I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how terrible the situation is for many kids in Jackson County, Kentucky. It’s something that I knew, at least abstractly, coming into my volunteer year, but after working in the schools for five months, it’s becoming much more tangible.

A study just came out that listed Kentucky 41st in the nation for the quality of their teachers. I’m sure that there must be some truth to this, but I can’t help but think that there are some much bigger problems than the teachers. The teachers I work with are all very dedicated to their students and very frustrated with some of the state requirements. Kentucky is coming out with new standards that teachers are expected to meet, but it hasn’t developed all of these standards yet, making it hard for teachers to create a curriculum. In addition to planning for these mysterious new standards, teachers have to integrate various subjects and document how they do it. They can’t just have a science project – they have to have a science project that combines science, art, and English, and they have to upload examples of student work into the computer. There’s also paperwork to fill out for students who get extra help. Oh, and teachers can’t even work on all these documents while students are taking a test or working on a worksheet because many students need questions read out loud to them. One teacher was telling me that she literally does not have enough time to do all the paperwork that she’s supposed to be doing.

Family Resource Centers are an important part of all the schools. They try to make sure that students have all the support and resources they need in order to succeed academically – things like clean clothes and lunch. Unfortunately, their funding keeps getting cut, making it impossible for them to help as much as they would like. One of the issues that the Family Resource Centers deals with is attendance. I was recently at a meeting where one of the elementary school Resource Center directors remarked that she had at least five students who had missed at  least 50 days of school (and the schools just hit their hundredth day). The middle school director responded that she had students who had missed 70 days. “Don’t the schools have some sort of absence policy?” you might be asking, and the answer is yes, they do, but those policies tend to deal with unexcused absences. In a lot of cases, these students come in with doctor’s notes.

If students aren’t even in school, it’s impossible to teach them, and imagine how they must feel when they do come. If they’re only around about half the time, I’m sure that they’re completely lost, which won’t make them want to come back. I can see the results of constant absences in many of the kids I work with. A lot of the fourth graders have handwriting that is nearly impossible to read, and sometimes I can only tell what they’re trying to say on their tests because I know what the answers are supposed to be. Many of them don’t know how to read. And I don’t mean that they’re not reading as well as they should be – I mean that they actually can’t read. I was helping one boy with his Power Point presentation, and I was supposed to be writing down his thoughts as he told me the information. I quickly discovered that he didn’t know the information, and he couldn’t read in order to find it. Where do you even start with a student like that? I tried coaxing the answers out of him, but in the end it felt like I was just telling him things and then he would tell me to write them down. It’s so hard to learn new information when you don’t have the basics of reading and writing down.

There are so many underlying issues with the quality of education that it can seem kind of hopeless. How can you teach students who aren’t even coming to school? How can you help kids learn when they don’t have any support at home? How can you enforce attendance policies when kids come in with doctor’s notes? Sometimes I think the most important thing that I do for these children is show up every week. I get to be the “fun teacher” that they see for an hour, and it’s something they look forward to – it makes learning fun for them. Sure, we’re teaching them important lessons on bullying and budgeting, but we’re also showing them that someone cares.

And there is hope. There are school backpack programs that provide a bag full of food on Fridays to families that might not otherwise be able to feed their kids over the weekend. There are mobile health units that provide some dental and medical services so kids don’t miss school for doctor’s visits. CAP has a school readiness program that makes sure children have all their essential school supplies. Perhaps most important, there are a lot of people who care: people who are working to get students to school and keep them there.

“At the end of the day, love and compassion will win.” – Terry Waite

Erin C. is a long-term volunteer in Educational and Recreational Development. She is a member of the Jackson Volunteer Community.