Teacher: It's a feeling of us vs. them

Cleaning out years of projects and student art from her classroom was an emotional process for Teri Cowan, but she felt it was her only choice.

Cowan worked for the Ector County Independent School District for 23 years, 13 of those years teaching Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate sophomore English at Odessa High School. She was teacher of the year for the 2010-11 school year at the high school and secondary teacher of the year for ECISD for the 1995-96 school year. As well as volunteering as the National Honor Society, prom and class council sponsors.

Tuesday, Jan. 17, was her last day as a teacher in the district, following her Jan. 3 resignation.

“I would’ve died there,” Cowan said nearly to tears describing in detail her “beautiful” classroom. “It took a stick of dynamite to get me to leave.”

The “dynamite” for Cowan was a process of being worn down for two years with “micromanagement” from administration, and a series of events that she said led her to feeling unvalued and replaceable by the district.

“It’s never been this bad,” Cowan said.

She said in the fall when curriculum changes and district software were implemented district-wide it was difficult to find time to do everything being asked of her. As an English teacher, CSCOPE, the web-based lesson plan program, was not implemented in her classroom yet. However, she said she spent hours each day on the computer trying to enter each detail of lesson plans as part of Eduphoria, which is a software tool for teachers to track student progress and teachers to input lessons.

“They have got to give us time to do what they expect,” she said adding that teachers can either stay until 9 p.m. or “show movies all day” instead of teaching so they can input data.

Administrators defend the need for change and point to low ratings for ECISD in several areas.

ECISD Superintendent Hector Mendez said when a district has three unacceptable campuses, is not meeting federal AYP standards on 60 to 70 percent of the campuses and is classified as stage 3 and 4 in areas by the Texas Education Agency; some things need to change.

“We are having to do things differently or we will get the same results,” Mendez said. “It reflects on us to hear how bad we’re doing.”

Charles Quintela, interim principal at Odessa High School, said he was sad to see Cowan leave and had a few conversations with her trying to convince her to stay.

“Mrs. Cowan was an excellent, master teacher,” he said. “We looked to her for leadership. She would go above and beyond what was required of her.”

He said he thought her leaving was more due to family issues she was no longer having time to handle. He said he knew she was frustrated with the new software and asked her to give it time.

“Had she waited until the end of the year she would have gotten it,” he said. “It would have gotten easier with time.”

Cowan, however, said if she hadn’t had to work 10 to 12 hours a day she never would have left.

Quintela said any time veteran teachers are required to work through new software there are glitches that go away with time.

“I think she was set on the fact that it was more than she was willing to give,” he said.

Quintela said the school was redefining its path and focus through new programs he believed in and the district was doing nothing wrong with its expectations.

“In the long run, it gives teachers the tools to be learner-centered,” Quintela said.

Cowan said as a teacher she should be held accountable and is always eager to learn something, but having the administration watch her every move and implementing time consuming programs that did not help her students was not the right approach.

“It’s not a team, it’s insulting,” she said.

Cowan said she did not benefit from the software and felt it took time away from her students.

Discipline also suffered, Cowan said, as campus administrators now focus more on making sure teachers are inputting data instead of spending time addressing discipline issues. She said it should be the job of administrators to keep discipline on campus.

Administrators use “scare-tactics,” Cowan said, to force teachers to constantly sit at desks inputting teaching practices into a computer. She said it was implied if directions were not followed to the letter she was replaceable.

But to her students, Cowan was irreplaceable.

Abdiel Natividad, an OHS junior who had Cowan as his teacher last year, said she was a great teacher and someone, “you just couldn’t help but love.” He said as a student he noticed Cowan doing a lot, especially when former English teacher Jena Marie Graves resigned last April and Cowan added Graves’ students to her classroom.

Graves was indicted in May on a felony theft following a negative balance of more than $6,500 from the Bronchettes activity fund. The loss of Graves as a teacher led to Cowan teaching several classes that often had 50 plus students. Cowan said she had a teaching assistant but the majority of the self-inflicted work fell to her because she wanted to make sure no student fell between the cracks in Graves’ loss.

“We witnessed her juggling a lot of things,” Abdiel said. “It was pretty chaotic because you had two teachers teaching. Technically, it was just her (Cowan).”

Even in a class that had about 50 students in it at one point, he said he learned a lot.

“It was definitely a class that impacted the rest of my International Baccalaureate classes,” he said.

Katie Patterson, an OHS sophomore who had Cowan in the fall, said Cowan was a teacher she could go to with any problem. She said Cowan required a lot from her, but she was always happy and engaged in class.

“I didn’t have her for long, but she was easily my favorite teacher,” Katie said.

Cowan said she loved her students and wanted each of them to be pushed to their full potential. She said she had lesson plans prepared for an entire year. Lessons she loved and thought students truly benefitted from. But she said it was “demoralizing” having to almost justify each lesson to administrators.

“They treated us all like we were emergency certified teachers,” she said. “They make us feel like all of our past teaching has been a waste because it hasn’t been the way they wanted it.”

Cowan said she had no problem with the changes the district was implementing and said many of the programs had merit and were probably needed for some of the teachers. She said she was just unhappy with the implementation.

“I think these initiatives could be successful, when paired with the insight of a teacher,” she said.

Quintela said he has open communication with his staff and truly valued Cowan as a teacher others could learn from.

“Our whole intent is to retain teachers,” he said. “That’s huge for us. I think there’s a deeper issue here.”

For some ECISD teachers, the issue is CSCOPE, as revealed to the board and administration Tuesday through a local Texas State Texas Teachers Association survey. The results showed 47 percent of respondents were not confident CSCOPE would increase test scores, 56 percent said it moves too quickly for students and 70 percent said there is more unrest among students due to CSCOPE. Mendez said after the meeting the survey and results surprised him.

Chuck Isner, local president for the Texas State Teachers Association, said Friday many experienced teachers have expressed to him they feel like they are being “pushed out” by the district. He said Cowan’s resignation is evidence. Last semester he received more phone calls from frustrated teachers than he has in his 10 years in a TSTA leadership position.

“To be fair, people don’t call me to tell me how wonderful it is,” Isner said.

The phone calls, he said, come from teachers in elementary, junior high and high school who teach a variety of subjects. Still, he said he does not want or expect the administration to drop the changes they have made in curriculum and programs due to complaints.

“I can see value in this,” he said of the new district initiatives. “We just asked them to slow down.”

Another issue Cowan and Isner said was teachers do not feel like administration listens to their frustrations.

Mendez disagreed and said Thursday the district does have a process to hear issues. He said one teacher representing each campus meets at administrative offices monthly to express issues to administration. He said he heard all these issues at the beginning of the year in these meetings, but the administration worked to resolve the issues. He said since the start of the year the district has progressed with its issues, but it’s still going through a learning process.

“I’d be the first to acknowledge this is a process,” he said. “It’s a new process and we have to work on it. That’s the pain of change.”

Mendez agreed that teacher input is necessary when implementing new initiatives in the district.

“It doesn’t help us to start a program if it isn’t working,” Mendez said. “They tell us the issues every month. We address them immediately.”

Isner said after speaking with administration there has been no evidence that they have been listening, and a semester is an ample amount of time to slow the pace down and listen to teacher suggestions for change.

“In some ways, I’ve been impressed with his (Mendez’s) willingness to listen,” Isner said. “But if it’s critical, I feel he takes it personally.”

Ray Beaty, ECISD Board of Trustees vice president, said anytime the district loses a teacher it’s a loss.

“I think it’s important to listen and have open communication from one direction to the other,” he said. “There is a lot of effort and the intentions of the board are trying to ensure good communication.”

Mendez said recent changes have been difficult for everyone, but the district is trying to adapt to changes the best it can.

“We’re putting in support and resources (on campuses) and we’re moving as fast as we can,” he said.

Mendez said he did recognize that there were, “pockets of excellence throughout the district.”

The district changes have been a learning process for everyone, but he said encouragement by district and campus administration to teachers can always be improved.

“We can work on that,” Mendez said.

Mendez said he remembered Cowan.

“She had done very good work with the Advanced Placement program,” he said. “It’s unfortunate.”

In the end, Cowan said it was her students and teacher friends who were afraid to speak up that drove her to be candid publically about her final months with the district.

“I tell my kids I want you to have something you believe in and stand up for it,” she said. “So I would’ve been a hypocrite otherwise.”

Cowan said she would like to see district officials realize the workload they expect from teachers is overwhelming and that more mentorship opportunities for new teachers to learn from the experienced ones would be a positive step for ECISD.

“They need to better make use of veteran teachers,” she said.

For the rest of the semester, Cowan said she is looking forward to having more time with her family. In the fall, she said would probably look to teach elsewhere or lead a youth group, but whatever she does she wants to keep helping teenagers.

“I love it so much,” she said.

Students enjoyed the help.

Smriti Prasad, a senior at OHS, said Cowan was more than a great teacher, “she was there for us.”

“I was shocked,” Smriti said she learned Cowan was leaving. “We all tried to tell her, 'We need you. ' ”

@OAschools

What is Eduphoria?

• Eduphoria is an online software ECISD uses district-wide. The program allows teachers to input student exams into the program and it identifies exactly which strategies the student is struggling with. It also has a lesson plan component where ECISD teachers must enter their lessons, explain which state assessment is taught and how the teacher would alter any given lesson if something goes wrong.

What is CSCOPE?

• CSCOPE is a web-based lesson plan software program. It provides the time sequence needed for teachers on when to teach lessons as required by the state standards and how long to spend on each lesson. The lessons provide units, exams and projects for teachers of every grade level. The district currently uses CSCOPE only for mathematics and science.