An Interview with Matthew Amaral: Teach For Real

5.27.10 - Michael F. Shaughnessy - Well, first and foremost I wanted it to be a place for new teachers in our toughest schools. I have noticed an alarming trend in first year teachers at my school. We hire about five or six new teachers every year in the English department alone at my site.

An Interview with Matthew Amaral: Teach For Real

Michael F. Shaughnessy
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico

1) Matthew, you have a web site called www.teach4real.com   What led you to set up this site?

Well, first and foremost I wanted it to be a place for new teachers in our toughest schools. I have noticed an alarming trend in first year teachers at my school. We hire about five or six new teachers every year in the English department alone at my site. One of them leaves within the first few months. Another doesn’t make it through the year, and at the end of the year a couple others leave our school, or the profession entirely. They are mentally and physically exhausted. Yes, even physically. The everyday grind of teaching in these schools actually takes a physical toll. They get ill.

They become depressed. And there isn’t a whole lot that I’ve seen out there that helps them-our credential programs aren’t preparing them correctly, and when they get their first job they are given the toughest assignments with the worst kids because the veteran teachers don’t want those classes. It is a crazy, turbulent job and many first year teachers aren’t able to make a career out of it.

So, I thought I would start teach4real.com to help them, and let them know they aren’t the only ones who are dealing with all of this. I’ve had a bit of success at my school (I say this very humbly), so I feel like I can offer a bit of advice in the hopes it might help someone out there, so that next year, we don’t hire six new teachers in our department, maybe just five.

2) What are some of the things that one would find at this site?

Mostly it is a site consisting of articles I’ve written on inner-city education. Some give tips on the different aspects of teaching, like how to talk to a kid after school, or how to help failing students even with a month left and you know they’re going to get an F. Other articles are more generally about the state of education, and have been published in such places as TeachHub.com and here at EdNews.org. I would also like to expose the true state of our schools to those out there who are not in the profession.

I think there is a gross misconception by most people about what is going on in our schools. Things are a lot worse than people think-they are horrible. If any company in the U.S. was run like we run our schools, our country would have collapsed long ago. Why do we continue to allow things to go on in our schools that we don’t allow in the business practices of a fast food restaurant? Some schools don’t even have enough bathroom access for their student population. The riot police come onto our campus a couple times a year. I think my site offers this above anything else-a big dose of ghetto reality.

3) What exactly do you teach and what grade level?

I am a high school English teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have taught all abilities and grade levels, from the accelerated 9^th grade student to the below-basic Junior. I prefer to teach 9^th and 10^th graders because I feel like that is where I can help them the most. Almost half of our kids don’t get to Junior year, so I like to work with them before that, when their future is so uncertain. I feel like that is where I can do the most damageJ

I also teach programs designed to help under-represented kids get into college. The two programs are called Puente and AVID. Puente is a program created to help Latinos (the most underrepresented ethnic group that goes to college based on population) get into college. Of course, it is not just for Latinos, and anyone can join. Puente focuses on Latino Literature, and is a wonderful program run by the most professional, dedicated people in education through UC Berkeley.

AVID stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination. It is a study skills class that teaches students how to work together in “Tutorials.” Both programs focus on a college-going culture, and last year I took a bus full of AVID and Puente Juniors down to tour 4 college campuses in Southern California. We also tour many colleges in the Bay Area during the year. I guess one of my favorite things to do is help kids get into college. But that isn’t all I do, I also have classes in which not a single kid will go to college.

4) From the e-mails that you get, what would you say are the biggest concerns of teachers nowadays?

I think teacher pay is a big worry. We want to be treated as professionals like the rest of the working world, but our salaries aren’t competitive. I think health benefits are another big concern. I know at my site it is cheaper to find health coverage on your own than go through our district plan. A single teacher pays almost $600 a month (it’s not included in our salary) for coverage. As anyone knows, a Cadillac plan through Kaiser would be three or four hundred a month, and basic plan much less. Our job should make getting health care easier and cheaper, instead it makes it more expensive. Weird, huh?

But most of all I would say we are worried about class sizes and support. We went up to 38 kids a class this year. I cannot describe the insanity of having 38 ghetto youth in one tiny room (I use the word “ghetto” lovingly, as those who read my blog know). It’s a mess. I’m not saying it can’t be done, we do it, but your student contacts are so many per day that it’s hard to focus on the kids individually, which is what they really need. Also, if I assign a one page quick write to all five of my classes one day, that means that the next day I have 190 papers to grade. In all honesty, as an English teacher I should be assigning at least one page of writing every day, which in essence means I read a novel every day written by bad writers whom I need to edit. This is why English teachers leave the profession before they’ve taught 3 years-grading papers. And it’s not just in the English department, 190 pages of math problems, or formulas in science, is just as wearying.

5) Grades always seem to be problematic.....I have never had a student ask me to LOWER their grade- what are some of the issues regarding grades?

In the classes with a high percentage of struggling learners, sheltered classes, you have a class of 38 and 20 of them are failing or have a D, and there is almost nothing you can do about it. You can go to their house, meet their parents (or grandparents, or whoever runs the group-home they stay in), you can work with their counselors and parole officers and anyone and everyone, but every day 20 kids walk into your room with a D or an F. With five classes, that’s 100 students. After a while they see the futility in all of it.

After a month they are so far behind they could get an A on every assignment from here on out for two months and maybe get up to a C-. Of course, the odds of them getting an A on any assignment aren’t good, let alone the rest of them. That is what hurts teachers about grades and grading. After a month it is almost hopeless. So what do you do with these 100 kids who come into class knowing they are failing and knowing they are going to fail, and they’ve been doing it for so long they don’t even bother to hope anymore? It’s a tough situation for the kids and the teachers, and there aren’t a heck of a lot of answers.

6) What are some of the issues regarding parents?

Well, my latest blog on www.teach4real.com is about this exact issue. The key to education in this country does not lay in the hands of the teachers. It doesn’t even take place on school grounds. The biggest indicator of student achievement is a stable home life. If we want to change education, we need to start with the parents and guardians. In my blog, I suggest we add an entire social services department in our public schools.

We have a lot of services out there, but they are never connected directly to our schools. One of my best friends is a counselor at our school, and part of his job is researching the different organizations he can refer students and parents to in our city and the surrounding ones. But he can never direct them to anywhere close, or on campus. I think the fact that families have to search them out and travel cuts down on those who actually go and receive help. Why don’t we combine all the resources out there with the schools on site?

Parents are the biggest influence on the success of their students-not schools and certainly not one teacher individually. Education begins and ends in the home, if we want to change things, we need to work with parents first, and schools second. I know this might sound crazy to some people, but in all honesty I believe our schools are SECOND in importance, but all our policies on education put it first, and NEVER address the home.

7) I shudder to use the word in an interview- but principals--what seem to be the biggest concerns relative to these educational leaders in the schools today?

To tell you the truth, I couldn’t tell you too much about principals. I’m just a teacher (which I say with pride). We’ve had four principals in four years. Whatever it is they try to change or implement rarely takes shape in one year, and so the next year someone else comes in and starts something new. I’m not blaming them. It seems that their job is just too much for one person. They work horrible hours. We have one principal and three vice principals, and to tell you the truth, we should probably have double that (yes, we could use two principals). It seems to me that their job is not what they expect it to be when they start as a vice-principal. They are rarely doing the things they were trained to do. They aren’t designing curriculum and helping teachers become better at their profession.

Our vice-principal in charge of Discipline spends every day with the police and security guards chasing down the worst and most dangerous kids. He is more like the Head of Security than an Assistant Principal. They just seem to be overworked and under-prepared for what the job ends up being. I say the same thing about teachers, including myself.

8) Stories seem to tell us a lot about what is going on in the schools. Could you share a favorite story?

I have some good bad stories, but I’m going to focus on a good one, because sometimes I get tired of complaining, and I think we need to remember the really great aspects that come with the job.

I have a lot of students who are seniors this year who I taught for one, two, and some of them three years before they became seniors. All year I have watched and helped them get into colleges. It is my first crop of seniors going to college, because I began teaching four years ago. I cannot tell you how amazing some of these kids are. I plan on doing some profiles of them on www.teach4real.com. Graduation this year is going to be a special affair for me, and I can already feel the tears welling up in my eyes. It is going to be a day full of joy. I guess that’s not really a story in a narrative sense. It is more of a compilation of four years of my life that has come together so beautifully. Of course there are more sad endings than happy ones, there always are in public education, but I think it’s important to acknowledge the best things about our job, and that is the stories of the students who overcome the many obstacles in their lives, and go on to be successful.

9) What exasperates or frustrates YOU the most regarding education?

Oh, man. You’re going to have to keep reading my blog to hear all of that. Every week I complain about something different. I guess I am just amazed that such a developed country as ours remains in the third world in terms of education. We treat our criminals better than we treat our students (really, we spend more on the average prisoner than the average student). Everyone says education is a top priority, but it never comes through in policy.

10) It seems everyone has an opinion about No Child Left Behind, so could you share your thoughts or feelings about it?

My school was designated as a failing school, even though we had higher scores than the other two high schools in the city. We are judged by unrealistic expectations of growth, you have to have continuous growth in order not to be designated as failing, which any human knows is impossible over a long enough period. Sure, there are some rules in place for some aspects of it, but for the most part it is unsustainable in our lowest schools and unrealistic.

But the biggest problem is how we assess our schools. Not many people know this outside the profession, but NCLB assesses schools based on STAR tests. So for a week the students come to school and are forced to take tests all day long. But here’s the kicker: The test means nothing to them. NOTHING. They are not graded, it doesn’t count on their transcript, for graduation, toward college—Nothing.

And the kids know this. If you have ever met a teenager, you might guess how this might affect their test-taking attitude. We have kids who answer every question as “C”. Many of them just bubble in patterns. They know the quicker they are done, the quicker they can put their head down and go to sleep.

But our schools, our teachers, and our principals are being assessed as to our success based on a test that means NOTHING to the students taking it. It is insane, and one of those practical things the people making the policies never think about-the actual students. We are grading schools based on tests the students could care less about, and that is simply ridiculous!

11) What have I neglected to ask?

It was nice talking to you. I guess what I am really trying to do is shine some much needed light on the reality of education in this country. Like I said, things are a lot worse than people think. You should just come to my school and walk around at lunch. You’d be amazed at what you see, and what you hear coming out of these kids' mouths. These kids are surrounded by violence, and if you took a poll and asked the students at my school if they felt safe, an overwhelming majority would say no. How can we expect kids to learn when they don’t even feel safe at the place they go to learn? Things are bad and with the Recession, they are only getting worse. People need to be informed about what is going on in the schools they are sending their kids to, and as a society we really need to wake up and focus on education. Remember, China has more Honors students than we have students. If that isn’t a sobering statistic, I don’t know what is.