SCHOOL DAYS
Jim Hite

Much has been said of the change in the school calendar. Deborah Bennett noted in her "Chatter Box" a couple of weeks ago that going back in the heat of August is a far cry from the "old days" of returning to the classroom after the Labor Day weekend.

And it surely is! As a former elementary and high school student, albeit in the very ancient 1940s and 50s, I returned to school on the day after the holiday; we had two days off for Thanksgiving, a couple of weeks at Christmas and a couple more days prior to Easter; and then we were out the first week of June. Outdoor summer jobs ran from mid-June to mid-August, since the paycheck came on the fifteenth and on the last day of the month.

I don't know the why and wherefore of the change to our present schedule, and I have no real opinion one way or the other, except the usual "I liked it better the way it was" that is part and parcel of my generation.

The beginning of the school year is an opportunity for me to put into print my annual attempt to sing the praises of those in the front lines of the educational establishment, the classroom teachers. From kindergarten through twelfth grade, these men and women are faced with the awesome task of educating children and young people.

And how marvelous it would be if that was all they had to do.

But that is not the case. The non-education tasks that take up so many hours have been and are being well documented in the media. Teachers must make sure their charges are ready to pass the standardized tests that supposedly show academic prowess. Paperwork must be provided for each and every action taken. Proof must be shown that this and that topic has been taught.

Then there are the parents and administrators. Parents who support the teacher make that educator's day. Parents whose child "wouldn't behave like that," whose child must never be corrected for improper behavior, whose child must be preserved from arduous tasks yet given the highest grades, whose child is in school to get good grades rather than an education - these are the bane of a dedicated teacher's day/week/year.

Students brought up by these parents, even though found in elementary, middle and high schools, are undoubtedly very similar to the subjects of a study led by San Diego State University's Jean Twenge which found that today's college students are more selfcentered than their predecessors, according to scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory recorded between 1982 and 2006. Prof. Twenge stated, "We need to stop endlessly repeating, 'You're special,' and having children repeat that back. Kids are self-centered enough already."

Thank God for all those who are exceptions to the above!

Another educational topic fitting at this time of year is teacher pay. I don't need to take you back to my pay scale when I started in the mid-1970s. Many retired educators living here go back further and remember pay levels even lower. Fortunately, those levels have risen though not nearly enough, especially for the classroom teachers.

A letter to the editor in USA Today recently said that the classroom teacher should receive the highest pay, while administrators and oth- ers in the educational system should receive less. Obviously, the comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but an interesting approach to highlight the importance of the classroom teacher when it comes to the education of students.

In the late 1980s, I worked as a writer for The Statesboro Herald. One of my assignments was to cover the education beat. This was the time of the Quality Basic Education Act (QBE), which was passed earlier in the decade, a period when I was also in the classroom.

A principal in the Bulloch County system had to go through the late State Senator Joe Kennedy to get the information, but he finally was provided a list of all state office employees in the Georgia Department of Education, along with their annual salaries. The list showed that, while QBE added funding to local school systems, called for improved educational standards, and increased teacher salaries, it also increased greatly the paperwork load of the classroom teacher. What the principal disliked was the use of QBE money to staff and fund a bureaucracy that shuffled the papers demanded from teachers under QBE, papers that had nothing to do with the teaching going on in the classroom.

All this has been to say: "God bless each and every one of you, Jenkins County teachers." You have the most difficult job in the world, if you do it right. All of us, parents of students now in the Jenkins County system, parents of students who have been in the Jenkins County system, citizens with no children in the Jenkins County system, all of us thank you.

To paraphrase the old Irish blessing: "May your administration always cover your back, may the mountains of paperwork quickly become level on your desk and may you reach the end of each day one step ahead of that child who makes you want to tear your hair out!"