Like the rest of South King County, Kent has seen dramatic demographic changes. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Kent is 42 percent non-Hispanic white (it is funny how Hispanics who see themselves as white are not seen as such by “real Americans”), 22 percent Asian (both South and East Asian in equal measure), 16 percent Hispanic and 12 percent black; according to the 2000 census, the city was 68 non-Hispanic white. Of course even that was a dramatic change from the mid-80s, when the locally-produced comedy show Almost Live! frequently poked fun at Kent and its redneck ways, a place where you used to see during every election cycle Republican election posters and placards everywhere. Now they appear only in “select” areas to remind long-time residents of their “roots.”
I only point this out because today I observed a line-up of red-shirted teachers picketing in front of a school in Kent. According to the Associated Press, “Teachers in the Kent School District are on strike, saying they want higher pay, smaller class sizes and more mental and behavioral support for students.” Most if not all of the teachers out there were white and female; given the demographic shift, we can surmise that two-thirds of their pupils are non-white.
First of all, according to salary.com. the average salary for teachers in Kent is $58,000 a year, which we assume is for 10-months worth of work. Is that enough? Anyone could probably use a little more money in that income bracket. Smaller class sizes are hard to get unless you build more facilities and hire more teachers—which of course means you have to find the money from somewhere. The 2018 levy that increased property taxes slightly failed, cutting 20 percent of the school budget. The 2020 levy proposal passed (barely, supported mainly because it was for only two years), and the 2022 “renewal” also passed, barely. It seems that instead of a permanent “fix” to offset insufficient revenue from the state, the school district goes through this charade asking for these “renewals” every two years.
But really sticks out in that AP statement is the other “conditions” that the teachers are demanding. Terms like “mental health” and “behavioral" support are of course used to describe “undisciplined” students who don’t respect the authority of teachers. From what I can tell, the teachers I saw probably came from seriously different backgrounds than many of the children in their classrooms, and didn’t know how to communicate with such people, or felt that it wasn’t their “job” to. Not that I don’t particularly blame them; their job isn’t to “parent” these students; that is supposed to be someone else’s job; not everyone has the communication skills or the ability to motivate people of a different background of Mr. Thackeray in To Sir With Love.
Now, I haven’t been in a primary school classroom for many decades, and in the Catholic grade school and subsequent public high school I attended there wasn’t a whole lot of troublesome behavior going on; kids shooting spitballs, chewing gum, late for class, smoking in the boy’s room. In the movies or crime shows you saw inner city punks and gangs in the classroom, some even threatening a teacher or two with a knife. Both of those scenarios are probably a bit of a simplistic view of the contrasting classrooms, but I’m fairly certain that most of those teachers expected to be working in the former environment, and because most of the problem children are perceived to be black males, white female teachers only feel threatened by them and don’t know how to deal with them, so they want someone else to take care of the problem for them—or pay them more to do it.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the school district levy promises to increase “security” in schools (to deal with students with “behavioral” issues) and provide more help for students with mental health issues (probably mostly those of the first group fit in that category as well). Do schools need permanent psychiatrists or more people to “counsel” students about their behavior? Or are there more “simple” ways to deal with “problem” students besides just suspending them? We are told that boys who “can’t sit still” in a classroom are much more likely to be wrongly diagnosed with “psychiatric” issues like ADHD—meaning “hyperactive,” “inattentive” and being “impulsive”—and become addicted to the drugs they are given just to keep them from being “natural,” because some teachers have a problem dealing with boys-who-will-boys and not nice little girls.
There was a 2014 story in Esquire entitled “The Drugging of the American Boy” which noted that teachers, school administrators and doctors were too quick to emasculate boys as having “mental health” issues; at the time of the publication of the story, a shocking 20 percent of boys were “diagnosed” with ADHD by the time they reached high school. Of course, girls always have to be more the “victims” of everything, and despite the fact they are much less likely be diagnosed with ADHD (they should be so lucky), they allegedly manifest “symptoms” much “differently” than boys, so many cases are “missed.”
On a website curiously called boredteachers.com which seems devoted to teachers who prefer to be bored, a teacher who calls herself Angela Barton posted something called “Students Are Out of Control This Year, and Teachers Aren’t Having It!” which I’m sure is the right attitude to fix the post-pandemic school environment, after most students learned all their social skills on the Internet or their phones, and now have problems “socializing” properly. The “solution” after all her complaints about “unruly” and inattentive students is for teachers to complain their way into just quitting.
On the website Edutopia, there are some suggestions that a teacher like Barton who probably doesn’t have great social skills either could take to heart:
At the beginning of a school year, settling in with a whole new group of students, it can be difficult to navigate heated moments. How do you deal with all-too-predictable disruptions in a way that feels proportional and controlled when there are a thousand daily decisions to make and dozens of personalities in play? When you’re overwhelmed, can you really afford to be empathetic?
But empathy and compassion, even under duress, is the better path—and overreacting can lead to unintended consequences. A solid and growing body of research suggests that students who are frequently called out for low-level misbehavior, such as not paying attention or chatting with a friend, are more likely to become disengaged and apathetic in the classroom—leading to more behavioral issues in the future. Research suggests that to keep students motivated, teachers are better off picking their battles and keeping in mind that the most effective classroom management strategies are based on building relationships.
In any case, what those striking teachers want is to be paid more to do (slightly) less, and without any sass from students. Some could say that a victim mentality has made its way into the education system. I don’t know what it is like in classrooms today, but I certainly don’t remember school being a battleground when I was younger. Maybe it is now in some schools populated with students who get the impression that teachers just want to get rid of them. Fair or unfair, I wonder where the truth actually lies in a society of people competing with each other about who is more a “victim” than someone else; those teachers certainly don’t see their problem students as victims of a society that doesn’t really want them to succeed anyways.
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