THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 19, 1997 TAG: 9701190073
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LORRAINE EATON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 167 lines
School's out and Mr. Lankford is cruising the aisles of Farm Fresh, doing his homework. So to speak.
``Let's talk here,'' the English teacher at Green Run High School says to a stockboy, one of his students.
Before leaving the store, he has clarified two homework assignments with one cashier and discussed ``Macbeth'' with another.
After 28 years of teaching, this is what it has come to. So many teen-agers are working so many hours that teachers are sensing school has become the part-time job. Most students work for cars, clothes, school supplies and college - in about that order.
Educators like Paul Lankford are being forced to change their teaching style to accommodate the crushing schedules of their students. This year, Lankford has reassessed the amount of homework he assigns, and he has the uneasy feeling that makeshift mini-conferences in the cereal aisle will become increasingly important.
``Most of my students are working 40-hours plus a week,'' said Lankford, chairman of the Green Run English Department. ``They are very, very tired.''
Like a mutating virus, the world of work has infected every corner of Room 104. Students straggle in yawning; some sleep during class. Others can't concentrate. Homework still gets done, but it is obvious that the input is minimal.
``Class discussion is very, very different. I don't get the freshness and spontaneity that I've been accustomed to for years,'' said Lankford, who teaches two honors and two regular English classes. ``And these are not slough-off students.''
There's a new reality, Lankford said, and teachers can't ignore it. Old maxims such as ``an hour in class and an hour-and-a-half at home'' must change.
So Lankford was doing something last week that would have never been done 10 years ago: reading ``Paradise Lost'' to and with his students right inside Room 104, instead of requiring that the reading be done at home. But Lankford, executive secretary of the Virginia Association of Teachers of English, said that some principals have discouraged reading classics in class because that is traditionally homework.
``It's awkward for teachers,'' said Lankford. ``There is a temptation to let them (students) slide, and at the same time there is a new reality. It's hard for me to assign homework when I know that they (students) will be giving up sleep to do the assignment.''
So this year, Lankford is searching for ways to cover the course material without crushing his students with homework. Other teachers are doing the same.
``Teachers this year, a few are sympathetic,'' said Shari Henderson, 17, a Green Run senior who recently cut her work week from 20 to 14 hours. ``A few are still like, `My class comes first.' ''
Before 1950, only 5 percent of high school students worked during the school year. Today, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, 44.2 percent of America's teen-agers ages 16 to 19 work, including 42.2 percent of Virginia's youths. And of Virginians 16 to 19 years old, 24 percent are officially working 35 hours or more each week.
But researchers like Laurence Steinberg at Temple University aren't buying these statistics. Steinberg, a professor of psychology, has studied adolescent behavior for 20 years. He believes that employers routinely underreport teen-agers' work schedules. He estimates that 80 percent of high school students work. Too many, he said, work 20 hours a week or more.
The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act says that youths ages 16 and 17 can work unlimited hours. The law limits teens 14 and 15 to three hours of work on a school day, and no more than 18 hours a week.
Researchers and educators agree that some work is beneficial. It teaches responsibility, time management, interpersonal and other skills. But when high school students start working more than 20 hours, trouble begins. And it's not only the grade-point average that hits the skids.
For his 1996 book, ``Beyond the Classroom,'' Steinberg studied 20,000 teen-agers and found that as students' work hours rise, their grades fall, their parents' control over their behavior falls, and their use of drugs and alcohol rises.
``Young people working more than 20 hours a week probably use drugs and alcohol 30 percent more often than kids who don't work,'' Steinberg said, based on his research.
Academically, the difference between working and nonworking teen-agers is one-third to one-half a letter grade per year.
``It's the difference between a B and a B-minus, but that accumulates over time,'' Steinberg said.
By the end of high school, the difference between a teen-ager who works more than 20 hours a week and one who works less or not at all is ``significant.''
``Students who work more than 20 hours a week are really risking their school careers and their health,'' Steinberg said.
On North Carolina's Outer Banks, a resort area where most high school students work between Easter and Thanksgiving, the seasonal difference in the classroom is stark. During the tourist season, Manteo High English teacher and publications adviser Robin Sawyer lectures over the heads of students who are falling asleep in class because they bused tables until midnight the night before. When businesses close for the season, students' performance improveds.
Parents must take charge, Sawyer said, and employers should have policies against scheduling students to work long hours.
``Parents who are truly monitoring their kids and allowing them to work only a few hours a week, those kids are going to be fine,'' Sawyer said. ``The problem gets out of hand when parents have no clue, or when the kids work for employers who don't care about the kids.''
It's true, area high school students said, that they or their friends sometimes work more than they want to because if they ask for time off, they will lose their jobs.
McDonald's, the nation's largest employer of young people, limits students to 20 hours a week and discourages late hours. Farm Fresh has no written policy, but managers try to accommodate student schedules, according to a company spokesman.
Susie Silver, parent of Norview High senior Steven Silver, keeps her son's work hours in check by visiting his boss and letting her know her son's limits.
But often, it's the students themselves who pile on the pressure.
Green Run senior Tammy Kilbane, 18, slides into her desk at school at 7:30 a.m. and drives out of the parking lot at 11:15. By 1 p.m., she's answering phones, filing and typing documents at a Norfolk engineering firm. She leaves work at 5:30 p.m., sometimes later. Working 22.5 hours a week and getting home after 6 p.m. leaves little time for anything else but homework.
Last year, Tammy also worked 16 to 24 hours each weekend at a bingo parlor, bringing her work total as high as 46 hours a week.
Only 3 percent of America's teen-agers work to support their families. About 11 percent are saving for college and nearly 60 percent spend all the money on themselves. Most teen-agers interviewed for this story said they needed to work so that they could have a car.
Tammy's parents buy her clothes, pay her car insurance and part of her car payment, and will pay her college tuition. So why is she working so much?
``I feel it benefits me,'' she said. ``I want to be a business administrator in the future. . . . I feel more responsible; it's helped me grow up.''
Tammy has since quit the bingo parlor job - it was just too much. And while she likes her current schedule of weekends off, she sometimes questions her work ethic on the dark drive home.
``That's when I feel like I'm losing out,'' she said. ``I mean, I've got to take off from work if I want to go to a pep rally.''
All work and no homework is a purely American phenomenon. In Sweden, about 20 percent of teen-agers work; in Japan, 2 percent.
While the academic toll on overworked teen-agers can be measured, other consequences can't.
``I don't know a kind way to say this, but they don't look as young as they should,'' Lankford said of his working students. ``I've grown so depressed. I leave school on Friday and can't even say, `Have a nice weekend.' They just look at me and say, `I'm working all weekend.' ''
For hard-working teens, this internal struggle remains unresolved.
Colleen Kelly, a Manteo High senior, has been to only one home football game in four years.
``I kept thinking that I'm trading one of my few experiences in high school to make $40,'' said Kelly, who has worked throughout her high school years, most recently busing tables.
And being forced to always make choices between being a kid and making money cannot be good, Lankford said.
``The real question here is whether we as a society want to sanction this work ethic,'' Lankford said. ``We are supposed to be turning out students who are literate human beings. We're turning out workers, and there is something very frightening about that.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by L. TODD SPENCER
From left, Cox High students Chris Quimby, Hollie Robinson and
Mike Hill, all work at the Farm Fresh at First Colonial and Great
Neck in Virginia Beach.
Graphic
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WHO WORK AFTER SCHOOL
Before 1950: 5 percent< Today: 44.2 percent of America's
teen-agers ages 16 to 19 work, including 42.2 percent of Virginia's
youths. Of Virginians 16 to 19 years old, 24 percent are working 35
hours or more each week.
KEYWORDS: EMPLOYMENT HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT HOMEWORK