TEACHER INTERVIEW

Montevideo
April 17, 1992 

Q.   You're a high school counselor?

A.   Yes, I am.


Q.   And how long have you been here?

A.   I've been here since 1982.  Previous to that I was still in
 the school system.  I was a junior high special education
 counselor for probably one or two years before that, and I
 started as an elementary teacher in 1974, and then, gosh, only
 one year later, I became a learning disability teacher on the
 junior high level, and from that to a special ed counselor.

 

Q.   Can you tell me about an incident -- the principal?  In the
 classroom, that might be selection of curriculum materials or
 how you teach, how you choose to teach, or how students are
 grouped, how classes are scheduled, how behavioral problems
 are dealt with.  I'm not sure what examples would fit your
 situation.  Maybe you could think of others.

 

A.   Well, there certainly are -- in choosing a speaker, for
 instance, for a club I sponsor, he was aware of some parents,
 at a couple different times, or some community people's
 feelings, maybe slighted or hurt over some incident, so at one
 time he asked me if we could possibly use a Jewish Rabbi at
 some time because there had been some hard feelings with some
 Jewish thing.  This year he asked if it would be possible
 somehow to include a Black person, that would be very good,
 because we have very few Black students, and those are things
 I was happy to do, but that came from him as a suggestion.  I
 don't know if that's what you're looking for, but that's the
 first thing that came to mind.  I mean, he often brings things
 for us to get involved in and I was head -- one of the
 chairpersons of core team for a couple of years, and there his
 influence was felt as far as program.  We certainly sought his
 leadership somewhat, too.

 

Q.   What is --

 

A.   Core team is an all-school involvement program that is
 basically geared toward ________ prevention, but it involves
 trying to do positive things as well as preventing things and
 we involve as many faculty as will participate, and then they
 also are involved in being -- like we have a team of probably
 20 or 25 right now in Core team, and those teachers serve, for
 instance, on referral teams so that when we have a student who
 is having a problem in some way or shows a symptom, not
 necessarily drug abuse, but maybe behavior problems or shows
 something that is not seemingly a very happy situation, then
 the teacher can fill out a referral to the core team.  Then we
 have the referral teams that gather information on that
 student all the way from attendance to grades and talk to
 their counselor, talk to the principal about any incidents
 that they've had, and gather all this information together,
 and then somebody, usually the core team chair people, review
 it after it has all been gathered.  First, this referral team
 also evaluates it and makes recommendations as to what should
 be done and what they think will be helpful.  And that could
 be some intervention of some type.  Then the core chair people
 also go over it and call the student in and talk to the
 student and usually contact the parents, and try to do
 something in the way of intervention that will help the
 student.  Well, Mr. Curlett has been instrumental in the first
 place in having that core team formed.  There were a couple of
 people out of Tucson and they worked there in similar type of
 programs and then they came back and talked to us.  When I was
 on the child abuse team, Mr. Curlett was certainly a big part
 of that, he and I and the nurse, other counselors, and when we
 have a report of a child abuse, the nurse and counselor get
 together with the child and talk to them, and then meet with
 Mr. Curlett and he has a strong voice in this, kind of advises
 what he thinks, and we all three make a decision what to do.
 So his influence is felt in many ways in what we do.

 

Q.   Incident -- department chair?  Do you have a department chair?

 

A.   We have our department chair.  Yes, he has -- it varies a lot
 in every situation you're in, depending on their style of
 leadership, but certainly our chair person is very much in
 charge and very much -- at the beginning of the year, he gives
 us our assignments.  We have some voice in it like now in the
 spring he will ask us, "Are there any assignments that you had
 this year that you would rather not have or that you
 definitely don't want?" or whatever, and he tries to take that
 into consideration.  But he does make the assignments and you
 may not know what you're going to get.

 

Q.   Has an incident ever happened to you that you got an
 assignment that you didn't want?

 

A.   I haven't really minded my assignments.  I can think of a
 couple that I wouldn't like but I can't say -- I'm getting a
 little weary maybe of doing _______, but I haven't expressed
 that because I haven't felt that way all that much until now.
 I'm trying to think what I asked not to do.  I think I've
 expressed that I don't want to do the military, the ROTC,
 although our head counselor has done that for years and he
 probably wouldn't assign us that.  Did I ever get an
 assignment I didn't want, huh?  I don't think a big
 assignment.  But sometimes, for instance, maybe in the way
 that I handle a situation, I'm thinking of a student -- this
 has nothing to do with assignment really, it just has to do
 with dealing a student and their credits and etc. -- and this
 little girl that I had yesterday is pregnant and she came here
 in December from another school district and she was in our
 co-op work program -- in their co-op work program, which we
 call COE -- and it's office-type -- Cooperative Office
 Education -- so the students work in some office setting and
 then they get credit for the class here which is called COE,
 one of their credits is for that, but two credits for the
 whole year come from their work experience.  And she came in
 late, like the 15th of December, right before Christmas, so
 there were only two weeks left of the semester.  Well, the
 other counselor who registered her had sent her down to the
 COE teacher; the COE teacher didn't want to take her because
 they kind of have a rule that they should be in it all year or
 not get credit for it, and she was pregnant at the time, had
 come here because she was pregnant, and so she wasn't going to
 be able to place her a job with her being pregnant.  So she
 more or less refused her, but she ended up with only three
 classes, then the counselor who registered her gave her a
 correspondence book and told her she needed to do a half-
 credit of correspondence and then registered her for a full
 load this semester.  Well, she didn't do the correspondence,
 and she came in yesterday and tearfully said, "Am I going to
 graduate?  My name is on the list but I'm a half credit
 short."  And, sure enough, she is a half credit short, and
 that didn't seem quite fair because she had put in all that
 time with the potential for one semester if she had stayed in
 the other school, she should have had 1 1/2 credits for that
 program.  So I talked with our head counselor and he said --
 he didn't think it was quite fair, either, so we should try to
 work something out.  So he had me talking to our COE teacher
 and I got her -- she was very agreeable to us granting a half
 credit because she remembered that she hadn't wanted to enroll
 this student but she had thought herself that her other school
 would have granted the half credit because she came so close
 to the end of the semester.  So then I took that back to our
 head counselor and he said, well, that was fine, but he
 thought maybe he should call the previous school and see what
 she had put in the way of hours, because he was asking me did
 I want to give her a half credit or a credit and a half?  I
 said, well, the teacher here is willing to give a half credit,
 but now that you mention it, in case she should fail anything
 else, she says she's passing it all, but in case she should,
 it would have been kind of nice to give her the whole credit
 and a half, if she came pretty close to deserting us.  So then
 he suggested that I call the other school and see if she had -
 - how many hours she had put in, you know, so it really was
 close to what you would need in order to qualify for that.
 Well, the other teacher over there said she hadn't turned in
 more than 110 hours and that's not close to what you need.
 Now, the little girl told me today that she had moved from
 _______ before that and she had put in hours there.  So maybe
 she has put in more than we thought, but anyway, when I told
 her head counselor that she had only that many hours, he said,
 well, that makes me feel a little uneasy and I don't think we
 should just give her that half credit from this teacher here
 like we figured on.  I think, to cover ourselves, we should
 make sure that she does some project that's worth ten days
 because she missed ten days not being enrolled in our
 semester.  AFter Christmas, there were ten more days, that's
 what she missed.  Of course, that's because she wasn't placed,
 right?  So, now I had to meet with her, and she was so happy
 because she can just get her half credit.  She thinks it's
 pretty good that we're at least doing that for her.  But I was
 influenced by -- I would not have done that,  I would have
 just given her the half credit, I felt like we had done the
 wrong thing, so there I was influenced.  I really didn't feel
 I could make my own decision and I'm sure that's why we have
 chairpersons that they have to look out for the department and
 make sure that we are covered.  Maybe it would come up, but,
 see, I don't think it would come back to haunt us, I don't
 know why it would, if this teacher signs for us and says she
 has the half credit coming, I really don't know why it would
 be a problem, and I don't know why we had to put this little
 girl through a project to get her a half credit.

 

Q.   Let's move on to another person who may have influenced your
 work life, and that would be -- incident -- superintendent of
 your district?

 

A.   Mine has not been, I don't believe, I don't remember any
 instance of any contact with the superintendent.  I mean, his
 broad policies certainly do but if you're talking about an
 individual instance where that came to bear on us -- it would
 have to be through some policy, I guess, that came down and we
 didn't know about it or something new, but I don't --

 

Q.   A policy that you felt came from him directly?  Can you think
 of an incident in which he directly influenced a policy that
 affected you?

 

A.   I really can't.  I have a feeling that a lot of policies come
 --  but they come through the chain of command, I don't think
 they come right from him to us.  I don't think so.  They come
 through the school board or sort of -- I really don't.

 

Q.   What about that school board?  Have you felt influenced in
 your work life by the school board?  Maybe by a decision they
 might have made or --

 

A.   Well, not the way I work.  They influence how they makes
 decisions about where the monies go and they have passed to
 spend money on the opening of an alternate school, which is
 YYY Elementary School, which is sort of a school without
 frills, academics -- I mean, there are certain parents who
 prefer to have their students just do academics and not  art
 or PE or music much, I guess.  So I have thought that in a
 year when we had a real economic crunch and there wasn't much
 money available, I did not agree with their decision to put a
 lot of money into adding to that school because they needed
 more space.  It just seemed a poor use of funds to me; there
 are a lot of other more pressing things like having the money
 to have more teachers, student ratio would be better, or
 materials and things like that.  So there has been a lot of
 dissatisfaction among a lot of people that they chose to spend
 a lot of money on that.

 

Q.   Influence -- state or federal programs or regulations?

 

A.   Well, yeah, probably so.  For instance, we have the chronic
 illness policy that comes down and I'm not sure whether it's
 federal or state, but it is one -- anyway, that policy allows
 students and their parents, to request, when they're going to
 be absent a lot due to some physical problem or it could be
 probably be emotional, too, but usually it's some illness or
 something, like migraine headaches or whatever, anyways, the
 student has a form signed by their doctor and requesting for
 chronic illness.  Then we have to contact their teacher, we
 usually have a conference, and the teachers are obligated to
 provide some kind of work whenever these students are absent,
 and they just can't drop them because of their lack of
 attendance because they have medical reasons, and so it
 necessitates a lot of extra paper work and a lot of extra
 effort on the part of the teachers, too, plus there are some
 students and parents who take advantage of that.  A student
 might have something we think is sort of questionable -- for
 instance, one we had on this chronic illness, was working
 regularly at Smitty's, but we really couldn't really drop her,
 we finally did because she just didn't come at all, ever, for
 part of the day, and then she started not coming for anything,
 so she had only about two classes left, she finally admitted
 that the afternoon she wasn't going to be coming to that at
 all.  But that policy we have to accommodate it, we have to
 work with it, but we all have mixed feelings about it.  There
 are situations where it is good.  For instance, a child that
 really has leukemia or something and really needs to have some
 allowance made.  But we've always made some allowance for
 medical excuses anyway, so we're not -- I'm not always sure
 that there is a need for this chronic illness but it's
 something that I have to live with and I have to work with and
 provide information, and work with the teachers to help these
 students get their credits.

 

Q.   Influence -- legal or judicial judgments?

 

A.   Hmm.  I'm not one of those that I've heard about who had, for
 instance, a parent threaten a suit or that type of thing, but
 there have been some students in the past against a teacher,
 a principal, then the whole school or whatever, but I've never
 really been directly involved with anybody who had that.  I
 know that one parents was unhappy with something that I had
 advised a student, but it couldn't come to any threat like
 that, but it did come to where I wasn't to see that student
 anymore.  And it was having to do with -- well, it was a
 student who had been taken away from their parents and the
 foster parents, it was because of child abuse, and the foster
 parents are the ones who were upset with some discussions I
 had had with the student about her parents, her real parents.
 When I thought about it, I thought I hadn't been really wise
 in saying what I said.  So you have to be very, very careful
 sometimes.  Sometimes you mean well, but you just can't say
 certain things.  For instance, I know one teacher -- are you
 interested in other people and how they've been influenced?
 One teacher who talked to a foreign exchange student -- about
 her Christian faith, and the student was Jewish, the student
 was highly offended and brought it to the school district.
 There wasn't any suit, I don't believe, because there was a
 lot of apology and whatnot made, however, this teacher was --
 you know, something was put in her folder, in her personnel
 folder about that, and she was told that if that ever happened
 again, she wouldn't have a job.    That was getting religion
 mixed up with -- personal religion beliefs, and she had
 probably done it in real good intentions but you really can't
 do something like that.

 

Q.   Influence -- parents?

 

A.   I'm sure there have been lots of those.  Hmm.  We're forever
 having conferences where we do get involved in being mediators
 between parents and the teacher somewhat, you know, and
 helping try to get a kid through a class or maybe in some
 cases the teacher is down on them or there's some conflict
 going on, and you try really hard to bring resolution or have
 the kid moved into some other kind of -- I don't know if you
 call that shaping, but that's shaping that work.

 

Q.   Do you feel that parents have a great deal of influence?

 

A.   Yeah, we do have the sense in WWW schools, at least in our
 team, I think, and I think it's fairly pervasive that the
 parents are the most powerful elements you might have, and
 that if the parents were to go to the district over us, that
 they will get what they want, at least generally, in most
 cases, I mean, if it's within any power to do, they will
 usually try to -- and certainly our principal -- if a parent
 comes in, you know, if they think to appeal their problem to
 our principal rather than going to, say, the teachers or the
 vice principals who may turn them down, but if they go to the
 principal, he will usually -- he's a real softy when it comes
 to granting whatever it is they want.  If they feel like they
 should have a different teacher, for instance -- Mr. Curlett
 has many times brought a parent over to me and say, change
 that, we haven't been right about that, give them another
 teacher, change that class -- and ordinarily we don't, later
 on in the semester makes any teacher changes unless it's an
 obvious need and the teacher feels that it's best, too.  I
 mean, if the parent has just a personal complaint maybe about
 a teacher or something, if they go to Mr. Curlett or down to
 the district, they'll probably get what they want.

 

Q.   Incident -- a professional organization or teacher's
 association?

 

A.   My work life -- I'm an active member, and always have been, of
 the WWW Education Association, and I can't really say --
 other than, you know, attending meetings and working towards -
 - well, maybe here's one.  Our school district, as many
 others, has gone in for career ladders, and a career ladder is
 supposed to reward teachers for outstanding performance or
 kind of another way of getting them monetary rewards other
 than just your longevity or your seniority on the job.  In
 theory, that really sounds like something I approve of and
 really think it should be, but I decided -- first of all, when
 they first started career ladder, there didn't seem to be any
 way for counselors to participate in it, it just wasn't set up
 that way, but gradually some counselors kept applying and
 asking how to do it and they got on career ladders.  So then
 last year, another counselor and I decided we were going to
 try to be on career ladders, and there are mounds and mounds
 of paper work with that.  Well, both of us knew that because
 we have a lot of seniority that we would not, even if we were
 approved for it, we would not see any salary gain because they
 had enough of a ceiling on it and we already were making more
 than that because of the years we had put in here.  But the
 one reason I felt, well, they had another option that if you
 got on it, you were placed on the career ladder, then you
 could apply for what they called -- what did they call it? --
 but you could apply for special projects and if you wrote
 something up and it was approved again, then you could carry
 out this project which would entail hours of work outside of
 school, but then you could be paid for that.  So it was like
 doing more work for money.  But you couldn't do that project
 unless you went through that.  So I never thought that was
 equitable nor do some of the other veteran teachers, but we
 brought it up at NEA and think it's unfair, but if they would
 stop the whole career ladder, they feel that they would hurt
 the other teachers who are younger who do benefit from it.
 The less experienced teachers get large sums, I mean, $8,000
 to $10,000, some of them have received for being on career
 ladder for one year in the past.  But anyway, I work with it -
 - I could have easily been placed on it, I believe, but
 because my friend was, but at some point I said to myself, why
 am I doing all of this?  Why do I want to do all of this just
 to prove the point that I can get on it, and then I have to do
 more work to earn anything for it?  And they were saying that
 because so many people were applying, there was less money for
 this project, so you weren't going to be doing as well.  So I
 just dropped it.  But it certainly does shape your life if you
 try to participate in that career ladder.  There are hours and
 hours of paper work to do and I was spending a lot of weekends
 and trying real hard to try to be on that career ladder.

 

Q.   It sounds like another job, doesn't it?

 

A.   It seemed that way to me.  The idea was really so you could do
 your job better and it doesn't seem like it worked that way to
 me.

 

Q.   Incident -- in-service training or your own continued
 education?

 

A.   Oh, probably -- we've had some in-services where I've probably
 gotten information -- for instance, on suicide, that
 definitely give you additional information to use in a crisis
 situation, how to act or what things, you know, very important
 information.  It's more or less like a class, you know, so I
 think it's been very valuable at times.  Classes -- I've
 definitely benefitted from our training -- what was the second
 one?

 

Q.   In-service training or your own continued education.

 

A.   Well, I think there have been some, some of the classes that
 I can think of that have been -- certainly my practicum for
 counseling, you know, where you actually were observed and did
 some counseling, was probably the most valuable for
 counseling.  Other classes that I have taken have varied, we
 share some through the district -- that would be kind of in-
 service -- and sometimes the speakers on things like drugs and
 how to identify them or whatever, have been good.  Like our
 core team, too, has gone up to -- had weekend retreat
 education-type of things, and I've benefitted from those, too,
 from the speakers, just in information, I guess you would say.
 But sometimes in camaraderie, too, you know, is another
 benefit, being off on a weekend retreat with a few of our
 faculty members in a large school like this is really a way of
 getting to know them better.

 

Q.   Speaking about colleagues, incident ----

 

A.   Uh-huh.  Certainly through a conference we had on students,
 the teachers and together, usually, we share a lot of
 information, so I'm influenced by what they perceive about a
 child, sometimes they bring a whole different perspective
 maybe because they had had the kid in the classroom, you know,
 so a lot of times a teacher will come with a student, send one
 up or come with a student, and say that they felt the student
 needed someone to talk to, I've had several like that this
 year, and if that teacher hadn't brought that student up, I
 would never have known they were having problems, and it's
 been a real nice teamwork to have the teacher support the
 student and I felt like it we would both help the student, and
 the student had two places for support, and I could call that
 student out of that class and the teacher would understand why
 I wanted to spend a little time talking to them.  So I think
 teachers are right out there where the action is and it's
 really helpful to keep in close touch with a lot of them.

 

Q.   So that experience has been positive?

 

A.   Most of the time, most of the time.  You know, you always may
 have somebody who is not really easy to work with, when you
 have a conference or with parents, but they have been real
 minimal to me.  Most of my experiences with teachers have been
 pretty positive.

 

Q.   Incident -- students?

 

A.   Well, the first area that comes to mind is support groups.
 For the past two years, another coach and I have been
 facilitators for a divorce support group for students whose
 parents are separated or divorced, and it's been a warm
 experience, a touching experience, because those students come
 with so many mixed-up home situations and you really feel they
 need so much help and encouragement because they're resulting
 conflicts and they're being torn sometimes between parents and
 step-parents and all kinds of situations.  And you have some
 of them are unbelievable, some of the situations, so, of
 course, it influences me because I think about it, I also end
 up working with some of them individually and talking with
 them individually, and they become very great concerns for me.
 But it's the part of my work that I sometimes feel is the most
 rewarding, I feel like I really valuable or really needed, so
 that's one place where students definitely influence me.  I've
 had suicide situations, everybody has had at some time,
 sometimes either a teacher or maybe the student himself has
 come in and you find out that they had contemplated it or
 talked about it to somebody or written a note to somebody and
 then you have to be very, very careful and cautious because
 you're concerned for the student first, you also have to be
 concerned that you do take the proper precautions that if
 something should happen to that student and you hadn't
 contacted parents and taken some action to make sure that the
 student was safe and etc., you could face it that you would
 responsible.  So my life has been shaped -- one time, I was
 called to another school, last year, because of a potential
 suicide, and I guess it was a student who had been our student
 but was attending the alternative school, and so they just
 asked -- there had actually been -- the suicide had taken
 place -- they asked for a counselor to come over and be
 available for other kids and other teachers and that type of
 thing.  So I went over for a couple of hours.  I didn't really
 -- I felt by that time that they had really kind of handled
 it, at least there weren't that many and the immediate family
 was being taken care of, so I talked to a few teachers, not
 really many kids.    Well, the students are the most
 important, that's who we are here for and they're our most
 important influence, I would say.  We are primarily really
 here as advocates for the students and be their helper, so I
 regard them as the biggest influence that I have really.

 

Q.   Perhaps at times they can get in the way of you doing your
 job?

 

A.   Oh, yes, many times when you might have something planned,
 some meeting to go to, if a crisis comes up, you know, if it's
 not a crisis, you can usually reschedule it for later if you
 need to, but it does take your day and yes, it sometimes takes
 priority over some of the other paper work or assignments or
 plans you had to write a letter or that type of thing.

 

Q.   Are there times when a student may have been uncooperative in
 your effort to do your job the way you felt you should be
 doing?

 

A.   Some students usually -- I really haven't found them
 belligerent, you know -- but sometimes when I'm trying to work
 a student and help them be successful in school and maybe
 they're not attending or they're not getting their homework
 done or whatever, they're not motivated, it's very difficult
 to inspire them or get them motivated, and sometimes they just
 really don't see the big picture or the long view, they just
 see today, and so some relationships they're having are
 falling apart or some other interest they have are more
 important, and I've had many a conference with students after
 having talked to their parents and had felt, you know, I felt
 like I went through the motions, talked to them, tried to draw
 them out, tried to encourage them and really -- they might
 yes, yes, and sound like they're going to do something about
 it or they're going to carry this monitoring report around and
 then they don't, so very often it is discouraging at times
 because they don't carry through or they don't realize the
 importance until it's time to graduate.  But then there are
 some, like I have one little girl that's finally catching on
 that next year she wants to graduate.  All of a sudden she's
 trying to figure out how she's going to get enough credits,
 what does she have to take in summer school to be able to
 graduate next year, and her mother says she wished she had
 gotten a fire lit under her a year or two ago and it would
 make things a lot easier for her.

 

Q.   Creative attempt made to improve the classroom teaching
 methods, the curriculum or student achievement or something
 else that best fits your work, that was thwarted or
 substantially altered by any of those sources of influence
 that I talked to you about?  An instance where maybe the
 principal, the department chair, school board, parent, or
 students stood in the way and didn't allow you or this teacher
 to go ahead with a creative or innovative idea?

 

A.   Well, maybe --as a part of that core team effort, we set up
 the support group and we had students fill out surveys to
 indicate what their interest might be for what type of groups,
 like for learning disorders, whether they just wanted a self-
 esteem group, or whatever, and I guess in a school setting,
 especially a high school setting, so often the teachers are
 so focused in on academics that it's really difficult to get
 their wholehearted support to allow a student to be out of
 class, you know, to attend the support groups, and I can see
 from their point of view that missing -- if you have eight
 sessions during one hour during the semester, that student
 would miss eight times out of that class, and that makes it
 difficult for students.  But, from my point of view, you know,
 if a student is hurting and not producing well anyway, or is
 just plain so upset by some concern or worry or something
 that's going on in their life, then I would kind of think
 "Let's let them get that straightened out even if their grade
 doesn't -- or if they miss a lot of work," and from my point
 of view, I think sometimes I wish that teachers could be more
 flexible, I guess.  When we did set up the groups, we finally
 came with the idea that we wanted teachers involved anyway.
 We didn't want to have a counselor alone on these support
 groups, because the idea of a core team is total school
 involvement.  If you just have administrators and counselors
 doing things, then you don't really have the teachers behind
 it.  And the whole idea of a core team was to provide some
 kind of training and the support groups are not to be
 therapeutic groups anyway; they were to be groups where
 students could talk and share and teachers listen more or less
 and not try to offer therapy particularly, so therefore we
 felt that it would be important to have teacher facilitators
 along with counselor facilitators.  We tried to pair them up
 and have one teacher and one counselor for each group.  And we
 were successful in getting the teachers and the counselors,
 but we have had a harder struggle to work out how to run the
 schedule for the groups so that the kids don't miss too much.
 Also so the teacher can be there.  Teachers only have one hour
 a day when -- that's their planning period, so then if you're
 going to run the group on that hour, then you're going to take
 the kid out of the class all those periods.  So we kind of
 tried to have each teacher facilitator get somebody to cover
 for them if they could and run the group two periods.  We also
 limited the groups to eight sessions rather than every week
 all semester, which really isn't very long and to my idea, at
 least for my groups, the kids need a lot more than that, and
 we do extend that a little -- I'm probably running mine 10, 11
 or 12 sessions.  But, anyway, that means that we've had a
 struggle getting the teachers to allow the kids to come.  It's
 always the teacher's option to keep the kid and we have to go
 with that.  And that's -- I think maybe if our administration
 was a little stronger, their supportive of us doing this, but
 they don't forcefully tell the teachers to let the kids out if
 they need to be there.  So we kind of run a compromise and try
 to get the kids to come as much as we can.  Most teachers do
 let them come most of the time, but certain teachers will not,
 and if they don't have their work done, we have to kind of go
 along with the fact that they should stay in class.  We tell
 the kids, "If you don't have your work done, if you're going
 to have a test, or whatever, then you had better stay in
 class."  I have mixed feelings about that.  But as a result,
 I don't think our support groups have been as strong as they
 could be or as active.  I think that we could be running a
 program twice as strong if we had a lot of support from
 everyone and I know a couple of schools that do, not in WWW,
 but in other areas.

 

Q.   Can you describe a failed attempt by any of these sources to
 influence you that you resisted?  For example, what way have
 you been able to work around --

 

A.   Well, I tried to answer that for you all at once, but we try
 to work out a compromise on that where we did work with the
 teachers and do vary the groups.  Sometimes we even vary it
 more than two periods; in other words, rather than take a
 student out of class eight times out of first period, we run
 them first and third, one-three, one-three.  Or if possible,
 sometimes there will be situations where maybe the teacher has
 some flexibility because maybe they have two periods for one
 reason or another, or maybe they have somebody who will cover
 for them, then we'll try to run it even one-three-five, and
 that helps the student and the teachers in that respect.
 That's one way we have tried to work around the problem.
 Well, probably another situation, I'm a sponsor for a group we
 call New Horizons, that's groups for girls, and we used to
 meet every month and have a monthly speaker who would be a
 woman who has attained an unusual or outstanding non-
 traditional career, and it's just a way to inspire and
 motivate girls to achieve their best potential.  I helped
 start the group when I first came here, probably in about 1984
 or something like that.  Anyway, somewhere along the way, our
 advisory council, which is made up of parents, teachers and
 administrators, some teacher had brought the complaint that
 why did New Horizons get to meet during class time when all
 the rest of the clubs meet at lunch?  And why couldn't they
 just meet at lunch, too?  Which I really didn't want to do
 because it's hard to get attendance of students, for one
 thing, and it's -- I thought it would be harder to get
 speakers to come right at lunch always.  Let the speaker have
 some flexibility and you can draw from more interesting
 speakers, too.  But we had pretty good students, too, and it
 seemed like that was kind of thwarting the work of that club.
 But our administrator, our principal, came up with kind of a
 compromise at that time, and that was that we will keep
 meeting on class time but we'll just have three meetings per
 semester, and we'll vary them each hour of the morning so that
 a student doesn't miss any class more than once during a
 semester.  So that's what we have done ever since, but I had
 to change gears and go with the compromise.

 

Q.   What does it mean to you when people talk about bureaucratic
 constraints on teachers?

 

A.   As a special ed teacher, which I was before I went into
 counselor, I was very aware of bureaucracy and having to fill
 out lots and lots of paper work.  There was always your IEP,
 which was your plan -- individualized education plan -- that
 you filled out for each student, and you have goals and it was
 all very, very structured and we had to follow those central
 guidelines.  So sometimes you felt like you spent more time
 filling out all this paper work than preparing for your
 students, you know, it really was interfering at times, I
 felt, but I don't think it's gotten any better.  I think those
 are the things you are stuck with.  And I think career ladder
 is much the same; career ladder has so much paper work to do
 that I can't believe that it really allows teachers to be
 better teachers or does what it's designed to do, but those in
 charge think it's wonderful, that career ladders make you
 finer teachers because they're better organized and they have
 all their goals and whatnot and etc.

 

Q.   And what do the teachers feel?

 

A.   Teachers vary a lot.  If you got $10,000 that year, you
 probably thought it was worth it.  I mean, it's the reward --
 it has allowed teachers who came in recently and are younger
 and haven't had the years and still are good teachers, it does
 reward them for what they're doing, but I wish there were a
 better way to judge that they are stellar teachers.  I think
 there must be but it seems very hard in education to find a
 way to assess who are outstanding teachers and who really
 deserves rewards.  I don't think that putting it down on paper
 proves that you're a better teacher but I realize that's what
 happens in actuality.

 

Q.   This last question and I'll let you look at it is to rank
 these activities.  This may not apply to you at all.

 

A.   It sure doesn't, because it's more a classroom teacher-type of
 thing.  We do go out in the classrooms once a year and teach
 a career unit, and we decide together as counselors what we're
 going to teach, but it is kind of mandated by the district
 what the general content is.  We have some freedom how we
 present it, so that would be the only way I could -- and we
 have freedom as to the technique we would use, I guess, to
 some extent.  We don't grade and generally we don't have any
 discipline problems.

 

Q.   Disciplining a student, do you handle that or not?

 

A.   The administrators handle that, so whenever we -- sometimes
 students will come in and say so and so is threatening me out
 on the campus, I'm scared because they think I took their
 boyfriend away from them or whatever, she's got another gang
 of several kids who are going to beat up on me after school or
 this type of thing, then we always take it up to our
 administrators, because really if you end up being an
 administrator and trying to deal with punishing or handling
 discipline, you really usually damage your ability to be a
 counselor.

 

Q.   You have a wide latitude of discretion about teaching
 techniques when you present content?

 

A.   Yes.  Well, the content at least is -- because the district
 has mandated that we cover career information and the whole
 purpose of our being out in the classroom is to every year
 present some information that will further help the student
 toward realizing graduation and planning his future beyond
 high school.  So with that, those are the constraints --
 that's our purpose in being there.  I don't object to that; I
 think that's important, so we really have somewhat of a
 content given to us.

 

Q.   And this last part is a survey -- maybe the first part is your
 job.

 

A.   Well, within limits, you know, with the students, the teacher
 usually sets up expectations for behavior, but you have to be
 within reason, you couldn't require that they wore a certain
 dress,  you have to follow general policies --