Star Tribune
As a new school year begins, teachers and students need our support now more than ever
Nearly 25 years ago, Monica Byron stumbled into teaching when a friend pointed her toward a job she had not sought.
“I was kind of looking for a job and it was in the schools,” said Byron, vice president of Education Minnesota, the union that represents more than 86,000 teachers in the state. “I just felt that calling. I knew when I walked in, it was where I belonged. It filled my heart.”
That commenced a journey through education that included a quarter-century as a teacher in the Richfield Public Schools system — one of the few Black teachers in her school — and her role now as union advocate for thousands of teachers. She understands their needs. Byron left the classroom only a year ago. She understands the significance of ensuring their safety, too.
During her time as a teacher, she worked to build strong relationships with students. On a difficult day seven years ago, one of those students — who had behavioral challenges — bit her.
“Of course, my reactions, at that moment, I wanted to scream,” she said. “It hurt. But at the same time, I had to think about the kids, I had to think about him. He knew he had done something wrong. I could see it in his face.”
Our teachers should always feel safe.
I don’t believe our children collectively pose a threat to teachers, despite highly publicized incidents across the country that have demonstrated the extremes.
And I choose to ignore the racists and bigots who attempt to turn any dialogue about school safety, especially when that conversation involves schools in diverse areas, into an opportunity to misrepresent and stereotype BIPOC kids. I am, however, interested in a real conversation about teachers, the students they’re asked to educate and the safe environment necessary to facilitate their respective goals.
“I’ve seen administrators supporting their teachers when teachers decide that a student does need attention outside the classroom and administrators do need to listen to educators when they say situations are unsafe,” Byron said. “We need to hire those [education support professionals] … and get them training and hire trained teachers and counselors and social workers and psychologists.”
Teachers are judged by lagging test scores in a world that’s still wounded by a global pandemic. There are behavioral concerns for some and mental health challenges for an increasing number of post-pandemic students, all with staffing shortages and, at some schools, limited resources. There is the threat of school shootings and other forms of violence that can interrupt the learning experience.
“The data also indicates that we’re dealing with so much more, as well, if you look at the safety data that we collected last year,” said Joe Gothard,superintendent of St. Paul Public Schools. “As a leader of a large system, I think communication is the most important piece. I heard our staff loud and clear that they don’t always feel safe, and I also heard our students not really talking about safety so much but talking about a lot of other things: going to see the school support folks they have in their school, sometimes needing a break in their school day.”
To Byron, the issue is complicated. But teachers, she said, aren’t asking anyone to do their jobs for them. Their only request is for the support, resources and staffing to do what they’ve always done: build bonds with the children in their classroom and work together with communities to push them toward scholastic success.
Her perspective compelled me to consider my guilt in this conversation. I, too, have become so laser-focused on my own life and post-pandemic boundaries that I have not always thought about community as much as I’ve emphasized my own children’s progress. But we can’t win that way.
At some point, “me and mine” has to become “ours” if we expect to emerge from this chapter, well, better.
I’d like to shake this selfishness and do more to help students beyond my household and do my part to support our greatest citizens: teachers.
Byron’s heart for her students remains. She was physically and emotionally hurt by one of her students. In the moment, however, she only considered the fate of that student.
Would he be punished? Would he get the mental health resources he might have needed? Would he get another chance?
At a time when she should have been concerned about herself, Byron only thought of protecting a student who had just harmed her.
“I needed that kid to be removed so they could get help,” she said. “I needed to get support, but there was no adult to help take care of my kids. … I was going to heal. I knew that piece. It wasn’t about, ‘Let’s suspend this kid. Let’s do all these things with this kid.’ It was, ‘What happened for this reaction to take place?’ To me, that’s what educators are going through. At the end of the day, you want what’s best for those kids. I always wanted what was best for kids, even sometimes at my expense.”
Myron Medcalf is a local columnist for Star Tribune and recipient of the 2022 Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for general column writing.
Star Tribune
Celebrity chef Justin Sutherland gets two years of probation for threatening girlfriend
According to the criminal complaint:
Police were twice called on June 28 to an apartment in the 800 block of Front Avenue. During the first call, a woman told officers that everything was fine despite previously reporting that Sutherland had choked her and tried kicking her out of the apartment.
During the second call about 90 minutes later, the woman told police that Sutherland had briefly squeezed her neck with both hands, said “I want you dead,” pointed a gun at her and hit her in the chest with it, and at one point said he would shoot her if she came back after running off. Officers then arrested Sutherland.
Staff writers Paul Walsh and Alex Chhith contributed to this story.
Operators of the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) have agreed to consolidate housing units, create a new programming schedule and retrain correctional officers in an effort to satisfy state regulators, who rebuked the downtown facility last month for violating resident rights.
Changes come in the wake of a scathing inspection report that accused the center of placing minors in seclusion without good reason to compensate for ongoing staff shortages. An annual audit by the Department of Corrections found that teens were frequently locked in their rooms for long stretches, due to a lack of personnel rather than bad behavior.
In response, county officials vowed to bolster staffing and retrain all officers tasked with performing wellness checks. Last week, the facility closed its “orientation mod,” typically reserved for new admissions, and combined male age groups to reduce the number of living units and provide heightened supervision.
The moves, including a new schedule, are expected to help prevent the undue cancellation of recreation, parent visits and other privileges to children in their custody.
“[Previous] staffing levels did not allow for all units to run programming simultaneously while having sufficient staff available to respond to incidents and emergencies in the building,” JDC Superintendent Dana Swayze wrote in a seven-page letter to state inspectors. “Programming is only cancelled on an as-needed basis based on the JDC’s ability to safely accommodate [it].”
In a Dec. 4 email to the County Board, Mary Ellen Heng, acting director of Hennepin’s Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation, assured elected officials that they had begun taking corrective actions but asserted that some of the report’s findings lacked context.
Heng pointed to a violation where teens were allegedly confined without cause, even when multiple correctional officers were sitting in a nearby office. She explained that, during the dates of the inspection earlier this fall, several officers observed in the office were still in training — and therefore not permitted to interact with the youths alone.
She also contended that while programming has been modified by staffing limitations, “this additional room time is not reflective of punishment, disciplinary techniques, or restrictive procedures.”
Tired of surging gun violence across St. Paul, community leaders and police are asking residents to help create a safer city.
The call for community support came Thursday night when officials from the St. Paul NAACP, St. Paul Police Department, Black Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the African American Leadership Council gathered at Arlington Hills Lutheran Church to talk about ways to decrease gun violence in the city.
St. Paul has recorded 30 homicides so far this year according to a Star Tribune database, two fewer than last year. But four of this year’s homicides happened in the same week, frustrating law enforcement and alarming residents.
St. Paul NAACP President Richard Pittman Sr. said that solutions to gun violence are “right here, in the room.” But without the community’s help, Pittman said their efforts could fall short.
“Over the last several weeks and months, we have experienced an uptick in violent crimes in our communities. [That’s] turned on a light bulb that it’s time [to] not have the police feeling like all the pressure is on them,” Pittman said. “Nobody wants to the responsibility of having to shoot someone down in the street. Nobody wants the responsibility of hurting somebody’s family. We all want the best outcome.”
Attendee Carrie Johnson worried generational trauma is derailing youth’s behavior, adding that she’s seen boys in middle school punch girls in the face. Migdalia Baez said mothers living along Rice Street feel they have nowhere to turn for help in redirecting their children. Some worry that their child would be incarcerated if they ask for help.
Larry McPherson, a violence interrupter for 21 Days of Peace St. Paul, said some issues stem from youth with no guidance. McPherson and others patrol hot spots for crime across the city, including near the Midway neighborhood’s Kimball Court apartments where fentanyl drove a spike in robberies and drug violations.
“We’ve got a lot of mental health [struggles]. We’ve got a lot of doggone drug addiction that’s going on in our neighborhoods. We all got the best interests at hand for all people in our community, but we’re just not working fast enough,” McPherson said. “Until we get feet on the ground, people coming out of their own community and standing up for this real cause to take back the community, we’re going to have the same outcome.”
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