Illinois teacher commits suicide citing working conditions

[proud2BlibKansan]

Mary Thorson, a 32-year-old physical education teacher at Cottage Grove Upper Grade Center in Ford Heights, Illinois, took her own life on November 24, 2011. The note she left at the scene of her death was devoted almost entirely to the conditions in the Ford Heights school district, closing with, “We must speak up about what’s going on! This life has been unbelievable.”

A veteran of the US Army Reserve, Thorson was a popular teacher at the school where she had worked since 2008, having taught in Chicago and suburban Bellwood before taking the position at Cottage Grove Upper Grade in the Chicago suburb of Ford Heights. Her colleagues noted her dedication to the students at the school, including her habit of providing them with warm clothing and school supplies.

Thorson had been suspended one week before her death due to an allegation that she had cursed at a student. Her family told the Chicago Tribune that she was worried about having become a target of the school administration and about being fired. Her personnel records were found neatly laid out on her bed after her death.

More than 98 percent of students in the Ford Heights school district live below the poverty line. In her final statement, Thorson wrote of extreme hardships faced by the students, the school administration’s disregard for teachers, and the lack of resources available in the district.

<skip>

Mary Thorson’s parents have made a special effort to communicate their daughter’s intentions. Her mother said that the young teacher’s suicide was directly related to the pressures at Cottage Grove Upper Grade Center, emphasizing that Mary had no prior mental health issues and was never in a combat situation in the Army Reserve. Thorson’s father said, “Is the school responsible? Yes, the school is responsible.”

more . . . http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jan2012/suic-j09.shtml

[limpyhobbler]

1. tragic n/t

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt

[Starry Messenger]

3. .

[madrchsod]

4. the teachers are under constant attack here in illinois.

there has always been people who found fault in the teachers, administrations,and the state`s role .today the teachers take the full brunt of the hatred of public education. we can blame both the democrats and the republicans for demonizing public education and public teachers. we can blame the guy who is our president and the person he appointed to "fix" public education.

this lady is another victim of the war on public education.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. Sadly, that's true in many other states as well

It's an epidemic.

[Tansy_Gold]

9. No, not always. It used to be good. It used to be better than good.

I'm a product of the public schools in Illinois. Working class Chicago suburban, started kindergarten September 1953, graduated high school 1966.

What was done once can be done again. Can, but not necessarily will.

I mourn for what was lost, and I am angry because it needn't have happened.



TG

[madrchsod]

21. i remember those days in the 50`s

for better or worse teachers were never questioned. although we had some "bad kids" who were trouble makers i think the majority of us were afraid of our teachers!

i still remember several of my teachers who were down right mean but i did pass their classes. another thing i find interesting is that i never had homework. today`s kids have at least an hour or two of homework every night.

[Tansy_Gold]

22. I had one "mean" teacher

And I had a couple I thought later might have been less than great. I even had one who was a blatant anti-semite, and another who was so incompetent I took the outrageous action -- at age 15! -- of walking out in the middle of a class and reporting him to the principal!

But teachers were seen as professionals and for the most part they saw themselves as professionals, and those of us who got through the system came out at the other end with a decent foundation, prepared either for life or further education.

Maybe my perspective is skewed because it was a suburban district, but I don't think the public attitude toward teachers and teaching was all that different between suburban, city, or even rural schools. Something shifted, something basic, and that's what screwed it all up.

[chervilant]

26. hmm...

I have to agree with you about the caliber of public education pre- and post-mid sixties.

A seminal study of public education in the US (The Coleman Report, 1966) substantiated that the strongest predictors of academic achievement are a student's family and peers. Yet, instead of motivating educators to explore ways to capitalize on these important predictors, this study was "widely interpreted as saying that schools {do} not matter." Our system of public education--and the teachers who carry the responsibility of EDUCATING our children--have gotten short shrift ever since.

BTW, a plethora of studies from the 60s to the present have shown a strong correlation between parental involvement and student success. And I can count on one finger the number of parents who visited my classroom (2008-09, the lone year I was allowed to teach in a public school) to discuss their child's academic success.

IMHO, some of us "survive" our contemporary system of public education, and our critical thinking skills continue to stand us in good stead, despite having been rarely exercised in public schools. Perhaps we become the parents who encourage our children to value critical thinking, and to get a good education.

[tblue37]

37. I am 61 years old. When I was in school, teachers had authority in the classroom.

If a kid acted up or didn’t do his work, the teacher was able to do something about it. Parents backed up teachers’ efforts to teach and, when necessary, to discipline students. These days, if a kid acts up, the teacher can’t do much to get him back under control, because the administrators are too afraid that the parents will sue if anyone says anything negative to their precious darling or, heaven forbid, give him a grade he doesn’t like.

Unfortunately, back then some teachers did abuse their power in the classroom, because there are rotten apples in every job. But good teachers can no longer focus on teaching, because they must spend most of their time doing crowd control and trying to keep the disruptors from completely preventing the serious students from doing any work at all. And, of course, what little time is left must be focused on test prep for NCLB.

I have an article on my Teacher, Teacher site entitled “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum,” which I wrote in response to the year I spent substituting in the local elementary schools to augment my meager salary as an adjunct college instructor. Here’s the link if you are interested:
http://www.teacherblue.homestead.com/inmates.html

[chervilant]

46. Wow...

I am just days away from a decision that will end my efforts to become a teacher...

In the five years I've struggled to obtain my accelerated teacher's certification, I've seen all manner of defiant, angry, argumentative, frustrated, disinterested, and sarcastic students. These types of students now predominate in public schools. Defiant behavior is virtually ubiquitous among teenagers, but I find it particularly distressing to witness a first or second grader using sarcasm and manipulation to derail a lesson or interrupt a teacher.

Most veteran teachers are fearful of losing their jobs, so there is very little peer support or camaraderie. The poor unfortunates in administrative positions are just as battle-weary and just as unlikely to support teamwork. The ‘bad’ teachers, whose power and control issues exacerbate students’ defiance, are present in every school, charter or public. ‘Good’ teachers are leaving the system every day.

Very little academic education is accomplished in today’s schools. Less than 10% of my classrooms showed any interest in learning the material, and few of them were able to read, follow instructions, or think critically about the material we covered.

Instead, our children are continuing to learn strategies for defying ‘adult authority figures’ and for accomplishing their social agendas throughout the day (don’t get me started about cell phones...). I see young girls wearing expensive push-up bras with cleavage-baring blouses and skin-tight jeans, locking lips in the hallways with young boys, whose pants are riding well below their waists, rendering clearly visible a vast expanse of colorful boxers or briefs. Some of my students would begin the day in ‘dress code’ and end the day wearing something skimpy or revealing, straight out of the pages of Vogue or Cosmo.

I keep reminding my friends and fellow activists that we now live in exponential times. This temporally challenging new paradigm means that we are deluged with visual and auditory stimuli from the time we wake up until we pass out each night from sheer exhaustion. Virtually ALL of our social constructs—but most particularly our parenting strategies and our system of public education—do not reflect this ginormous socio-cultural change. Add to that the fact that our global economy now exemplifies the worst of human traits, and I have to assert that our species is at an evolutionary crossroads.

I sure hope enough of us choose to be the change we hope to see in this world. I suspect that our present day “road less traveled” actually represents an evolutionary cul-de-sac abutting a bottomless abyss. If we are indeed too stupid a species to survive our own hubris, I certainly hope we haven’t inflicted any lasting damage on our amazing planet.

[patrice]

6. The work of teaching can be so absorbing. I imagine even more so amongst the truly poor.

Resisting alienation from resources that help provide balance, requires broad and deep connections that could get supplanted by the needs of the persons whom you teach, especially when those needs are chronic and acute.

God rest her soul.

[Remember Me]

7. I now declare that IT IS MORALLY WRONG to allow schools to have different

funding. ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS MUST BE EQUALLY FUNDED.

And it must start NOW.

[MadHound]

10. No, not equally funded,

But rather funded according to their needs. Rural and inner city schools both face burdens that suburban schools don't.

Not to mention that we need to simply put more funds towards education.

[Remember Me]

15. Alright, let's try this --

That the primary source of their funding is NOT the tax base of their school district. I'm sick of poor neighborhoods having poverty-stricken schools.

[MadHound]

18. Oh, I fully support that n/t

[frazzled]

13. The problem in Illinois is more complex

Illinois has a ridiculous number of school districts--more than 800, due to longstanding adherence to notions of local control. Quite a number of them have only one or two schools in the entire district, but have their own administrative staff (superintendents, etc.). This particular school district, Ford Heights School District 169, has only two schools in it: a PK-4 school and a K-8 school. It serves a total of 700 students. (Compare that to Chicago Public Schools, which has more than 600 schools and serves 450,000 students.)

The governor is trying to form a plan to consolidate a number of these miniscule districts together in order to save on administrator salaries, provide more coherent policies, etc. But it's getting a lot of pushback.

I can't say for sure, but if the administration in this district was truly this bad that it drove someone to suicide, maybe they are just a bit too insular and autocratic, and perhaps would benefit from joining a broader coalition that could bring some balance (and probably hire better a better administrator, because instead of, say, 3 separate superintendents there could be just one, recruited with a higher salary and, hopefully, better credentials). I don't know that this was about funding formulas. We really don't have enough information. It sounds bad, and I'm sure that working with kids from this kind of poor, blue-collar environment is depressing. But you probably have to have some personal instability as well to do something like this: nonetheless, she certainly must have felt deeply about the situation with the district. I don't think it's for us to make any firm judgments from this paltry amount of information.

Ford Heights is a community of about 3500 people 25 miles southeast of Chicago. It's 96% white, 0.06% African American, 2.5% Hispanic. The shocking statistic for me to read is that of the population, 45.3% is under the age of 18 (that's huge!), 11.2% 18-24, and 22.7% from 25-44. Most of the seniors must have fled: they constitute just 6.8% of the population. The median household income is a shocking $17,500. We're talking a kind of third-world skewing of the population here. According to its Wikipedia entry: "Often viewed as one of Chicago's most impoverished suburbs and at one point the poorest suburb in the United States.,[8] Ford Heights has experienced high levels of political corruption, decaying infrastructure, and an elevated crime rate." We're talking a serious situation here.

[madville]

8. I wish she should could have found the help she needed instead

I wonder what kind of mental health services the school system offered to employees?

[MadHound]

11. None.

Overworked, overstressed, underfunded, understaffed, underresourced, that was the help she needed. Sadly, that is exactly the needs that are being unmet.

The US has a long tradition of doing education on the cheap. For awhile we got away with it, no longer.

[Lifelong Protester]

12. Geez, that really hits me in the gut.

But, let's not waste money making the lives of poor kids better, eh?

Where the hell is that little sarcasm thingie?

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. Here:

[Withywindle]

14. Oh no, that's terrible.

[Trillo]

17. That's sad.

In nearly every job I've ever had, mostly every tenth word or so was a cuss word, and the bosses cursed workers everyday.

Perhaps those administrators don't live in the real world.

[msanthrope]

38. The cussing suspension was after a suspension for hitting a student...

The OP source didn't think that was important to include, but I suspect that once you hit a student, it's best that your behavior be circumspect.

[Smarmie Doofus]

19. Stress-related pathologies are off the charts for teachers I work with.

Including hypertension, anxiety disorder, depression, alcohol abuse and prescription drug dependency.

Thank you, corporate school "reformers." Thank you, $$$chool privatizers. Thank you, US Departent of Education.

Thank you, Democrat implementors of RW Republican educational philosophy.

>>The so-called educational reforms, begun under the Bush administration and expanded by President Obama, have largely been couched in the highly confrontational language of “accountability,” >>>

[riderinthestorm]

34. And she was a vet! 8 years of service so she was used to stress!

Not only that but she was clearly a pretty driven, independent woman as Thorson was the first in her family to graduate from college, getting a diploma from Western Illinois University in 2005..

"The students "loved her," said Walter Cunningham, who taught physical education with Thorson. "She treated them like a daughter or son. They all gravitated toward her."

"Like many of the teachers there, Thorson used her own money to buy students school supplies or warm clothes if she saw a need, Cunningham said. More than 98 percent of the 520 students in the district are considered low-income, according to state records"

This story is tragic on soooo many levels. Kick for more exposure and some tears for Mary Thorson....

[maximusveritas]

20. It's too bad she didn't get help

I never like to see people blame others when someone kills themselves. It was their decision to kill themselves and they have sole responsibility. Conditions and mental health services for teachers is another issue and should not be mixed in with the other.l

[aptal]

25. Well said.

[LanternWaste]

45. Quite often, mental health is the motivating factor in suicides

"Conditions and mental health services for teachers is another issue and should not be mixed in with the other.l..."

Quite often, mental health is a primary motivating factor in suicides, so it appears to me that unless you can objectively rule out mental health issues in this circumstance, then mental health services are relevant...

[Nikia]

23. It is too bad that she thought that she had no options beyond working at that school

Having recently left a workplace that was damaging to my mental health, I know what it is like to feel sadness and anxiety over one's work. Certainly, some people are more sensitive to certain conditions. I think though it is very human to feel upset in response to some situations. Leaving might actually be a better long term solution than medication or counseling.
Leaving presents new problems, especially in this economy. Public healthcare would have given some help, especially if she was thinking about getting mental health help. I don't know how supportive her parents were in life and whether they would have been willing to help her out if she would have lost her job or left instead of killing herself.

[KharmaTrain]

24. Ford Heights Is A Desparate Place...

It's long been poverty-ridden as the factory jobs that were once in the area are long gone and it's become a run down area. Add to this the dumping of "Section 8" low income people from Chicago and the poverty has only gotten worse. Sadly there's a lot of crime and broken families that put a tremendous amount of pressure on teachers...many who have come from poverty themselves. These teachers take on the angst of many of their students and in many cases are the only person who can prevent many of these kids from turning to the streets. There's no easy fix here as the cycle of poverty sucks up more and more victims...

[girl gone mad]

27. Heartbreaking.

[NNN0LHI]

28. This school is located across the street from the auto plant I retired from

That is where Ford Heights got its name from. This town was always poor. But things have gotten much worse in the past decades with the loss of local manufacturing jobs. My father used to deliver mail in this neighborhood.

This story really hits home.

Don

[Scottybeamer70]

29. I had a principal one time who

told me that I was not allowed to buy a pair of shoes for a student. I told hime it was my money and I would buy what I wanted.
The principal said, "Don't push your luck.".............
After school that day , I went to the home of the student and took him shoe shopping!
That was my last year to teach...........couldn't take it anymore. No one cared about the kids.

[Canuckistanian]

30. It astounds me how little respect teachers in America get

Constantly being attacked, blamed for low graduation rates, accused of "brainwashing" kids.....

And most are doing their jobs with far less money per student than just a few decades ago. It's no wonder many of them either give up or experience extreme frustration.

[Major Nikon]

31. "no prior mental health issues" really doesn't mean much

No one is immune from depression. It can hit anyone at any time for reasons that defy logic.

[Stuart G]

32. very sad..very powerful...nt

[malaise]

33. How sad

No one is sacred to these re[THUGS

[bigwillq]

35. Very sad.

K and R

[msanthrope]

36. Interesting that your source doesn't mention her hitting a student. Why is that??

Sadly, it sounds like she was ill, and under the impression she would be fired for cursing at a student, after serving a suspension for hitting one...


"Co-workers and friends said in interviews that Thorson was deeply upset by her job and was worried she was on the verge of being fired. She had been suspended in April after allegedly striking a student and again a week before her death, records show. The second suspension was for allegedly cursing at a student, a co-worker said."

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-01-01/news/ct-met-teacher-suicide-20120101_1_suicide-note-school-board-teachers

Your source seems to have a very biased agenda, and therefore, it is not surprising that they chose to leave out essential information that might lessen the impact of their anti-Obama rant.

What I find most surprising about your OP source is that they presume their readers are too stupid to work Google. That is sad.

[nashville_brook]

39. teacher commits suicide b/c of horrible working conditions, but all you see is an "anti-Obama" rant

that's quite interesting.

[knitter4democracy]

40. Allegedly hit a student, allegedly cussed at a student.

Key word here: allegedly. I've seen kids accuse teachers of all kinds of lies far too many times to miss that word. Heck, I've had students try to get me fired just because they didn't like that I gave so much homework--when my boss had told me to--so they made up all kinds of lies, ones they knew would work on my boss.

Be careful of assuming too much either way.

[msanthrope]

43. She admitted touching the student.

Read the article.

[knitter4democracy]

44. She was a gym teacher and admitted to a playful tap.

You can't see how this could turn into something completely different, then? I sure can. Teacher congratulates a student for a good kick in kickball by patting him on the shoulder. Student goes home and tells parent that teacher hit him. Thing snowballs out of control, and the teacher sees her career go up in flames over just patting a kid on the back.

You might want to shadow some teachers for a bit, sit in lunch rooms and class rooms, and see what we deal with on a daily basis before automatically believing the allegations when your own sources says it didn't happen.

[riderinthestorm]

41. The Chicago Tribune is about as far right wing as you can get. They are virulently anti-teacher

More facts: the allegations are just that, allegations without any determination of fact (at this point, that will never be determined for this teacher). Thorson disputed those allegations.

98% of the student population is really poor. This is an extremely challenged school district where the teachers need HELP not back seat drivers. Thorson had already spent time in the CPU system and embraced trying to help these kids at the lowest rungs. Yet these types of situations are the ones most fraught with stress and real peril for teachers under NCLB and RTT as implemented under Arne Duncan. Her fellow teachers supported her accusations about the school board and teaching conditions 100%.

[proud2BlibKansan]

42. So you dispute it with a far right source? LOL

And you dare to call it biased.



Your agenda is so transparent.

[TeachersForMary]

47. Documentary about Mary Thorson

Hello. My name is Myra Richardson. You may recall having read the January 1st, 2012, article in the Chicago Tribune about a teacher who committed suicide on Thanksgiving Day, 2011 by stepping in front of a semi-truck on expressway 80-94. Her name was Mary Eve Thorson. I am including a link to that story in case you've not seen it. A documentary based upon the events which led to this young woman's death will premiere at The Beverly Arts Center here in Chicago on June 30th, from 4 to 6.

Immediately following the film, we will have a special celebration for Illinois teachers acknowledging them for all they do. There will be refreshments, musicians, a unique raffle, buttons, wristbands, and everything necessary to promote solidarity among our teachers.

When teachers suffer in the classroom, there is a domino effect which adversely impacts our children...namely, the students. Please pass this information along to parents, teachers, and anyone interested in the emotional and physical well-being of our teachers and students.

www.marythorsondocfilm.com

[proud2BlibKansan]

48. Thank you

Looks like a wonderful film!