Retiring teacher talks about how students' lives have changed

Karla Bolken is retiring; she said she looks forward to sleeping in and drinking coffee and reading the newspaper in the morning.

Life will be very different for Karla, as she has spent most of it in school.

Karla holds a bachelor's degree in English and a master's in guidance counseling. She taught speech and composition for 10 years at Montana State University-Northern, English for 20 at Havre High School and spent the last five years as a counselor at the same school. During her time at Havre High, she has also coached speech and debate, as well as golf.

Karla thinks teaching is in her blood. She didn't play house or tea party as a kid. She played school.

"When I was a little, one of my best friends and I used to take her brother's wagon ... and would go over to the college," she said. "We'd dig in the garbage cans behind the college and get papers to take home and play school with. Sometimes you'd find books that they'd thrown away. We didn't want to get caught because we thought we'd get in trouble for stealing their garbage."

Karla's words flow out elegantly and rhythmicly, almost as if she's reading passages from her favorite John Steinbeck novel. When she becomes excited about a topic - students, for instance - her voice rises, but only a little.

"The kids are still the kids, and they still have the same needs," she said. "They still want acceptance, and they still want to be successful, and they still want to graduate from high school, they still want friends. I think it's just it's harder now."

Karla said social media has magnified the traumatic emotional experience that is commonly part of the high school experience.

"If you made a mistake, the people who saw it would know. And they might tell a few people," she said. "But today, one person sees it and posts it on Facebook, and the whole world knows. And then how do you recover from that? I think we do see kids with more emotional problems than we used to."

Karla said drugs are another factor that add to the already-present challenge of student life - drugs used to be mainly a problem isolated to students.

"We have not just kids who do drugs, but we have kids whose parents use drugs," she said, adding that the student's chances of success drop significantly when parents do drugs.

She emphasized that the issue of parents on drugs is more of an issue than it used to be, but also clarified she was saying "that a majority of our kids' parents are not on drugs."

Echoing the sentiment of other teachers who have taught for decades, Karla said teachers no longer have as much time as they used to.

"There used to be collegiality. Teachers had more time to consult with one another, to compare notes, to make plans together on how best to teach literature or math, or whatever - and to get to know each other. And they don't have the time. I feel like we don't know each other like we used to," she said.

To Karla, top-down standardized tests have been a major reason for the curb in time.

"There's more pressure on teachers to make the standard, to pass the tests," she said. "Most teachers had five classes and two prep periods. And now, nobody has two prep periods. Everybody's teaching six classes. If you have a stack of essays to read, or tests to correct, you don't have to time to talk to people."

While Karla agrees that guidelines have changed the way students are taught, she's not saying the education is better or worse.

"Because of the mandates that have come down from the federal level, there's more pressure to meet specific standards. But I don't think kids are learning less, they're just learning different," she said.

With that being said, she believes students are no less prepared after they leave high school than they used to be. But the world is very different from what it used to be - students today go out into a workforce filled with uncertainty.

"I don't think kids are less prepared for real life. But they say in college you can't do vocational or job preparation because the jobs these kids will be doing don't even exist yet. Jobs are changing so much. We're preparing kids for jobs that might not even exist, especially in Montana because we're so isolated. Kids don't even have a concept of a job they might someday be involved in," she said.

Now Karla is retiring and she says she wants to remember the good times, those involving students and other fellow teachers.

With grandchildren spread in Oregon and Las Vegas, she and her husband are looking forward to seeing them more. She said that this fall will be the first time she will attend the birthday party of one of her grandchildren.

To fill the void that has been occupied so long by students, Karla is working to become a Court Appointed Special Advocate, CASA, volunteer, to help children caught in the court system. Her training and background in counseling will undoubtedly come in handy. A child will be assigned to her, and she will recommend what is best for that child.

Karla looks forward to the simple thrills of easing into the day at her pace.