Professional Practice

STATEMENT INTRODUCTION

I started my teaching career as an eight year old child sitting on the floor of my dad’s apartment coloring and doing flash cards with his new wife. She was a second grade teacher, who happened to have helped her district get a bargaining contract through KEA, and I thought she was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I continued to play “school” with my dolls and stuffed animals until I was old enough to go to her classroom and help her with bulletin boards, making copies, and cutting things out. As I got older she allowed me to develop lessons and teach them to her summer school students. Recently, my stepmom shared with me that a colleague confided in her years ago that I would, “Never make it as a teacher, because I didn’t have what it took.” That same teacher recently contacted her to apologize and I know why. 

PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

I’ve been a special education teacher for 24 years at the elementary, middle, high, and alternative schools. I have taught resources classes, co-taught in every core subject, and taught in a unit for children with emotional and behavioral disorders. As a special education teacher, I support student learning and student success by listening, building relationships, and allowing them to teach me a thing or two. I work with students with Autism, Bi-polar Disorder, Schizophrenia, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, OCD, Reactive Attachment Disorder, and many other diagnoses. I believe I grew most as an educator during my time as the EBD teacher and with training from KEA. In the EBD unit my instructional assistants and I developed a level system of accountability for our students that was copied and utilized in numerous districts across the state. It was based on expectations, visual schedules, positive reinforcements, and extensive social skills instruction. Each student started the day on level 2, which was a normal day of attending all classes and participating in all school activities. They each carried a data collection sheet to all classes. This sheet was individualized based on their growth areas and IEP goals. If the student lost a certain percentage of points during the day, they dropped to a level 1 for the following school day. That meant they spent more time with us for extra social skills designed to meet their needs. If a student dropped low enough on their points, they would be a level zero the next school day, which meant they lost privileges, spent the day with us completing all assignments and receiving extensive social skills instruction, therapy from a counselor, making parent contacts, and developing a plan for moving forward. Most importantly, students received positive reinforcements throughout the day and at the end of each day for earning the required points and meeting their goals. Over the course of eleven years, we witnessed many students increase their time on level 3 by 70% or higher during their three years of middle school. By putting the student’s individual needs first, the child learned to put their own needs first through self-regulation and self-advocacy. 

Now teaching at the high school, I found myself with an entirely different group of students with a wide variety of needs. My most important challenge each year is to prepare them for life after high school. My students plan, design, and host a faculty and staff award program. For months my students learn about party planning, budgeting, organization, writing proposals, and making presentations. They collaborate with guest speakers, conduct research, develop presentations, meet with administrators, and design voting polls. My students decide the award categories, pick out the decorations, name their own roles for the event, and present their idea to our principal and Dean of Students. With a presentation they design, they ask for money for the decorations and for the food. They advocate for our culinary students to provide the food which gives more students real life experience. My students even design the certificates for the winners and analyze the voting results. They send personal invitations to the faculty and staff and are the hosts, servers, and presenters for the entire event. The only thing I do, as their teacher, is guide them, answer questions, and play event photographer. My students learn more life skills through this project based learning experience than they could through twenty different daily textbook lessons. It is an absolute joy to watch them develop skills, learn about their own interests and passions, and find their voice.

“Michael” is a good example of just how important it was for me, as a teacher, to learn to put the child first. Michael came to my classroom from Ohio through the foster care system. Michael was a child with an Emotional and Behavioral Disability. He wasn’t a child that “let you in” easily. He ran away from his foster home twice. When Michael returned, he was different…changed. One day, Michael told me he was being moved to another foster home in another school district. He went on to share that I was the only person he felt he could talk to and the only person he felt cared about him. He told me about his time on the streets. He had reconciled a relationship with a former girlfriend and had been living with her and her family. She became pregnant with his child and then she was killed in a car accident and Michael landed on the street. This fifteen year old child looked me in the eyes and he said, “Mrs. Slone, I try to be here at school and do what I am expected to do…but these other kids complain and bitch about things like video games, vapes, pot, girlfriends and boyfriends, and homework or shitty teachers. I was going to be a dad. For the first time in my life I was going to be something to someone. I’m fifteen years old. I don’t care about video games. I don’t care about doing my homework. I’ve already lost more friends to drugs than I can count. I’ve lost the one person I loved. I’ve lost a child. I’ve lived on the streets.” He went on to tell me that the only reason he came back was because he got arrested. Michael shared, “The officer booking me said he had also been a foster kid. He told me that I could turn my life around because he had. As he was taking me to my cell he told me I could make one call. Mrs. Slone, I didn’t have anyone to call.”  At that moment, my heart literally broke. This fifteen year old child had lived more life and experienced more hardships than I had in my entire life. Just before the end of that day, I gave Michael a note. I told him to read it later, but to never lose it. On the note, I wrote….”No matter where life takes you. No matter what mistakes you make. No matter what happens….. I will always be your one phone call,” and I gave him my number.  It’s been almost a year since I saw or heard from Michael. I’ve stopped trying to find information about him. I’m just going to wait for the phone to ring.

ADVOCACY FOR THE PROFESSION

I became the Vice President of my local association in 2021 and the President in 2022. I have served on the EKEA Board and the MOVE Committee for KEA. I have been an elected Delegate for KEA for four years and a state elected Delegate to the National Education Association Representative Assembly three times. 

I ensure my local members have a voice through the use of surveys and meetings with our superintendent. I attend meetings with members and their administrators. I attend local board meetings and present multiple times a year. As RCEA President, I was part of our recent Superintendent Search Committee and the yearly Calendar Committee. Recently, we developed an Exit Survey to be given to members who leave the district or the profession. This data is vital in understanding what changes need to occur to help us recruit and retain the best teachers. Our local has advocated for and were granted professional leave days throughout the year to be in our schools talking and working with our members. We set a goal of increasing our membership by twenty-five people by the end of April. However, by the end of March we had already added twenty-eight new members. We still have two more schools to visit! Last year, and again this year, we took the largest groups of local members to the KEA Day of Learning in history, due to working with our superintendent. He agreed to double our numbers and pay for the substitute teachers as a result of my advocacy. 

In 2017, when the Kentucky Education Association planned advocacy events and rallies at our state capital because our governor and our legislature were attacking our pension system, I drove and spent many long days sitting side by side with our leadership in the chambers of the House and the Senate talking with our legislators to save our pensions. I wrote letters, made phone calls, and had one-on-one meetings with them as well. I wrote several Op-Eds and Letters to The Editor about the attacks on public education. I was interviewed on various news programs at the state and national levels. I also appeared on KET’s Kentucky Tonight three times, where I debated various legislators, education leaders, and a previous Commissioner of Education. 

During the 2022 Legislative Session a bill was passed that made it illegal for KEA dues to be pulled from our paychecks. This threatened our membership, but we used this to strengthen our local. We have since moved almost 100% of our current members to SmartPay and increased our overall membership. We recently recruited several new classified members from our transportation department as well. My Uniserv Director and I have been meeting with them to help them learn how to have meetings, elect leaders for the Rowan County Educational Support Staff Association, and how to advocate for the changes they would like to see. We recruit by showing our colleagues that being a member is more than liability insurance. We treat our members to fun activities and treats. We host a yearly silent auction and use the funds to provide scholarships. Recently, we collected over three hundred books and shelving that we donated to our local National Guard Readiness Center. I also provide training to our building reps each year. KEA is a family and because of that I encourage and support my local members like they are my family, not just my colleagues.

In 2017, I created a social media group, Kentucky Teachers In The Know, It became a platform for keeping educators informed and a way to enhance educator voice. Now, over six years later, the group has grown to over twenty-eight thousand members including teachers, staff, administrators, superintendents, legislators, and even the media. My experiences within KEA taught me how to advocate, communicate, and collaborate with educators. This gave me every skill I needed to make KTITK a resource that people would use daily. We have expanded the group to include the yearly Conference For a Cause that provides free professional learning and gives back monetarily to one public education employee in need. To date, we have given over five thousand dollars to four individuals. We added EdTalk, a LIVE talk show, with guests like Lieutenant Governor Coleman, the Commissioner of Education, the president of the Council on Postsecondary Education, legislators, teachers, and students. We have a yearly KTITK Award Banquet where we recognize leaders in public education for their work. When tornadoes hit western Kentucky, the members of KTITK raised enough money to send a $200 Visa Card to every public school employee who had lost their home or had been displaced, totalling over $20,000. When the flooding happened in eastern Kentucky, we asked members to “adopt a school employee.” We had over twenty employees adopted and helped financially. During virtual teaching due to Covid-19, we started Kentucky Parents in The Know, where teachers posted video lessons for parents to use while working at home.

I think the most important thing to come from KTITK and my advocacy work, was being appointed as the first active teacher to be a non-voting Ex Officio Member of the Kentucky Board of Education. After working diligently to help Governor Beshear to be elected, I knew teacher voices had to be the center of his term in office. I reached out to newly elected Lieutenant Governor Jacqueline Coleman with the idea of placing an active teacher on the Kentucky Board of Education. Not only did she and Governor Beshear like the idea, they asked me to be the first. During my time, I was able to speak up about policy, legislation, and other decisions around funding and school needs. I was a member during COVID-19 shut downs and virtual learning. I was part of the hiring process of Dr. Jason Glass for Commissioner of Education. As a member, I was also a Board member for the Kentucky School for The Blind and The Kentucky School for The Deaf. We also added a student member to the KBE, which might have been the greatest part. Over the course of our time on the board, the student and I had to fight for our seats over and over again. The legislature attempted to remove the teacher and student seats every year, until finally we were able to convince them to write legislation that ensured those two seats would remain part of the KBE forever. Now, there will always be the voice of the teacher and the student on the highest decision making board within education in the state of Kentucky. 

COMMITMENT TO EQUITY, DIVERSITY, INCLUSION AND JUSTICE

Two years ago, my high school had a real problem with racism. Working together, our administration, faculty, staff, students, and parents decided to address the problem with a Unity Walk to show that we were all in this together. Students were told the date and time that everyone would get together and walk around our school track. Students were also given the choice to stay in our gym if they wished to not participate. When it was time for our unity walk, something happened that we were not expecting. More students went to the gym than we predicted. We were confused and heartbroken. After talking with many of those students we found out that the biggest majority went to the gym because their parents had told them they were, “not allowed to participate,” or “I better not find out you went to the stupid unity walk,” or “if you go to that walk you’ll be in trouble when you get home.” Our problem wasn’t with our student population. Our problem was with our entire community and it was boiling over in our classrooms. I was added by my school to a diverse committee of parents and stakeholders willing to address the problem as we worked to become a Kentucky Community School through the Prichard Committee. This committee included school personnel, parents, local business owners, students, and community leaders. This committee designed school and community broad action plans such as PSAs, student activities, and projects to help students report racism. Being part of such a movement inspired me to step outside of my comfort zone and address this issue in a much bigger way. I wanted to learn more and do more about diversity, equity, and inclusion for my students.

While serving as the first active teacher on the Kentucky Board of Education, I was able to help draft and publish a Resolution Affirming Its Commitment To Racial Equity In Kentucky’s Public Schools. We had a vision of all students having equitable access to a proper education, a stance against racism and violence, and a plan to lessen the achievement gap for our students of color. In 2021, I was invited to be part of the National Education Associations Minority and Women’s Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C. In 2022, I designed and presented a professional development to my colleagues on the various categories that students qualify for special education. I talked about characteristics, how they qualify for services, and shared strategies to address their unique needs. During the summer of 2023, I was a Delegate to the National Education Association Representative Assembly in Orlando, Florida. NEA made a stance by hosting a Pro-Public Education, anti-Desantis, rally. My colleagues and I stood front and center in support of public education and against the very racist policies, the book banning, and harassment of teachers. Also, in 2023, I was invited to be part of the National Education Association’s Leaders for Just School Cohort. It’s a three year program that gives us, the participants, tools to transform policy and practice within our own schools, districts, and/or state. In July, we spent a week with participants from all over the world working to understand equity, investigating our own biases and how they impact our teaching, and learning ways to improve school culture so everyone can succeed. As a result of being a leader within KEA and NEA on this very difficult topic, my district has asked me to design and present professional learning on diversity, equity, and inclusion to my colleagues at the end of this school year. I am also working with my Leaders of Just Schools KEA colleagues to develop a training on this same topic that will become a permanent part of the KEA training choices.

FAMILY AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

During my time at the middle school, I was a member of the Schools To Watch Leadership Team. Our team worked with our teachers and students to develop multiple projects that addressed food scarcity in our community. All projects developed were student designed, created, implemented, and led. 

Our students planted a school garden with raised beds. The food grown was donated to a local soup kitchen, used in our own school kitchen, or sold to school employees. The money earned was then used to buy more food for people in our community. Other students worked on the math behind the costs of food and how that impacts poverty in our community. The entire school ran a community canned food drive. Some students worked with our local newspaper and radio station to advertise the food drive. The canned foods gathered were donated to the local soup kitchen. That particular soup kitchen fed the hungry people in our community for free every day. 

As part of this, I hosted a yearly Leadership Retreat for community members, parents, teachers, staff, and students. The goal of the retreat was to share the success of our Food Scarcity Project, highlight the work of our students, and to provide space for community partners, students, and teachers to develop more collaborative projects. Many projects were developed from this retreat. Our science teachers worked with environmentalists to develop field experiments in our community. A certified wetland was developed in the front of our school and our alternative school students built and tended to bea hives. Our school wide project based learning initiatives earned us the national recognition and title of, “A School To Watch.” 

I’ve since left the middle school, but I use project based learning every opportunity I can. Last year, my students planned an award program for the faculty and staff of the high school where I now teach. We spent months learning about event planning, budgeting, decorating, ballots, and so much more. My students planned everything about the event, including leading a meeting with our administration to ask for permission and funding, and working with our culinary students to plan the menu. My students hosted a beautiful event giving away several awards like, Teacher With the Coolest Car, Yummiest Cafeteria Meal, and Most Fair Administrator. They had a blast, and learned so much along the way including skills they can use in future employment which only helps our community more.

LEADERSHIP IN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Eleven years ago, my son was diagnosed with ADHD, Dyslexia, and Sensory Processing Disorder. As a special education teacher, I knew dyslexia was not recognized as a categorical diagnosis for special education services. It quickly became apparent that I could only help my own child through expensive tutoring programs or send him off to summer school camps. I was not happy with either option so I began having discussions with policy makers, teachers, parents, and other influencers. 

I developed and began presenting a professional learning session about dyslexia to members at the KEA TALK Conference. Dr. Pruitt, our Commissioner of Education at the time, appointed me to the Kentucky Department of Education’s Dyslexia Task Force. Then, along with a team of teachers and parents, I attended the US Department of Education’s Teach To Lead Summit in Long Beach, California. At the Summit, my team and I created KYREADS, an organization that provides professional learning opportunities to educators about dyslexia. With funding and help from KEA we expanded my dyslexia presentation into a three part professional development series, developed a website, and a social media group. I spoke on both the floor of the House and the Senate. I was invited to speak at Joint Education Committee hearings and  asked to work with legislators to develop dyslexia policy. It took three years, but finally a policy passed that required the Kentucky Department of Education to develop a dyslexia toolkit to be provided to every school district, develop a list of high quality screeners, and required schools to acknowledge dyslexia as a subcategory of Specific Learning Disabilities. In 2021, legislation passed that required the Kentucky Department of Education to focus on the science of reading instruction and develop professional development for K-5 teachers on the five strands of literacy. Dyslexia is now a common word in our schools and homes. People still reach out for resources and the Department of Ed. recently published updated guidance. I credit KEA training on advocacy, speaking, and support for my ability to make such drastic changes for so many students and teachers across the Commonwealth. 

CONCLUSION

When I think about my stepmom’s colleague and the statement she made all those years ago, I can honestly say I understand. I was quiet, nervous, shy, and not extremely extroverted, but I knew I was a teacher. I have always been a teacher. Becoming active in KEA just made me a better teacher. The more involved I became in this association, the more I transitioned into exactly who I needed to be. When my son needed me, I found my voice. When my colleagues needed me, I found my voice. Most importantly, I use my voice to make a difference for public education, for the association, for the profession, and to show other teachers that it is okay to speak up. My goal is to show our members they can be leaders in various ways. They just have to find their voice and get involved with the Kentucky Education Association.