A teacher humanizes her school: Miracle at stoner hill

Abstract

In fall 1972 we would have had difficulty finding a school faculty more ready for improved interpersonal relations skills than this elementary school, Stoner Hill, of 600 students located in a southern town of 200,000 people. The schools had integrated in the middle of the previous year. Integration had uprooted and thrust teachers into alien situations teaching children of another race and working under and with people for whom they felt mild contempt and sometimes open hostility. Central office efforts to foster desensitization groups achieved scant success in day-to-day contacts between principal and teacher, teacher and teacher, teacher and child. In this school a black principal, a community leader for many years and a powerful person in black professional organizations at local and state levels, supervised twelve black teachers (in the school from five to twenty-five years) and ten white teachers (only two returning from the previous year-five experienced and five beginning teachers). All pupils were black. The community-inner-city, disadvantaged-felt slight hope for better prospects. Few white teachers understood the children's language patterns. Vandalism spread rampantly. Black and white teachers clustered separately, with white teachers totally excluded from policy-making. Unfortunately, during the previous year a physical confrontation had occurred between a black teacher and a white teacher, and feelings remained raw. Prior to opening the school in 1972, the principal had attended a workshop for administrators where David Aspy had impressed him as a person of good will with ideas worth considering. Aspy talked to the faculty about the changes his research had documented in teaching-learning processes where schools had implemented the Carkhuff model of Human Resource Development. As a result of Aspy's challenge, the group voted to undertake the study as a year-long process and to dedicate time to study between monthly meetings. Although the workshop presented other topics, most chose Interpersonal Relations Skill Training. Fifteen group members purchased copies of The Art of Helping; with a course plotted, we were on our way. A local principal, Bruce Middlebrooks, working in a similar school population using the Carkhuff model, led our first meeting. He helped us see the need to acquire skills of attending, listening, and responding to facilitate the helping process. After this initial phase, the librarian designed the specific study and provided leadership and coordination for each session. Carkhuff and associates found that persons (therapists, counselors, teachers, parents, students, and peers) offering high levels of interpersonal conditions (empathy, congruence,