The Pro and the Rookie

Nancy Adams and Kathy Beers teach at Anza Elementary in El Cajon. Enrollment is 40 percent Latino, and most of the students live in apartments in the heart of the El Cajon Valley, a working-class community where money is so tight that the vast majority of children—around 80 percent—qualify for free lunches under the National School Lunch Program.

Adams is 56 and teaches a combination class of fourth- and fifth-graders. Beers is 28 and teaches second grade. Adams has been a teacher for 32 years, ever since she graduated in 1970, from what was then San Diego State College, with a bachelor’s degree in English and picked up a teaching credential a year later. Beers began teaching last August and got her credential from San Diego State University in May 2000.

Adams says that even after all these years, she still gets excited about teaching.

“I really enjoy being in the classroom,” she says. “I enjoy watching the children learn, seeing them grow. I enjoy communicating with them, the camaraderie. I treat them as equals, not as children, and it’s just a real comfort zone for me, being in the classroom with the children.”

She says today’s teachers are coming out more prepared than they were when she joined the profession. “When I interview and look at new teacher candidates, they’re much better prepared than I was,” Adams says. “The college curriculum is much more focused on actual classroom strategies, whereas mine was a general education. Specific strategies and techniques are addressed, and I think the new teachers also have more support as far as mentoring.

“I remember when I was hired—my first assignment was teaching eighth-grade English—they handed me a book and said, ‘Here you go.’ Now, teachers get much more visible support.”

Beers seconds this, saying the two-year internship mandated by the state of California between getting her teaching credential and becoming a full-fledged teacher was invaluable in preparing her for what lay ahead. Still, she says, she’s a lot busier than she ever imagined she would be.

“You don’t realize how much work it is until you are actually in your first year,” she says. “You realize how much planning you have to do, gaining professional development, balancing time, making sure you reach all students in all learning levels. You have to do a lot of research yourself and find a lot of material on your own, besides what’s provided in the classroom.”

In addition to her classroom work, Beer says she spends much time on the Internet, researching various strategies and downloading charts and other visuals. “You’re always looking for ways to teach students so they feel more a part of the learning instead of simply listening to the teacher talk,” she says.

Both the veteran and the novice have had their share of high points and low.

Adams’ biggest triumph came just recently. “Right now I have a student who is very bright, but he also suffers from attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity [ADHD]. From kindergarten on, he’s been suspended numerous times because of comments and behavior. When he got to my class, we hit it off from the start—he has a dry sense of humor, like I do. In fact, I never even had a clue he had had problems until this past Christmas, when his grandmother sent me a thank-you note, saying this is the first successful year he’s had in school and it’s because of me.”

Her most tragic memory came early in her teaching career. “I had a child die,” Adams says. “He was born with a heart defect, and he was in my first class, eighth-grade English. He was a neat kid, the neatest kid you’d want to know. He’d been through so much—several open-heart surgeries—and he just relished life. He went on to high school, and one day he had a heart attack on the way home from school, and just like that he was gone. I’ve never been able to forget him.”

For Beers, the crowning moment of her brief teaching career came several months ago. “I have some really low-achieving students in my classroom, and I was teaching double-digit addition and this one student really didn’t understand it,” she says. “We had been working really hard, and she continued to not understand it, and one day I put the children in small groups to teach her along with other students. I turned to give her some advice, and she looked up at me and said, ‘Miss Beers, please don’t talk so much, I’m trying to count.’

“She was actually trying to understand it, and finally a light bulb went on and she did.”

For Beers, the downside of teaching is “students who don’t try.

“Sometimes, my patience is really tested,” she says. “When a student doesn’t really try, and you put so much effort into it, that’s the most frustrating thing. There are so many variables as to why they don’t understand, but when they don’t try, that’s what gets me. You modify and you modify, and then you still see they don’t try...

“I take many deep breaths. I’ve learned how breathing can make you less stressed,” she says. “Sometimes you’ve just got to step aside or have that student go back to his seat and work on something else. But you can never give up.”

A Heavy Topic

California’s Student Backpack Law

At Sun Valley Charter High School in Ramona, students never have to open books. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t learning. At Sun Valley High, there are no textbooks—only computers—which means students no longer have to lug heavy backpacks around campus. Homework is done on laptops or home computers.

“My son, who’s in the seventh grade, has a backpack, and I’ve lifted it. It’s darn heavy,” says David Tarr, executive director (as opposed to principal) of the progressive Ramona school, which opened last September. “We believe in our method of integrative teaching with computers and no textbooks. And certainly one of the great side benefits is that our students don’t have to carry heavy backpacks.”

It may sound like a lightweight issue, but really, it’s a weighty one. The latest federal statistics show that in 1999, more than 3,400 children between the ages of 5 and 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for back injuries related to heavy backpacks.

According to doctors, backpacks should not exceed more than 15 percent of a child’s body weight. For an average 75-pound student, the backpack should not be heavier than 11 pounds.

Last October, California legislators came to the aid of overburdened kids. They passed a law that limits the weight of schoolbooks. AB 2532 requires the state Board of Education to set, by July 1, 2004, a maximum weight for textbooks used by elementary- and middle-school students.

State leaders say many students are carrying backpacks filled with books and supplies that weigh as much as 50 pounds. The bill also requires the state board of education to examine using CD-ROMs and more Internet resources to replace heavy books.

While critics think this move toward learning entirely on computers will only exacerbate the have/have-not problem that already plagues California’s urban schools, many teachers, parents and especially students applaud this step.

Taylor Brown, 16, a high school junior whose shoulder hurts “big time” from carrying his backpack to and from school every day, sums up the issue: “My books are heavy, and I’m all for any law that says I don’t have to carry them around all day.”

—Jamie Reno

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