Teacher Challenge Good Teachers Often Get Thank-You, More Work Gratitude Of Students, Parents Invaluable, But Pay, Sabbaticals Are Also Important

Teachers can’t count on someone noticing each time they excel in the classroom.

Rewards for excellent teaching in Inland Northwest schools range from tokens of appreciation - refrigerator magnets, lapel pins and golden apples - to a year or more of learning, outside the classroom.

Few teachers or administrators believe schools do enough to reward good teaching. More training is one way. Yet principals say they lack the money to do more of that. In fact, they say they don’t have time to say enough thank-yous.

“We don’t (reward good teachers). We ask them to do more,” said Ralph Larsen, principal at South Pines Elementary School in the Spokane Valley. “Here, take these three kids instead of just one more.”

Some educators believe thank-yous from students and glowing letters from parents keep teachers going.

“Excellent teachers gain status in their own communities. That reputation becomes a mantle of pride,” said Central Valley School District Superintendent Wally Stanley.

Merit pay seldom enters the discussion. Politically, administrators say, it is unrealistic given today’s tight-spending environment. Teachers say it’s divisive, pitting one against the other for administrative favors.

Setting fair standards for such pay is a major sticking point.

“If we could work out with the union an acceptable and fair way to measure teacher performance I would support it (merit pay),” said Spokane School District Superintendent Gary Livingston.

The tiny Kootenai School District, east of Lake Coeur d’Alene, awards $500 each to its top two teachers annually. It’s apparently the only district in the Inland Northwest to use merit pay.

A few state and regional awards carry cash prizes and usually require the money be spent in the teacher’s classroom. Four teachers in Spokane won $2,500 prizes last spring in the state’s Christa McAuliffe awards.

Spokane School District 81 honors eight “distinguished teachers” each year. “It’s quite a week of celebration for them,” said Cynthia Lambarth, associate superintendent. Honors include announcements on television, a surprise ceremony attended by school board members, a bouquet and lunch at Patsy Clark’s Mansion.

“Believe me, I felt like I had won the Academy Award,” said Joan Hamilton, named a distinguished teacher last spring. She helps run the Homework Support Center at Spokane’s Libby Center.

Many administrators reward their best teachers by helping them with time off, travel and registration money to attend conferences or workshops.

But what teachers really need is the chance to study what’s working and what isn’t in their schools, said Judith Renyi of the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education.

The foundation, the research arm of the National Education Association, issued a report July 30 on how school administrators and teachers can learn together.

Indirectly, a year abroad rewards excellent teaching, said Jdon VanCurler, who will spend this year teaching English in Nishinomiya, Japan, Spokane’s sister city.

“Being competent in the classroom is definitely a factor in being selected,” he said. VanCurler is a first-grade teacher at Franklin Elementary School in Spokane.

Most teachers don’t get anything like that experience.

“We really do not reward excellence in teaching. There is nothing built into our salary scale,” said Caroline Bitterwolf, a fifth-grade teacher in Moscow, Idaho, and a board member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

“The expert teacher generally has the choice of staying in the classroom, moving into administration, going to the university level to teach. Or getting out. So if you really love kids, there are no doors,” Bitterwolf said.

Still, East Valley High School Principal Jeff Miller believes great teachers want to be told, by people they respect, that they’re doing a good job.

“I hate symbolic awards. Where’s my golden apple?” He turned to search a bookshelf. “I think I tossed it somewhere.”

Miller’s biggest challenge in rewarding teachers is his busy schedule.

“I don’t need money, I don’t need fictitious rewards. I need time.”

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The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Marny Lombard Staff writer Staff writer Carla K. Johnson contributed to this report.