OPINION: I was a police officer for decades. Teaching was even more difficult.

Many years ago, I completed a student teacher assignment while pursuing my education degree. I was assigned to her fourth grade class on the third floor of her elementary school in Ketchikan. There was a fire drill the first week. I had to march the kids across the hallway to another classroom and wait for the students to evacuate. I then took them to the window about 3 feet off the floor and made sure they could all climb over the window frame and land on the metal steps. They could then descend three rickety steps to the ground. Some students needed a boost to pass through the windows, and there were also quite a few who were heavy. By the time we arrived at the meeting point away from the building, it was time to re-enter. Of course, elementary schools are usually one-story buildings.

A student was undergoing a double-blind study to determine whether he would benefit from medications to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Every day he took his medication from an encrypted envelope, not knowing if it was a fake or real drug. I ended up recording his behavior and including my observations about whether it was a drug day or not. On other days, he would jump off desktops, hit other kids, throw things he found at other kids, and run down the halls screaming, making it hard to get through medicine days properly. was easy. Having one student who requires a lot of attention can be exhausting. It became even more exhausting when many other children were also unruly. I remember my host teacher’s words of wisdom on a particularly chaotic day. he said: “You don’t have to like them…just teach them.” To his surprise, it was very helpful.

When I was a substitute teacher in Anchorage, I was impressed by how the teachers documented their daily preparations. The ‘kit’ for substitute teachers included instructions on the lockdown. It is a failure of society that we must prepare for the next school shooting. Title 1 schools had five color-coded table signs for individualized reading instructions. Moving from table to table in 50-minute segments was not enough time for teachers to see if they were making progress. English was not the first language for many students. It’s great to have such diversity, but I was worried that people wouldn’t fully understand what I was saying. As classroom sizes increase, language barriers can impede learning ability. Ideally, there should be no more than 15 students per class in K-12.

Teaching is the hardest job I’ve ever had. I spent over 35 years in law enforcement, and I still believe that teaching was my greatest challenge. If we want to give our children a bright future, we need to adequately fund our schools. We need to pay teachers a livable and fair wage. We need equity for students. Charter schools may be great, but they are government-funded and unavailable to students who don’t have the transportation to get there. Public schools need more funding. My thoughts on homeschooling are to limit it to children in remote areas who don’t have access to school, or who must stay home due to illness or symptoms. Social interaction is part of healthy growth.

andrea jacobson He earned a master’s degree in education and retired from the Ketchikan Police Department after 21 and a half years of service. Jacobson has been with the Alaska State Police for 14 and a half years, and has been a Certified Fraud Examiner for 18 years.

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