Teaching in the Wake of Growth

By Mitch Traphagen

mitch@observernews.net

GIBSONTON - The school is huge. Only partially visible to passing traffic on Big Bend Road, the sprawling single story building includes portable classrooms and even portable teachers.

That's right, portable teachers. A handful of instructors do not have permanent classrooms and travel the hallways along with the students between classes teaching in rooms that become available throughout the day.

As people flock to south Hillsborough County, the stories are usually of booming real estate and commercial markets. Growth is a way of life in south county. Few people, however, stop to think about the wake of that tremendous growth. That wake is a way of life at Eisenhower Middle School.

At nearly 1,700 students it is the largest middle school in Hillsborough County. That number, however, is about to grow. Some projections place enrollment at 2,100 for the next school year.

No one is the 'new kid' for long at Eisenhower. "Virtually every day a new student enrolls," said Eisenhower Principal Tim Ducker.

Ducker and the nearly 200 faculty members, however, take the crush of students in stride. They are committed to maintaining the focus on providing a quality education to each student. The school is also focusing on reading, particularly for students who speak English as a second language. Eisenhower has developed a beginning school program, an after-school program and set up teams to bring up reading scores. "We're going to work hard every day," said Ducker. It is his focus, it is the faculty's focus.

Maintaining that focus is just about all they can do, however. Shortly after school lets out for the summer, the oldest sections of Eisenhower will be torn down and construction will begin on several new classrooms and facilities. This will have a major impact on the faculty as well as the students. Even the cafeteria will be torn down and, as such staff members may be delivering boxed lunches to the students when it rains next year. "What else can we do," asked Ducker. "The kids have to eat lunch and we can't let them get soaked."

Despite the rapidly growing student population that long since surpassed the capacity of the school, the faculty and administration has successfully managed to avoid problems seen at other large schools. There are no armed guards at the doors, there are no metal detectors. There is one HCSO school resource deputy but the smile she wears indicates that she is not constantly expecting to pull her weapon.

"The single best way to prevent problems in the school is to have the faculty out and about in the halls between classes," said Ducker. "Our teachers are very good at knowing what is going on. They communicate with the kids, they are out in the hallways."

That strategy was evident on a recent Monday morning. Within seconds of the bell ringing signalling the end of the first period, the halls filled with a riot of students and sounds. Ducker and most of the faculty were also in the halls and within a few minutes, quiet had returned as quickly as it started. There are military operations that may not perform with such efficiency, yet that process is repeated several times each day.

The entire nature of Eisenhower is now changing. The school, previously remote and considered rural is quickly becoming a neighborhood school as housing developments go up around it.

"That is a major change for us," said Ducker. I got a call the other day asking 'where does my child put their bike?' That's the first time anyone has ever called about that. Now we've got kids that can actually ride their bike or walk to school and that's new for us."

Eisenhower was built in 1957 as East Bay High School. It became Eisenhower Junior High in 1972 serving what was until recently the largely rural south county area. Although a new middle school is planned to open near Ruskin in 2004, Eisenhower remains the only middle school in South Hillsborough County.

With construction and growth the school is facing rapid changes and many new challenges. "We're going to take on a whole new look fast," said Ducker. The construction is a two year project but parts of it will be phased in. Fortunately we won't need as many portables as we thought. We have 24 of them now and we've lost a ton of P.E. (physical education) space to them."

Preparing for such major changes is not easy and Ducker is working to expect the unexpected. "We have to be prepared for day to day changes," he said. "Something will happen on a Wednesday morning that we'll never have expected. We'll have to have patience and we'll have to have understanding with the kids that things will happen."

The good news in all of the change is that the school is not having difficulty in attracting quality teachers. "I get a lot of resumes," said Ducker. "In the last year or so we've had a large number of quality people applying. There are a lot people that want to live in this part of Florida. I can't blame them, I love it too."

For Ducker and the faculty, the bottom line remains with the kids. While many would consider the pre-teen/early-teen years as difficult, Ducker can't imagine working with any other group.

"These kids want to be treated as adults but at the same time they want to be treated as kids," he said. They are kind of stuck in the middle. To tell you the truth, I love working with this age. These kids are still pliable, they are great to work with and I thoroughly enjoy it. You can definitely still have an impact on these kids."

Ducker paused for a moment and then added, "So many times the kids will put on this outer facade and then you start talking to them and find that they are just nice little kids."

That thought quickly puts the growth, the numbers, the changes and the challenges into perspective. Everything is, after all, about and for the kids.