Conditions Change. Kids Don't.
An interview with Karen Moore, retired teacher of English from Trenton High School

    Karen Moore was born and raised in Chatham, New Jersey, in rural Morris County. Although she always wanted to be a teacher, she never in her life would have imagined that she would do her teaching in an inner city setting. The thought never crossed her mind, until her undergraduate work in education at (what was then) Trenton State College. Originally an Elementary Education major, Mrs. Moore went out on field work to an elementary school, and after her first day, couldn’t change tracks fast enough. With the encouragement of Dr. Holman, she switched to Secondary Education – English. Both of her internship placements were to schools in Trenton, and she found that she loved the environment. After graduation, she got a job teaching at the school where she’d done her internship, and she spent thirty-three years there, retiring in 2003. Now, she’s employed by the Trenton school district to teach SRA classes to students who haven’t passed the HSPA examination, and need to pass the SRA in order to graduate. Asked if she’s ever had any regrets about her decisions involving teaching, the only thing she could come up with was “retiring.”

    I found Mrs. Moore to be passionate, both about her subject, and about teaching in general. She finds it to have been the most rewarding career path she could have chosen, and if she had the chance to do it all over again, she would. “In a heartbeat.” She also went out of her way to recommend that more students be encouraged to do inner city teaching, and heartily believes that all students should be required to do at least one of their internships in an inner city school, if for no other reason than to realize that there’s nothing scary at all about such schools, and to see how much they need well trained and qualified teachers

    While our interview lasted almost an hour and a half, there were a couple of things that stood out, and that I want to relate here.

    The first was her answer to a question I asked about classroom management. She believes that the most important rule is "Don't shout over your kids." Never. The moment you do, you've lost them. You can teach loud ("I'm a loud teacher," she said proudly), but if you've got kids walking around, or talking, or something similar, just sit at your desk and be quiet. "I don't care if you sit there for four weeks! The minute you yell over them, you've lost them, and you won't get a chance to try again until you get a new class the next year." This was also, coincidentally, the best advice she could give me for new teachers.

    The next thing that stuck with me was her answer when I asked how to deal with discipline problems in the classroom. First, she told me that you need to exhaust every conceivable possibility before you send a student out of the room. Once you do that, the students know you can be beaten, and you lose a little respect from them each time you do it. She said, "It helps to be nuts. Really! Be nuts about coming up with solutions!" She related the following anecdote. It seems that she had a young man in her class who was non-stop trouble. Wouldn't sit still, wouldn't behave. So she contacted his mother, and worked out a plan. She got a letter from his mother, which the mother mailed to her at the school, giving permission for Mrs. Moore to take her son for a drive. Mrs. Moore held on to this letter until it was needed. Meanwhile, the mother had warned her co-workers that this was coming, so they would play along. As usual, the student got rowdy. Having the letter on her person, Mrs. Moore called the office, who sent someone to watch her class for a little while. She then told the student "Come on. We're going to see your mother!" In front of an absolutely astonished class, she dragged the student out the door, down the hall, out of the building, and into her car. And then took him to see his mother at work! The next day, in class, another student asked "Did she really take you to your mother?" The student said no. Mrs. Moore heard this, and suggested that they call his mother right then and there to verify the truth. The student changed his answer, and was NEVER a problem in her class again.

    Mrs. Moore went out of her way to point out that she's not necessarily recommending this solution, but it worked for her. "Be nuts!"

    Mrs. Moore’s animation, and her sincere desire to pass on her knowledge captivated me over the course of our hour plus interview, and I found a number of things that she said to be of possible great help to me when I begin my career. But as we finished she said that she could boil everything down to three rules for her classroom:

1. No student is ever allowed to call another student stupid.

2. Never punish the class because of the behaviour of one student.

3. Always have a box of tissues on hand, because “you can’t learn with snot running down your face.”