Facebook

Hi everybody. Cindy Ashton here representing Iowa's third district and I am so pleased and honored to have as my state of the Union Guest today, Shannon Beatty, who is a teacher at Clay Elementary School in alternative part of the Southeast Polk District. she teaches children with behavioral health issues as well as children with learning disabilities. I'm so excited to have her to be able to represent the issues that we're facing in our public school system so she can help me and all of us. A voice to improve the opportunities for children in our district, I'm Shannon would love to hear you know what drives you to to do this work well I feel like all children need a voice and somebody to care and advocate for them. And so for me, this is an even bigger opportunity to do that for all kids but being with students with special needs has been just a driving force for me since that when I was in College and. felt like. like to be and over time is clearly that's where I need to be and so I want to be a voice for our students it's with special needs as well as the students so incredible job mentally ah but here's the problem we don't have enough money to support the issues that we are facing in our in our district and cross country ah she now has over twenty students with behavioral health issues that she is now responsible for in addition to that she's responsible for the children who have love of learning curve out there and need some help with that. so she oversees 12 other teachers who help children with educational aspects and so she spread thin. I've heard this from teachers across the district and what happens just like all of us their people. they have their families. They have issues as well. but what they know how you heard from Shannon, how important children are to her. They take the problems that the children are bringing to school with them and not only absorb those but try and be there for them every step of the way and stand strong and right now, our teachers are feeling the effects two of the stress of this and unfortunately, we're seeing less people coming into the industry and people leaving because of it. Shannon. What's up? How is this impacting what you're seeing to me? It's just teachers wanting to give as much time as they can to support their students in the classrooms. and when situations arise, it's very difficult to be able to allocate that time when classroom teachers have their schedules that they have to follow to provide those academics. but there's situations that arise, especially with behavior and that's within the classrooms that's been special education and just being able to make sure that we have the funding and resources to be able to provide for teachers to be able to do what they need to do to give kids their education as well as provide help around trauma and health issues and concerns that these kids come in. Every single day and you know all of the teachers that I work with, I know just they wanna love on every single one of them and so sometimes that's just difficult. Well. I'm grateful to have Shannon here who's not just an incredible teacher, but a wonderful wife and mother and advocate for children across this country really comes from a family of educators. This is how she's grown up. She wants to give back. We need to make sure that we're giving back to our teachers and fight hard to make sure they got the resources they need. Be doing that and hopefully working with my state representatives as well to make it happen in Iowa. thanks for checking in.