Teacher efforts to teach soft skills run into hard reality of testing
I wrote an entry last week on the state’s push to teach soft skills in high school. Here is a response from a newly retired high school teacher, Pat Pepper, on that topic:
Your column “Teaching punctuality 101″ caused me to smile sadly and shake my head. On May 31, I retired after 30 years in the classroom. For most of those years, I was a public high school English teacher here in Georgia.
After my first two years teaching, I quit the classroom because I could not live on the $5,200 a year salary that beginning teachers made. I got a job as an office supervisor for a large insurance company based in Atlanta.
In that position I quickly learned that my most valuable employees were those with enough intelligence to learn their jobs and were reliable in their attendance. I once had to fire the brightest employee I had ever had because I could not count on her to be at work when needed.
When I returned to teaching, I saw a great need to not only teach the hard skills of good communication but the soft ( or “life” as I called them) skills as well. In the ’70s, it seemed that education administrators and teachers were on the same page concerning the importance of both hard and soft skills. That is not the case today.
Because teachers are on the front lines of education, daily working face to face with students, they know that they can only impart hard skills in a well-disciplined class with students who show up regularly. Discipline and attendance are considered soft skills.
Today, because of high-stakes testing, merit pay, and the scramble for both state and federal funds, administrators find themselves having to resort to Machiavellian (”The end justifies the means.”) tactics. Here are a few examples:
1. Attendance
Schools receive federal dollars based on attendance records. In the Georgia school system I retired from, teachers were told that they could not penalize students’ grades due to non-academic behaviors ( such as sleeping in class), but the administration apparently saw no incongruity when they told teachers they had to add a 10 percent bonus to the final exams of all students who had “perfect” attendance. “Perfect” did not really mean perfect, however. In the school system “perfect” meant no more than two excused absences. I never understood how attendance did not qualify as a non-academic behavior, except when thinking in Machiavellian terms.
Georgia law requires students to be present a certain number of days in order to get academic credit. If a student is not in attendance those required days, he or she will fail the class or will have to appeal. The appeal committee must be made up of teachers and administrators.
Teachers, trying to teach the truant a life lesson, usually do not grant the appeals unless there is hard evidence of medical difficulties. The administrators are worried about failure rates, not life lessons. In my school, for several years, the committee was abolished and one sole administrator made all the appeal decisions. You can guess how many appeals were granted.
2. Money
When it comes to the scramble for money, both hard and soft skills take a beating.
1. Pep-rallies: The football team brings in the most money, so it is perfectly all right to take students out of class in order to rev them up to attend the football game. Georgia State Law has set a maximum amount of time that students can be out of class for non-academic events. Try asking the principal for that time log!
2. Hypocritical Classes: Georgia State Law requires high school students to take a Health class. There they learn the importance of good nutrition, but scattered all around the school are vending machines begging them to buy junk food. The school gets a monetary cut of these machines. No wonder they don’t take what we teach seriously.
3. Fund-raisers: In my high school, the dress code did not allow students to wear hats. The reason given by administrators was that the security cameras could not video faces obscured by hats. However, on “hat days” the students could pay to wear a hat. Was security not important on those days?
Teachers have been trying to hold up the standards of both hard and soft skills because they know, ultimately, that students will need both to be productive employees and citizens; however, they are losing the battle. Soft skill questions don’t show up on CRCT’s, EOCT’s, SAT’s, ACT’s, AP’s, ad nauseum.
Many more teachers in Georgia will be on merit pay this school year (as APS teachers were when the cheating occurred). I hope the pressure to succeed based on flawed criteria will not cause them to abandon their own set of soft skills due to fear.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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62 comments Add your comment
Active in Cherokee
August 23rd, 2011
6:11 pm
How did a well written letter from a former educater with her legitimate and documented concerns about the schools turn into a blog full of teacher bashing? I would understand administration bashing as many of Ms. Pepper’s concerns were obviously geared towards the school and system administration. I think some people on here totally ignore the merits of the article and/or blog topics and jump straight to bashing teachers – that’s just ridiculous. Thank you Ms. Pepper for sharing your thoughts and enjoy rocking away with your retirement.
slap stick
August 23rd, 2011
9:46 pm
I’ts so sad that some of you write books on here for comments. Good mother, get a life! We don’t need a grammar nazi here, just thinkers. The comments expressed in the article were great ones. Too bad no one cares enough about what you do to write a blog about it. Half of you critics are probably 250+ pounds and miserable, with 2 divorices and no friends. Seriously, get a life.
Wheeler Mom
August 23rd, 2011
10:43 pm
I may be wrong, but I don’t think Ms. Wright is a teacher…do teachers call their students “associates?” That just sounds weird.
Ole Guy
August 24th, 2011
12:37 am
Mom, agreed, believability of Ms Wright’s teacher status falls into question; refering to students as associates earns the catagory of “SAY WHAT?!”.
However, in Ms Wright’s defense, I refer to the (misuse, in business, of the) use of the “associate” label. Historically, professional firms…law firms, and the like, promoted underlings to the status of associate. Following a period of DEMONSTRATED PROFICIENCY in their fields of endeavor, the associate title was viewed as a “badge” of EARNED growth within the organization. The more contemporary use/misuse of the “associate” handle, within the business structure, has come to be simply a “quick n’ dirty” means of projecting (unearned) self-esteem among workers.
As we have seen, within the educational community, the lavishing of “esteem-enhancing” (though completely unearned) good grades, it is not entirely inconceivable that a well-intentioned (though mis-informed) educator might employ the “associate” title much in the same manner of artificially elevating students’ self esteem.
When these very kids “gradiate haa scho”, HOPE scholarship in hand, and face the unbending demands of collegiate academics, they (at some point in their lives) just might realize that all the warm n’ fuzzy esteem enhancers, like faux grades and being called “associates” was the cruelist joke ever played upon them.
To Slap Stick
August 24th, 2011
6:38 am
When ignorant people have nothing intelligent to say, they resort to personal attacks like yours.
You need a better vocabulary and a higher education.
Good Mother
FYI
August 24th, 2011
11:28 am
@ Good Mother. That’s a personal attack on Slap Stick!!
In the Trenches
August 24th, 2011
12:14 pm
I’m back in the classroom Monday for my 17th year of teaching high school students, and I have to say that Concerned has eloquently explained the dilemma, particularly the comment about there ALWAYS being excuses.
I believe a fundamental change in the way we raise our kids has transformed most parents into unapologetically biased advocates for their children–in many aspects of the kids’ lives, this is an improvement over the “good old days”. However, too many times I’ve heard from dropouts, kids who are retaking classes, and parents grousing about “incompetent” former teachers that the reason for the student’s failure is that “the teacher didn’t like the kid”. Holding students accountable is too often confused with being mean. My guess is that when people hear or read rhetoric about getting rid of “failing teachers”, a former culprit immediately springs to mind–someone who didn’t “love” the kid enough to let him or her slide by.
Many kids are easy to like, but when a kid needs something from me, on or off the syllabus, I don’t play favorites: I give out pencils, paper, cheese and crackers, quarters for the tampon dispenser, duct tape to hold a broken sneaker together, etc. to any kid in need, often accompanied by a mini-lesson to prevent a reoccurrence. I don’t know a single one of my colleagues who doesn’t do the same thing.
I wish that parents and kids could see that when I give a pop quiz, correct a grammar error, admonish the kid to study the flashcards tonight, or even when I mark a tardy, it’s all done in the same spirit of caring. Certainly “walking the walk” provides a better lesson on soft skills than trying to carve out time from the core subjects.
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/profdev077.shtml has some great commentary on an old favorite teacher story of mine.
Ole Guy
August 24th, 2011
7:45 pm
Trenches, I am not sure I understand how parental “unappologetic advocacy” in their kids’ lives can be considered an improvement over “the good ole days”. I am quite certain I represent the overwhelmingly vast majority of my generational contemporaries when I point out that school difficulties (an area in which I had MUCH experience) were automatically deemed to be MY fault and no one else but ME. At a very early age…because of this parental view…I learned that I, and I alone, would be completely and totally responsible for life’s travails. While my parents offered all the help and support humanly possible, it would fall, ENTIRELY, upon MY shoulders to GET THE DAMN JOB DONE. There is NOTHING which can ever improve upon that…
slap stick
August 25th, 2011
6:41 am
Hehe, ignorant- can you define ignorant? At what point during my correspondence was I lacking in knowledge but strongly opinionated? Do you actually have a retort, or are you just trying to deflect responsibility I implied in my post? I have listened to you rattle on for long enough. My verbosity is a moot point, and I won’t list my formidable educational credentials that your pseudo-persona so wants to hear about. I think you happen to be exactly what I described. Go figure!
To In the Trenches from Good Mother
August 25th, 2011
10:45 am
In the trenches, I wish you were teaching my child. My child has Spanish four days a week. I have yet to see a single note, handout or any kind of communication from their Spanish teacher. I didn’t even know her name so this morning I went to find her and introduce myself.
I asked her what my child was doing in Spanish and she said “Don’t worry about it. We’re learning. They’ll get it.”
I told her I wanted to know what they were learning so that I could practice with them at home. Again, she blew me off. She said “Just tell them to watch ‘Dora” (a Spanish TV show for kids)”
I said I wanted to participate. I wanted to be a good parent and I wanted my child to learn Spanish. She waved her hand in dismissal and said “I’ve never had a parent ask me that before so I don’t have anything.”
I couldn’t’ believe it but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, In the Trenches, because for every diligent caring teacher at APS there are at least a dozen lazy or ignorant ones.
I plan to make another trip to see her this afternoon with laptop in hand. I want to park myself in her room and insist she tell me what she is teaching them.
If you have any advice for me, I’ll all ears.
Good Mother
Observer
August 25th, 2011
7:26 pm
@Good Mother. I guess you never made it to this Spanish class this afternoon, or if you did you spent it blogging on that laptop. For on the other blog thread, “Live Blogging Education Finance Committee,” on Aug. 25, you had long entries this afternoon at 1:03 pm, 1:32 pm, 2:35 pm, and 3:08 pm.
Ole Guy
August 26th, 2011
6:57 pm
Ya know, it cannot be argued that the so-called soft skills are not important. These “life skills”, as Ms Pepper refers to them, are, in many ways, just as important as having the right credentials for that right job; that right promotion, etc. However, I take issue with public schools teaching these virtues on public monies…on MY monies, and during designated school hours. It must be remembered that during the relatively short 12-year educational pipeline, there are many “hard” skills which must be mastered…the so-called “3-R education”.
These soft skills, while extremely important, only serve to further minimize instructional time on the 3-R component of education.
It might be argued that ballet, the piano…all extracurriculars including sports, clubs, etc are equally important to the kids’ education and, more importantly, one’s development as a functioning adult. HOWEVER, all these activities are (used to be/should be) 1) considered EARNED privileges AFTER a period of demonstrated proficiency in academics/good grades, and 2) AFTER school…during a period NOT supported by public monies.
What’s next? Lessons on “fork on the left, knife on the right”; sit up straight; no talking with mouth full of chow?
It might be argued that our (U.S.A.) global competitiveness, over the years, has somewhat diminished. I don’t think soft skills are going to win the day. Before we start with the “please and thankyous”, howbout we start DEMANDING semi-acceptable academic performance.