015, p.17).

The girl asked permission to leave the room and she immediately went to Tamika, the principal at that time, apologized to her and then apologized to the PE teacher.  Jenni said it was almost like the student came to her and said, “Mom, fix me” (Jenni, v.t., 2015, p.17).

Jenni’s last piece of advice to future teachers was not to be afraid to change, especially if they taught the “riskiest of risky kids”. They may have criminal records, but they are still kids. They are still coming to school and some of them are trying to break the cycle, trying to get out of a bad situation. “They don’t know how to do it and they don’t know how to show it.  If your heart is not really in it and in the right place you can do some damage” (Jenni, v.t., 2015, p.18).