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Two teachers discuss why they teach, the value of standardized tests and whether their own kids got a good education.
By JAY CRIDLIN
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 31, 2003
If you're looking for a solid debate on the state of public education in Florida, sit in on a family dinner with Michael Smith or Diane Ward.
Smith, who runs the math department at Armwood High School in Seffner, and Ward, a fourth-grade teacher at Buckhorn Elementary in Valrico, are among the 10 nominees for Hillsborough County's Teacher of the Year award, to be presented at a banquet Thursday.
The two are each married to teachers and have children of their own in school.
Who could know more about education?
The St. Petersburg Times sat down recently with the two nominees to discuss their philosophies about teaching.
Excerpts follow.
Q. Finish this sentence: If I weren't a teacher, I would be ...
SMITH: I can't imagine not being a teacher. That's all I've ever done. Maybe a football coach.
WARD: I'd be a photographer. I used to do photography a little bit, amateur stuff.
Q. Give me an example of a time during your careers when you said, "Hey, this is what I was really meant to do."
SMITH: Last year, I had a student come back from college that I had in my calculus class. This girl didn't pass the AP calculus exam, and last year she came back to my class, just walked right into the middle of my calculus class and gave me a big hug. She said, "Even though I didn't pass the AP exam, I am now teaching (tutoring) my calculus class in college." That's how much she learned.
WARD: (I had) a little boy that struggled. He'd been switching around from school to school, so he didn't really have a lot of stability, and I worked with him. One day, there was a letter on my desk, a letter that this little boy wrote to me, and it was the sweetest letter I've ever gotten from any child ever. He couldn't read very well and he couldn't write very well, but he said, "Mrs. Ward helps me learn and makes me like to learn."
Q. Mrs. Ward, you're married to a high school teacher, and Mr. Smith, you're married to an elementary school teacher. What sort of discussions do you have at the dinner table?
SMITH: She'll ask me a lot of questions about math -- what type of things could she do with math in the third grade? Sometimes I'll even go to her class and entertain them with some kind of a math trick.
WARD: That's really neat that you'd do that.
SMITH: They love it. When I walk in, they know me.
We do discuss a lot of things -- pay, and rules and things that go on in the county and whether we like them or not.
WARD: And ideas -- I get science ideas from my husband. I sneak his books. He's got this really great experiment book, and it's got every kind of experiment you'd want to do with science.
Q. Do you ever wonder what it would be like to teach the other side for a day? Do you think you could do it?
WARD: I think it might be fun. Sometimes, I've thought about moving up to maybe fifth grade or even middle school. But I just love fourth-graders.
SMITH: Well, I enjoy visiting my wife's class, but if I had to live with them for a day, I don't know.
Q. How important do you think standardized tests are?
SMITH: I think they're important. I just don't think one test should determine everything. Students have bad days. I teach, every year, for kids to take one test at the end of the year, an AP calculus test. They mess that up, that's it. That's very difficult on students. They come in with a cold, even if they have the flu, they have to be there. That's not real fair.
WARD: I feel the same way. I think you have to have some kind of measurement to see where they are. But I think you also have to look at where one child starts and where he ends up. A test isn't always going to tell you that.
Q. Are you satisfied with the education your own children have gotten?
WARD: My son had an absolutely wonderful education. He went through the IB program at King High School, and it was wonderful.
I don't know about middle school. Not that he didn't have good teachers, because he had some very good teachers. But in middle school, at the time, they went to a sixth-grade center, and then to another school for a seventh-grade center, and then to another school for an eighth-grade center. I didn't like that choppiness.
SMITH: I think class size is going to be a big issue. My daughter, her first kindergarten year was a very good year. She was doing everything she needed to do as a kindergartener. But her first-grade year was a disaster. I don't know what happened. I can't say it's the teacher. I do say that she had 28 students in a first-grade class.
After the third term, we took her out of the school she was in and put her in the school she's currently in, and that basically turned her around.
I have to give my wife full credit, and the teacher full credit. My wife constantly works with her, every day, every day.
WARD: That's the key, right there, is the help at home -- when you have parents that follow up with their children and check to see that their homework is done.
Q. So now you're both up for the Teacher of the Year award. First person you'll thank if you win?
WARD: My interning teacher was just awesome. Her name's Julie Lacy. We're still friends to this day. She has gone on to become assistant principal at Lopez Elementary. She was wonderful. That made me enjoy teaching, because she enjoyed it so much.
SMITH: Actually, there's a teacher, David Belcher, from Plant City High School. I remember my first day. Scared as can be. Walked into the school, went to the planning area, and I didn't even have a desk. There were too many teachers for the desks. The first thing he did was say, "Okay, you're sitting here at my desk." Just little things like that on top of being a great teacher and a role model. He really has made a difference.