Dare to Care

Caring for Students is Not Officially in Our Job Descriptions

By Dave Arnold

During my school days in the 1960s, if you played hooky you might be confronted by a truant officer. Today, if you skip school you may have to deal with an attendance officer. The updated title may not sound as menacing, but the work is still as important and rewarding as ever.  

Today, we can also refer to some attendance officers as National Education Association members. They are classified as Education Support Professionals (ESP).

An acquaintance of mine, Cathy Jones, is the attendance officer for the Regional Office of Education (ROE) in Vandalia, Illinois. She isn’t classified as an ESP at this time, nor is she menacing at any time. What she is, however, is smart, caring and highly motivated.

Parental Support Needed

Cathy wears several hats at work. She is also the Health Life Safety Inspector, and supervisor for home schooled students in a three-county region (Bond, Fayette, and Effingham). We got to know each other when she was doing a safety inspection for my school district in Brownstown.

We also met again one Sunday as her husband and family came to my church to share their gospel music and singing.

As an attendance officer, she has endured some unpleasant experiences with rowdy students and uncaring parents. She doesn’t dwell on this. Instead, she radiates when telling of the students she has worked with over the past 11 years.

She loves her job. She handles 120-140 truancy cases each year with about 20 of those ending up in court.

Though time-consuming, she remains fresh and enthusiastic about her work.

She says the biggest problem she encounters is parents of habitually absentee children. They generally are neither concerned nor supportive of their children.

Saving Students

In a recent ROE newsletter, Cathy explains how one such incident exemplified the rewards of caring for students:

“Due to the nature of my work, I have to claim any victory, no matter how great or small. Recently, my husband and I were leaving Wal-Mart and I spotted a young woman who I had spent many hours with and worked with quite diligently. She was a typical “at risk youth.” The biggest problem she had was the lack of parental concern and support.

Previously, while we were meeting one day at her high school, she looked at me for a split second with hope in her eyes. That was all it took.

This girl was a hardcore delinquent. One day we were in the hallway of the courthouse before one of her many court appearances (“we” being the girl, her mother, and myself).

“I’m going to follow you through college if I have to,” I said. A nod before the girl could respond, her mother cursed and said, “Like she’s going to college!”

One night while I was fixing dinner, my husband came to the kitchen and said, “There’s a young girl at the front door for you.” It was her. She had stopped by to let me know that she had a friend who wasn’t going to school and asked me if I could call this girl’s mother, which I did of course.

Back to the story: that day in the Wal-Mart parking lot I rolled down my window and said, “Hey, I know you!” And with a smirk on her face she said, “Yeah, I know you too.” She had her young son by the hand. I asked her what she was doing now. She replied, “I’m an EMT (emergency medical technician) and I’m going to school to be a paramedic.” I cried all the way home.

Moral of the story: keep up the good work, you never know who or when you’ll impact on someone’s world.”

Changing Lives

I have yet to see a job description that required a school employee to love students, care about their well-being, or future success. But I have yet to meet a teacher or ESP who didn’t love children and care about their present and future success. If we did only that which is required of us without adding our heart and soul to the job, we would be nothing more than robots.

(Dave Arnold, a member of the Illinois Education Association, is head custodian at Brownstown Elementary School in Southern Illinois.)

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NEA or its affiliates.