Real Talk with Mrs. Mahaffey

Robyn Mahaffey met with Women of Cincy over a delicious blueberry muffin at the North College Hill Perkins last Sunday morning. She’s a woman of equal parts grace and grind, who gives everything she has to her family of five and her eighth-grade students.

Interview by Kiersten Wones. Photography by Kali Robinson.

Tell us about yourself.

My name is Robyn. I’ve been married for almost 20 years. I have three kids: 16, 12, and 10, so they keep us really, really busy. I’ve been teaching for 20 years in and out of North College Hill.

Why did you want to become a teacher?

It’s funny because I didn’t. I was an aerospace engineering major. We had co-op so we were in school a quarter, worked a quarter, so I did everything at GE – every department imaginable. And I absolutely hated it. I hated sitting behind a desk. So I wrestled and wrestled, and it was kinda like I was running away from what I was supposed to be doing and just miserable.

I decided to follow my heart and go into teaching. I got the engineering degree with a math degree and then I went to grad school and got my teaching degree. It’s funny because right before graduation, my mom sent me a little care package thing and she had found our first-grade newspaper, and I had put, “When I grow up I want to be a teacher ’cause I want to help kids.” I guess it was my destiny. It’s my passion. I love doing what I’m doing.

You started out teaching at North College Hill, but in between you taught at Hamilton for seven years. Tell us about that time.

Hamilton was bigger – much bigger. We had like 13 elementaries as opposed to one. The unique thing about Hamilton was they have a humungous Hispanic population. My building was one-third ESL, one-third African American, and one-third white. Where our building sat, the prostitutes were here, the drug dealers were here, the gangs were here, and then it was us and a little bitty church on the corner.

It was fun. It was challenging. It was like, “Okay guys. Life is bigger than this.”

I taught sixth grade then. When I started, we would send 50, 60 kids to the middle school, and maybe three would graduate from the high school. Maybe three. So my partners and I got together, we found a sponsor in Miami, and they had our kids come up and do the college thing. By the time I left, we were graduating maybe 20. Which you know, not great, but better than three.

A lot of our kids were first-generation immigrants, most illegal, and for that first generation (the girls, anyway) it was like, “Okay, go get pregnant, have a kid, that way you can stay, and then it’s your kids who will benefit from the education and be able to go to college.” So we have sixth graders who are like, “Really my mission is to have kids so that I can stay.” Oh my gosh.

And then you returned to North College Hill nine years ago. How were the two districts different?

Hamilton’s huge. North College Hill’s really small. Everybody knows everybody. I have kids now who I had their parents. I had one little boy, I was subbing in sixth grade and he was a hot mess, so I was like, “Sweetheart, get on the phone and call your mom.” So I called the office and she said his mom’s name and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, she was in my first class.” So I called her and I said, “Hi, sweetie, it’s Mrs. Mahaffey,” and let her know what was going on. So she talked to him and he got off the phone – he slammed the phone down. He was like, “She doesn’t even look old enough to be my mom’s teacher!”

It’s totally family-oriented. If they feel like you respect them, then they respect you. Between my husband and I, we’ve been there 20 years. My kids went to school there, so they’re like, “Oh, you’re Evan’s mom” or “You’re Eric’s mom.” I had my daughter’s class in fourth grade and then again in eighth grade. They call me Mom because she did. They know me. I’m just me, and they respect that, I think.

The community looks to the school for help a lot. Not quite sure why. Some people say it’s because our moms are younger and they need help. Some people say it’s because a lot of our kids are gonna be first-generation high school graduates or maybe even second-generation high school graduates – which still isn’t a lot, being 2017. So they look to us as the experts, and you can’t take that lightly.

I think smaller is better. It’s a little more personable. You can see your impact a little bit sooner than with the larger district, whether it’s good or bad. You can see like, “Oh shoot, that was a terrible mistake. Let’s see how we can fix this and it’s not 20 years later and they’re on Oprah like ‘My eighth-grade teacher screwed up my life.'” I wouldn’t trade it.

When you first came back to North College Hill you were teaching fourth grade, but a few years ago you switched to eighth. Tell us about that.

The superintendent came in and said, “I need you to teach eighth-grade math.” And I’m like, “You know the hardest thing we do is fractions, right?” He said, “You’ll be fine. You got a math degree.” And I said, “Do you know how long ago I got that degree?”

But I think in my heart of hearts, I’m a straight middle school teacher. Elementary was fun, it was cute, it was challenging, but I like the middle school. You can talk to them about the future because the future is next year, freshman year, when everything counts. The next four years is gonna determine your life, seriously, like how many choices you have, how many bumps you’re gonna have to go over. You can talk real to them, and because of the way the world is going, they need real talk right now.

What kind of challenges do you see your students – particularly the girls – facing?

This year in particular, our kids are way more sexually active than in the past few years. We’re blown away, like, “You did what? Seriously?” We had one incident where a young lady invited a young man over to her house, and she got caught, so her mom flipped out. We had to call Child Protective Services.

So we had lunch together and I said, “You’re really angry at your mom. Justifiably so.” I said, “How old is your mom?” And she told me she was like 30, and I’m like, “So your mom had you when she was super young” – I’m trying to talk to her from her mom’s point of view – “and she reacted out of fear because you all have struggled.” And she said, “Yes, ma’am.” And I said, “Your mom doesn’t want that to happen to you, so when this happened she kinda saw red and was like ‘I don’t want this happening to my kid.’ So be angry with your mom for maybe another couple days, but you really need to sit down and talk to her, because she loves you more than anybody on the planet.

“Ask her, ‘Mom, why is this such a big deal?’ Start that dialogue, and then when you think about doing something you may feel more free to go to her before you make the decision.”

If you’re confident in who you are, if you have goals and dreams, you’re less likely to get tripped up by these things. So what we try to do is just get them talking. And it’s easy for me because I have kids who are teenagers, and I can say, “Well this is what Danielle shared with me,” and they’re like “For real? You talk to her like that?” And I’m like, “I have to. She’s gonna be gone from me and I won’t be able to pick up the pieces. She’s gonna have to make these decisions on her own, so yeah, we talk.” And that kinda opens their eyes, like, “I guess I can to my mom about these things. Or I can talk to Mrs. McMillan or I can talk to Mrs. Z.” Find an adult that you’re comfortable with that’s gonna tell you the truth. That’s the biggest thing, because what happens is teenagers, they just know what they know, which they think is everything, but it’s really just this little small piece and if they don’t talk about it then that’s when all kinds of stuff happens and they get tripped up and they get into gangs and they start having sex too early.

So that’s the biggest thing that we do is getting them to talk. They’re angry about life. I tell them, “Honey, if I could rewrite your story, I would. However, we get one story and we have to take it as it comes, so let’s figure out ways to cope with these things so that the next 60, 70 years of your life are on your terms.”

We have students who are straight middle class and we have some students who it’s like, “Oh my gosh, they only eat at school.” And they act up when vacations come because they know that stability isn’t there. We’re trying to figure out where they’re coming from so that you can address that, ’cause if their basic needs aren’t addressed, they’re not gonna learn math. They don’t care about the volume of a cone.

North College Hill recently started an advisory program to try and deal with some of these social and emotional issues. Tell us a little bit about that.

It’s just a time to not be so formal. It was, “What happens here, stays here.” We would just talk and reflect about things. Like, “Why are you doing what you’re doing? You want to fight her, but for what? If you go and just punch her, total respect, but if you’re gonna disrupt class to argue, what does that solve?” And they’re like, “Yeah, it is kind of a waste of time.” It’s just giving them a different perspective while I’m not trying to teach them something.

Is it tough walking the line between being their teacher and trying to act as a friend?

I tell them, “I’m not your friend. I will pour into you, and there are some things I can learn from you, but I’m not your friend. I’ll talk to you candidly because that’s the only way I know how to.”

I had an incident with my son, who was being bullied at school, and oh my gosh, I became that parent like, “Do you need me to come up there?” I became that mom. I did. So I was sharing that with my students and I was just telling them as a parent we want everything to be okay with you. It kinda helps them relate to what their parents are going through. If they had a whoopin’ the day before, they’ll ask me, “Mrs. Mahaffey, would you have whooped Danielle if she did this?” And I’m like, “Yeah.” And they’re like, “For real?” And I’m like, “Yes, and this is why.”

And that way we’re strengthening that relationship, because without the family you’re not gonna get anything out of the kids.

There’s that few exceptions, but for the most part, that’s why education is like it is, because our family units are breaking down.

You also work as a mentor to new teachers. Tell us about that.

Four or five years ago, the state of Ohio came up with this new program to mentor first- through fourth-year teachers. Basically we’re just here to support, encourage, be a safe place to bounce ideas. And it’s by no means “You have to do it the way I do it.” We’re helping them recognize who they are, their own teaching style, because you can’t do what I do – and not that I do it so great, but it’s just you’re not me, I’m not you. I’ve taken it as a learning experience for me, too. What can I learn from them?

What challenges are new teachers facing today?

It’s way different from when I started. Way different. Some people say we don’t even teach anymore, we’re just jumping through hoops and paperwork and data and this and that. Some of it’s good, but it’s a lot, and especially with a small district where we have to do a lot of that ourselves. So on top of having this group of 30 students, different personalities, different places, different academic levels, and getting them to learn this one thing that you need to teach them, you have to be a parent, you have to be a social worker, you have to learn your content. And then when you work in an urban district like ours, there’s another set of things that you have to figure out. And the only way to do it is to do it. There is no class that can say “do this, this, this, and that, and everything will be fine.” And they learn that after the first week of school. So we’re trying to help them maintain who they are and figure out how to balance, because it can be all-consuming. It can be everything you think of and dream of, while you’re awake, while you’re asleep, it can consume you.

These last maybe six years of education have been so rollercoaster-y, up and down, let’s try this, let’s try that, because nobody really knows the answer, so they’re just trying to try anything and unfortunately we suffer the consequences because not only do we have to teach; now we gotta do all this other stuff. It’s been good. It’s not all been bad. But it’s just been a lot.

What are some of the good things?

I don’t mind having a fair assessment of where my kids are at the end of the year. And I like the Common Core. Some people hate it. But as the teacher, it reduces the amount of things that I have to get through in a year. It spreads things out so that students are getting things at more age-appropriate levels.

For example: kindergartners and money. The dime is worth more than the nickel, but the nickel is bigger than the dime, so now they wait until maybe first or second grade to introduce that abstract kind of thinking. For me in eighth-grade math, when we do systems of equations, I just have to introduce that. So it’s not overwhelming to the point of “Oh my god, I hate math.”

And then, every school in Ohio is doing what I’m doing. So they can’t say Aiken is better because we’re doing this. Nope, we’re doing this at North College Hill also. Or Princeton is better or Lakota is better because they’re doing this. Well if you walk into my classroom and a Lakota classroom, we’ll be doing the same thing, so that’s put us education-wise on an even playing field. You’re not better. You’re different, but not better. We have kids that go to Ivy League schools, too.

Everybody’s tied up into data. Now we have to figure out what’s an effective use of the data? You’re just sitting there with a spreadsheet with numbers on it. I could’ve told you what the numbers would’ve been before we took the test. But there’s something missing, and I think bottom line, it’s the family. Why does this child get it and this child doesn’t get it? What’s the difference? They have the same teaching. And at the end of the day, if you dig deep enough, it’s home. The kids are looking to the school for something they should be getting at home, and so we gotta give it to them at school, and the thing that suffers is their academics.

Tell us about an influential woman in your life.

There are two. My mom and my grandma. My grandmother was a teacher, and I think that’s why way back in first grade, I wanted to be a teacher. She grinded. She was born in Middletown. She went to Miami when African American students couldn’t stay on campus in the ′30s. She got an advanced degree when people of color weren’t getting advanced degrees.

Middletown was very segregated. You had this side and then you had this side, but they all went to the same high school. My mom went to school there, and she said, “They taught us, ‘When you go up there you are on your P’s and Q’s. You are representing our neighborhood. You don’t go up there acting a fool. You get your education.'”

My grandma was asked to be one of the first African American teachers in one of the white middle schools, and that’s where she retired from. She did everything: music and plays and language arts. But it was a struggle, especially in the ′30s, ′40s, and ′50s. She did a lot of firsts in Middletown.

My mom, she had three girls, and she raised us to be able to take care of ourselves. She was very serious. She passed away maybe 11 years ago; she was diagnosed with cancer in September and she passed away in December, so we would just rotate taking turns staying at the hospitals. I said, “Mommy, how come you didn’t play with us when we were little? You were always so serious.” And she said, “I had three girls to get ready to survive in this life and I took my job very seriously.” And so we fell and we made mistakes, but she was always there.

You grow up saying, “I don’t want to be like my mom,” but now I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I wanna be like my mom. How did she do it?”

We didn’t have a lot, but she worked every day. I watched her go to work in a blizzard. We lived on a hill and we would have to get up early and jump in the back of her hatchback so that the car could get up the hill, and then we’d go back home and go to bed. So I watched her grind, just instilling that work ethic in us and a love for Christ.

She was always helping people. We always didn’t understand, like, “Why are you giving our piano away?” “Because this person who’s a budding artist needs it.” Things like that. She had a huge heart. Once we were grown, we could see how cool she was.

I remember when I changed majors, and everybody was like, “I can’t believe you did that,” and she was like, “You’ve gotta follow your heart.”