Dr. Bonnie Jones-Jackson never imagined having a doctorate would be a detriment. After moving from Louisiana to Kansas, the educator experienced what it was to be both over-qualified and under-qualified at the same time.
“They would not give me a teaching license and wanted me to complete a two-year teaching program to gain the certifications needed to teach in my content area, which is English and language arts,” she explained.
Since earning her teaching credentials at Wichita State University, Jones-Jackson has been teaching middle school in Kansas and finds herself in an educational environment no amount of research could prepare her for.
“Covid has had a maturing effect on our children that we have not discussed,” Dr. Bonnie Jones-Jackson said of her middle-school students. “It’s almost as if they are consistently on overdrive for survival. They were essentially latchkey kids all alone at computers for two years as their parents went to work during the pandemic. They were responsible for their own learning. They were only given verbal instructions when they really needed hands-on instruction as 11, 12 and 13 year-olds.”
As a result, Dr. Bonnie Jones-Jackson believes, we now have a group of young teens who hold themselves responsible for their own learning and hold themselves accountable, even when they don’t have the tools – just because of age and development phases — to bring all that responsibility and accountability to measurable academic results.
“What I’ve seen as a result of emergency remote learning is that it takes an adult to come lead the way,” she said. “When I think about my students and the gap between maturity and the action it takes to work independently, it is all about learning to prioritize. When you have someone who is consistently giving you guidance to help with prioritizing, then you see growth. When we returned to the classroom after the pandemic, there were students who were struggling because they just didn’t have the tools to prioritize, but by the end of the year, we could see growth in every single child’s learning.”
Insights like these reflect the deep satisfaction Jones-Jackson finds teaching middle school after two more years of training after doctoral studies.
“I know my purpose. When you know your purpose, you know you are going to come up against barriers and find the strength to continue,” she said.
One barrier Dr. Bonnie Jones-Jackson had to overcome was writing her own CV. Like many scholars, she was unable to get enough distance from her work and accomplishments to list her achievements for today’s job market.
“I struggled with trying to write that document for years,” she explained. “The Babb Group had popped up in my feed when I was working on my dissertation, so I knew they existed and what they did, but it wasn’t until I couldn’t get a teaching license and needed a job that I actually started to work with them. Within in three months of finishing my CV with Babb, I got a job with Kansas Kids @Gear Up, which mentors elementary and middle school children. Through my work there, people were begging me to get back in the classroom and it motivated me to apply to the alternative teaching credentials program at Wichita State and to my job here. You see, everything is connected.”
Her only regret is not working with The Babb Group earlier to get her CV finished and out into the world.
“When I told my husband about it, he asked me ‘why are you so cheap?’” she said with a laugh. “It made me realize I had to invest in myself to make it all happen.”
Dorothy Miraglia
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