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When Teachers Become Parents

One Day gathered a roundtable of six alumni to talk candidly about their experiences of facing the challenges of education from a new perspective—as parents. The roundtable was moderated by Marion Hodges Biglan (S. Louisiana '93), the regional operations business partner at Teach For America. Five parents participated: teacher Aisha Anderson-Oberman (Baltimore '99); legal recruiter Julie Countiss (N.Y.C. '93); homemaker Karen Fee (S. Louisiana '92); principal Tom Shepley (Baltimore '92), and Jilo Tisdale (G.N.O. '92), program officer for Enterprise Community Partners. Here's an excerpt from their conversation.

BIGLAN: So just to open it up ... how have your corps experiences affected your views on education?

TISDALE: I came away from the corps having met a lot of very committed individuals and with a belief in public education. So when it was time for my oldest child to go to school, I was sure that she would go to the Detroit public schools. I was overwhelmed at first when I began looking by how many choices there were and how many things to consider... Even though it was a public school, I found that there was a lot of competition to get your kid in once it was identified as a good school, and so I jumped through all these hoops, and it was like a job interview to get her into school. Then once she got in, it turned out that it was not a good fit for her ... It was just way too structured for her personality [and] there were way too many kids. It was a kindergarten class-there were 30 kids. She cried every day when I dropped her off; she was crying when I picked her up ... I think we stayed there maybe three weeks, and then sent her to a charter school where she was happy ... It was my first experience with charter schools, and it was really a wonderful experience in terms of the community involvement and just the willingness to operate outside the box. So we're back in [non-charter] public school now, and I have been basically pleased with the experience we're having, but I had some pretty idealistic notions about public education.

BIGLAN: Have you all been satisfied with the quality of teaching?

COUNTISS: I definitely had issues with the teaching-things like my fourth grader saying, "Oh, we don't have any homework this week." That sort of thing gets under my skin in some ways, because I feel like I took my teaching experience so seriously. I certainly run into teachers where my children are at school who have their script that they've taught for 15 years and it's always worked and so that's what they do. But they're all good people, and eventually each of my three kids will definitely have some of the teachers who are really great and then they'll have some of the teachers who are not really great, and they learn that that's kind of what happens in life.

SHEPLEY: I have to agree. It's an interesting perspective being a principal of a city school. Where we live in Baltimore, there's a ton of wonderful private schools that are very expensive but very, very popular. And there's a lot of social pressure to put your children into private schools. But I am in complete agreement that I'm looking for a school that is going to educate my child. I'm not willing to experiment with my child. I'll be honest, I want to send my children to a good school where they're going to learn a lot ... but you know, I don't have to have my children go to school with all the power elite in the city. My children should be going to school with kids who are very bright and brighter than they are; they should be going to school with kids who aren't as bright and have to struggle some more and need help; they should be going to school with kids who are mostly well-behaved but sometimes mess around, just because that's life.

BIGLAN: What about those of you with younger kids?

ANDERSON-OBERMAN: It really hit home for my husband and me in the last couple of weeks because our daughter is 3 and won't turn 4 until the end of December. Because she was born so late ... in the public school system she won't be allowed to start school until the following year... So my husband and I-who believe completely in sending our kids to public schools and working within those schools to make sure that our kids are always getting what they need-are having to [ask ourselves] do we send her to something private just to get her in school? So that then we can, after a year-after pre-K, kindergarten-we can actually transfer her in and have her not held back a year.

TISDALE: When we left Michigan [where] we were in the charter school and came here to Atlanta looking for a school for my children, I found that even though there is a public school system, it's very much zoned ... Basically a lot of the times I've chosen to live in a community of the children that I would teach, and once my own children began going to school I began to wrestle with, how comfortable was I teaching somewhere that I wouldn't want my own children to go? So it raises for me the question of, is public school in this country a myth if all children don't have access to all schools?

SHEPLEY: You raise an excellent point, which is, yes, when push comes to shove and it's your own kids, you're thinking to yourself, "What options do I have here?" And I have to say I'm becoming more and more sympathetic to the idea of people having more and more choice. I mean, we've got to start opening it up for folks to start figuring out for themselves what is the best match for their own children and give people more opportunities to find schools that match them.

BIGLAN: I think the country does itself a disservice and does its children a disservice when it creates a sort of environment where the decision to teach requires you to sacrifice your own children. Why should I have to decide? If the only reason I come out of teaching is because I want to make enough money for my children to have a quality education, that's not a good situation to be put in.

SHEPLEY: Amen to that.

TISDALE: You know what it can be. You know the expectations.

SHEPLEY: Yes, you're exactly right. I think a lot of people come to the point where you're battling between what you believe in, in terms of public education, and what's best for your own children. That's not a conflict that's an easy one.

BIGLAN: It's so easy when we're talking about other people's kids.

SHEPLEY: Exactly. Then when it's your own little baby, you're like, "Holy mackerel!"

FEE: I've been impressed with our public school, though we're considered one of the higher-performing schools [in Oakland]. There's definitely a mix in my son's class in terms of ethnicity and socioeconomics.

COUNTISS: Houston has sort of a school- choice setup. The bottom line is that if I'm in [Houston Independent School District] and I would really prefer that my kids go to River Oaks Elementary, I can have them tested and jump through the right hoops and apply to go to that school rather than the one that I'm zoned to. I will say that I did certainly like the idea that there was school choice here. But I have mixed feelings about school choice. I want the schools to be a reflection of the neighborhoods that are around them.

We've yet to send our children to school, and our struggle has been more around quality childcare. I knew what I should expect, and I did not see it. I was paying a ton of money and so I just thought, my gosh-I mean, I'm actually paying top dollar for what is perceived to be a very good day care. It just made me very angry to think of the parents who didn't have the ability to even go to this day care and just start right away.

ANDERSON-OBERMAN: I had those same experiences with day care-it was horrible. And so expensive. God, so expensive.

FEE: Last year, [with] my son's kindergarten teacher, there was no differentiation in her instruction. He was happy there, he liked his friends, he was perfectly fine, but he was not challenged at all. He was one of those early readers. And I was just trying to figure out how to approach her but knowing from a teacher's point of view how that feels-to have this parent walk in assuming their kid is so smart, and "What are you going to do for my kid?" It was weeks of trying to figure out how I was going to go in there and not become her adversary from day one. We ended up having a good year for it, and working with his teacher helped us start our public school experience in a positive way.

COUNTISS: I totally relate to what you're saying, but at the end of the day I always come back to [the fact that] it's their job; it's their job to serve my child and the other children in that class. And I find myself, because we're in a public school, feeling the same way, like "Oh, I don't want to irritate them." And yet my friends who are paying all this money for private school have no problem going to the teacher, having a meeting, sitting down, and saying, "Look here are my concerns." I get mad at myself sometimes for not speaking up more at their school.

FEE: I felt the same way about myself when I was teaching school-you know, that was my job. That was my career, and if parents wanted to come to me and they had concerns and needs and desires for their kids, that was part of what I was paid to do. And yet [as a parent] I seem to sort of shrink away from expecting too much from my children's teachers.

TISDALE: I think I understand what you're saying, and I guess what comes to mind for me is the day care situation. When I was looking for day care for my youngest daughter, I was living in inner-city Detroit. [There were] just too many kids in there, and so even though as a parent I was frustrated that my daughter was having this experience ... I felt like the real problem was a level beyond the teacher. It's not that teachers aren't still accountable for what happens in their room, but I think having been teachers in urban classrooms, we're a little more sensitive to what can be overwhelming.

BIGLAN: Well, this is such a great conversation, but I know we have children to tend to and things like that.

FEE: Maybe we could reconvene in five years to see how it all turned out?

COUNTISS: That will be the next conversation. What to do when your children want to join the corps ... or don't want to join the corps.