Interview with Barbara Parker Charnock

Note: Information added or substantially modified by Mrs. Charnock during the editing process is in brackets [ ]. Karen Blair: Mrs. Charnock, thank you for sharing with us your thoughts about your teacher preparation here at Towson and your subsequent career in Education. You are helping us enrich our understanding of the evolution of Teacher Education across time. I guess the best place to begin is at the beginning. If you would, would you tell us a little bit about your early social context: where you grew up, what your thoughts about a career were, when you decided that perhaps you'd want to become a teacher and finally, your decision to come to Towson University? Barbara Charnock: I grew up on the border between Carroll and Baltimore County on Wards Chapel Road. I always wanted to be a teacher since fourth grade. I used to line up everybody in my family and the neighbors and force them to play school during the summer, which they didn’t all appreciate. I had always wanted to be a teacher. Still, education is a prime priority for me on all levels. I was the first to go to college in my family. I began high school in what they called the Commercial Course, getting you ready for a secretarial position. I soon realized that I really didn't like that kind of study. I had a good mentor in high school that helped me revamp my course structure and get into college. I also had a guidance counselor that told me my two sisters had been secretaries, and I should be satisfied to be a secretary too. K.B.: Really? B.C.: Fortunately, Kenneth Vice at Milford Mill High School where I went to high school in Baltimore County, felt that I could be a teacher if I wanted to be a teacher. I was Valedictorian of my class at Milford Mill and had no money whatsoever to go to college. At that time you could go to Towson for tuition waiver. You didn't have to pay tuition if you promised to teach two years in the state. That still left $250 per year for room and board. I got that $250 through four scholarships: $100, $100, $25, and $25 from the Lochearn Women's Club, the Optimists, the Kiwanis and people who were interested in helping students go to college. K.B.: Wonderful. B.C.: Every semester I had to write to each of those organizations and tell them how I was doing and show them a list of my grades. We kept in touch throughout the four years of college, and they paid for my tuition. When I graduated, I did return the two year tuition waiver to the college by teaching two years in Baltimore County. K.B.: Wonderful. We'd like you to recall, reflect on your coursework here at Towson. Were your Teacher Education courses mostly theoretical or practical? Combination of both, perhaps? B.C.: I think they were a combination of both. I was very fortunate to go to Towson State Teacher's College when it was a teacher's college. The main priority of the college was teacher instruction, teacher preparation. I think it was excellent. It was realistic in that we had excellent teaching experiences in the schools around the county to help us understand the reality of teaching. [It was theoretical in that it strengthened our commitment to the Philosophy of Education. Priority was placed upon citizenship education and in helping a state and a nation become more informed and better citizens. There was a global perspective on education, I think, when we were being taught. It was more than learning facts. Education was perspective broadening. It was more of a philosophical commitment to empowerment and changing lives. As teacher education students, that's what we were really, really committed to and interested in. Good teaching instills the will to learn and reach beyond your grasp to better yourself and others. Our instructors were extremely committed at the time. We had excellent instructors in the content areas and in Education Theory and Practice. They were fine examples for us and introduced us to teaching as a “calling,” as well as a profession. Mr. Burrier and Mr. Abendroth were exemplary as were Dr. Blumberg and Dr. Falco.] K.B.: Is there anything you remember, in addition to Mr. Abendroth, about your coursework that sort of served you well afterwards? Was there a trend at the time on how children should be taught? B.C.: I think our watch word was preparation, preparation, preparation. It was just drilled into our heads as student teachers and as teachers-to-be that you needed to prepare. You needed to have every moment focused and have something for the students to do. There was a big priority on motivation. Lots of gimmicks and things to help the students become engaged. The theory was once they were engaged there wouldn't be any discipline problems. There would be good educational instruction time. That worked usually most of the time, if you were prepared, but over-preparation was a keynote there. There wasn't any off-the-cuff allowed. As a result, we put a lot of emphasis on written education plans, written lesson plans and knowing exactly what we were supposed to be doing. Planning ahead so that you knew what your goals were for that week, that month, in addition to the day. We had very strict formulas for instruction. I think that stood us in good stead when we got out into the classroom, because if you have a lot planned and you have a lot going on, then the kids seemed to be very engaged and they would stay engaged. No down time. That was always a very important point. No down time. I think that was the biggest emphasis. They also taught us so many important organizational skills. Just little clues, little things like seating arrangements and meeting the students at the door and always moving around the room. Things that seem today to be not as important or a little irrelevant, I think, were an important part of classroom discipline and control. I think today when new teachers go into the classroom, discipline and classroom management are the biggest problems, the biggest challenge they have. They're very well versed in their subject, but when they try to teach the subject, they don't get the attention. When we were being taught to be teachers that was a major consideration, classroom control. I'm grateful for that because I think it made for successful beginnings for new teachers especially. K.B.: Where did you do your student teaching? B.C.: In 1962, teachers were in great demand. You could have your pick of where you wanted to teach. K.B.: Oh my heavens! B.C.: There were many new schools. It was exciting to be able to go around and look at the schools and feel like you were really wanted. For purposes of geography for where our apartment was, and where my husband was teaching, I chose Woodlawn Junior High School on St. Lukes Lane near Randallstown. My husband chose Johnnycake Junior High School, which was over by Route 40. At Woodlawn, we had a very motivated population of students. Very motivated. It was a good school to teach in. Good administration. Good school. A lot of support for new teachers, which proved to be a big help for success in the first few years. K.B.: Before you started your career, you student taught there? B.C.: No. I student taught at Dumbarton Junior High School, which is right here in Towson. It was a premier junior high school. There were excellent teachers there. I was fortunate to teach under Mrs. Bush, who had had student teachers forever. She was a very formidable teacher for both student teachers and students, but excellent in her advice and organizational skills. K.B.: When you student taught, at what point did you take over the teaching? Did you gradually go into this? B.C.: We did. We started with that right in the very beginning with helping students and maybe doing what they called a drill or a motivation, a preparation for the class. We did maybe one or two of those a day. We did a whole semester of student teaching. I'd say maybe three, four weeks into the semester we would be doing one class at least, maybe picking up half of another class. We had, what was called at that time, CORE, which was a correlated group of subjects: Language Arts, Social Studies, English, Reading. You had two sections each for three hours a day, so it was six hours, the two classes. Then you could restructure the classes. If you had a Reading assignment that correlated to your Social Studies work, you could switch the two and work with it in a different way. We did a lot of that. We also started out mainly with the Language Arts and the English and then moved into Social Studies. At least, that is the way she structured it. K.B.: That was a lot of subjects to be conversant in. B.C.: [Yes. If you had a major in Junior High, which is what my Bachelor's major was in, you had to be responsible for subject matter courses that prepared you to teach English plus the Social Studies concentration. I was in seventh grade CORE, which was American History. My emphasis was American History and then American Literature in addition to English and Language Arts.] K.B.: You had said that when you were ready to graduate there were many opportunities available because teachers were in demand. How were you feeling as you graduated? Confident? Were you anxious about taking your first job? B.C.: No. Very excited, very confident, very enthusiastic. My husband was a teacher. We had many teacher friends. That was one of our main sources of conversation when we got together. We were excited about beginning our first year of teaching. I was never really anxious, because I felt very well prepared from Towson. I feel we got an excellent education here and preparation for how to handle the kids. That was part of the classroom management piece, which I hope is still being emphasized. I know there is an emphasis today on the content matter, but I think that teacher preparation piece is so important. We were ready. In 1962, we were ready to teach and excited about it. K.B.: You went to Woodlawn? B.C.: Woodlawn Junior High. I had 30 to 36 kids in a class. K.B.: Oh my heavens! B.C.: We had a large population in our classes. K.B.: You were dealing with this baby boom. B.C.: We were. A big emphasis on education, especially, Science and Math. I was English/Social Studies. Science and Math was very important because we were in the Sputnik Race, [with Russia and the Cold War.] K.B.: That was 1960, I think. President Kennedy had promised that would be front and center in terms of our focus. B.C.: We were charged with keeping up with the Russians and everyone else around the world, and especially in Math and Science. K.B.: You were there for three years? B.C.: I was. I was there for three years. I had fulfilled my two year responsibility. Then my son was born. I stopped teaching full time and began to substitute some at my husband's school, Johnnycake Junior High. Then my daughter was born four years later. I stopped for two or three years until she was a little older. In fact, when she went to kindergarten I went back to substituting. My husband was at Deer Park Junior High School then, and that is where I began substituting. I did that for four years, I think, four or five years. Then I became a Special Education Aide at Deer Park Junior High. That was another interesting thing in the 60's. You were allowed to have husband and wife teams in the school. There were several husband and wife teams. Neither of you could be the direct supervisor of the other one. He was the Science Chairman first and then Vice Principal and remained Vice Principal until 1989. K.B.: What did you do in this new position that you had as a Special Education Aide? What did that entail? B.C.: As a Special Ed. Aide, I worked mainly one-on-one with students that were having quite a bit of difficulty or who needed direct supervision in a regular classroom. We tried to mainstream as much as possible. Many times we would go into the classroom as a Special Education Aide to offer up assistance to the teacher or to just be with an individual student if they were having a lot of difficulty. K.B.: Were you an aide for Language Arts? B.C.: Every area. K.B.: Everything? Oh my heavens! B.C.: Science, Math, English, Social Studies. Specials we did not go into, but we were in the others. I also did some individual instruction with two or three students at a time. It was very interesting. K.B.: At a certain point, you elect to go back to school yourself and get a Master's degree. What prompted that and what was your degree in? B.C.: In 1989, unfortunately, I lost my husband to cancer. I decided to use my head to heal my heart and came back to Towson for a master's degree. I received a Master's degree in Secondary Education, again, but this time with an emphasis. I had become interested in the discipline problems at the school. I took as many courses as possible in Risk Management, Crisis Intervention and Behavior Modification. I had learned a lot of skills as a Special Ed. Aide with behavior modification, because that's the thing that we emphasized a lot in Special Ed. So, I got my Master's degree. Fortunately, at that time there was a great Principal at Deer Park, Dr. George Hohl. He is also involved at the college here, I think. He was very interested in trying to keep suspensions down. The county was very interested in that as well. Instead of suspending and having the students out of school, they wanted to keep them in school as much as possible. The regular classroom teacher did not want discipline problems in a classroom of 30 kids where it was more difficult to attend to them. I asked him if we could begin a program, which I was familiar with, with another teacher from Johns Hopkins that would address the discipline problems. Instead of suspending them, I asked to have students in this program on a limited basis. Not 30 at a time, but 10-12 at a time. Fortunately, he was all for that, because that was one of the major goals of the county. We began a program called the PAR program. Actually, that was Hopkins' program, but we brought it to Deer Park. It was called Prevention, Action and Resolution. It was based mainly on behavior modification. The students that were giving difficulty, behavior problems, not academic problems, but behavior problems in the regular classroom were diverted to the PAR program. I had at that time an old Home-Ec room, which had its own kitchen, its own living room, its own dining room table, its own refrigerator, its own sink, its own bathroom and all the desks in one area. We were totally self-contained. I would take the discipline problems. Usually, between six and eight, sometimes ten at a time for however long it took to rehabilitate them. Then they would try to go back into the regular classroom with the promise or the threat that if they didn't make it in the regular classroom they'd come back to the self-contained PAR program. I had help. Teachers were assigned two or three periods during the week to be with me for academic purposes. It was individual tutoring, no classroom instruction. K.B.: The teachers actually then helped with content. B.C.: [The students’ teachers sent work to the Resource Room. Correct. I did as well. We had a schedule. I think the success of the program was based on three different things. One, consistency where the schedule was exactly the same every day and expectations were the same every day. Two, knowing that they were comfortable and expectations were there, but that they were not going to be disciplined, as such, except with more work kept them focused. Three, the fact that it was a one-to-one basis and there was no one around or no audience extinguished behavior problems. There were no other students, except for the ones that were in there who couldn't speak at all. I think the program really revolved around that consistency and scheduling and our individual attention. They thrived on individual attention and rewards for positive behavior. It was very successful. Hopkins has some statistics which followed our progress over several years. Many of the students were rehabilitated and did very well. Others did not, but they were different stories. I kept journals, which could become best-selling novels, I’m sure!!] K.B.: Well, of course. That's a tough audience. B.C.: I loved it. I thought it was exciting every day. You never knew what you were going to get, what you had to deal with. The intake was the most interesting part, because that's when they were at their worst. You had to use a lot of skills. It was very, very interesting. K.B.: How long did you do that? B.C.: I did that from 1992 to 2003 when my first grandchild was born. I retired the year my first grandchild was born in California, so I would be able to go out there when I wanted. K.B.: Of course, absolutely. B.C.: They were very rewarding years. I loved it. K.B.: It sounds like it was a very effective program. That in itself is very rewarding. You had an additional relationship with education and that is through Carroll Community College. You now serve on the Board. B.C.: Board of Trustees. K.B.: How did that relationship develop? Tell us a little bit about it. B.C.: Southern Carroll County, South Carroll was very interested in education. There are many transplants from Baltimore County that moved out to South Carroll. [We kind of call South Carroll Baltimore County West. In the late 60’s and early 70’s, many young families who were very interested in education moved to Carroll. When our kids were in elementary school at Freedom Elementary, a group of us got together and realized that there was no further additional education after high school that was affordable in Carroll County. There was Western Maryland College at the time.] K.B.: Which is private? B.C.: It is private and prohibitive as far as cost was concerned. We went to the County Commissioners. Several parents, this was the PTA at Freedom Elementary, went to the County Commissioners and asked that they do a study or take some time to think about higher education beyond high school in Carroll County. We asked them if they would consider approaching Catonsville Community College to have a branch of Catonsville come to Carroll. After several years of looking at it, finally, we had a county planner that was very interested in it. We did get a branch of Catonsville Community College that came to the old Robert Moton School in Carroll County and began there as a branch community college. They were still graduating from Catonsville Community College and they would still have their degree from Catonsville but be based in Carroll. This went on for several years until we really just began to outgrow our little school there. Also, we were not really in sync with the goals and mission of Catonsville because they were serving Baltimore County and Carroll County was more agricultural. It had other goals and other priorities. [We were encouraged by the Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) and the State Board of Community Colleges (SBCC) to become an independent college and we did become an independent college in '95, I think it was. We have been an independent college since then. We are accredited by Middle States and we've just grown and grown and grown into a beautiful campus with an excellent reputation. We serve over 20,000 people altogether with a superior academic transfer A.A. degree, many certificate programs as well as lifelong learning opportunities for all ages. We're very proud of the whole process with building the campus and also building the credibility of the college within the county, state and nation.] We've had two excellent Presidents, Dr. Shields and now Dr. Pappalardo. The county is very proud of and very invested in the college as is the college in the county and the community. Education has always been a priority of mine. I remember my son saying after he got into college “Mom, there is no PTA in college.” Little did he know there was going to be a PTA in college, at the community college. He went to James Madison. My daughter came here to Towson. She's a teacher. I moved on to the Carroll Community College Board of Trustees since there was no PTA. K.B.: What kinds of programs, especially, does Carroll Community College emphasize? B.C.: We have fully accredited transfer programs and articulation agreements with many colleges, private colleges as well as state colleges. You're guaranteed full transfer to any college in Maryland. Our students are highly sought after. We get scholarships from every college in the state. University of Baltimore is particularly interested in our business students as is Hood, McDaniel and Notre Dame. They are welcome everywhere, because they’re so well prepared. [Our faculty and staff are incredible and they give individual attention to the students--a lot of counseling, a lot of preparation, individualized studies and teaching for learning as we were taught at Towson. We have programs that fit the needs of many of our citizens. We have academic programs such as the Hill Scholar Program. We're very proud of our Criminal Justice Program, our Engineering Program, Nursing Degrees, Physical Therapy, Education and many others. We're extremely proud that in September we opened the Mount Airy Center for Medical Technology in which we partner with Frederick Community College and Howard Community College. The three of us were able to purchase and set up a variety of high tech medical equipment that one college could never have afforded. We're very proud of that. We had Barbara Mikulski, Elijah Cummings and several of the congressional and representative members at the opening because they had been so instrumental in helping us get the money for the center.] Our Med Tech programs are excellent. We're staging them mainly from the Mount Airy Center. Our Nursing program is equal to none. We not only have 100% graduation for the last four years, or 100% passing of state accrediting, but we had 100% on the tests from all the students. That has occurred for four years in a row. We're extremely proud of that. There are so many other programs. We're emphasizing, as you would imagine, STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, because that's the emphasis in the high schools now. That's a big program. We just started a Pre-Engineering program. We have the Pre-Teacher Ed programs here that transfer to Towson or wherever. I think the college is doing an excellent job. We're very proud as a Board of Trustees for what is going on. As you can tell, I could talk forever about Carroll Community College because I am committed to its excellence and what I see it doing for the community. I felt the same way about Towson. I've always spoken very highly about the excellence in teaching and teacher preparation that we had as a State Teacher's College. K.B.: Barb, is there anything we've forgotten? B.C.: You probably heard more than you expected. I'm so committed to education. I think it's the key to our future and the community college especially, because right now the American Dream is in jeopardy because of the economic crisis. I think the community college is part of the remolding of the American Dream. Students do have a chance at an education. They're not constrained by finances. We have so many scholarships. We have a wonderful foundation, as do the other fifteen community colleges in Maryland. I think that education is the key to the future. An informed citizenry, and an educated citizenry can do anything and everything that is needed to get this nation back on track and to help us with the financial crises that we have now and the crisis in attitude which threatens our prosperity. When you have a chance at an education, you get a global perspective. That global perspective helps you to be more cooperative with your neighbors as well as your global neighbors. I think that will be the key in the future for our contact with the rest of the world. We have to have an educated population. Towson is a part of that and our community college is a part of that. K.B.: One last thing. Given your involvement in education over the last 50 years, what advice, what wisdom would you share with individuals who were considering a career as a teacher? B.C.: I think to never lose sight of the fact that the students are very influenced by one-on-one attention and commitment to their education and to their wellbeing. I know we're placing a lot of emphasis on technology and a lot of emphasis on so many varieties of ways of educating a child. That's good. That's important, because it meets individual needs. I don't think we should ever as a teacher, a new teacher or any kind of teacher, lose sight of the fact that is it a very personal human relationship that you have when you're teaching. You can impart this knowledge so much better with a committed human relationship than you can with any matter of devices that there are. The technology can be very helpful. I'm not at all against technology. I don't think we can lose sight of the fact that this is a very personal commitment that you make as a teacher to become committed with your students, to love them first, teach them second and help them to progress in ways of human relationships. I think no matter how much technology we have in the future, if we can't get along with one another and use that technology cooperatively on a neighborhood and global basis, it's not going to be any good at all. If you have a teacher-student relationship that promotes cooperation, compassion, integrity and human relations, then I think your teaching is going to go so much further in molding a future and a future for that child than anything that you could do with History or Social Studies or technology. I think that would be the key I would say. Be sure you love what you're doing. Be sure you love the students that you have. Work with them as best you can to impart what good human relationships mean in learning and living in this world. K.B.: Is it a career that you would recommend? B.C.: Oh, it's so rewarding. Yes, I would highly recommend it, unless you want to get rich. Then I would not recommend it. You're not going to get rich in money, but you'll be so rich in experiences. There is so much reward in teaching and really relating to students. I don't think there is any better career. At least, there wasn't for me. I've enjoyed it thoroughly. I continue to enjoy teaching my grandchildren, working with the Community College students and the adult learners as well. I would highly recommend teaching. K.B.: Thank you.