Sometime between the shootings at Columbine and Bailey high schools, Stephanie Rossi was chatting with a stranger in a slow-moving Starbucks line and mentioned she was a teacher.
“Really?” the woman asked, eyes widening in concern. “Do you have to carry a gun?”
Rossi was dumbfounded. “No, no,” she sputtered. “Absolutely not. My kids are wonderful.”
The moment haunts her, though. “What people don’t know about being a teacher is a lot,” says Rossi, 48, her voice tinged with sad wonder.
Recent school shootings have made violence feel like a fact of contemporary education. But of the many things the Wheat Ridge High School history teacher might fear about being in the classroom, violence falls far down the list.
Test scores, lessons intended to spark discussion being interpreted as something more, and the thought that her behavior toward students might be construed as inappropriate are much more worrisome.
The world inside and outside the classroom has changed a lot in the quarter-century since Rossi first stepped in front of the blackboard at Carmody Middle School in Lakewood.
But even as the social and political winds swirling around her profession change again and again, replacing old mandates and expectations with new, one thing remains the same for Rossi and many of her fellow teachers: “I love what I do,” she says. “The outside noise is just that: noise. I just shut the door and breathe.”
Her husband, Ron, also is a teacher. Her mother was a teacher. So was her mother-in-law. Her husband’s grandmother was, too.
When Rossi’s daughter was 5 years old, she would crouch under her mother’s desk and peek out at the big kids in the classroom. Now 23, Alexandra, too, is a teacher.
The era of education Rossi sees her daughter entering is one less civil and more nervous than when she began.
1980s were easier
In 1980, no kid in the hallway ever spat the f-word into her face, and teacher-lounge chatter did not include strategies on what to do if a gunman burst into the room. Back then, the big worry was catching students as they sneaked out for a smoke.
C, S, A and P didn’t form an acronym, and the idea of a disgruntled sophomore armed with a camera phone recording a teacher’s words was no more than potential plot material for a Jetsons cartoon.
Today, teachers don’t talk to students of the opposite sex alone in a classroom unless the door is open or another teacher is present.
Not so long ago, a male teacher called Rossi out of her classroom and asked her to tell a female student that a skimpy, breast-baring top was inappropriate. The other teacher couldn’t do it himself. “It might have been construed as sexual harassment,” Rossi says.
Rossi knows many see hers as a profession under siege. Nearly half of all new teachers leave within five years, citing low pay, poor working conditions and the drumbeat of failure if test scores don’t rise.
“I could react that way,” she says sympathetically. “But if I gave in to the pressure, the fear, it would paralyze me in the classroom.
“My responsibility is to the kids,” she says. “They are who get my energy.”
“All means all” is the new mantra handed down from education gurus.
The prevailing wisdom of the past – even among the very best teachers – was that most students will graduate from high school, some will not; many will go to college, some should not.
Her current mandate is that every student should be academically ready for college, whether they go or not.
Rossi calls it unrealistic, just another variation of the one- size-fits-all academic standards that schools must meet. She says college admission should not be the only measure of a student’s success.
During Rossi’s planning period, a teen named Drake sits hunched over his notebook in a corner of the empty classroom. She uses her spare time to help him complete an English assignment for another teacher. Last year he failed the course. He was nearly two years behind in his skills. Now he probably will graduate only a semester behind.
New mandates
Rossi entered her career during the backlash against the 1970s free-to-be-you-and-me era of education that emphasized individuality and taught in classrooms without walls. During the Rea gan era, the battle cry became “Back to Basics” when a 1983 report concluded that the U.S. was failing miserably on the world education stage.
School standards and accountability became the new buzzwords, but as the ’80s and ’90s gave way to the new millennium, political leaders said school accountability needed teeth.
In January 2002, President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, a mandate that furthered previous ideas of standards-based accountability. But his version included the crucial – and controversial – provision that schools must meet “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) or face losing federal funds.
At Wheat Ridge High School, the teachers joke without laughing that the AYP police are skulking in hallways. Their eyes roll as mailboxes overflow with new memorandums to replace the old memorandums about new teaching methods.
Rossi wakes at 4:30 a.m. to work out for an hour before setting her school day in motion.
“Exercise is an incredible coping mechanism,” she says.
In the Denver area, not one of 15 school districts made AYP goals for 2006. In Jefferson County, where Rossi has spent her career, schools met 91.5 percent of their goals yet were still considered failing to do enough.
“It is so hard to try to articulate how hard we’re trying to the public,” she says, “We always sound like we’re whining.”
It takes creativity
Rossi favors accountability. She is a tougher teacher today than she was early in her career.
And she’s more creative.
When she teaches about the 1960s, she asks Richie Furay, father of another Wheat Ridge teacher, to sing for her class. He was a member of the rock groups Buffalo Springfield and Poco. She figures he can better reach kids about how music shaped the era.
Her classroom walls are lined with posters through the ages. Robert Plant to Lenny Kravitz; Albert Einstein to Timothy Leary.
A reminder for all hangs at the front of the room: No Pissy Attitude.
10:40 a.m. Room 16. Rossi moves easily among the sophomores sprawled across ratty, thrift-store couches and armchairs scattered through her honors history class. The girls are discussing shoes. The boys are discussing the girls.
The lesson today is about reform. Rossi guides students through the decades, from muckraker Upton Sinclair’s meatpacking plant to women’s right to vote to Adolf Hitler’s application of eugenics.
She asks whether free speech should ever be limited. She presses them to wonder how long anyone should have to wait for social change.
“Tell me about an issue you are passionate about,” she says.
Hands fly up. Racial stereotyping. Forced religion. Gay rights. Dependency on foreign oil. Stem-cell research.
“Does a baby have to die?” one girl asks about using stem cells.
“It depends on what you consider a baby,” Rossi replies. She has trained her face and voice to stay neutral.
“I believe it is a baby when it is conceived,” the girl answers.
They have entered a minefield, but Rossi will not retreat.
Across town last spring, high school teacher Jay Bennish made national news when a student recorded his comments in geography class comparing President Bush’s comments in a speech to those of Hitler.
Although he ultimately kept his job, when Bennish returned to the classroom, his students said, he was much more cautious.
Rossi calls that tragic. “We’re supposed to teach students how to be critical thinkers, but how can you be a critical thinker without tackling difficult subjects?”
She insists she will not operate from fear. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t get nervous.
Looking for bruises
A few weeks ago she broke up a fight. As she yanked the two girls apart, she immediately worried she was too rough. Were they bruised? Was she? Teacher bruises come in handy when there are allegations of abuse.
Back in the classroom, a student says she doesn’t think it’s fair that a Jefferson County middle school teacher got in trouble for refusing to remove foreign flags in his classroom.
“If you disagree with something, what would you do?” Rossi asks.
“Petition to change the law?” the girl offers.
“Can we make this a class project?” another jumps in.
A cause is born. Students volunteer to petition the legislature to change a Colorado law prohibiting foreign flags in public buildings except for temporary displays.
Class ends. “Do you know what you did today that was so wonderful?” Rossi asks.
“We talked?” someone answers.
“Yes, you did. Thank you. I’m so proud of you.”
Children rise to expectations, she says.
“In 25 years of teaching, they have never dropped the ball.”
