I have never been one to follow the beaten trail, ask my friend Steve Bailes. I have always wanted to go on new life-changing adventures. That does not mean I need to go to the heart of Africa and live with the natives, although I have thought about it, but I try to never leave a stone unturned. Life adventures are abundant and usually not far from your front door. As you may know, I have been a teacher for almost 50 years and for the most part have thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course, there were teachers who weren’t as happy as I was/am, but for the most part enjoyed working with the kids. Way back in 2005, I retired from Hampshire county to pursue other adventures. I worked for FEMA for a while, drove a tour bus for Schrock out of Winchester, subbed at the juvenile detention center, deaf and blind school and Burlington children’s center. Believe it or not, all these jobs gave me new insight into the job of being a teacher. With all this wisdom stored away in my head, at the age of 76, I decided to give back some of what I have learned. I will not deny that I enjoy sitting back in my lounge chair and relaxing. When I arise my brain is teaming with ideas of what I want to accomplish. Several months ago I arose with the idea of running for Board of Education. I did, I won, thanks to the support of many of my friends and acquaintances.
So here I am in a publicly elected position for the first time. I know what I want to accomplish in the next 4 years and I hope I am able to git-er-done. As you know, teachers are leaving West Virginia and many other states for a variety of reasons. At the top of the list is salaries, right behind it is the increasingly hostile American classroom. The workload for the average elementary teacher is a hill too steep to climb. Roughly 70% of teachers consider leaving, or have left teaching in the first 5 years of their career according to The Center for American Progress. Realize that they just spent tens of thousands of dollars, or more, to be teachers!
You might wonder where I fit into this scenario. I see my job as a teachers’ advocate. One thing I learned as a teacher is that almost all successful programs come from the people who are doing them. In other words, programs thrown down by the state or administration generally have a life of about three years at which time they fade away. If you think these programs are cheap, think again! Employees who have no vested involvement in developing a program will have very little interest in seeing it succeed. You might say that these programs were created by professional people and I would say we hire many very professional people in our county who could create their own programs. I know this for a fact! I was involved with faculty in creating four major programs without any state or county involvement. All these programs were very successful! We created an incremental math program for 7th and 8th graders to correct math deficiencies. We created a fully lab oriented science program for 7-9th graders which pushed scores through the roof. I worked with the high school gifted program and fostered 7 trips to the International Odyssey of the Mind competition, one year winning the INTERNATIONAL Renatra Fusca award for creativity. A trophy is still standing in the Bureau of Standards in Washington DC with the students’ names on it. Our final creative milestone was the 9-10th grade CAT SCIENCE program at Hampshire High school. A group of us science teachers got together after school to organize, on our own, a program that would allow us to enhance the science literacy of all our students. In 2003 we began the program after many months of work. Our science test scores were hovering below 50%. At the end of 2005 Hampshire science were in the mid 80’s. All these programs were grass root programs, developed by teachers without any outside involvement. I am still proud of what we accomplished.
My job as Board of Education member is to motivate teachers to create programs that they are vested in. I don’t mean to demean all programs that come from the state. One state sponsored program that we called the TREK program, which the faculty involved got together, along with the state officials and forged a program that met most everybody’s needs and desires. We were all vested in our program! I believe we created more professional level career choices for our students in that program than any other program in the county.
Teachers, I want to come to your teacher meetings and faculty Senate to talk to you about my aspirations. I want to make your job more enjoyable and within the realm of do-ability. I want to hear your ideas of how we can improve the classroom environment! We cannot compete with surrounding schools in salary, but maybe we can make Hampshire County the best place to teach. Maybe we can draw in teachers who enjoy teaching without the distractions that our teachers currently endure. I cannot do this by myself! I need all teachers to stand with me. I have four years to make an impact. As a teacher I usually gave myself 5 years, so lets get to work!
Charlie Streisel
charlie.streisel@gmail.com
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