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The State of Public Education in Anne Arundel County
Part II: When the Bell Rings And the Door Closes, It's Their Show
By Robin Weiss
Photography by Kimi Raspa

When Nadja Maril approached me to write a series on public education in our county "in a fashion that would make sense to parents and taxpayers rather than just pulling out bits and pieces that make headlines," I didn't grab the assignment. Stunned at the immensity of the topic, and starkly aware of my ignorance about the issues, I waited.

But after several days of stuffing myself with archived articles and plumbing the depths of the school system's Web site, I was hooked. The resignation of Dr. Smith, accompanied by accolades and recriminations; the tedious mechanism to come up with multimillion dollar budgets; the ever-growing weight shouldered by our teachers; the extremes of wealth and poverty in our county; the rapid growth of our population, due, in part, to military base shufflings; the search for a permanent (we hope) superintendent; the pressure of No Child Left Behind . . . These real dramas, and more, put me in the midst of a page-turner, a thriller that never ends.

In fact, educating our children in a public system is laced with serious, ongoing problems and challenges. In this highly contentious atmosphere, I take it for granted that I will step on toes. Though I do take care, out of ignorance or oversight, I'll make mistakes.

What I cover in three articles can't be comprehensive; I'll stir up more questions than answers. But already, through many hours of in-person interviews, then more hours of listening to and transcribing tapes, I feel part of a meaningful effort to "bring up" our county's children beyond my own two teens.

The first article (published in our February issue), based on an interview with departing Superintendent Eric J. Smith, spoke for itself. Out of it arose, for me, a burning need to hear from our teachers: close to 5000 of them! I put out feelers, asking students, teachers, principals, and more for names. I didn't stage a popularity contest. I wanted a handful of teachers, from random sources, to speak for themselves about their devotion to spending countless hours with and for our kids.

Sue Hannahs, Sheila Finlayson, Phil Greenfield, Margi Sigler, and Nancy Mann are a small sample of talent and dedication that, in each case, spans more than 3 decades. All five began their careers in the classroom. All five remain, in various roles, on the front lines. There are a lot more where they came from, but they made the time, in the little time I had, to inspire me with unique stories. I hope this peek into their lives teaches us how much more we have to learn.

In Sue Hannahs' classroom, the boom of afterschool announcements drowns out her voice. "Oh, that will stop soon," says Ms. Hannahs, rotating on her chair. From behind her desk, in a corner of her Advanced Placement environmental science room at Severna Park High, she's positioned just right to oversee thirty-some students at a time, hunched in desk chairs or clustered around sinks during labs.

"This is the room I had my favorite teacher in," says Ms. Hannahs, as her hand disappears into a drawer. "This is his ruler. I found this." She withdraws an ordinary, if old fashioned, foot-long, wooden ruler as if it's a magic wand. Carved on the back, in neat script, is "Mr Sparkes Rm 129." She recalls "The Colonel," her senior year zoology teacher, a retired army colonel and chemist, "a very sweet-looking, white-haired gentleman who had a twinkle in his eye and wore bow ties. He was really hard, very demanding, but because we liked him so much we wanted to try hard."

She calls him her inspiration and, in fact, after this "Park Chick" graduated in 1972, she enrolled at Georgetown College, in Kentucky, a biology major. "It's kind of a family profession," she says, explaining that her mother taught first grade for 30 years, ending up at Belvedere Elementary.

Ms. Hannahs remembers her first position, in 1976, at Annapolis High, when it was housed in (what's now) Maryland Hall: "a really cool old building with a lot of atmosphere, personality, and problems!" she exclaims. Then she taught at Bates Jr. High until her second child was born, when she decided to stay home. After her divorce, Ms. Hannahs got into sales because, she says, laughing, "a lot of teachers, we think we're so smart, that we can do anything." But the traveling got to her, and she always found herself "defining myself as a teacher."

In 1991, after graduate courses to renew her certification, she was hired to teach at Severna Park. As a student government advisor, Ms. Hannahs was introduced to the Chesapeake Regional Association of Student Councils (CRASC), the countywide student government body, whose motto is: Don't just complain about a problem; become involved in finding a solution!

When the CRASC advisor (a full-time, administrative position, under the Department of Instruction, at the central office on Riva Road) resigned, Ms. Hannahs replaced him as teacher specialist for student advocacy. "It's a mouthful," she says. "I really didn't want to leave the classroom, but it was a good opportunity to do something different." With student government representatives, she found herself "doing all of these little odd things," which she enjoyed, including mailings, publicity, agendas, and meetings.

She believes that Anne Arundel County is unusual for its efforts to get student input. "As far as we know, we're the only local board of education with a full-voting student member; ours gets to vote on everything." As it has since 1976, CRASC elects the student to serve a 1-year term on the board.

During her 9 years at the central office, Ms. Hannahs remarried and had another child, "the first CRASC baby born in captivity." In the fall of 2003, she returned to Severna Park High.

"This is where it really happens, right here in the classroom. When the bell rings and the door closes, it's our show," she proclaims. The most important thing, and what she missed so much in administration, is the "relationship that develops between teacher and student."

This year she's blessed with six AP environmental science classes. But the new high school block schedule system, initiated under former Superintendent Eric J. Smith, means that she has 188 students (versus approximately 150 with the old schedule). Thirty additional names to learn and papers to read, collect, and grade is "really intense, probably a little bit more than I wished for," she says.

A Day/B Day, or block schedules, means that students take eight classes, each meeting every other day in longer, eighty-five minute periods. Under the old system, they took six classes per day, in fifty minute periods.

Ms. Hannahs explains how, on the plus side, she loves the longer lab periods. And students have the opportunity to take more classes overall: thirty-two over 4 years, (which would have allowed her son, a Broadneck student in the '90s, to remain in orchestra while taking more AP classes).

But in the old system, "we saw them every day. And, overall, they had more time for a class." Now her AP students are competing, on College Board exams, with students who have those classes every day.

For teachers, fewer classes per day doesn't mean less work. In fact, more classes, over the semester, and longer periods mean-along with more students-increased preparation time.

For both students and teachers, the staggered class days are an organizational challenge: two backpacks, snow days and holiday interruptions . . . Is it A Day or B Day?

Under Smith's leadership, Advanced Placement classes, which used to be "for the elite" became open to anyone. Ms. Hannahs thinks this is good, to have more kids involved and pushing themselves. "I think this is why we get into the profession; we want to push them along to reach their potential as happy, motivated, well-educated citizens." According to her, some of the teacher protest under Smith's reign was due to "the manner and speed at which things were innovated . . . everything at once."

On the first day of school this year, she told her students, "The hurricane is hitting New Orleans today. There's not one topic we're going to study this year: water, soil, food, human populations, poverty, disease (well, maybe not nuclear waste) that doesn't relate to Katrina."

Engaged in the art of teaching, she prepares students for rigorous tests without following a script. "I could spend the whole year talking about the Chesapeake Bay. There probably won't be any questions on the AP test about the Bay, but they live here! They need to know about it. Most of them are going to be taxpayers here . . . A teacher in the Midwest might focus on agriculture. We have that freedom."

In this county, says Ms. Hannahs, "We have twelve high schools with completely distinctive flavors. No flavor is better. We've got fabulously expensive waterfront property less than 2 miles from a housing project. This wide range makes us unique." With that comes the problem of inequity, and giving each school what it needs with resources so tight.

Her work is a vocation, a calling. "Teachers are helping to launch the next generation. How much do we value this profession?" She remembers her years as a single mom, when living on a teacher's salary was tough. "What are we willing to pay these people who have our kids all day?" she asks.

But it's been a long day and she doesn't have a quick answer. As usual, Ms. Hannahs woke up at 5:30, and if she didn't have a 9-year-old daughter at home, she'd stay at school until 6. "Somebody else will have to fight that one out," she says.

Leading that fight is what Sheila Finlayson intends to continue to do. In this, her fourth year of two consecutive terms as president of the Teachers Association of Anne Arundel County (TAAAC), she'll work on increasing salaries, decreasing workload, maintaining adequate benefits, and significantly improving pensions.

"We have the worst pension system in the country," she insists. Out of all fifty states, Maryland is dead last, dead last." She can't say it enough: "We are the fifth wealthiest state in the country and we are dead last in pensions." She explains that if she retired today, she'd get 37 percent of her salary, less than $25,000. "Nothing you can live on in Anne Arundel County."

The proposed new retirement package is a big-ticket legislative item, she admits without apology, somewhere between $300 million and $500 million.

TAAAC, an advocacy organization with collective bargaining power, represents more than 5000 teachers and personnel in the county public schools; more than 4200 are dues-paying members. In her role as president, Ms. Finlayson will have visited all 120 county schools. She's in the buildings, talking to teachers, and they e-mail her with issues.

Ms. Finlayson spent 28 years teaching in the classroom. She started at Marley Jr. High, moved to Bates, and, when South River High opened in 1977, taught there until 2002.

Of her political role she says, "It's hard. It's more difficult than teaching high school kids Shakespeare." But she feels she's doing good work. "I'm a teacher and I hear every day, 'We're so glad we have your voice speaking for us.' I feel this is my calling, giving a face and voice to teachers and their issues."

She's currently running for president of the Maryland State Teachers Association (MSTA). If successful, she'll be stationed at the MSTA office on Main Street starting in September.

Either way, of course she'll remain in town. "Annapolis is my home. I grew up in Eastport. My church is there," Ms. Finlayson says. She has a large family here, and though that doesn't include children, she explains, "I raised two children. My mom died when I was a senior in high school and I had two sisters who were four and five. They're both over 40 now." She laughs. Her dad, a retired Ob-Gyn, and two brothers live in Milwaukee. She has a sister and brother here, and another sister in North Carolina. "We're a very close-knit family. I'm hopping between Annapolis and Milwaukee all the time. My Dad's 81; he demands a lot of my time," she says, and adds, "He's my Dad and he gets it!"

Down Riva Road at Annapolis High, Phil Greenfield has been teaching since 1979. He teaches comparative religion and world civilizations the first semester. "You've got to be nuts to be here and not be part of the union," he proclaims about TAAAC. With "so much stuff that can go wrong," the liability insurance itself is well worth it.

While pursuing a PhD in political science at Johns Hopkins in the 1970s, Mr. Greenfield found he loved teaching and finished with a master's degree. He took education classes at Towson University before starting to teach at Annapolis High.

He remembers the 1980s as the humanities decade, when he enjoyed teaching ancient texts, Renaissance art, and music. When the state "slashed the humanities" out of the budget, a student-initiated religion class took him into the next decade.

He has a daughter and son in college and, though his daughter is studying to be a veterinarian, "they're both music kids," he says. His wife is a music therapist and performer. Mr. Greenfield has sung as a cantor at a synagogue in Greenbelt for 25 years. From 1987 to 2004 he wrote arts-related columns for the Baltimore Sun. "I used to kill weekends to do it," he says.

Now he's eager to start the theory of knowledge classes, part of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program, he'll teach in the second semester. "I have a ton of sources. I was trained, really nicely, twice." Last summer, in Las Vegas, New Mexico, one trainer was "a sharp, feisty character, very good at tying us up in knots the way he was encouraging us to go after our students (demanding): 'How do you really know this?'"

While he's attracted to IB because "you have to take the time to think," Mr. Greenfield finds kids on all levels who are very amenable to being taught. "The problem is that there are so many bureaucratically mandated banana peels," in the public system, "that it's hard to step without falling." He focuses on each student, and goes from there.

"It's a great gift, teaching religion and humanities, where you're flying under the radar of standardized tests," he acknowledges. "In so many aspects of life, there's not enough human contact. This is one place where you can try to give them that, try to go beneath the surface."

Mr. Greenfield teaches a Level III class about Henry the Eighth by telling the king's story and showing pictures of his six wives. "Anne Boleyn's head flying off . . . They'll get into that," he says. "They sense your interest in the story, how psychopathology runs through history: people looking for love in all the wrong places, having unhappy childhoods. Pretty interesting stuff. You do that, and sometimes they'll pay attention."

Margi Sigler has been loving "the little guys" since 1973, when she was hired at Eastport Elementary in a Title III federally funded preschool program.

After mornings and lunch with children, she made home visits. "I went into Eastport Terrace, Robinwood, Harbor House, by myself. I never felt threatened," she says. Her job was to help low-income parents become better teachers for their children. "People didn't understand the value of reading to their children. They hadn't been read to . . . they thought: children don't know how to read, so why would you read to a child?"

She would demonstrate the importance of stacking up toys with a 2-year-old, naming colors, counting blocks. "The parents didn't know how play and learning are connected," Ms. Sigler says, adding, "they were very receptive."

She taught kindergarten at Van Bokkelen for a year, then, back in Annapolis, spent 8 years at the first county-funded prekindergarten program at Tyler Heights Elementary.

One of her best stories begins with a prekindergarten girl who, 17 years later, showed up in Ms. Sigler's class at Anne Arundel Community College. "She'd made it! She was completing her degree there. I had taught her at Eastport as a 3-year-old, at Tyler Heights in first grade, then again at community college. That one, I really liked."

After teaching first grade for 4 years at Germantown in Annapolis, a position opened up at her neighborhood school in South County, where her three children were, and she grabbed it. Eleven years later, when she hit the 25-year mark in teaching, she was transferred to Central Elementary, where she remained for 5 years.

At that point-with a master's degree-after 31 years in the public system, she slipped on one too many banana peels. "With kids, I never had a negative year," Ms. Sigler insists, adamant that she never taught a child she didn't like and "the parents were always supportive."

But the transfers, and mandates in compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, stifled and disheartened her.

She describes an episode testing kindergarteners using the Dibbles standardized test. "I had a kid who could read words, but he didn't do well on the Dibbles because he didn't read nonsense words; he read real words."

Ms. Sigler calls it "no child left untested." It puts pressure on teachers, so that, "You're afraid to deviate at all from your schedule. Those tests take on a life of their own."

Now she's a first grade teacher at a private school in Annapolis where "there's a curriculum but I'm trusted to teach without a script."

She has a decent retirement salary because (along with having worked straight through since 1973) she's "pre-1980," the year when the state pension package changed. At that time, with the option to switch, she said to her husband (also a teacher), "Honey, if they're working that hard to get us out of this pension system, I think we better stay in it."

With benefits twice that of anyone hired after 1980, she says, "between retirement and my salary, it's good."

Ms. Sigler admits, "I look forward to seeing those children every day." And though she could afford to stay home, "I still enjoy the excitement and fun of teaching."

On a recent class trip to Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts to see the play Ellis Island, she learned three requirements for immigrants entering the United States early last century. "You had to be healthy, have enough money to go where you wanted to go, and you had to read. That's the special thing about first grade. When I take nonreaders and change them . . . I open the whole world for them."

Interim Superintendent Nancy M. Mann says that getting highly qualified teachers, especially in science, math, and special education, is a major issue in our system and throughout the nation.

As one solution, she says, "We are looking at recruiting teachers from the Philippines and China," a practice which is having some success in other counties, such as Prince George's.

In this context, she suggests that-perhaps-not all of our students are angels. One glaring problem is that "in those countries, the teacher is highly respected. There are not behavior problems. When teachers come to the U.S., discipline is a struggle for them, and they need a lot of support."

She contrasts this with the 1970s and '80s: "Students today have so many more challenges."

Ms. Finlayson, who cochaired the Teacher's Workload Taskforce with Ms. Mann, praises her. "She came up through the ranks here. She knows the issues and the value of giving teachers time." The task force listed 133 recommendations for reducing teacher workload.

What miracles for teachers can Nancy Mann perform between Thanksgiving and July 1, when she steps down (to spend time with her grandson) and a permanent superintendent is scheduled to be installed? Though Ms. Hannahs isn't sure, her confidence in her former supervisor at CRASC runs deep:

"She sees the heart of the school system as the classroom, what happens right here. To the core of her being, Nancy Mann is committed to students and teachers."

Robin Weiss is a freelance writer who lives in Annapolis and has two children who are currently attending Anne Arundel County Public Schools.

Look in our April Issue for Part III, a focus on our school board.