Mastery of subject + discipline = educator’s success
Some of the children LaToyshia Parson-Brown deals with are homeless. Some lack clothing, manners and school supplies.
Other children must be taught to work in harmony with others, to be responsible.
There are also times when Parson-Brown has to handle a cursing parent and mothers and fathers who don’t speak English.
No, Parson-Brown is not a social worker.
She is a sixth-grade math teacher at West Preparatory Academy in the Clark County School District, a school with nearly 90 minutes of extended instruction time each day.
“It would be wonderful to just teach math,” Parson-Brown said as she and her husband, Jorvell Brown, a minister at Second Baptist Church, barbecued recently at their North Las Vegas home. “Unfortunately, today you have to do much more than teach in your discipline.”
Even so, Mike Barton, the chief academic officer for the district and Parson-Brown’s former principal at West Prep, calls the classroom veteran of 13 years “a great teacher,” one who played “a big role” in improving math test scores.
“She has a high bar as far as expectations for her students,” Barton said. “Some students come in to her with at-risk obstacles in academic or social skills, but she finds a way to … never let that be an excuse in her teaching.”
With the start of the school year a little over a month away, Parson-Brown finds herself learning yet another new way of teaching pre-algebra and pre-geometry — she says “every two or three years there is a change.”
She’s also preparing to manage student discussion of this summer’s violent events around the country.
“It’s inevitable that they’re going to want to talk about it,” said Parson-Brown, who allows five to eight minutes at the beginning of class for students to have disciplined discussion.
“I’m very careful with my personal opinion on issues because students are easily influenced at that age,” said Parson-Brown, 36. “ But if a child asks me what to do if a policeman stops him, I’m going to tell him to be respectful and cooperative to help make sure there are no problems.”
Barton believes a few minutes of what teachers call directed “real talk” at the beginning of a class can pay dividends.
“You can’t ignore national issues,” he said. “It gives students an outlet … then they’re able to concentrate on the subject matter at hand.”
Key to making a classroom work, Parson-Brown said, is discipline.
If she has a student who informs her that homelessness is hurting his sleep, she deals with it outside of class. Ditto for problems with clothing, classroom supplies and parents’ language struggles.
“Real talk” can never go over the five to eight minutes at the beginning of class.
Should a parent barge into the classroom cursing about punishment given to her daughter, as has happened, she immediately calls the school cop for a quick removal.
Class time, she says, is too precious to waste.
She uses the first week of school to instruct students on school/classroom rules as well as the proper way to interact with authority figures and each other. If they forget during the semester, she politely, but firmly, reminds them of how to act.
“She knows her subject and knows how to control a classroom,” Barton said.
Parson-Brown concedes that it’s becoming more difficult to have a controlled classroom.
“Discipline starts at home, and if parents aren’t doing it there, it’s harder to have it in the classroom,” she said. “And without discipline, little learning can ever really occur.”
Parson-Brown’s grandparents were so respected as educators that a North Las Vegas school, Claude and Stella Parson Elementary, was named after them.
Stella Mason Parson was the first black woman to graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno.
“I was thinking of getting out of the classroom because it can be so frustrating,” Parson-Brown said. “And then I saw this young man in the community who said I straightened him out so he got an education and a good job. I cried all the way home. I realized I was still making a difference.”
Paul Harasim’s column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Friday in the Nevada section and Thursday in the Life section. Contact him at pharasim@reviewjournal.
