Saturday, April 08, 2000
Teachers must have lots of heart
BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Back in 1990, finding Tyrone Olverson and Ingrid Jarmon-Thomas was like a winning lottery ticket.
I was tracking down subjects for a story on first-year teachers, and there they were: Mr. Olverson, the irrepressible soul he's probably been from birth. High-energy, optimistic, confident and feisty, he told me, “I've never heard a teacher around here talking about cognitive stages. That Piaget stuff goes right out the window.”
His game plan at his alma mater, Princeton Junior High School, was simply to teach from the heart.
Mrs. Jarmon-Thomas was just the sort of person we hope goes into elementary education. She left behind a degree in physiology and plans for medical school to spend her days with second graders at Finneytown's Cottonwood Elementary School. She was low-key and gentle. A mother herself, she seemed to have an instinctive understanding of children.
But what were the chances that I could go back nearly a decade later, and find them still in the classroom?
Not great. According to the National Education Association, one-fifth of beginning teachers leave the profession in the first three years. In urban districts, half of new teachers leave in the first five years. (A third new teacher I interviewed left Bloom Middle School in Cincinnati Public Schools after two years on the job). Overall, 6 percent of the teaching force leaves the profession each year. The percentage of minority teachers is at a 20-year low.
Still loving it
So it was especially nice to ring up Mrs. Jarmon-Thomas and hear her say, “Yes, I'm still here, and still loving it.”
What has kept her is the chance to spend her life in a career with meaning, in a community that appreciates her efforts, she says. “You have these children who trust you, who for the most part listen to you,” she says. “You get to touch a lot of people's lives.”
Mrs. J-T, as her students call her, says proficiency testing is teachers' greatest frustration. “We're asking children to do things at an age where it's not developmentally appropriate,” she says. “The state has got to rethink this. It's stealing the joy of learning.”
Second-graders never change, she says, but their situations and experiences do. Her students are busier than they were 10 years ago, with after-school sports and enrichment. “While school is important, sometimes in some places it takes a backseat to these other things,” she says. From one computer in the classroom 10 years ago, she now has four and all her children can power them up and hit the Internet. Her best moments are “when you're working with them one-to-one and the light goes on and they get something,” she says. “It's like, man, they did it. I did it. We did it!”
Caring comes first
The love of teaching still shines brightly in Tyrone Olverson as well. His strength is motivation, and he specializes in picking up kids who would otherwise fall through the cracks. “I'll go down to their level to get them,” he says simply. “You have to teach kids, but they also have to feel wanted, cared for and needed.”
Coming out of college, he assumed all parents would be active in their children's education. “I think parents do truly value education, but they don't always get that through to their kids,” he says. “Parents are busier today. Sometimes they give their kids money when what they really need is their parents' time.”
His best moment was the day he was hired by Princeton City Schools, and knew he had chosen the right career path. His worst was the day he realized he was making more money at his part-time job as a loan officer than in full-time teaching and coaching. “I had to ask myself, "Are you happy making money, or being with the kids?'” he says. “It's always been being with the kids.”
Next year, Mr. Olverson expects to become a school administrator.
Education is no field for softies. It takes a good mind to enter the field; it takes a good heart to stay.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. E-mail her at krista_ramsey@hotmail.com.
