OPINION: I was a police officer for decades. Teaching was harder.

Many years ago, I did my stint as a student teacher to complete my teaching degree. I was assigned to a fourth grade class that was on the third floor of one of the elementary schools in Ketchikan. During my first week, there was a fire drill. I had to march the kids across the hall to another classroom and wait for their students to evacuate. Then I took them to a window about three feet from the floor and made sure they could all climb over the window sill and land on the metal stairway, so they could make it down the three flights of rickety stairs to the ground. Some needed a boost to make it through the window, and there were more than a few students who were, um, hefty. By the time we got to the gathering place away from the building, it was time to re-enter. No wonder elementary schools are usually one-story buildings.

There was a student who was undergoing a double-blind study to see if he could benefit from medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Each day, he would take pills from a coded envelope without knowing if it was a placebo or a real medication. I was to keep a log of his behavior and then include my observation as to whether it was the medication day. It was easy to get the medicine days right because, on the other days, he was jumping off the desktop, hitting other kids, throwing any object he could find at others, and running down a hallway screaming. It’s exhausting to have one student who needs so much attention. It was even more exhausting when many of the other kids were unruly, too. I remember my host teacher’s words of wisdom on a particularly chaotic day. He said, “You don’t have to like them … you just have to teach them.” Surprisingly, that was very helpful.

When I was a substitute teacher in Anchorage, I was impressed by how the teachers had written preparations for each day. The “kit” for substitute teachers had instructions on lockdowns. It is a societal failure that we have to prepare for the next school shooting. In a Title 1 school, there were five color-coded table signs for separate reading instructions. Going from table to table for the 50-minute segment was not enough teacher time to see if any progress was made. For many students, English was not their first language. While it is wonderful to see such diversity, I worried that they may not understand enough of what I said. With larger classroom sizes, language barriers can hamper their ability to learn. Ideally, K-3 should have no more than 15 students per class.

Teaching is the hardest job I have ever had. I spent more than 35 years in law enforcement and still believe that teaching was my greatest challenge. If we want a brighter future for our children, we need to make sure we fund schools adequately. We need to pay teachers a living and fair wage. We need equity for students: Charter schools may be great, but they are government-funded, yet unavailable for students that have no means of transportation to get there. We need more funding for the public schools. My thoughts on home-schooling would be to limit that to remote areas that don’t have access to schools or for illness or conditions for those children who must stay home. Social interaction is a healthy part of growing up.

Andrea Jacobson has a master’s degree in teaching and retired from the Ketchikan Police Department after 21.5 years. Jacobson worked for the Alaska State Troopers for 14.5 years and has been a Certified Fraud Examiner for 18 years.

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