Submitted by
Patricia
Fuhrman
Mt. Angel, Oregon
What do we do when adults refuse to be good role models for their
children? Operating on the
assumption that one can only change one’s self, not others. I would choose to
personally exemplify for my students the virtues I value.
As the Desiderata
As an educator I have worn many hats,
choosing to learn about children from a broad spectrum. I have taught from preschool to
college and from at-risk to gifted, including two years of international teaching. In each setting I have found myself needing to provide an ethical example for
children in the absence of such in their parents. When I
taught Parent Education for San Francisco Community College, I was able to provide this example by becoming involved in the community.
Parents were required to work one morning a week at the preschool to obtain the state funded money for their
students to have the opportunity. Here I was able to provide examples of good nutrition,
preparing with the parents healthy snacks and a nutritious lunch. We
were able to discuss parenting techniques from a variety of perspectives, using videos and teaching materials from Dorothy Corkville Briggs,
Your Child’s Self Esteem, Foster Kline and Fay and their discussions on natural consequences,
to Dr.Spock. A variety of discipline plans were discussed from Back in Control to Positive
Parenting. In addition, I
worked with parents to enhance their self-esteem by helping them to find part time jobs to
encouraging them when I noticed them using positive practices with their children during the laboratory
portion of the class.
As a foster parent educator for College of the Siskiyous, I had ample
opportunity to exemplify what a
good role model encompasses. Here,
we had funds to take foster children and their foster parents to
Sacramento for one week to work on interdependent living skills.
This project benefited both the foster
parents and the children because foster parents have a variety of reasons for
becoming foster parents, not all of them sound so they benefit from good role modeling also.
During the week in Sacramento we
parked the cars and the children had to find their way around on busses. One
scavenger hunt activity
required that they obtain an apartment lease agreement, a car purchase
agreement, information fromplanned parenthood or the
health center, a community college application, DMV information for voting license registration, and a
list of clubs or churches based on their interest.
We also had the students figure out all of the meals,
prepare, and clean up from them. When we went out to eat, they had to figure out
the bill. This exercise was
especially good because they discovered a fifty dollar error at one restaurant. This was only one project that
provided a good model for students. With this group of people we also did a
ropes course, took them
camping for a weekend, provided community speakers who spoke on every topic from grief, to
BAFA,BAFA—a government program that has students gain empathy by role-playing
being in a foreign country
with a different language.
The highlight of this program, however, was an overlap between my personal and professional life. I had a foster daughter, Vickie, who had been sexually abused by her minister father, turned to drugs, andended up in my care. She had extensive counseling, graduated from high school, and came to speak to my foster parent/child group. During her speech recounting her journey from abuse victim to forgiving survivor, she mentioned that one thing that had helped her along the way was having the trust of her foster mother, me. I was actually shocked when she said this, not realizing I had even provided that for her. She explained that when I left her in charge when I went to my mother’s funeral, she felt trusted for the very first time in her life. Trust is essential for a moral universe to exist.
As a teacher at the Inn Between Shelter Home, I continue my story as to what do we do when adults refuse to be good role models. Here I saw almost seven hundred children a year who were delinquent, disturbed, or dependent. I was charged with creating an at-risk program with them and with Governor’s Student Retention Initiative Grants creating one in the schools. Some of the projects we created, after completing an exhaustive survey of ‘what at-risk programs’ worked around the United States, included using older citizens from the Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) to mentor at-risk youth. They planted gardens with the at-risk students, built birdhouses, and forged connection and trust for both the older and younger participants. In addition, we created a community mentoring program with business owners from a bike shop owner to Carl’s Junior manager, working with at-risk youth either in a job related way or just as a big brother or sister. One woman who owned a beauty shop shared with her student that she had dropped out, been mentored, got her GED, went to business school, and now owned the beauty shop.
We also included nature in our efforts to provide models for these youth. Partnering with the Salmon Trout Enhancement Program (STEP) we provided self worth through community service with local stream biologists, working on riparian projects. Foundations like the Carpenter Foundation provided funding so I could do an Outward Bound type program with the students, modeling for them the benefits of exercise, hiking the Rogue River Trail, climbing Table Rock, for exercise to center them. Many productive conversations regarding right/wrong occurred on these hikes. I felt I learned as much as I gave too. I remember one hike where a girl was talking about how her stepfather would beat her up, but then right after he would be extra nice, bringing her little gifts. She said she began to doubt her feelings because he was nice—had she been imagining the other? This made me realize how often I doubted my feelings during an abusive relationship and just how insidious that kind of behavior was.
One final program that worked well was peer tutoring, using gifted students to tutor at-risk. I remember one gifted student saying this program kept her in school because finally, she was doing something she considered worthwhile in public school.
In public school one experience that has provided good role models for students is the Chautauqua In The Schools Program provided free of charge to our school. This program has provided a worldview for our students in this tiny rural community. We have had Phd speakers present on the ethics of cloning, the media and teenagers, the poet in society. All of these speakers have broadened the perspective and opened the door for debates and a variety of points of view.
In literature class we study literature from all cultures, finding the commonality that links us all, studying the coping skills of prior generations. I shock my students when I tell them that I have chosen not to watch television for the last fifteen years. Instead I recommend a book a week, read and write with them and distribute newspapers through the Newspapers in Education program to them to read in class or to take home. Remembering my Hooked on Books lessons, I realize that some of my students have no reading material in their homes so this helps to alleviate that problem.
In addition, I utilize the older people in our community. We go weekly to the Benedictine Nursing Center to dialogue with our elders, creating biographies, stories, and poems for them.
As a parent, I would answer the question what to do when adults refuse to be good role models with another story. My ex-husband is a recovering alcoholic with personality traits that weren’t at times exemplary, however, like in the Bronx Tale, he also had other sterling moral traits. In my boys’ experiences I chose to emphasize those and to choose a bicycle coach for them who supplemented the other traits I wanted in my sons. Both of my sons became state bicycling champions with my younger one gaining a national championship. They both are active in providing community service because before we could eat Thanksgiving dinner we would deliver meals for the Salvation Army. They also learned from the four foster children we had in our house just how many entitlements they have in their lives. My older son, at first, refused to share his computer with our first foster son, Steve. However, once Steve earned enough money to buy a second hand car, he drove to high school twelve miles away. When my older son asked for a ride, Steve refused because Harry had never shared. From then on Harry looked at what he had and shared with Steve. Both of my sons were shocked at the hardships of my foster children’s lives.
So, in the end what do we do when adults refuse to be good role models? First, we realize we don’t have to do it alone. Reach out into the community, utilizing retired seniors, business people, and parents. Utilize nature as a place to heal through exercise. Provide students with experiences that enhance their self esteem, allowing them to feel accepted, trusted, allowing them to succeed. The goal would be for students to self-actualize, get to know themselves, become survivors, not victims. Events are neutral. Teach students they’re at choice to see abundance rather than scarcity. Give them tools to view the world from multiple perspectives, discover their interconnectedness to all live. No easy answers exist, only determination, trust, and faith that one can make a difference.
Questions from Required Reading
Q1
comment on the six year old.......
I was surprised by the comments on the six year old with the telescope
based on the brain development article. “Still being forged are the
connections between neurons that affect not only emotional skills, but also
physical and mental abilities.” “.....unreasonable to expect young teenagers to
....grasp abstract ideas.” (Brownlee 3)
However,
I have encountered students with similar focus and reasoning abilities.
Basically, if a student has an intense interest in an area, like one of
my students does in history, s/he displays reasoning abilities beyond years of
age. Because of the
extensive exposure to media today students, if their interest is sparked may display this
ability.
Q2
Were you surprised.....
Although
I was a bit surprised, I have had experiences where children ‘knew’ things
beyond their years. Early trauma to
several of my foster children produced this result. Vickie knew much more about being ‘at choice’ then I did.
She also learned about boundaries earlier than I.
Q3
Morality can be taught.....
Definitely.
Literature is a perfect medium to discuss morality and writing provides another
avenue for this. Debates, putting
literary characters on trial—like Macbeth—provide a forum for teaching
morality. On 9/11 and in the
following days we wrote definition essays discussing heroism from multiple
points of view. We used the
definition essay to discuss terrorism. We
discussed War from multiple points of view, using editorials. We collected blood for the Red Cross.
Q4
....moral witnesses....
Basically
it means we must walk our talk, being moral, living with integrity.
In my classroom one of my students was giving a speech on tolerance for
his religion—he ‘shakes’ when he witnesses and this sometime occurred in
the hall. After his speech, I
gently reminded him that he needed to display that same tolerance for
homosexuals ( a group he had been deriding)
I could see the lesson click in his eyes.
Q5
Courage.....
Courage
is the ability to walk your talk, stand your ground when all around you is in
chaos. Courage is the ability to be
consistently yourself in the face of inconsistency.
It
takes courage to deviate from the text, to make use of a teachable moment.
September 11 provided us with such an instance. It took courage to walk
my talk, in the face of extreme patriotism, to offer a kaleidoscopic view, to
offer many perspectives.
Q7
good person.....A Bronx Tale”
“A
good person is the alert witness not only of others, but to his or her own
ethical tensions as they flash their various signals, warn of conflicts ahead or
of ambiguities not so easy to resolve....” (A Bronx Tale) Once
again, “Know thyself.” Be an actor, not re-actor.
Retain response-ability.
Q8
student trying to get another in trouble.......
Use
this as a teachable moment. One
should know the student well, then either privately or in the context of class
discussion discuss or role play the behavior.
Q9
teens too much credit......
“Kids
who exercise their brains, in effect, by learning to marshal their thoughts, to
measure their impulses, and to understand abstract concepts, are laying the
neural foundations that will serve them for the rest of their lives.”
(Browning 6)
Better
to trust too much than too little. All
of those studies where they discovered you ‘get what you expect” indicate
it’s better to make the attempt.
Q10
students pilot projects....
Definitely.
Yes!