Marian Mattice

I would think being born an American citizen in a family that was Bible-believing. My childhood was founded on faith, family, and those values. My dad was just a blue-collar worker, and my mother didn't even have a high school diploma, but she was a great bookkeeper. They told my sister and me, 'You girls want to go to college, we don't have the money to send you, you've got to study and get good grades and earn scholarships.' So that's what we did. We're first-generation college graduates, and we really felt that we were good students, we were good at school. But we also were humble enough to know that just getting a college degree didn't make us any better than anybody else. When my dad was on strike because he belonged to a labor union, my mother was the one that kept a little bit aside for those times, and we scrounged and had to be very frugal with our money. I think that's what I've learned to do, too - to be frugal. But yet, because of my frugalness, I could afford to buy things out of my own money for my students, because teachers are notorious for spending their own money on their students for things that the school can't come up with.

That it's a marathon, not a race. Remember, your goal is to be in it for the long run, and to take care of yourself so that you can continue to help others. If you wear yourself out and burn out, then you can't be of any use to anybody any longer.

Just remember, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. You might feel like it's a real struggle, you might have challenging times, but they will grow you. You can figure out what to do. I would always ask for advice - maybe not necessarily from people that I was working with, but I'd do research. I'd go to the teaching professionals at the colleges nearby, or else I'd take courses or workshops and stuff like that. I'd even pay out of my own pocket for professional growth situations, so that in whatever areas I felt I needed shoring up, beefing up in my own repertoire of skills, I could do that. I think modeling is very important. You need to exemplify to the kids and be an example of top shelf material in school, so that they can shoot for the moon, shoot for the stars, and still land on the moon. Also, the culture of the school you work in needs to match what rewards you. Feeling like a valued member of a family is very important, because when I worked at Downsville, I didn't always feel that way by my peers. Be judicious in your testing - don't just do practice test after practice test because it turns kids right off. Do some things every once in a while as a reward to make it fun. We make kids read these how-to-do things, and then they never get to do the how-to-do things. It's like you're always holding the carrot in front of them and they never get to eat it.

They're desperate for qualified teachers right now. But I think part of the problem I'm seeing in education is a lot of these people that are now teachers did not go into other fields where they could make more money, and they might have only been a C student themselves. So it's hard for a C student that became a teacher to make students that are A and B students. You can only make your students as good as what a student you were, or you are. The attrition rate from teaching is so horrible the first 5 years of people's careers. It's not like what they thought it was. There's a lot of expectations and demands placed on classroom teachers now that didn't used to be there, because you have to have two working parents, and with the rise in technology, it's the technology that's raising the kids now. So it's tougher to be a teacher than it used to be, I think. But if you go into it because you feel like it's a calling, and it's part of your nature - I can't not be a teacher. There's so much pressure on teachers to get the kids to perform on tests well, so they do practice test after practice test, and the kids are like, why am I - all school is is taking tests, test, test, and it turns them right off.

I guess, remember that you're planting the seed. You might not see it to fruition, but when the student is in your care, you are the gardener that's supposed to keep it alive and developing. You might not see the work that you begin to completion - that might be somebody else's opportunity. Family is very important to me. The culture of the school you work in needs to match what rewards you, and feeling like a valued member of a family is very important. It's supposed to take a whole village to raise a child, and I figure parents need every help they can get. My childhood was founded on faith, family, and those values have stayed with me throughout my life and career.