Category Archive

Yvonne Martini is a kindergarten teacher at Farjardo Elementary School.

I came to the Ball Foundation partnership work just like anybody else, which is sort of unusual for me because I’m usually getting the background information and the answers to the “why” beforehand. I was really impressed by Carla who was the hostess for these general meetings, and her description of the purpose for them. The word “collaboration” came up over and over again.

This initial presentation got me excited, and I was hoping that people would really open up. As it turned out, our small group conversations that we had were great. One of the people I was with was a middle school teacher. Kindergarten and middle school teachers don’t have a lot of opportunity to interact. I remember her saying that there is no excuse for children to fail, and if they do, it’s the fault of the parents. She was very angry because as teachers, we try so hard to work with students, and they fail. My school site had just finished reading Ruby Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty, and one of the things that we learned from it was that a characteristic of low income families is that they don’t do long term planning, they don’t set goals, they don’t have that forward thinking. So, the group was able to have a little bit of a debate. The middle school teacher said, “You know, I came from nothing and we still were able to make it.” Then we debated, “Yeah, but your parents already knew the day you were born that you were going to college.” It’s a whole different mindset. Then we got to talking about the kids that we work with, and how the culture is very different, and how we deal with that. For me, I felt like it was such a healthy debate that we wouldn’t have normally had. It was really good to be able to speak as a professional with other professionals. That, unfortunately, doesn’t happen a whole lot.

After the meeting, I really believed that Ball was going to be sending our messages back to the administrators – taking all that expertise that teachers have and really valuing what teachers know. I wholeheartedly believed it. I spoke up in the meeting feeling very much like an individual, and not part of the group mentality. I felt like I was one who spoke up and said, “This is what we’ve been asking for. Speak up, say what you mean. Say what you want the district to hear.” I felt like there was some resistance, a little bit of mistrust, and we’ll see where it goes, but I think that we had to see this as an opportunity.

As a result of this process, I feel like I better recognize my responsibility to step up and not rely on those in leadership positions. It really does come down to the fact that we are involved and we are leaders. I’ve always recognized that everybody has strengths, and that we shouldn’t focus on weaknesses. Instead, we should focus on each other’s strengths, because I think sometimes we tend to tear ourselves and each other down. But I think it’s become more clear in my mind that you can’t rely on those in positions that can make larger decisions to do all the thinking for you. You really have to be the one to get the ball rolling if you want to change.

Teachers tend to be very isolated. These meetings that Ball is having help teachers realize that we don’t need to be isolated, and that there are opportunities. I’m not sure why this has to happen at such a formal level because I think things can happen informally if we really want them to. We can come together and we can share, but the feeling of isolation is a detriment to teachers. This process helps break that down.

Word cloud created at wordle.net.