Fern: Today’s column is a family affair. Our daughter Megan is a teacher at East High School and we thought we’d bring her into the conversation.
Joe: Fern and I are retired English teachers. We both taught at Iowa State. But teaching at a university is a comparatively cushy gig. In both our careers combined, we had nowhere near the stories to tell that Megan has almost every week.
Megs, how long is it that you’ve been teaching high school?
Megan: Over ten years. Though sometimes it feels longer. Being a teacher in in this country in 2023 is not for the faint of heart. And it’s no wonder that droves of us are leaving the profession.
Joe: Why do you think this is?
Megan: Low pay, long hours, changing curriculums, large classes, lack of respect as a profession, decreased funding, a union with no collective bargaining power. Throw in the long-lasting effects of Covid. There’s also the threat of gun violence and that has affected the entire country. And in Iowa, misguided legislation such as diverting public funds toward private schools and calling it “choice” when private schools are the ones who can “choose” which students may attend . . .
Are those enough reasons? There’s more. It’s a wonder many of us do stay.
Fern: Well, why do you?
Megan: I once heard that teaching is like being in an abusive marriage. You never get your needs met, but you stay for the kids.
Joe: That sounds about right.
Megan: Schools across the country are still recovering from the trauma that was caused by Covid. The kids in my district who were in high school when Covid hit are still struggling. Some are more than a year behind in credits, some are taking five years to graduate, and many of my students were dealing with higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression in the first place.
Fern: What’s your role in all this as a teacher?
Megan: My students need me to be more than an English teacher. They need me to be a social worker, a therapist, and a mom. Since the pandemic I have bought kids groceries, driven them home from school when they didn’t have a way to get there, referred them to therapy. And I have made more calls than I wish to count to DHS to report abuse. Which is heart-breaking for everyone.
Joe: And DHS is --?
Megan: That’s Department of Human Services. As a teacher, I’m considered a ”mandatory reporter” if I discover that one of my students is abused or in danger. That’s probably a good thing, but man, it’s hard. I’ve reported on parents who hurt their kids, kids who were molested by their siblings, kids who are left alone for days in homes without food. “Home” is not necessarily the best place for every child. And parents are not always the ones who know what is “best.”
Fern: Please talk about what happened at school with regard to specific acts of violence in the recent past. What we’ve all seen on the local news.
Megan: Well, just what I’ve experienced myself in the past twelve months is alarming. In March of last year, we had snow – not unusual in Iowa at that time. What was unusual was that we had a late start that morning. Our district rarely does this because it’s so large and delays cause a lot of bussing headaches. But in retrospect, I’m thankful that it had been a snowy Monday morning with a late start, because I think many kids decided just to stay home and take the day off.
That afternoon, about a half hour before school was let out for the day, there was a shooting. Three cars filled with kids from different high schools open-fired on our students in the parking lot. Three kids were shot. One was killed.
When the lockdown was called, many of the students who had rushed in from the parking lot came into my room since it was the closest classroom to the front doors. This was a room without a window -- which turned out to be a good thing. The kids didn’t need to see what was going on. Still, they were sobbing and scared. Their phones were dinging since it was already on the news. I told them to call their families to let them know that they were safe.
East High cancelled classes for the rest of the week and the following week was spring break. We kept the building open and offered meals, counseling, art therapy, people to talk to. One usually quiet kid cried in my arms as he recalled giving CPR to a classmate. There was still blood on his shoes.
Memorial for the student who was killed at East High
After the trauma of the pandemic, I didn’t think it could get worse. But that year we lost seven other students. A girl was hit by a car as she walked home from school. Others died from drug overdoses or gun violence outside of school.
And there’s the just-misses that are not reported. One afternoon I heard a commotion outside my door. It was my planning period, and I didn’t have a class, so I rushed out to see what was going on. Fights are nothing new at our school, but since Covid they had really revved up. Though I’m not a very strong person, my instinct is to try to break up an altercation. I knew one of the kids pretty well and immediately went up and bear hugged him. Another female staff grabbed the other guy.
I told the kid I was hugging to calm down, saying whatever he was so angry about wasn’t worth a fight. I told him to keep looking at me and he did. I kept repeating that. This is a big kid – he towered over me - but I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.
Later I found out that the other boy had a gun in his backpack. He ran out of the building and was later caught. He was enrolled in virtual school but never attended. Recently someone sent me his mug shot.
A few months after that there was another shooting at an alternative school in my district. Two students and a staff member. The staff member survived; the kids did not. Many of my students knew them. One had been a student at East for a semester last year. I was in the office chatting with the secretary a couple of weeks before graduation. While on the phone she clasped her hand to heart and started crying. It was the father of the boy who had been killed that had gone to East. He would have graduated, and his family wanted to have his picture placed on a chair with the graduation gown he would have worn.
Joe: I don’t remember. Did you feel the threat of gun violence so strongly when you first began teaching? There have been school shootings for a long time, but I don’t recall you talking about it so much.
Megan: But not like this. Firearms are now the leading cause of death in children (and not only at schools). Not car accidents, not cancer, not running into the street after a ball. Guns. Yet despite this, Republican legislators are more concerned about protecting children from threats like drag queens, trans kids and books. That’s so misguided.
Fern: It’s scary when we get a call from you from school during the day. Though usually it’s just to say you’re going to be late coming home and asking us to pick Joey up. There are probably things you don’t tell us.
Joe: Just like when you were a teenager . . .
Megan: Yes. Like one morning a student in my class told me that he had just seen someone with a gun in the boys bathroom. I asked if he were sure. He nodded and I rushed him to the office to tell the administrators. But that day our internet had been hacked. Our cameras were down, further complicating matters. My student gave a description and we were able to find the student and detain him without incident. I poured praise on my student – I told him I knew he wouldn’t have told me if he had seen that gun last year. He said he had to talk himself into telling me. He didn’t want to think of himself as snitch.
Joe: Oh, Megan . . .
Megan: It was frightening. But what’s demoralizing is that over the last two years Kim Reynolds, like many Republican governors across the country, has taken steps to criminalize educators under the guise of “protection.” It started with banning any teaching of Critical Race Theory at public schools in the state - including universities.
Fern: As if anyone in the Iowa legislature could clearly explain what this “theory” is.
Megan: More recently Republican legislation has been passed that targets our LGBTQ+ youth. The teaching of gender and sexuality would be banned through grade six. Trans people are no longer allowed to use a bathroom where they feel comfortable in school buildings across Iowa. Not only are trans students denied this right, so are transgender staff and visitors. The most dangerous part of this bill is that administrators are now mandated to inform parents when students request to use a different pronoun or name.
At the beginning of every semester, I had always asked my students their preferred pronouns and if they went by a different name than on the roster. I will no longer do that. Although if a transgender student is not “out” to their parents by the time they are in high school, it is usually for a good reason. There are no stipulations put in place to protect trans children who fear for their safety if parents are informed. This legislation is not going to protect kids. It is going to harm them.
Fern: Though not as much as our inability to pass gun control legislation.
Megan: Before the end of December, I will have to go through every book in my classroom library to see if it will need to be removed because on January 1st a state-wide K-12 book ban will go into effect. I never thought I’d see the day when books were banned at the state level. But any book that contains a graphic depiction or description of a sex act is now banned. What constitutes “graphic” is not clear and districts are still waiting for guidelines from the state as to how to decide this.
Fern: Hmmm. While some parents are concerned about what their kids are reading in Iowa classrooms, they might check the hard-core pornography that tech-savvy kids have access to on their phones.
Megan: During the pandemic, when many parents had to step-in in the absence of school, teachers won accolades. Parents praised teachers for the tough job they did. But in three short years we are no longer trusted to make the right decisions for our students.
This isn’t because teachers don’t know how to do their jobs. Teaching is hard work. But many of us lament the current anti-intellectual climate. The state has decided it has an “obligation” to “protect” school children from things that are simply not threatening.
I want our governor and the Republican legislature to stop worrying about our kids being harmed by pronouns, books, and drag queens and instead worry about the very real threat of firearms. Because if all of that can happen to me in just the past year as a teacher, it can happen at your child’s school as well. In fact I believe it’s not if, but when.
Thank you for the conversation, Megan, Fern, and Joe. It is heartbreaking to think this is going on in schools across the country and especially heartbreaking because it is happening everyday, everywhere in our state. I never thought I would see such an outright attack on public education and students from so many directions happening in Iowa. The behavior of the governor and the republicans in the statehouse is a disgrace. Thank you for your good and compassionate work, Megan. Bravo to the teachers.
Thank you for being direct and straightforward. Having worked in the offices, as well as classrooms, I've seen many administrators and teachers come and go. Every time (that I can recall) someone retires or moves on, there's an outcry demanding "nationwide search because no one here is qualified". And someone from out of state is brought in. Although these "outsiders" did not always bode well (recall one who used district time and emails to correspond with a boyfriend and another who stayed home one day to, admittedly, smoke pot, insisting it never interfered with his job), this continues to be precedent. Where is the current Dept of Ed from? Or, the new Supt of DMPS? Who will administer the governor's new private school voucher plan? Hopefully all will do well. But my bigger concern here is the message it sends to our current educators, administrators, employees, and citizens. What happens to morale in a profession where morale sinks a few more degrees as each day goes by? What's happened to acknowledging and affirming the hard working people who are already here? Is there really no one here who is qualified? ----Just my two cents worth.
Thank you for the conversation, Megan, Fern, and Joe. It is heartbreaking to think this is going on in schools across the country and especially heartbreaking because it is happening everyday, everywhere in our state. I never thought I would see such an outright attack on public education and students from so many directions happening in Iowa. The behavior of the governor and the republicans in the statehouse is a disgrace. Thank you for your good and compassionate work, Megan. Bravo to the teachers.
Thank you for being direct and straightforward. Having worked in the offices, as well as classrooms, I've seen many administrators and teachers come and go. Every time (that I can recall) someone retires or moves on, there's an outcry demanding "nationwide search because no one here is qualified". And someone from out of state is brought in. Although these "outsiders" did not always bode well (recall one who used district time and emails to correspond with a boyfriend and another who stayed home one day to, admittedly, smoke pot, insisting it never interfered with his job), this continues to be precedent. Where is the current Dept of Ed from? Or, the new Supt of DMPS? Who will administer the governor's new private school voucher plan? Hopefully all will do well. But my bigger concern here is the message it sends to our current educators, administrators, employees, and citizens. What happens to morale in a profession where morale sinks a few more degrees as each day goes by? What's happened to acknowledging and affirming the hard working people who are already here? Is there really no one here who is qualified? ----Just my two cents worth.