Angel Teachers: Educators Who Care About Kids

There has always been a divide between teachers who view their job description solely as academic teachers and those who see their job as both academic teachers and advisng students on personal and well being problems. A dual role that is much in demand to help the increasing number of troubled teens in our large secondary schools. I call these dual-role educators " angel teachers." I have found angel teachers in almost every secodary school I observed as a teacher trainer, student assistsnce counselor, and writer/observer of secondary school life.

Angel teachers carry out their intervention in a quiet, trusting , and private manner with little interest in their own noteriety and stardom. In fact that's why students in need are attracted to them and lineup outside their classroom door for help. Students are very savvy about where they can find an open door for help. They quickly learn through the school grapevine which teachers are the " go to" educators. Yet angel teachers fly below the radar, doing their helping work quietly. They like it that way. And in their helping role angel teachers try to protect needy students from teachers, I call them " messiah teachers." who often cross professional lines and become " too" involved , serving as a parent figure, friend, and sometimes a lover. See my book, Sexual Misconduct by Teachers and Coaches, for more information on this sensitive topic. R&L publishers, www.rowmaneducation.com.

Secondary schools can be challenging, lonely, and risky places for many teens. It can wear them down, find themselves in a slump. As Dr. Seuss suggests in " Oh, the Places You'll Go," "un-slumping yourself is not easily done. You'll will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows will be lighted. But mostly they're darked. Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind. You are headed , I fear, towards a useless place.

Angel teachers who make themselves available for slumping students who find themselves in a useless place are at the forefront of the intervention system in our large secondary schools. Yet their helping skills and successful interventions , so valued by students , are often given little postive attention by the designated helpers in the school such as counselors, social workers, and school pyschologist. Professionals who may be reluctant to give up their helping turf for fear of losing their powerful role or even their jobs. While I understand their unease, unfortunately by circling the wagons to protect their turf these professioinals are missing the opportunity to create more open doors for help in the schools and take the lead in creating a new role for themselves in training teachers, students, parents, and even administrators as helpers. Opportunity knocks an they don't see it. They need a wake-up call!

It's time for these designated helpers to embrace and enlist angel teachers as valued colleagues and contributors. And to lead an effort to sell, encourage, and train academic teacher,who for too long have avoided helping their students with personal problems, as helpers. In today's school world we need every skilled person onboard to help troubled teens. They have too many problems and there are not enough open doors in our schools to answer their calls for help. The days of simply defining onself as an" academic" teacher should be brought to a quick close, replaced with a job role in which "every" teacher is well trained as a helper with the job expectation of intervening when they observe a student, parent, or educator headed towards the margins of school life.

We are after all, or need to be, our brother's and sister's keeper. Looking the " other way" when we see teens in trouble may come home to roost when we find ourselves as professionals in the same position. No one escapes adversity and tough times, even we as educators.

No, not every academic teacher can become a skilled angel teacher, but at the least they should be equipped with basic helping/ referral skills and willing and able to serve as first responders for teens in trouble What is required in this new role is caring and support to help teens fnd a way out of their troubles. That doesn't take a M.A. or Ph.D in counseling!A team composed of angel teachers and designated helpers can provide this kind of training intervention for teachers.

See my forthcoming book, Angel Teachers: Educators Who Care About Kids, for more information. Published by R&L Education, www.rowmaneducation.com, March, 2012.