Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 8, 1994 TAG: 9403080180
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By MARA LEE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
You're complaining about those co-workers who just seem a little out of their depths. You shouldn't, but you do.
A friend of mine said about one of his colleagues, "She's a nice person, she just shouldn't be in this field. She should be teaching first grade somewhere."
As an education reporter, this should've set off alarms at once, but it took a while for my indignation to build. My kindergarten teacher was one of the toughest women I've ever known. I've been a camp counselor in charge of a dozen or two rather spunky kids. This is f\ tinoto for the faint of heart.
Ellen Denny, Shannon Nunnally, B.J. Mullins and Millie Wiggert couldn't agree more. Denny and Nunnally teach first grade at Blacksburg's Gilbert Linkous Elementary School - Mullins and Wiggert team teach in Harding Avenue Elementary's kindergarten wing. The four women gathered after work, sat on those little bitty chairs, and reassured me that, no, sweetness is not the best qualification for taming, er, teaching small children.
"We get patronized by other teachers," Wiggert said. She began teaching in 1952, and said attitudes have improved little.
Mullins serves as Montgomery County Education Association president, and said folks act surprised she teaches kindergarten. "As if a kindergarten teacher is not capable of being our president. It's perceived that we lack self-propulsion, we lack the drive to be anything more."
But Denny said, "I have friends that will not teach [first grade] because of the pressure."
Nunnally said she invites Virginia Tech experts to lecture, and they are overwhelmed. "These people have their Ph.D.s, and trying to get the attention of a 6-year-old and keep it for more than 10 minutes ...." Nunnally said first graders can't be told, "'OK, I'm going to work back here on this, don't bother me.' That lasts all of about three minutes."
Mullins started out as a premed student at the University of Virginia, taught special education until three years ago, when she got a transfer to kindergarten. "I've worked harder these past three years than I've ever worked in my life," she said. But seeing the direct effect of her work is worth it. She said many children begin to read during the year, and act overjoyed. She said, "You've just given them the whole world."
"It's exhausting," Wiggert said. "We put in hours and hours, we come in weekends, work evenings."
Nunnally said the hardest moment in her 23-year-long life was when a parent called her to tell her she should be there as her pupil learned a parent died - New Year's Eve. "You don't leave this job," she said.
"You wake up in the middle of the night, and can't go back to sleep because you're worrying about them," Denny said.
"I was very young when I started teaching," Wiggert said. "It took me a while to realize those parents have needs, too." A mother came into her classroom after work one day. "Her marriage was breaking up, and she sat and rocked and she talked. She rocked that rocking chair across the whole durned room and didn't even realize that. [Parents] need the stroking just as much as their children do."
All the women agreed discipline takes toughness. "If you don't demand respect, you'll never get it," Denny said. In fact, sometimes that carries over at home. "My husband will say, 'I'm not your child, I'm Greg.'"
"Being nurturing is not exclusive of being a strong person," Mullins said, and spoke of a beloved Christiansburg librarian who died of breast cancer. "She worked the last week of her life."
Wiggert underscores her words as she talks about what happens when one of her former pupils gets in trouble down the road. She argued vehemently with one boy's critics. "I will," she said fiercely. "I'll stick up for my kids and don't you dare say anything against them."
Casual clothes and green magic-marker stained hands may contribute to their lack of respect, the teachers said. But Wiggert insisted, "That's dressing professionally on this level, something you can live in."
Because almost all early educators are women, that may contribute to the disrespect as well, Mullins said. "It's a pervasive problem in society, not just in education."
by CNB