A Much Smaller Number of Undergraduate College Students Indicate That They Are Interested in Becoming A Teacher at the K-12 Level

Even though I retired in May 2018, I still constantly get updates and reports on the status of education in the United States and in countries literally around the world.  In my estimation, however, the most serious problem facing the future of education in the United States is the decreasing number of college students interested in going into education, especially K-12 education. The article I have just read was a study completed in Michigan; the number of students interested in becoming teachers has dropped up to 90% at some small private colleges.

The first question most people ask is: Why is this happening? You usually get similar reasons, often centered around low salaries, lack of prestige, and history. Unfortunately, these are accurate to a degree, so in order to recruit new teachers to the profession and strengthen public education, we must come up with some new strategies.

Since I was a teacher for 44 years at the middle school, high school, and community college levels, and I taught in the Maryville College Teacher Licensure Program for 28 years, I have a thought or two to share with you. First of all, K-12 teachers do not set the standards for teachers, nor do they govern who enters the profession. In the United States of America, education is the responsibility of state government, and not the national/federal government. I often had students from other countries in my classes at Maryville College, and they could not understand how something as important as education could be left to state government. When this type of governance is mandated by the Constitution, there is one guarantee. The numerous, and often small, school districts fall into one of two categories: rich school districts, or poor school districts, based on the wealth of the districts.

When I examined the local school districts that worked with our  Maryville College program, I found it amazing that you could get in your car in one school district, drive less than 30 minutes, and find yourself in another school district that did not provide the same advantages for their children. Teachers who get trapped in some of these lower-performing school districts are eager to get out. If they are successful at being hired by one of the higher-performing school districts, they will make more money and have more respect and prestige from the community. This is one of the hardest battles we face in this country with local school districts. The educational experiences are not the same.

I am concerned that on many occasions teachers are their own worst enemies. They actually do not want people in the larger community to know they are teachers. You can attend almost any college recruitment day, and it will not be long before you hear the following statement from one of the parents, “I will pay for your college experience in any field--except teaching.” I am not certain we will ever be able to change this perception. But there is one thing I know for certain: if you build a high-quality teacher licensure program, you can still recruit good students into that program. In short, it all starts with the teacher education faculty. However, the program must also have the full support of the college administration and faculty in order to equip new, high-quality teachers for the profession. This can be done, because I played a small part in doing it.

We often told our teacher licensure students at Maryville College, “If you want to be TREATED like a professional, ACT like a professional, SPEAK like a professional, DRESS like a professional, and INTERACT with your students as a professional would.”  For, you see, teachers earn the status of “professional” from the community by working hard for that recognition by modeling the significant traits of a professional. There is, however, one thing to avoid: Do not camp out in the teachers’ lounge every day at lunch, because you will turn into the teacher that you do not want to be. It’s a place where things are said about kids--and their parents--that a true professional should not be discussing in public. As a teacher, you will find out personal things about your students and their families that you should take to your grave and never discuss with anyone.

Teachers should be involved in their communities in all aspects of community life. These are places where teachers can earn the respect of the community. I’ll never forget one day, after church in the town where I was teaching high school, when a member of the church was discussing with me my job in the community.  I told him I was a high school history teacher, and we began discussing a few of my topics and other things I was doing in class. He responded, “You know, I think you could really teach history.” Those are the battles we must fight and win. Most of the adults in this country do not have kids in school, but we must sell our programs to that very community. It can be done.

Bless You My Children.

Terry L. Simpson, EdD

Back to School in Real Life: May 2018 - December 2019

I retired in May 2018 after completing 44 years as a teacher, 16 years in the public school system and 28 years in the teacher education program at Maryville College. The 28 years at Maryville College resulted in some of the most productive years of my life. If I had told someone that my goals for the teacher education program at Maryville College would be to achieve state, regional, national, and international recognition, few people would have believed that these goals were anything more than impossible dreams. Consequently, they were not shared with most people. Yet, these goals were achieved through the hard work of my colleagues and students in the teacher education program.

I have never thought that these goals demonstrated arrogance on my part. However, if it was arrogance, then the good Lord took care of that attitude between May 2018 and December 2019. We moved to Tyler, Texas after my retirement. I had been fighting Parkinson’s since 2001, and it began taking its toll on me physically. By fall 2018, I was experiencing weakness throughout my body, and I began to have hallucinations. By Christmas 2018, I did not have the physical strength to drive the few hours from Tyler to the home of my daughter, Jennifer.

By spring 2019, I began losing the ability to walk, to stand up from a sitting position, to hold utensils while eating, and to write, because I could not hold a pencil. This became very scary time for me, and it tested my faith to its limit. I assumed this was the end result of Parkinson’s. I went to Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas to see a neurologist, Dr. Olga Wiln. She quickly determined that my physical problems were not the result of Parkinson’s, but that I had experienced a stroke or damage to my spinal cord. I entered the hospital the same evening, and by noon the next day it was determined that the spinal cord in my neck was damaged due to compression. While the surgery itself would not be complicated, the healing process would be. It would take six months to one year of intense physical therapy to see improvement of these physical problems.

This experience is giving me a new understanding of humility. For the last three months I have had to have help to complete any body functions. I have learned that I have to depend on others to live each day. The number of degrees behind one’s name no longer matter. The most important people in my life each day receive very little pay for the essential work they do each day. Many of them have become a daily blessing in my life each day. Striving to be in the center of God’s is no longer obvious. My daily goals have now become being able to stand without help for 10 minutes or to take three steps without falling. I have asked this question many times during the past three months, “Why am I here?” At times, it has become a difficult question to answer. I know one thing for sure: I have become eternally grateful to Jennifer and her husband Jeffrey, Savannah, and the other grandchildren. I am grateful for the support of faculty and the students at Maryville College and their willingness to follow me.

However, I want to mention two individuals. Dr. Charles Redmond was pastor of First Baptist Church in Lenoir City, Tennessee during the 1970s, and from there he went to First Baptist Sulfur Springs, Texas. He recommended me for a position in Greenville, Texas. He then went to First Baptist Pasadena, Texas. Jennifer and I went to see him this past summer, and he actually remembered me. When I shared my health issues with him, he asked, “May I pray for you?” He got up, walked across a very large room, got on his knees at my feet, took my hands and prayed a prayer that seemed to touch the very throne of God.

The second person is a nurse supervisor at Methodist Hospital. I will leave the hospital on December 20 after four weeks of intense daily physical therapy. She is a large African-American woman who always knows what is going on. She came into my room yesterday and said she had been watching me and was impressed by my progress and attitude. Then she laid her hands on my head and began to pray. She prayed that God would give me complete healing.

This old man of 71 years has learned many valuable lessons. These people and many others have become new blessings in my life.

In my last Ethics class during January Term 2018, we reached an impasse on how to respond, or if we should respond, to some very evil situations. My question was, “Why are you here?”

In my situation over the past year, I’ve asked myself over a hundred times, “Why am I here?” I have some clarity, but I am still working on the complete answer. The good Lord knows, and I am learning to trust him anew, and need to realize that I am still a student and need to learn some new things.


Bless you my children…

tls


Dr. Terry L. Simpson
Director of Teacher Education, Emeritus
Maryville College

Thankfulness

I am writing this blog on Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day, and like many of you, I am trying to finish all the chores related to Thanksgiving and leave time to rest in order to enjoy Thursday. I am not sure this will happen. I wonder how we have digressed to the place in our culture that we dread days that should be filled with happiness, celebration, and contentment. As a teacher, the Thanksgiving break was not much of a break. I was often too busy grading student assignments that were turned in before the break. However, I think as teachers we have often missed the opportunity to make this attitude of “thankfulness” a significant part of our teaching and learning experience with our students.

I want to tell you a story that forever made thankfulness a significant part of my life. My first-grade teacher was Ms. Presley. She and her husband were not from the East Tennessee region. I do know that her husband was a scientist at the Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory during World War II. They chose not to live in Oak Ridge and ended up in a rural area of Loudon County. By the time I became a senior in high school I had long realized that she had been a significant part of my educational experience. I didn’t know what made her better than most other teachers, but I knew that she was. Consequently, in the spring of 1967 when I graduated from Loudon High School, I sent four “thank you notes”--two were sent to individuals who I felt had made a significant difference in my life. One of those was Ms. Presley, my first-grade teacher.

She did not teach the next year because her children were entering high school, and she wanted to be able to spend time with them in their activities. After her husband died and with serious health issues, she moved to Maryland to live with one of her daughters.

I came to Maryville College in the fall of 1990 and began my 28 years in teacher education at the College. In the mid-1990s, while we were living on the family farm in Loudon County, I received a phone call from Carl who lived not far from our home. When I answered the phone he asked, “Can you come over to my house; there is someone here that wants to see you?” As I drove to his house, I had no idea who this individual was.

As I walked into the home, I saw an older lady sitting by the kitchen table. Carl asked, ”You don’t know who this is, do you?” I suppose all I did was nod because I did not know who she was. With a big smile on his face, Carl said, “This is Ms. Presley, your first-grade teacher.”

Ms. Presley also smiled and said, “Terry, I cannot really see you because I am almost totally blind. I can see the outline of your body but not your face or any physical feature. However, I wanted to come and see you.” She went on to tell me that I was the only student that she taught who came back to say “thank you” for being my teacher. She was nearly 90 years-old. She shared with me that one of the reasons she had to make this trip to Tennessee from Maryland was to say “thank you” to me--her student.

I always told this story to my teacher licensure students right before the Thanksgiving break or at the close of the semester. I would tell them to think of that teacher that made a difference in their lives, to write the “thank you letter,” and to give specific reasons as to why that teacher made a difference.

Have you ever been thankful for your students? Have you told them? You still have time before the close of the semester.

Bless You My Children, 
TLS

After This Bitter Election, What Do I Expect of Our Schools?

As I start writing this blog, I am sitting at my desk on Tuesday, November 6, 2018. Yes, it is election day, and Deborah and I plan to vote this afternoon. I am ready to see the end of this campaigning season. We have experienced everything from hateful name-calling to the massacre of 11 Americans who were worshiping in their Jewish synagogue. As a history teacher, this massacre greatly troubles my soul. Are we no better than the Nazis during the 1930s?

We are historically incorrect and politically naïve if we think elections in this country were much more civil in the past. As a native of Tennessee, I have often read the story of the election of Andrew Jackson as the 7th President of the United States. Jackson made bitter enemies throughout his lifetime, and they wanted to prevent him from becoming president of the United States. However, it was next to impossible to shake the confidence of Jackson, so they went after Rachel, his wife. She was called the epitome of a profligate woman: a bigamist, an adulteress, and a whore. Their accusations were so hurtful and vicious that she died between election day and the day that Jackson was to take the office of President of the United States. Jackson became so depressed that many of his supporters feared that he would not go to Washington to take the oath of office. Jackson blamed her death on his political enemies, especially Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. They were Jackson’s bitter enemies until the day he died.

Another presidential election that was filled with name-calling was the election in which Theodore Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate. Although he had been a friend, Roosevelt grew to despise his hand-picked successor in the Republican Party, William Howard Taft, toward whom he directed his hate-filled speech and name-calling.

To add to our pain, in 2018 we live with the power of technology, especially the Internet and 24-hour news cycles. This means that we cannot get away from the hateful speech and name-calling, as well as the senseless acts of violence.

Regardless, we cannot stand by and not do nothing. We owe our children a response to the civic and political climate in which they are being raised. Yes, I do have a few suggestions for schools.

Suggestion one: Students will be able to define stereotype and give a current example of a group being unfairly judged through stereotype. 

It is unethical to stereotype an entire group of people based on the knowledge one has of a single individual or a few individuals in that particular group. The group could be a religious group, ethnic group or any group different from the dominant group to which I belong. I learned in the early elementary grades at Davis Elementary School that it was not fair to judge an entire group based on this limited knowledge of the entire group.

Suggestion two: Students will be able to define ad hominem and give several current examples of individuals or groups on the receiving end of ad hominem attacks. 

One of the most rejected attacks in academic debate is an ad hominem attack, which can take the form of overtly attacking someone or casting doubt on their character as a way to discredit their argument through personal abuse, personal attacks by name-calling, or refutation by caricature of the person. In a formal academic debate this type of attack would get you an “F”. Too bad that we could not give many of our political candidates an “F” during this past election cycle. This will only be stopped when we refuse to listen to a politician that resorts to attacking the person rather than the ideas of that person.

The National Institute for Civil Discourse has as a purpose to revive civility in our civil discourse. They state that making fun of a political opponent, making disrespectful or demeaning statements, refusing to listen to arguments of different points of view, and making exaggerated statements that misrepresent the truth must be rejected in our civil discourse.

As a teacher in middle school, high school, and at the college level I have concluded that we must rediscover that in our democratic republic all citizens have the right to express their views in the marketplace of ideas. I am required to respect all people even those who have views which I reject. 

As John Dewey argued many years ago, the school classroom should operate as a miniature democracy. In other words, students need to practice civil discourse. If this does not become a priority in our schools, both public and private, I fear the end result for our country.


Bless you my children, 
tls

Dr. Terry L. Simpson,
Professor Emeritus 
Maryville College Educator Preparation Program

Image Source: [Onlin image/logo]. Retrieved November 8, 2018 from https://www.revivecivility.org/ 

They have lied to me; all of my teachers have lied to me.

I have taught middle school social studies, high school American history and world history, and American history in two different community colleges in two states: Tennessee and Texas.  On May 20, 2018, after completing 28 years at Maryville College, I retired as Director of Teacher Education.  Deborah and I moved to Tyler, Texas to be closer to our children and grandchildren.  I have rediscovered that public education in both states face similar issues in their history and social studies curricula regarding state required standards, historical content, and the strongly held views of various community and political groups.

A few weeks back, a short paragraph in the Tyler newspaper caught my eye.  It reported an argument over history standards in Texas.  One of those arguments seemed to basically boil down to this:  Should all of those Americans/Texans who died at the Alamo be considered heroes?  If I have misrepresented this issue, please let me know.  After all, it was a very short article.   

Being from Tennessee and growing up less than 100 hundred miles from the birthplace of Davy Crockett, I will never forget when I read for the first time that several historians had concluded that Davy Crockett may not have died like a hero at the Alamo. Some recent documentation they had read seemed to suggest he died more like a coward begging for his life. My reaction was explosive. What is this?  It must be some of those communist college professors incorporating revisionist theory to destroy our country and its values.  Please remember this was a few years after the McCarthy era.   

But the real shocker to everything I believed took place in 1971 in a graduate history course I was taking at Middle Tennessee State University.  The event under investigation was The Boston Massacre.  I was taking this course several years before the internet, websites, and email made a dramatic change in the availability of primary sources.  However, the library had copies of historical documents on microfiche.  I had the opportunity to read accounts of this event in colonial newspapers as well as accounts in newspapers in England.  In colonial newspapers this event was called The Boston Massacre, but in English newspapers it was called The Boston Riot.  But which description was more accurate?  These differing accounts put me in a real moral dilemma over patriotism and truth.  

This was the first time in my young academic career that I examined a controversial historical event in  detail from various viewpoints.  Who were the Americans in the crowd that confronted a single British soldier and later the soldiers who came to protect him?  Were they average citizens of Boston coming out for an evening stroll? Not really.  They were mainly sailors recruited from a local tavern.  During what time of the day did this event take place?  During the night.  Did the soldiers attack these Americans without cause?  Not really.  The colonists first attacked the lone sentry and later the other soldiers who came to protect him by screaming at the soldiers and throwing ice and rocks.  In this state of mass confusion, the soldiers fired on the Americans killing five.  Were any legal actions taken against these soldiers?  Yes, they were put on trial.  Where, in London?  No, in Boston.  I have read transcripts of testimonies given by several soldiers at the trial.  The soldiers were defended by John Adams who later served as President of the United States.  Captain Preston, the officer in charge of the soldiers, was found not guilty of murder.  Only two of the soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter and were branded on their thumbs.   

After completing this research, I left and while walking down the library steps, I kept saying to myself, “They have lied to me; my teachers have lied to me.”  My conclusion was that this event should more correctly be described as The Boston Riot.  If the history teacher includes both versions as he/she describes this event (a pivotal event in the American myth), Does this make the teacher unpatriotic or unamerican?  I hope not, but in the real world, I know this is possible in many communities.   

We live in a climate where politicians and community leaders at the highest levels often confuse myth with truth.  When we allow history to distort the truth for propaganda purposes, the end result is down right scary.   

Bless You My Children,
tls 

Dr. Terry L. Simpson 

Professor Emeritus 

Maryville College Educator Preparation Program